Publications by Esther Wright
Kinephanos: Journal of Media Studies and Popular Culture , 2017
Considering promotional materials as a source of information themselves, this article tracks how ... more Considering promotional materials as a source of information themselves, this article tracks how Rockstar Games position titles through cinema references. Referring to the relationship between video games and cinema, and tendencies to evaluate video games according to their “cinematic” qualities, it demonstrates Rockstar’s attempt to have an active role in coding their products as such. Through discourse analysis of selected Rockstar-authored promotion and other paratextual sites of information, it illustrates the ways in which the promotion of Max Payne 3 (2012), Red Dead Redemption (2010), and L.A. Noire (2011) encouraged identification of their relative cinematic influences and/or qualities.
Talks by Esther Wright
For two decades, Rockstar Games have shown a commitment to developing and publishing video game t... more For two decades, Rockstar Games have shown a commitment to developing and publishing video game titles that interrogate and mediate aspects of American society and culture, past and present, to critical acclaim and longstanding fan dedication. Largely infamous for the Grand Theft Auto (1998-) franchise, their titles have ensured that their brand image is associated with quality gameplay experiences and cinematic narratives, financial success and record-breaking sales; in addition to frequent controversies in the media and wider public discourse on video games.
This paper - an overview of a wider PhD project - discusses the ways in which Rockstar have committed sustained effort to the project of engaging with and subsequently repackaging American history in video game form. To do so, it firstly explores Rockstar's brand image, and how it is inextricably bound up with notions of "Americana". Moreover, it traces and analyses the way notable Rockstar titles - particularly Red Dead Redemption (2010) and L.A. Noire (2011) - were marketed, and how references to cultural history and "real" historical detail feature in the promotional discourses surrounding them: aiming to preload audience expectations of the games before release with a sense of both cinematic and historical "authenticity". It will ultimately question what is at stake when we consider the kind of historical representation that is being sold via the games themselves; constructed as they are, both textually and paratextually, in relation to a specific vision of the western and noir genres, and what is perceived as 'real' and 'true' about specific periods in American history.
Conference Presentations by Esther Wright
Historical video games are often judged – by reviewers and players alike – in terms of the sense ... more Historical video games are often judged – by reviewers and players alike – in terms of the sense of ‘authenticity’ they offer; and this is usually used as a selling point in their marketing ahead of release. This paper explores the promotional strategies of Rockstar Games as an example of this, and how the company actively tries to generate this sense of authenticity in ‘prefigurative’ materials (Barker, 2004), or ‘entryway paratexts’ (Gray, 2010). As will be shown, promotional content disseminated by the company is designed to explicitly offer potential consumers historical and pop-cultural infotainment. That is, blog posts and other content published before the release of Red Dead Redemption (2010) and L.A. Noire (2011), for example, sought to stimulate a specific discourse around the release of these video games; one that set parameters on the validity of the experiences they offered via pre-established criteria.
On the one hand, blog posts published on Rockstar’s official website sought to offer ‘insight’ into the historical foundations of their games: the ‘true’ history of American westward expansion, as represented in Red Dead Redemption, or the ‘real crimes’ that helped inspire L.A. Noire’s cases. This historical content, presented as the labour of Rockstar’s research team –and thus framing the company in the role of a ‘developer-historian’ (Chapman, 2016)– is both informative and seeks to add to the authenticity (and thus entertainment value) of their forthcoming releases, by themselves setting the standards of historical legitimacy which they attempted to fulfil.
Moreover, another set of blog posts ‘recommended’ certain western and noir films for players to access ahead of playing the games themselves. This kind of ‘promotional authorship’ aimed to inform players of the ‘correct’ readings of the games (Hadas, 2017), in terms of how Rockstar deemed that they were responding to or adapting certain ‘authentic’ conventions of genre history, and the ‘tone’ or ‘feel’ that these games were aspiring to fulfil. While providing potential (cinematic) entertainment preceding the game experience, this sort of cinematic authentication (Wright, 2017) also furthers Rockstar’s longstanding commitment to upholding the identity of their brand – and a public discourse around their products – as intrinsically linked to, and building upon, established cinematic history and prestige.
This paper will therefore discuss the ways in which Rockstar actively attempt to anticipate and control expectations, by educating potential players as to the historical foundations and cultural influences of their forthcoming titles, with the intention of enhancing their entertainment value. Moreover, by building upon the representation of America’s past as pre-established on film, Rockstar attempt to encode their titles with a specific identity that combines both popular perceptions of history, and canonical cinema history, to sell their particular brand of ‘authentic’ interactive entertainment experience.
