In-Game Photography, Photography in Red Dead Redemption 2

Video Games as an Art

Videogame industries have developed significantly in the context of the global pandemic in 2020. Fusions between the virtual world and the real world are emerging. 12.3 million people participated in a virtual concert in Fortnite; Joe Biden’s campaign team built a base in Animal Crossing: New Horizons during the US election. In a sense, the virtual world carries the missing part of reality. Video games have been recognised as a perfect combination of technologies and all traditional forms of arts we knew. Henry Jenkins directly points out that games are a ‘new lively art’, its harmony with the digital age just same with the previous media and machine age, new aesthetic experiences were created, and screens become a new field for people to explore and practice extensively.[1] Three-dimensional modelling technology shapes buildings and sculptures, making paintings more vivid; players can immerse themselves into a film version of the experience to interact and participate. Steven Poole states that ‘If architecture is frozen music, then a videogame is liquid architecture.’[2] Game developers have created vast, magnificent and unrestrained virtual worlds with infinite possibilities in video games. Those excellent can bring players some serious and deep thinking about history, future, nature, humanity, and philosophy. Games expand and prolong our lives; making up for what we lost and what we cannot get. However, Jenkins also suggests that although the status of games has been acknowledged by the public, there are still flaws in the study of games in digital art.[3]

When the PC version of Red Dead Redemption 2 (RDR2) was released in late 2019, it added contents such as a photo mode which previously was not available on the Sony PlayStation 4. Interestingly, this is not the only part that related to photography in this game and it is highly worthy of discussion that a video game involves so many contents about photography — a ‘physical’ camera, an advanced photo mode, various photography related quests and plots such as a nature photographer character and a photo studio. Furthermore, even the load page of the game are slides of Daguerreotype photos of that era (Fig. 1). Multiple photography elements helped frame the realism sense of this game and create a more immersive game environment.

Nowadays, almost all newly released games have at least one camera mode, which seems that it has become one of the essential functions of modern games. Why do game developers design so many photography-related contents? What does it to add to the game? What does photography mean for games? What inspiration does this give to photography in reality? This essay drawing on the research and experience of other scholars and commentators and in-depth analyses the two camera systems and photography-related contents in the game, to explore the relationship between photography and RDR2, the social status of photography in the set era of the game, and the reason for the popularity of retro-style, and discussing photography’s historical function and the suggestions to contemporary photography practice.

Bridge to Reality

RDR2 is a western-style action-adventure game produced by Rockstar Games in 2018. The game can be played in both first-person and third-person perspectives, and players can freely explore and interact with the open world. The game content includes gun battles, hunting, horse riding, non-player character quests, a bounty system that law enforcement and bounty hunters will respond to certain actions of the player and it has a moral value system which effected by some choice the player made.

The game begins with a brief introduction of its era background in three sentences, ‘By 1899, the age of outlaws and gunslingers was at an end. America was becoming a land of law... Even the west had mostly been tamed.’[4] Which is the end of the American Westward Movement and players play the role of Arthur Morgan and John Marston, members of the Van Der Linde bandit gang experience the life of a desperado, in a dilemma, make some difficult choices, decide whether to make some salvation or continue to fall and facing the ending of the American Old West era.

One of the critical points of an open-world videogame such as RDR2 is to create a more realistic world and build a more immersive atmosphere for players. In this case, photography can become a critical node to link the virtuality and reality, which serves the game to establish a sense of reality. Photography is constantly recognised as evidence of events and existence. Susan Sontag convincingly explains:

Photographs furnish evidence. Something we hear about, but doubt, seems proven when we’re shown a photograph of it. […] A photograph passes for incontrovertible proof that given thing happened. The picture may distort; but there is always a presumption that something exists, or did exist, which is like what’s in the picture.[5]

Similarly, Daniel Rubinstein and Katrina Sluis state that the objectivity of photography’s scientific programs supports a photograph’s authenticity.[6] As people tend to believe what photos show is real, it seems that the use of photography in games weakens the boundary between the real world and the world in the game. Which can be verified in RDR2.

Developers of RDR2 have built the ‘hand-hold’ camera (Fig. 2 & 3) for the protagonist in the game in the previous versions, and it requires players to take out the camera from the backpack and control the character to compose and shoot, which makes the camera challenging to control. Despite that it provides different lenses for players, the altitude of the angle is also limited. If the player wants a selfie, he even needs to set up a tripod in the distance personally. However, these steps are very much in line characteristics of the times and can create a sense of really taking pictures for players.

