Reviewer 2's Review of Red Dead's History

I promised myself I would never write a negative book review. I promised my PhD advisor I would never write a negative book review. I promised I would always find a silver lining in any piece of academic writing I reviewed. But I can’t keep that promise with Tore Olsson’s Red Dead’s History.

In December I was approached by an academic journal to write a review of Tore Olsson’s Red Dead’s History: A Video Game, an Obsession, and America’s Violent Past for a roundtable. It was an easy “yes” for me. I have spent over a decade studying and publishing on the depiction of history in video games, and I’m always eager to learn another scholar’s opinion on the topic. I’ve spent most of the last ten years talking with game developers and scholars from various disciplines about historical video games for my show History Respawned. My goal with the show is to bring as many people to the table of historical game studies as possible to build the field. I’m especially eager to have scholars from my own discipline of history join because I think it could be a compelling way to reach younger audiences with our scholarship and relate that scholarship to the modern day. I didn’t know Tore Olsson from Adam, but he was a fellow historian and he had written a book on one of my favorite topics. I was looking forward to reading it.

I received a review copy of the book at the end of December and started reading in January, after the winter break. It was at that point I realized that writing a review for this book was going to be very problematic. In the preface of Red Dead’s History, Tore explains the origin of the book, which began with playing Red Dead Redemption II during the pandemic. He decided to use the game as the basis for a history class in 2021 on American history from 1880 to 1920. Sounds great. After this quick introduction, however, came the kicker. “To my great surprise,” Tore writes, “no other historian had tried this before” (xi). Huh. That is surprising, Tore, mostly because it is not true. Now, it may be the case that Tore’s class was the first to use Red Dead to cover the exact period of 1880 to 1920, but, even still, it is quite a bold statement to say that “no other historian had tried this before.” I myself have been using the Red Dead series in my American history classes since 2014, and in my history game classes since 2016. And I was most certainly not the first.

So, this bizarre line from Tore immediately sent me from the preface to the book’s endnotes, which includes references to all the works the author consulted for Red Dead’s History. There I discovered copious references to major gaming websites, to newspaper articles and to YouTube videos, but not a single reference to any scholarly analysis of the Red Dead series beyond a quick citation of Jonathan Jones’ Slate article about the depiction of racism in Red Dead Redemption 2. Wow. How did this make it out of peer review? Did this go through peer review? I then manically read the rest of the book, hoping that maybe there were references to scholarly work on this topic that didn’t make it into the endnotes for some reason. Nothing.

Upon finishing the book, of course, I thought of my own injuries first. By the time Tore taught his class on Red Dead, I had published half a dozen podcasts and videos for History Respawned on the topic of how the series depicted America’s past. This work included an entire episode dedicated to how Red Dead depicted the Pinkerton’s National Detective Agency, a topic which receives pride of place in Tore’s book. I had also written a feature for Eurogamer in 2018 on how Red Dead’s developer, Rockstar, depicts American history more generally. Now, I’m obviously upset this work wasn’t cited, but, if I’m being generous to Tore Olsson, it’s something I can accept. This work wasn’t published in a traditional academic setting and wasn’t peer reviewed. This sort of issue didn’t stop Tore from citing the work of other non-scholars writing for gaming websites or publishing videos for YouTube, of course, but it is at least some sort of plausible explanation. History Respawned is a niche show, with a niche audience, and I am a non-tenure track professor at a community college. To ignore that work is par for the course in academia. However, what makes Tore Olsson’s work so incredible and embarrassing is that he doesn’t cite any published, peer-reviewed scholarship on the Red Dead series or historical game studies more generally. Most importantly, there are no citations of Esther Wright’s groundbreaking and essential monograph on the series, Rockstar Games and American History (2022), or Esther’s edited volume with John Wills, Red Dead Redemption: History, Myth and Violence in the Video Game West (2023).

Citations are the lifeblood of an academic career. They help to build a scholar’s reputation. They are used in tenure and promotion cases. And they are essential for funding and grant applications. Citations are particularly valuable for scholars trying to develop new fields, like historical game studies. Citations are also important for the author because they show that the scholar has done their research and can be trusted when they say something like “no other historian had tried this before” (You know what? Don’t trust anyone who writes something like this. Bad example). During my graduate training, I was encouraged to cite even books that I hated just so I could demonstrate my knowledge of the field. For example, I’ll probably be citing Red Dead’s History for years to come. It’s a professional courtesy, but it’s also important for establishing the author’s own credentials and argument.