Mafia III (2016) begins with a disclaimer informing players of the developer’s intention to creat... more Mafia III (2016) begins with a disclaimer informing players of the developer’s intention to create ‘an authentic and immersive experience that captures this very turbulent time and place, including depictions of racism.’ The way the player is able to navigate the city, via the game’s biracial protagonist Lincoln Clay, was supposed to offer a particular ‘historically accurate’ experience: claiming a serious attempt at representing 1968 in a fictionalised version of New Orleans, without shying away from ‘era-authentic’ use of racial slurs and institutionalised prejudice.
This creates a series of tensions between the formal characteristics and conventions of open world games (and the Mafia franchise generally), and the demands of ‘authentic’ representation of a problematic historical period. For example, with the game’s explicit desire to examine a serious historical topic it naturally must negotiate questions about what can be played with tastefully (Chapman and Linderoth 2015), while facing pressures ‘to get it right’; that is, align with dominant interpretations of the setting. Amongst other points, we argue that the game deploys an unusual documentary framing of in-game events in order to negotiate such tensions. Ultimately, this paper will ask: how does the game resolve this necessity for authentic treatment of serious subject matter with the demands of gameplay and, more specifically, player agency? In doing so, we argue, Mafia III reflects on the very process of representation of the American past in game form.
This paper explores Rockstar Games’s successful Western franchise, and its titles Red Dead Revolv... more This paper explores Rockstar Games’s successful Western franchise, and its titles Red Dead Revolver (2004) and Red Dead Redemption (2010). Despite having different styles of gameplay, and drawing reference from two distinct, but interlinked, styles of cinematic Western, both construct their interactive experiences by deploying recognisably Western settings and narratives, visual and aural iconographies, and a diversity of possible gameplay actions. Moreover, this paper will specifically study the ways in which the promotion and marketing for Redemption privileged a sense of Western authenticity (and arguably historicity) for the latter franchise release, at the expense of the former; that where Revolver was considered by its creators to ultimately embody Western ‘myths’, Redemption was perceived as a fundamentally more ‘compete western experience’, and critically therefore, representative of the ‘reality of the Old West’. This is especially of note considering the global success of Redemption as a Western game, and the acclaim it received from both critics and fans alike, having now sold at least 14 million copies worldwide. This paper will thus explore how references from the wider Western genre have been used and portrayed with the explicit intention of instilling a sense of authenticity in these contemporary video games, and what this ‘authenticity’ actually appears to consist of. It will do so by tracing which specific styles of Western film are seen by Rockstar to conform to the ‘classic’ look, feel and narrative of the genre, and have thus had their particular elements replicated in digital, virtual form.
This paper considers two contrasting aspects of Rockstar Games’ Red Dead Redemption (2010)—
its p... more This paper considers two contrasting aspects of Rockstar Games’ Red Dead Redemption (2010)—
its prescribed, mission-based linear narrative, and its free-roam gameplay elements—, to study the
game as a postmodern intervention into the wider cinematic Western genre, and a retelling of the
early twentieth century history of the American West. The game’s narrative—told through cinematic
cutscenes and isolated missions that limit players to certain kinds of objectives and actions—is situated within an expansive open-world, free-roam game environment, in which players can seemingly enact any kind of ‘Western’ situation they choose. The game’s ‘story’ is therefore afforded a sense of authenticity and completeness, while actually privileging a particular, exclusive image of American’s Western past; heavily informed by a specific kind of Western film, but purporting to showcase and represent the ‘reality of the Old West’. This paper will consider the way the game was promoted, as well as specific gameplay and narrative components, to consider the kind of ‘reality’, and indeed historical narrative that Red Dead Redemption offers to its players, and what kind of experience and story can be ‘played’.
This paper examines the television series The Newsroom (2012-), and how it utilises, explores and... more This paper examines the television series The Newsroom (2012-), and how it utilises, explores and revises specific events and symbols of contemporary American history; moreover, how it does so following fictional characters embedded in landscapes of historical fact within living memory. A supposedly 'behind-the-scenes' look at the television news industry, through its character and narrative arcs it consistently questions the ethics and democratic responsibilities of reporting 'the news' to mass-audiences, with the explicit intention of educating ‘America’ about itself. Its storylines are constructed through blending actual current events and fictionalised versions of recent and notable news stories; arguably, in order to deal with significant traumatic or controversial events in contemporary American society. Considering the most prominent historical storylines, the televisual context of The Newsroom, and Aaron Sorkin as an auteur, this paper will discuss the way significant visual, historic and political tropes of America’s recent past are evoked, reconsidered and re-reported for consumption, by television audiences in America and around the world. Ultimately, it will explore whether The Newsroom is writing its own version of contemporary American history, or simply re-presenting ‘the facts’ in order to allow viewers to do this themselves.