This is complicated indeed, however, these tedious processes have the ability to enhance the realistic sense of the game. Ellen Sandor and Janine Fron state that put a camera into the virtual world of a videogame can establish a perception of dominate over it just as a photographer facing his subject.[7] Moreover, Cindy Poremba makes valuable suggestions that when designing a game, developers can give the power of shaping reality in the virtual world to players, by introducing photography, allow players to keep and rebuild their journeys.[8] Which provide an idea that although the player is taking pictures in virtual reality, the process of taking pictures and rituals is almost the same as the real one. In a high-quality virtual world, it can even be said that the content of the photo is essentially the same as in reality. Thus, the use of photography elements in the game can increase the realistic feel of the game to a certain extent and enhance the player’s immersive reality experience.

On the other hand, this ‘handheld’ camera is also one of the task props in the game. It was given to the player at the early stage of the story by a novelist (Fig. 4), who gives a quest to find four gunslingers, provided photos of the four people to help find them, and asked to use the camera to take a picture of them to prove their meetings. This detail with performance is a crucial point that further breaks the boundary between reality and virtuality, which provides a film-like sense to player’, makes the game world truly become a ‘world’ and gave players the opportunity and for some extent hints players to explore and record the world, because it shows the source of the prop and it is much more real than it straight shows in the player’s backpack. In a study of RDR2, Andrew Westerside and Jussi Holopainen quote Henry Jenkins’s theory of four modes of environmental storytelling — evocative spaces, enacting stories, embedded narratives and emergent narratives,[9] arguing that the game space becomes more believable and energetic due to the fusion of the narrative strategy.[10] The interweaving of these details subtly shapes and increases the authenticity of the game in the player's subconscious, and further built the sense of real. From which, the status of photography elements in RDR2 can be arguing that it is one of the critical parts of constructing the realistic atmosphere for this game.

Bright of Time

Photography as the witness of history, it has the ability to take people reviewing history even experience it. Just as Susan Sontag laments, ‘A family photograph album is generally about extended family — and, often, is all that remains of it.’[11] It is fascinating to use modern technology to experience life more than a hundred years ago. As one of the critical elements in RDR2, photography makes RDR2 sublimated, making it not only an entertainment product but also a work of art that can bring players thinking and profound experience.

The historical background of RDR2, as mentioned before, is the ending of the Westward Movement, the ‘progressive era’ (1896-1916), during which the United States of America was modernising its political and social activism reforms. The fabulous thing is that the photography elements in RDR2 can lead players to travel through time and personally participate in history, and we can glimpse the history of photography of that era through lenses.

During the journey in RDR2, players will meet an amateur nature photographer, Albert Mason, who is passionate about taking pictures of wild animals (Fig. 5). Players need to help him get through a series of difficulties, such as protecting him from wolves and alligators' attacks. Some players speculate that this character is inspired by George Shiras III,[12] known as ‘the father of wildlife photography’,[13] who has published the first wildlife photograph in National Geographic. Similarly, he frequently has a company who protects him and gives him suggestions (Fig. 6).

According to Susan Sontag, in the decades since the birth of photography, people expected photos to be perfect, ideal and to showing beauty.[14] Which has been demonstrated in the game — the photographers of that era pursued the beauty in nature. And just as Sonia Voss’s compliment to George Shiras:

‘“When I first discovered Shiras’ photographs, I was struck by their beauty and eeriness. But beyond the poetic element that emanates from these pictures, there is something more,” […] “Their experimental and committed nature distinguishes them from the images of certain nineteenth-century painters and photographers, with their portrayals of a nostalgic, idealized nature, unspoiled and authentic.”’[15]

Countless such photographers constructed our knowledge of history, understanding of the world and have made them become essential. As Susan Sontag suggests, photographs collect the world and establish the modern environment we recognised, and these are fragments of the world, the epitome of reality.[16] And during the nineteenth century, the development of technology promoted the idea that the world is a series of potential photographs.[17] A significant part of the human perception of the modern world is through photographs since the invention of photography, and RDR2 has displayed the part of the historical function of photography. Moreover, another critical point is a part of the main storyline which related to photography.

