Video Game Violence

While the Western was dying a slow death across the cultural landscape, it was blazing back to life as a video game in the early twenty-first century. Rockstar Games' Red Dead franchise, beginning with Red Dead Revolver in 2004, has grown into one of the most critically acclaimed video game franchises of the twenty-first century. Red Dead Redemption: History, Myth, and Violence in the Video Game West offers a critical, interdisciplinary look at this cultural phenomenon at the intersection of game studies and American history.

When someone brings up the subject of violent video games, it's usually for one of two reasons: first, to insist that media violence is turning our kids into killers; second, to deny that the media has any effects on us and to call anyone who says otherwise a moral crusader. Like most complex issues, the effects of media violence aren't so black-and-white. This book cuts through the rhetoric and grandstanding to directly answer the questions that parents, gamers, and researchers have.