Living the Dream, Playing the Nightmare: Remediation as the Critique of the American Dream in American Arcadia (2023)

The 2023 game American Arcadia , set in a dystopian reality show with the same name and a 1970s design, follows the epic escape of the main character Trevor, aided by his ally Angela, a programmer-hacker operating from outside Arcadia. The game, similar to a few other recent titles, challenges the American Dream of unlimited spatial and social mobility. Its novelty, however, is that American Arcadia implements a dual-character game mechanic, where Trevor has to proceed in a 2,5D platform-puzzle game, while Angela works as a hacker in a 3D environment, assisting him by undermining the behind-the-scenes infrastructure of Walton Media, the corporation behind the reality show. The present essay seeks to analyse the game as a critical commentary on the American Dream, and, by extension, on neoliberal ideology. Using Jay David Bolter and Richard Grusin’s theory of remediation as a theoretical framework, this study offers to conduct a close reading analysis of the game mechanics, narrative and symbolism. It argues that the game oscillates between hypermediacy and immediacy to expose that the in-game space of American Arcadia is not a utopia built on the remediation of the American dream, but rather a dystopia that makes all aspirations to freedom impossible.