A rather attractive plot, about John Marston, our second protagonist, after the gang's dissolution and everything settled down, he went to a photographic studio (Fig. 7) to take a photo with his wife. The design of the photo studio in the game (Fig. 8) legitimately shows the internal space and functions of the photo studio of that era (Fig. 9). In the late nineteenth century, although the exposure time has been greatly shortened after the advancement of technology, the exposure time is still measured in seconds, for instance, the ambrotype, which takes 2 to 20 seconds to image. In order to obtain a clear image, the photographer will ask the guests to sit on a chair, fix their heads with almost hidden brackets, sit tight and try to stay still. Furthermore, photographic agencies generally provide several different backgrounds to create the feeling of shooting outside, which is also shown in the game (Fig. 10 & 11).

On the other hand, photography as a media in nineteenth century seems to play a different role with the present. According to Elizabeth Edwards and Janice Hart, Sassoon states the different understandings produced by viewing the same historical picture on different media (computer screen and photo paper).[18] The difference in materiality endows photography diversity functions, meanings and social values at different times. But the nature of photographs is the same — to record and keeping memories and information. Family albums bearer the memories of generations, lost relatives or friends. As in RDR2, after Arthur’s death, John will get Arthur’s backpack, including a photo of Arthur and his wife. Likewise, modern vernacular photographs on social media also carry the memories of the public’s daily life, such as social activities, changes in trends and evolution of habits.

Then again, because of the high cost of taking a photograph at that era, the plot of John taking a picture with his wife seems to symbolize that they have settled down and lived a better life and demonstrates that people regarded taking photos as a considerable serious and ritual activity. We get to known people's living custom and the social status of photography at that time. Photography means caring about the existing ones and thinking about the past. Other examples are the spirit photography and portraits of the deceased in the late nineteenth. Such as the Sleeping Beauty: Memorial Photography in America[19], a collection of 76 photographs of deceased people from 1840 to 1930[20], which is a regular part of Europe and America society late nineteenth and early twentieth. At last, regarding the archive feature of photography, as Gillian Rose emphasises the feature of photography as a cultural document that can feed the historical, cultural evidence form a unique angle.[21] Therefore, photography builds up the bridge for people to connect the past.

Unlike the past, taking a photograph would spend half a year of savings of an ordinary family, photography is almost accessible to everyone, photography as a media has undergone tremendous changes in its definition and functions. For which the advanced camera mode in RDR2 must be mentioned.

Dive into History

The advanced camera mode in the PC version and later PlayStation version RDR2 is a full-function camera plus post-editing functions (Fig. 12, 13 & 14), which includes a free-angle mode, zoom function, lenses with different focal lengths, focus function, aperture function (blur strength), exposure compensation, exposure lock, contrast adjustment function and numerous retro filters (Fig. 15), including but not limited to Daguerreotype, Tintype, Carbon Print, Woodburytype, Gelatin Silver Process, Cyanotype and Photogravure. A large number of retro filters are provided in this mode, which seems to be affected by two reasons.

Firstly, the style of these filters is in line with the game's age setting. Which again, increases the realistic sense of this game. Whether an in-game photo is taken by the player or made by the game’s publicity department, the image of the game that appears in the public’s vision will match the nineteenth century atmosphere that the producer wants.

Secondly, most people are into retro style filters. For instance, NOMO, a retro-style camera software on smartphones, has reached the top 30 in Apple's application market in China, which simulates many classic film cameras with unique styles (Fig. 16), such as Leica 135 A and 135 M3, as well as filters of certain displays, such as Nintendo’s Game Boy. Additionally, Mike Chopra-Gant studied the increase in smartphone photography and retro filter software, compellingly points out:

‘Coincident with this enormous growth in the popularity of photography has been the development, and increasingly widespread use, of smartphone apps designed to change the appearance of photographs taken with smartphone cameras in order to render the images in a variety of “vintage” styles.’[22]

The fact is mobile phones are already one of the indispensable parts of our daily lives. Smartphone photography has greatly promoted the development of modern vernacular photography. It is undeniable that mobile phone photography’s quality is also improving rapidly, and mobile phone manufacturers are also striving to develop camera functions as their unique selling proposition. This can be seen from the increasing number of lenses on mobile phones, such as Huawei P40 Pro’s ultra-telephoto lenses, which can take a clear moon; and the iPhone 12 Pro's lidar scan function, which provides it with a super focusing function, whether it is day or night. The point is that people’s demand for photography exists, whether for sharing or memory, mobile phones provide such a convenience, and they are usually cheaper than a professional camera.

