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People are using Red Dead Redemption 2 to hold conference callsIt still beats Zoom.
It still beats Zoom.
“Found my own body floating down the river today. Didn’t recognise myself for ages.” This may sound like the start of a magical realist detective story, rather than something you’d say in a meeting with colleagues. But inRed Dead Redemption 2, which is rapidly emerging as an unlikely competitor to Zoom and Skype in the world of conference calling, this is business as usual.
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Viv brought this revelation to light with this thread on Twitter, which has since launched dozens of similar initiatives in small businesses with a taste for their weird, and has reputedly been received with delight at Castle Rockstar, where the Cowboys were originally created before being imprisoned in the game.
Zoom sucks, we started having editorial meetings in Red Dead Redemption instead. It’s nice to sit at the campfire and discuss projects, with the wolves howling out in the night— Viviane Schwarz (@vivschwarz)May 16, 2020
Zoom sucks, we started having editorial meetings in Red Dead Redemption instead. It’s nice to sit at the campfire and discuss projects, with the wolves howling out in the night
— Viviane Schwarz (@vivschwarz)May 16, 2020
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“Mostly we were just having a really crap time,” said Viv when I spoke to them, about their meeting life before Cowboys. “We were having to deal with all those Zoom and Skype meetings and emails and phone calls… and we were just feeling worse and worse and more annoyed all the time.” Minecraft was considered, apparently, but people tended to just wander off and start digging, or dumping gravel on the meeting table, “so picking the most ludicrous game to meet in seemed good.”
But then, as it turned out, it wasn’t quite as ridiculous as expected. “The thing is,” Viv explained, “the Cowboys just look right when they’re sitting around the campfire? They look like they’re in a meeting: scratching noses and frowning, and occasionally gesturing.”
Viv’s colleagues have taken some steps to boost their immersion in the world of Cowboy conferencing, and work around the limitations of the game at the same time. “We keep trying to have coffee breaks, because it feels right - and because if you don’t do anything you get kicked off the server for idling. So we order a load of coffee in, and keep brewing it to unidle”. Apparently, the posse are considering getting a stew pot next, “because it feels kinda rude that we can’t share snacks”, but doing so will involve Viv becoming a trader, and they’re a bit worried that doing so will make the camp too busy.
Etiquette, too, is important. It’s polite to wash your face before a Cowboy meeting, of course, “as sometimes you can be really caked in blood and dirt, and not realise”. And that’s just not a professional look. Participants should also make liberal use of emotes. Viv, for example, sometimes opens up RDR2’s weapon catalogue when they’re reading a shared document IRL, because it makes it look like their Cowboy is thoughtfully studying it in-game. It’s an expensive tactic, since if they don’t order anything, their Cowboy just closes the catalogue and leaves the table, and it’s pretty hard to negotiate purchasing while reading a document at the same time - but it’s almost worth it for the realism.
Nevertheless, RDR2 is not without its drawbacks as a piece of conferencing software. And while it may avoid the ritualistic solving of minor audio and connection problems that attends the start of most conventional video calls, it comes with its own set of technical idiosyncrasies, as Viv’s tweets attest:
“Can you parlay these people, they keep hogtying me"“Where did you spawn?““Am I not on the map?““You’re miles away… Let me just kick you out from to the posse and invite you again”— Viviane Schwarz (@vivschwarz)May 16, 2020
“Can you parlay these people, they keep hogtying me"“Where did you spawn?““Am I not on the map?““You’re miles away… Let me just kick you out from to the posse and invite you again”
— Viviane Schwarz (@vivschwarz)May 16, 2020
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And then there are the glitches. The main problem encountered, apparently, is that the meeting table sometimes doesn’t exist for everyone. Occasionally, the whole camp will vanish, so along with the fire, leaving everyone talking away in the dark until it reappears. And if someone gets dropped out of the posse and returns, they can’t sit down for the remainder of the discussion. Oh, and of course, there’s the fact that “sit on the ground” is mapped to the same control as “strangle the nearest person”, which can apparently lead to some pretty robust brainstorming sessions.
It’s a great place to socialise, except for the fact that one accidental click will inevitably escalate into a miserable orgy of strangling.
“It’s the same glitches as usual,” Viv said, “only, they’re funnier when you’re talking about business about the same time. Like, you fall off a cliff, and your horse falls on your head and kills you, after which you respawn elsewhere. But your body and horse haven’t disappeared. So your colleague gets distracted, silently wondering whether they should revive your horse, and trying to figure out whose body lies crushed beneath it, and all the while you’re walking back from miles away, carrying on about the project.”
The final drawback of the virtual campfire as a meeting venue is a significant one, unfortunately. You see, to get to a point where you can invite friends into a posse, and have a camp to meet at, you’ve got to go through the intro quests toRed Dead Online, which are unskippable, relatively dull, and time-consuming. It can take an hour or more for a Cowboy to progress through this mandatory prologue. “Especially,” said Viv, “if the people you get paired up with for staff training decide to sabotage your horse wrangling”.
Perhaps, then, this West is best left wild? “I mean… it isn’t a good game for an uninterrupted meeting,” concluded Viv. “Or even… a meeting… really. But it still beats Zoom.”
