Professor Teaching World’s First Red Dead Redemption American History Class Wants to Do GTA Next

ign.com:

College history professor Tore Olsson taught the world's first Red Dead Redemption American history class in 2021, at the University of Tennessee, using Rockstar's open-world epics to engage students on one of the most tumultuous periods in North American history. The class is a huge success, so much so that Olsson was inspired to write a book to bring his work to a global audience. Out in August, Red Dead's History looks like it could be a hit, and Roger Clark, who plays Red Dead Redemption 2 protagonist Arthur Morgan in one of the all-time great video game performances, has signed on to narrate the audiobook.

In an interview with IGN, Olsson discusses the book and delivers his verdict on Red Dead Redemption 2's historical "thoughtfulness", as he puts it. But he also reveals plans to repeat the trick with the Grand Theft Auto games in a new class and book that delves into 20th Century American history, using the likes of Vice City and San Andreas to educate on 1980s Miami and 1990s Southern California. And what does Olsson think of the upcoming GTA 6? Read on to find out.

You’re a historian who uses Red Dead to teach American history in a class you started in 2021. How has that gone?

It’s been a real adventure. And it’s a big experiment, too, in the sense that no other professional historian had tried to do anything like this before, which is shocking in many ways, because historians, we use pop culture all the time. We use film and literature and TV series, but a lot of historians have been reluctant to engage video games for various reasons. And I decided, well, no, I want to take this medium seriously, because it’s so dominant. Of course, I have my own personal history with this as well. I was a huge gamer when I was a kid, and now once again I’m a gamer, since the pandemic, which has shaped a lot of this.

It came as an epiphany when I sat down in the midst of the pandemic in 2020, and played Red Dead Redemption 2 for the first time. I was only about 10 hours in,