However, a more important question emerged — why do people like retro filters? Generally speaking, retro filters will ‘damage’ pictures. The pictures they produce are usually attached with lens flaws, scratches, and even traces of light leakage and dust.[23] On the one hand, it seems that it is precisely because of these flaws that the realism of the photo has increased, Mike Chopra-Gant draws conclusions after conducting in-depth investigations on some filtering software:

‘Efforts such as this constructed legend provide a sense of the significance that both producers and users of these digital imaging technologies attach to the aura of materiality and authenticity associated with older, film-based processes: even if images are produced digitally and exist only as megabytes of data in a smartphone memory card, they must appear to be “real,” to have substance and materiality.’[24]

Likewise, Gil Bartholeyns claims that the convergence of media (mobile-phone and camera) changes the position of photography, which has become regularization, opportunism and part of people’s daily life, antique filters make the photos have natural memorial significance and historical colour and can enhance the intimate family life fragments in people's memories.[25] As mentioned before, photos are part of people's memory, the retro filter strengthens people’s perception of the historical content of photos. On the other hand, film cameras are far away from normal people now, and those techniques are subtle and require energy to learn. But in the present, image processing is carried out during the photo shooting process, and post-modification only requires a simple point to add a filter.[26] Retro filters can easily satisfy people's pursuit of retro feeling and make photos look more meaningful. Thus, these filters are just like photography, they are already part of people’s lives.

Finally, another critical point is that the advanced camera mode attaches an in-game photography sharing community, players can directly share to the social network platform after taking satisfactory photographs. This seems to be a vital step of all the previous works, no matter how exquisite the photo is and how shocking the content is, the process of photography could only be completed by sharing it and letting others see it. From the developer’s point of view, the combination of camera functions and social functions can increase the popularity of the game. Jack Yarwood interviewed a group of ‘virtual photographers’, among them, Emiliano Pardo shared that when he was playing GTA Online, he would browse the photos shared by other players in the social club, those ideas opened his eyes and driven him to try it personally.[27] This approach of directly integrating photography and community functions in games has become more and more popular. For example, Ubisoft’s Assassin’s Creed: Origins and Odyssey, have directly added image communities to the game map, when players play it online, they can see the exquisite photos of everywhere in the game taken by players all around the world. For this kind of single-player game, this mode obviously allows players to experience the connection with other players in the world without feeling so alone. Therefore, it seems that in the digital age, the quintessence of photography is about social and the importance of retro filters in the game is nothing more than to cater to the needs of players and the public and to create a more real world and more realistic game atmosphere.

Beyond the Game

When we leave the game world and return to reality, admiring the charm of photography, a series of moral, history and aesthetics issues rising, which leads to the thinking that despite that photography is significant benefits, we may have missed more while looking at photos. Photography is so unilateral because the photographs are only a partial mapping of reality. Which is a paradox that the only thing photography can do is to present reality, but the only thing photography cannot do is to present reality, or in other words, it can only show the truth that people want to see. Susan Sontag said that ‘the aestheticizing tendency of photography is such that the medium which conveys distress ends by neutralizing it.’[28] Therefore, photographers are greedy and want to record all the beautiful things. When we look through the camera, the world is beautiful and perfect, and even when we look at a photo which shows a tragedy, such as The Vulture and the Little Girl[29], we would still recognise a miserable beauty. And the fact is, there do not have excessive people who would like to appreciate ugly objects and hate beautiful ones, despite that we would be aesthetically tired because of seeing too many beautiful objects, and the appreciation of ugliness is just caused by curiosity in most cases (However, this discussion does not include research photography, such as anthropological research photography). Moreover, back to eighteenth and nineteenth century, when photographic materials were deficient, people regarded portrait photography as a sacred thing. This can be seen from the portrait photos in the past. People’s expressions are often serious. No one wants their offspring to see the photos commemorating themselves as ugly. Our feelings about the scene now have to be told by the camera, when disaster strikes, the photographer stays behind the camera and creates a small element of another world, a world of images that will exist longer than all of us.[30] Photography seems to draw the viewer closer to the event itself, but it is actually alienated, the viewer cannot integrate himself into the event anyway.