Papers by Esther Wright
European journal of American studies, 2021
New Media & Society, 2018
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Publications by Esther Wright
Talks by Esther Wright
This paper - an overview of a wider PhD project - discusses the ways in which Rockstar have committed sustained effort to the project of engaging with and subsequently repackaging American history in video game form. To do so, it firstly explores Rockstar's brand image, and how it is inextricably bound up with notions of "Americana". Moreover, it traces and analyses the way notable Rockstar titles - particularly Red Dead Redemption (2010) and L.A. Noire (2011) - were marketed, and how references to cultural history and "real" historical detail feature in the promotional discourses surrounding them: aiming to preload audience expectations of the games before release with a sense of both cinematic and historical "authenticity". It will ultimately question what is at stake when we consider the kind of historical representation that is being sold via the games themselves; constructed as they are, both textually and paratextually, in relation to a specific vision of the western and noir genres, and what is perceived as 'real' and 'true' about specific periods in American history.
Conference Presentations by Esther Wright
On the one hand, blog posts published on Rockstar’s official website sought to offer ‘insight’ into the historical foundations of their games: the ‘true’ history of American westward expansion, as represented in Red Dead Redemption, or the ‘real crimes’ that helped inspire L.A. Noire’s cases. This historical content, presented as the labour of Rockstar’s research team –and thus framing the company in the role of a ‘developer-historian’ (Chapman, 2016)– is both informative and seeks to add to the authenticity (and thus entertainment value) of their forthcoming releases, by themselves setting the standards of historical legitimacy which they attempted to fulfil.
Moreover, another set of blog posts ‘recommended’ certain western and noir films for players to access ahead of playing the games themselves. This kind of ‘promotional authorship’ aimed to inform players of the ‘correct’ readings of the games (Hadas, 2017), in terms of how Rockstar deemed that they were responding to or adapting certain ‘authentic’ conventions of genre history, and the ‘tone’ or ‘feel’ that these games were aspiring to fulfil. While providing potential (cinematic) entertainment preceding the game experience, this sort of cinematic authentication (Wright, 2017) also furthers Rockstar’s longstanding commitment to upholding the identity of their brand – and a public discourse around their products – as intrinsically linked to, and building upon, established cinematic history and prestige.
This paper will therefore discuss the ways in which Rockstar actively attempt to anticipate and control expectations, by educating potential players as to the historical foundations and cultural influences of their forthcoming titles, with the intention of enhancing their entertainment value. Moreover, by building upon the representation of America’s past as pre-established on film, Rockstar attempt to encode their titles with a specific identity that combines both popular perceptions of history, and canonical cinema history, to sell their particular brand of ‘authentic’ interactive entertainment experience.
This creates a series of tensions between the formal characteristics and conventions of open world games (and the Mafia franchise generally), and the demands of ‘authentic’ representation of a problematic historical period. For example, with the game’s explicit desire to examine a serious historical topic it naturally must negotiate questions about what can be played with tastefully (Chapman and Linderoth 2015), while facing pressures ‘to get it right’; that is, align with dominant interpretations of the setting. Amongst other points, we argue that the game deploys an unusual documentary framing of in-game events in order to negotiate such tensions. Ultimately, this paper will ask: how does the game resolve this necessity for authentic treatment of serious subject matter with the demands of gameplay and, more specifically, player agency? In doing so, we argue, Mafia III reflects on the very process of representation of the American past in game form.
its prescribed, mission-based linear narrative, and its free-roam gameplay elements—, to study the
game as a postmodern intervention into the wider cinematic Western genre, and a retelling of the
early twentieth century history of the American West. The game’s narrative—told through cinematic
cutscenes and isolated missions that limit players to certain kinds of objectives and actions—is situated within an expansive open-world, free-roam game environment, in which players can seemingly enact any kind of ‘Western’ situation they choose. The game’s ‘story’ is therefore afforded a sense of authenticity and completeness, while actually privileging a particular, exclusive image of American’s Western past; heavily informed by a specific kind of Western film, but purporting to showcase and represent the ‘reality of the Old West’. This paper will consider the way the game was promoted, as well as specific gameplay and narrative components, to consider the kind of ‘reality’, and indeed historical narrative that Red Dead Redemption offers to its players, and what kind of experience and story can be ‘played’.
