In this short documentary, a laundress, a stablehand, a street sweeper and a carpenter are observed with ethnographic precision. They are nonplayer characters, or NPCs, in the blockbuster Wild West-themed video game Red Dead Redemption 2, and many of them are trapped in work.

NPCs populate the gaming world as background extras. They simulate being alive, but their rhythm of life is controlled by looped activities — which they exercise tirelessly and repetitively into infinity.

These NPCs are Sisyphean machines, programmed to get stuck in the routines of everyday life without results. Occasionally, the NPCs glitch, breaking their cycles and revealing their own flawedness. In these moments, they seem touchingly human.

We’re an artist collective whose work explores contemporary computer and video games. Here, we reflect on the question of work and what’s supposed to be normal. Despite the game’s turn-of-the-century setting, the labor routines, activity patterns — as well as bugs and malfunctions — paint a vivid analogy for how workers today toil under capitalism.

Can we, the nonplayer characters of a political economy that controls, exploits and alienates us, find a way to rebel against the absurdity of our own activities?

– Film and Text by Total Refusal (https://totalrefusal.com/, @totalrefusal) The collective explores the field of contemporary video and computer games through artistic interventions.

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