However, this series of issues such as misunderstanding of history are not because of the photography medium itself, which seems that it is common in all the media that we use to review history. John Berger writes that a photo shows neither the event nor the visual itself, it just is ‘a message about the event it records.’[31] Furthermore, Susan Sontag explaines the usurpation of reality by image, ‘a photograph is not only an image, an interpretation of the real; it is also a trace, something directly stenciled off the real’.[32] As back to the game, the age was definitely not full of joy, at least not for everyone. Which filled with a variety of society problems, such as gender inequality, racism and oppression of Indians are all shown in the game. Nevertheless, the video game as an entertainment, people may sigh while playing it, but after that, they would have thoughts that have nothing to do with themself. Yet, the difference is that photography is a relatively serious matter compared to games, so it should be handled more rigorously.

While Susan Sontag analyses the ’predatory’ side of photography, she calls American photographers of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries ‘moralists, conscienceless despoilers, children and foreigner in their own land’.[33] She claims that the photographer both plunders and conserves, condemns and consecrates.[34] History seems to be a plaything in the hands of photographers. Susan Sontag sharply pierces the beautiful performance of photography:

‘In America, the photographer is not simply the person who records the past but the one who invents it. As Berenice Abbott Writes: “The photographer is the contemporary being par excellence; through his eyes the now becomes the past.”’[35]

Still, the fact must be must emphasised again that the essence of the problem does not come from photography because the effect of photography is frequently after the event is named.[36] The photographic documents are just a small ‘gear’ in the ‘machine’ of capital and political, just like America’s vague political slogan, ‘Make America Great Again’, which was argued that is racism and trying to erase its ugly history in the past. To which Andrew Cuomo also said that ‘it was never that great’.[37]

To be clear, this is not trying to say that photography is must be completely about history or morality, and the issues are not only presences in America. Just as Hegel writes, ‘What experience and history teach is this — that nations and governments have never learned anything from history or acted upon any lessons they might have drawn from it.’[38] People would always make the same mistakes, and history must be treated with respect.

Conclusion

This essay has analysed the camera systems and photography-related plots in RDR2, and it seems that photography has the ability of increase the realism sense in the virtual world, and the game developers added such amount photography elements is for constructing a more realistic gaming atmosphere, giving players more immersive experience and helping the game popular appeals. Then, the research shows that photography plays a role of the memorial object in the late nineteenth century and early twentieth century, and as Susan Sontag criticises that after the end of the Civil War, photography was an inseparable part of America's new popular culture, a typical art of a wealthy, wasteful and anxious society.[39] Moreover, the reason for the phenomenon that people like retro-style was explored because retro filters can easily satisfy people's nostalgia. Finally, we discussed the moral issue of photography as a record of history. Through photos, we can learn about the history and appreciate places we have never been before. Photography is an extension of people. Yet its advantages are also its disadvantages, which as a media tool that generally recognised as the representative of 'reality', it can easily be used to distort historical reality.

However, this essay does not delve into the root of people’s pursuit of retro style. For which it seems that this needs to be studied from the psychological aspect. Though Mike Chopra-Gant conducts an in-depth analysis of this phenomenon, which summaries that ‘the nostalgia expressed through “retro” digital photography represents a therapeutic response to an existential crisis of the self in postmodernism’, but he also admits that a more detailed description needs to appear in deeper research.[40] On the other hand, the problems were put forward that may arise when photography transmits historical information, expresses an anxiety that ‘the image world is replacing the real one’[41] but we did not propose solutions. It is unrealistic to create a perfect world, these problems are extremely complicated. Information dissemination is extremely widespread and rapid in the digital age, and these issues are even more unpredictable. As Geoffrey Batchen concludes, the future of computers and photography has been etched in the past, and we need to re-understand the past, the relationship between the present and the future, and a new understanding of history itself.[42] Perhaps the only thing we can do is to constantly review history, sum up experience and lessons, and cherish the present.

Figures

Fig. 1: One of the Load Pages of RDR2, Screenshot: Mingxuan Hao.

