A biology teacher from Cornwall has published a paper that reports that Red Dead Redemption 2 teaches its players natural history.
As spotted by delete12345 on ResetEra, the teacher, who goes under the name SaiRookwood on Reddit, posted in the truegaming subreddit about the results of their study and how several members from the subreddit helped decide the results.
According to SaiRookwood, the purpose of the study was to find out whether "the immersion afforded by RDR2's detailed environment led to gamers inadvertently learning to identify some of the species portrayed in the game's simulated ecosystems".
The process behind the study involved gamers being tasked to identify 15 animals based on real-world photos. The animals selected were all featured in Red Dead Redemption 2, and the results showed that those who had played the game could identify, on average, ten out of the 15 animals correctly.
This was three times more than gamers who hadn't played Red Dead Redemption 2. The results also showed that scores were higher if the person had played more recently and if they'd played as the Naturalist role in Red Dead Online. SaiRookwood also recalled that players had many different wildlife and nature stories to tell from their time in Red Dead Redemption 2.
Following the results of the study, SaiRookwood believes that Red Dead Redemption 2 has "something to learn here for educators and conservationists who want to enhance the world's natural history education". They also believe that "immersion in a learning experience, by making people's actions have meaning, can be more effective than simply getting people to learn a list of animals by rote".
If you're interested in reading up the full results from the study, SaiRookwood posted a detailed synopsis on the subreddit, as well as providing a link to the full paper.
As pointed out by Redditor FlashCrashBash, this isn't actually the first time that Red Dead Redemption 2's realistic and detailed wildlife has been praised outside of the gaming community. The Audubon Society also commended Red Dead Redemption 2 for its portrayal of extinct species of wildlife.