Now, if Tore Olsson had merely cited some of the existing scholarly literature on Red Dead – not even thoroughly discussed it, but just cited it – you wouldn’t be reading this review. I would have assumed that Tore read the work and hated it. I then would have written, through gritted teeth, a mostly positive review, pointed out the need to really engage with the literature, and sent it on to the roundtable’s editors. But the fact that those citations are completely absent tells me that Tore either didn’t do the reading or did the reading and decided to ignore it (we could lump his book editor into this as well, but the ultimate fault in these circumstances lay with the author). Now, this isn’t just something that pisses me off. It’s also something that does damage to the field of historical game studies in a couple of ways.

First, thanks to Tore’s publishers, this book has garnered a lot of attention. In addition to the journal roundtable I’d signed up for, this is a book that has been featured in major news articles, blogs, and podcasts. The audiobook version of Red Dead’s History is read by none other than Roger Clark, the performance-capture actor behind Arthur Morgan. This book has also been generously blurbed by an impressive collection of historians and writers such as Tom Bissell, Ed Ayers, Daniel Immerwahr, and Glenda Gilmore. Tom Bissell goes so far as to say “never before has a trained historian dived so deeply…into a game’s politics and milieu” (I’ve already warned you about this type of writing but to be fair to Tom Bissell, he’s probably much too busy doing awesome Tom Bissell things to pay attention to the work of historians). Far be it from me to jealously snipe at another scholar’s success, but the reason this matters is because this success is based on the assumption of originality and scholarly authority. This book has neither, but now it is easily the most famous book in historical games studies.

Second, and most importantly, the lack of citations or recognition of the field of historical game studies means that Red Dead’s History isn’t just trying to steal the spotlight, it also means it is a really bad and dull book. Part of the reason why citations are so important is that doing the reading helps the author know the lay of the land in terms of the scholarship and avoid making easily avoidable errors with their analysis. Tore Olsson is a good writer, and based on his CV, he is a very talented historian in other areas of research, but when it comes to games, and in particular Rockstar Games, he really needs to get out there more. One of the most bizarre characteristics of Red Dead’s History is that it doesn’t talk about Red Dead very much. The chapters are essentially historical overviews of topics in American history sandwiched between very brief discussions of moments and sequences within Red Dead Redemption II. The book also avoids the game’s sequence in the Caribbean, arguably the most important and interesting section of the game. In a lot of ways, Red Dead’s History reads like a textbook on American history that occasionally brings up a video game for some reason.

Furthermore, in addition to sidelining Red Dead Redemption II, this book goes even further by purposefully not discussing any other game in the Red Dead series. That’s right, no Red Dead Revolver or Red Dead Redemption. Tore’s explanation for this is that the earlier games in the series are “mindless” and favor “sensationalism and stereotype” over serious history (5-6). And yet, those games, particularly Red Dead Redemption, provide the entire story for Red Dead Redemption II. Indeed, the notably long epilogue for Red Dead Redemption II is essentially a section of Red Dead Redemption. To go into all the ways that the two games are interrelated would take too long, but suffice to say this is an astonishing decision on the part of the author. Tore complains throughout the book that the events in Red Dead Redemption II occur too late in the 1890s, and don’t match up with the actual historical record. Yet the entire reason Red Dead II is set so late is so the story in Red Dead I (partly set around the Mexican Revolution in the 1910s) makes sense. Thus, this complaint is like reading the Christian New Testament without the Gospels and complaining that no one has told him who this Jesus guy is.