Fig. 2: The ‘Hand-hold’ Camera in RDR2, Screenshot: Mingxuan Hao

Fig. 3: The User Surface of the ‘Hand-hold’ Camera, Screenshot: Mingxuan Hao.

Fig. 4: The Novelist Giving the Camera to Arthur, Screenshot: Mingxuan Hao.

Fig. 5: Nature Photographer Albert Mason in RDR2, Screenshot: Mingxuan Hao.

Fig. 6: George Shiras and His Assistant John Hammer Aboard Their Jacklighting-Equipped Canoe, 1893, Whitefish Lake, Lake Superior region, Michigan.

Fig. 7: The Photographic Studio in RDR2, Screenshot: Mingxuan Hao.

Fig. 8: The Inside of the Photographic Studio, Screenshot: Mingxuan Hao.

Fig. 9: Stafhell & Kleingrothe Photo Studio, Netherlands, 1898, Stephanie Ash Art Collection, Tropenmuseum, Amsterdam.

Fig. 10: Taking a Photo in Photo Studio in RDR2 (1), Screenshot: Mingxuan Hao.

Fig. 11: Taking a Photo in Photo Studio in RDR2 (2), Screenshot: Mingxuan Hao.

Fig. 12: The User Surface of the Advanced Camera Mode (1), Screenshot: Mingxuan Hao.

Fig. 13: The User Surface of the Advanced Camera Mode (2), Screenshot: Mingxuan Hao.

Fig. 14: The User Surface of the Advanced Camera Mode (3), Screenshot: Mingxuan Hao.

Fig. 15: Filters in the Advanced Camera Mode, Screenshot: Mingxuan Hao.

Fig. 16: User Surface of the NOMO, Screenshot: Mingxuan Hao.

Fig. 17: The Social Club of Rockstar Games, 2020, Screenshot: Mingxuan Hao.

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[1] H. Jenkins, Games, the New Lively Art (web download edn, 2005), http://web.mit.edu/~21fms/People/henry3/GamesNewLively.html [accessed 29 November 2020].

[2] S. Poole, Trigger Happy: Video games and the entertainment Revolution (2000, web download edn, 2007), p. 389, http://pdf.textfiles.com/books/triggerhappy.pdf [accessed 29 November 2020].

[3] Jenkins, Games, the New Lively Art.

[4] Fandom, ‘Out laws form the West/dialogues’, Red Dead Wiki, https://reddead.fandom.com/wiki/Outlaws_from_the_West/dialogues [accessed 14 December 2020].

[5] S. Sontag, On Photograph (UK: Penguin Modern Classics, 2008), p. 5.

[6] D. Rubinstein and K. Sluis, ‘Algorithmic Photography and the Crisis of Representation’, in The Photographic Image in Digital Culture, ed. by M., Lister (Routledge, 2014)., p. 26.

[7] E. Sandor and J. Fron, ‘The future of Video Games as an Art: On the Art of Playing with Shadows’, in Playing by the rules: The cultural policy challenges of video games, (Museum of Contemporary Art and the University of Chicago, 2001), http://www.artnlab.com/files/pdfs/UCGAMESARTN.pdf [accessed 6 December 2020].

[8] C. Poremba, ‘Remediating Photography in Gamespace’, Point and Shoot, Vol. 2, No. 1, 2007, p. 50.

[9] H. Jenkins, ‘Game design as narrative architecture’, in First Person, New Media as Story, Performance, and Game, ed. by N. Wardrip-Fruin and P. Harrigan (MIT Press, 2006), pp. 118-130.

[10] A. Westerside and J. Holopainen, ‘Sites of Play: Locating Gameplace in Red Dead Redemption 2’, DiGRA '19 - Proceedings of the 2019 DiGRA International Conference: Game, Play and the Emerging Ludo-Mix, (DiGRA, 2019), http://www.digra.org/digital-library/publications/sites-of-play-locating-gameplace-in-red-dead-redemption-2/ [accessed 17 December 2020].

[11] Sontag, On photography, p. 9.

[12] T. Arguello, ‘RDR2's Nature Photographer Character Might Be Based on a Real Person’, ScreenRant (2020), https://screenrant.com/rdr2-character-albert-mason-photographer-real-history-natgeo/ [accessed 22 December 2020].

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[14] Sontag, On Photography, p. 28

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