"Red Dead Revolver" - Case Study

Released: June 2004
Developed by: Rockstar San Diego (formerly Angel Studios)
Published by: Rockstar Games

DEVELOPMENT
In 2002 Capcom, the hugely successful Japanese games publisher, announced that they were working on a Western themed shoot-‘em-up called Red Dead Revolver. Developing the game for them were US based company Angel Studios who previously had ported Capcom’s Resident Evil 2 to the N64.
The game was due for release in March 2003 and was an arcadey shoot-‘em-up that used a mythical vision of the west with a mix of pantomine villains and comic characters. This wasn’t gritty or realistic recreation of the Wild West.
Also the presentation of the game was bold and intrusive, with large health and ammo gauges cluttering the screen.

CAPCOM’S RED DEAD REVOLVER

*Loads of on screen information – cluttered in its presentation of onscreen information

As well as working on Red Dead Revolver for Capcom, Angel Studios were working on the Smuggler’s Run and Midnight Club for Rockstar. Then in November 2002 Rockstar bought Angel Studios for $28million and renamed them Rockstar San Diego.

Despite Rockstar’s purchase the team working on Red Dead continued with the development. Capcom then announced in August 2003 that they would no longer be publishing the game. In December of 2003 Rockstar announced that they had acquired the game from Capcom and would be releasing it in the summer of 2004.

Rockstar changed the tone of the game giving it a grittier look and feel, they altered the presentation to give it a cleaner look (in terms of on screen information and increased the amount of blood and violence, enough to warrant a 16+ PEGI rating.

ROCKSTAR’S RED DEAD REVOLVER

*Less intrusive HUD (Heads-Up-Display) and a much cleaner presentation.

MARKETING
It wasn’t just the look of the game that changed, the way it was marketed changed. Take a look at these two trailers of Red Dead – one from Capcom and one made by Rockstar.

Capcom’s Red Dead Revolver Trailer:

The music is typical of a spaghetti western, but used for almost comic effect rather than giving the game any authenticity. The focus is purely on the game’s action rather than environment or atmosphere, and it is frantic in its delivery.

Rockstar’s Red Dead Revolver Trailer:

This is much more like a movie trailer in pace and presentation. It lingers over the environments before showing some of the action. When the action is then presented it’s from a contrived and stylish angle rather than the perspective from which it would be played in the final game.

RECEPTION
Red Dead received a warm if not necessarily gushing critical response and has a 75% rating on Game Ranking. It was released for the PS2 and Xbox and sold 1.5 million copies.
It does however stick out from Rockstar’s other games, which tended to focus on cool, contemporary culture and relative realism.

“Rockstar acquired the partially-built bits of first game, Red Dead Revolver, from Capcom. So with Red Dead Revolver, Rockstar wound up polishing and completing the product, but the core wasn't what Houser termed a "Rockstar design." "It didn't fundamentally play like a Rockstar game," he said.”
Exert from Ign.com feature interview with Rockstar co-founder Dan Houser (08/05/09)


RED DEAD REDEMPTION

Red Dead Revolver sold well enough to warrant the production of a sequel, so Rockstar began work on a follow-up called Red Dead Redemption. The first glimpse of this came in 2005 during the unveiling of the PlayStation3 so it has obviously been in development for some time.
Unlike Red Dead Revolver this will be a ‘Rockstar game’ from concept to completion and so will be a very different game to the original.

"We loved the mechanic of Deadeye (a slow motion aiming gameplay feature) and thought it was executed very nicely for the time… so we wanted to keep that and keep the Wild West theme, but beyond that I don't think there's much that's being kept. I think the way we came to see Red Dead Revolver as being about the kind of myths and iconic images of the Old West, the cowboy with the scar on his face, the Indian, or the iconic set pieces put together in a somewhat linking story but it was really about trying to show off these very iconic myths about the Old West. Then what we wanted to do with Red Dead Redemption was to do something that felt more like the reality of the Old West…Story-wise we felt there was no point linking them because it wouldn't make any sense."
~ Exert from Ign.com feature interview with Rockstar co-founder Dan Houser (08/05/09)

Here are Red Dead Redemption’s key features:

1. Different time period to Red Dead Revolver, a different lead character and different style of gameplay.
2. Redemption is set in an open world in which you are free to explore, take on missions, hunt wildlife, play mini-games, shoot at whoever you want, and progress through the story. It’s a sandbox game.
3. The lead character is John Marston a former bandit turned lawman who is trying to lead ag conventional life until his past catches up with him.
4. For transport there will be horses, trains, and stagecoaches all around the game world for you to hop into. You can buy horses in town or use your lasso to break ones in the wild. On trains and stagecoaches you can either stay on in real time or, if you just want to get somewhere quickly, can just take a nap. When you wake up, you'll be at your destination.
5. Missions include helping or robbing the characters you come across, you can take on jobs for the Marshall and there’s even gambling in the local saloon.
6. While you’re allowed to shoot at anyone, just like in GTA if you shoot innocent citizens the locals will form a posse to hunt you down. Act too recklessly and you’ll be unwelcome in certain towns.
7. Just like GTA 4 it will use the RAGE game engine and Natural Motion’s Euphoria.
8. The game already has an 18+ PEGI rating which suggests it will have violent and mature content.

The Trailer:

See how it’s very similar to the GTA 4 trailers by focusing on the environment and the world in which the game is set. Again there’s a voice over to convey that the game is story led and it also feels like film trailer.

IGN: Five Reasons to Love Red Dead Redemption