This focus on Red Dead Redemption II as well as a lack of reading in the field of historical game studies has a lot of negative effects on Tore’s book, but the most important negative consequence is a lack of curiosity. Red Dead’s History accepts as fact that the developers at Rockstar Games, particularly the Houser brothers, were making an earnest effort to develop a historically rich and thoughtful game. In other words, Tore takes the game’s publicity and marketing at face value. A writer could only be this gullible if they consciously avoided any knowledge of Rockstar Games beyond Red Dead Redemption II and avoided any of the copious amounts of criticism of the Housers and their perspective on American history and culture. Rockstar Games and the Housers spent over a decade developing a sneering, misanthropic, bloodthirsty, and misogynistic vision of America through the Grand Theft Auto series. Through the historical games in the GTA series and the Red Dead series, the Housers have shown a legitimate interest in American cinema but not really American history. As Esther Wright, in particular, has shown, the latest Red Dead game adopts the appearance of serious, high drama and the veneer of authenticity to achieve a higher level of cinematic facsimile rather than historical accuracy.

This scholarship matters because if Tore had consulted it, it may have saved him from writing extraordinary howlers like “Red Dead Redemption II doesn’t contribute to…toxic nostalgia” (146), “Rockstar Games resists the recycling of tired myths” (207), and, even more amazingly, with reference to the game’s depiction of women, referring to Rockstar Games as “social justice” developers (196. I nearly choked when I read this line). In another remarkable passage related to women, Tore argues that “‘Damsels in distress’ are hard to find” (195) in the game, when they were a central part of Red Dead Redemption’s open world. They also formed the basis for that game’s most famous secret achievement, “Dastardly,” which required the player to not only kidnap and hogtie a woman and place her on train tracks but also wait to witness her death when the train ran her over. Not quite “social justice,” but perhaps an example of “toxic nostalgia?” Tore praises Red Dead Redemption II for unexpectedly foregrounding the story of the American suffrage movement (196), and he chastises players for publishing YouTube videos that feature suffragettes being physically assaulted. Hmmm, I wonder who gave the players the inspiration for this sort of stuff? And why would Rockstar go to such trouble to foreground the suffrage movement after “Dastardly?” It’ll remain a mystery, I suppose. Better not bother reading any other articles or books about this topic.

I finished Red Dead’s History in February, and I was left in a situation I never thought I would find myself in. I had agreed to write a review of this book, but I could not bring myself to write a positive one. The overwhelming majority of published academic book reviews in the humanities are positive for two reasons. First, no one wants to bring down the work of another scholar, particularly if that scholar could be up for promotion based on their book. Second, there is a more than fair chance that your negative book review will come back to haunt you down the road. You have to worry about retribution from the scholar you criticize, but also their friends and supporters who are in academia as well. With my review due mid-April, I decided in early March that my best course of action was to tell the roundtable editors my situation and offer to withdraw. I even offered to return the review copy of the book they had sent me (this was more of plea). They accepted my withdrawal but encouraged me to keep the book. I was momentarily relieved, but as I looked at the copy of Red Dead’s History on my shelf, I realized that I was not done. After Spring Break, I returned to work and started collecting my notes and annotations. Then, at the start of April, I started writing this review.

We live in an era of incredible change and much of that change is bad for academic scholarship. Everywhere, academics are under threat: in the job market, in the publishing world, in public affairs, in popular culture, and in the classroom. So many old norms and assurances are abandoned. Not a day goes by where I don’t wonder, “What’s it all for? What’s the point? Should I keep going?” Reading a book like Red Dead’s History makes me think, “Maybe our critics are right. If this is how scholars treat each other, maybe I should just step back and watch it all burn.” Maybe this review is adding kindling. I know this review will be very unpopular and probably damage my future career opportunities. But, as a great scholar once argued, “this will not stand, you know. This aggression will not stand, man.”

Historical Game Studies is a young field, but its work and scholars are worth fighting for, even against the ignorance of other academics. As someone who has played a role in building that field and promoting the work of those within it, I just can’t let Tore’s book pass without saying something in public. Moreover, as a historian, I can’t allow the work of another historian to promote an insular understanding of games. Video games are a complicated medium, and relying solely on the expertise and literature of the discipline of history alone is not sufficient. An interdisciplinary approach to scholarship and theory is essential. And, honestly, historians should relish this type of approach. Historiography is our thing, after all! After all this, there is something I agree with Tore Olsson about. He writes in his introduction that he hopes “this book forces an acknowledgement that video games can be powerful tools in teaching serious historical content and should no longer be ignored or written off” (6). I think this book can accomplish this goal, though maybe not in the way the author intended. There is already a great, developing literature on historical games that accomplishes this goal. Maybe one day Tore Olsson will read it.