Papers by Esther Wright
This paper - an overview of a wider PhD project - discusses the ways in which Rockstar have committed sustained effort to the project of engaging with and subsequently repackaging American history in video game form. To do so, it firstly explores Rockstar's brand image, and how it is inextricably bound up with notions of "Americana". Moreover, it traces and analyses the way notable Rockstar titles - particularly Red Dead Redemption (2010) and L.A. Noire (2011) - were marketed, and how references to cultural history and "real" historical detail feature in the promotional discourses surrounding them: aiming to preload audience expectations of the games before release with a sense of both cinematic and historical "authenticity". It will ultimately question what is at stake when we consider the kind of historical representation that is being sold via the games themselves; constructed as they are, both textually and paratextually, in relation to a specific vision of the western and noir genres, and what is perceived as 'real' and 'true' about specific periods in American history.
On the one hand, blog posts published on Rockstar’s official website sought to offer ‘insight’ into the historical foundations of their games: the ‘true’ history of American westward expansion, as represented in Red Dead Redemption, or the ‘real crimes’ that helped inspire L.A. Noire’s cases. This historical content, presented as the labour of Rockstar’s research team –and thus framing the company in the role of a ‘developer-historian’ (Chapman, 2016)– is both informative and seeks to add to the authenticity (and thus entertainment value) of their forthcoming releases, by themselves setting the standards of historical legitimacy which they attempted to fulfil.
Moreover, another set of blog posts ‘recommended’ certain western and noir films for players to access ahead of playing the games themselves. This kind of ‘promotional authorship’ aimed to inform players of the ‘correct’ readings of the games (Hadas, 2017), in terms of how Rockstar deemed that they were responding to or adapting certain ‘authentic’ conventions of genre history, and the ‘tone’ or ‘feel’ that these games were aspiring to fulfil. While providing potential (cinematic) entertainment preceding the game experience, this sort of cinematic authentication (Wright, 2017) also furthers Rockstar’s longstanding commitment to upholding the identity of their brand – and a public discourse around their products – as intrinsically linked to, and building upon, established cinematic history and prestige.
This paper will therefore discuss the ways in which Rockstar actively attempt to anticipate and control expectations, by educating potential players as to the historical foundations and cultural influences of their forthcoming titles, with the intention of enhancing their entertainment value. Moreover, by building upon the representation of America’s past as pre-established on film, Rockstar attempt to encode their titles with a specific identity that combines both popular perceptions of history, and canonical cinema history, to sell their particular brand of ‘authentic’ interactive entertainment experience.
This creates a series of tensions between the formal characteristics and conventions of open world games (and the Mafia franchise generally), and the demands of ‘authentic’ representation of a problematic historical period. For example, with the game’s explicit desire to examine a serious historical topic it naturally must negotiate questions about what can be played with tastefully (Chapman and Linderoth 2015), while facing pressures ‘to get it right’; that is, align with dominant interpretations of the setting. Amongst other points, we argue that the game deploys an unusual documentary framing of in-game events in order to negotiate such tensions. Ultimately, this paper will ask: how does the game resolve this necessity for authentic treatment of serious subject matter with the demands of gameplay and, more specifically, player agency? In doing so, we argue, Mafia III reflects on the very process of representation of the American past in game form.
its prescribed, mission-based linear narrative, and its free-roam gameplay elements—, to study the
game as a postmodern intervention into the wider cinematic Western genre, and a retelling of the
early twentieth century history of the American West. The game’s narrative—told through cinematic
cutscenes and isolated missions that limit players to certain kinds of objectives and actions—is situated within an expansive open-world, free-roam game environment, in which players can seemingly enact any kind of ‘Western’ situation they choose. The game’s ‘story’ is therefore afforded a sense of authenticity and completeness, while actually privileging a particular, exclusive image of American’s Western past; heavily informed by a specific kind of Western film, but purporting to showcase and represent the ‘reality of the Old West’. This paper will consider the way the game was promoted, as well as specific gameplay and narrative components, to consider the kind of ‘reality’, and indeed historical narrative that Red Dead Redemption offers to its players, and what kind of experience and story can be ‘played’.