Rockstar Games is a video game publisher famous for its immersive and highly detailed action-adventure titles set in America, thanks to its two main franchises, Red Dead Redemption and Grand Theft Auto. The game is awash with social and political commentary. Hector St. Rockstar hones a unique outsider view on the American condition. The view reflects the international origins of the creative team; it also resides in the cast of playable game characters, who typically come from minority backgrounds and position themselves outside the mainstream U.
Rooted in revolution and the overthrow of colonial powers, the American Dream has developed across two centuries into an amorphous but alluring myth that celebrates individualism, freedom, opportunity, materialism, and personal success. From Langston Hughes to Hunter S. Thompson, critics have meanwhile highlighted and lampooned the limits, falsities, and failings of the concept, particularly in terms of it being out of reach to minorities and the working classes Hughes; Hochschild.
Critical media commentary on the American Dream now extends to games. The Grand Theft Auto series serves as valuable social commentary on the twenty-first century Dream. In GTA V , the subject of this article, the contemporary Dream is critiqued on a range of narratological, experiential, and gamic levels.
The state of the Dream is very much connected with the state of Los Santos based on Los Angeles and its environs, the ideals and realities of San Andreas or California culture, and the narrative arcs of at least two out of three of the playable characters Michael De Santa and Franklin Marshall. The play experience as a whole aims to highlight the ironies and contradictions of modern American capitalism, and casts doubts over the survival of a national myth. In many regards, GTA V mirrors other cultural products in its mix of edification and damnation of the California experience.
Rockstar explores the American experience chiefly, I argue, through the prism of parody. Parody thus shapes much of the GTA gaming experience. Critical commentary on its nature is delivered through a complementary range of game mechanics that I refer to as environmental immersion , character narrative , and mission-based play.
