The game puts you in that world, but the judge isn't in the game. It focuses on one small aspect of the story, like the scalper gang (or maybe a different scalper gang), but doesn't follow any of the events in the book. You don't play as the book's main character, just some random person, but you might hear the book's character mentioned.

You can play passively. There are jobs (minigames) you can do for money. Buying only food, water, and shelter is affordable this way. There's beautiful scenery to explore and interconnected story threads you can explore non-violently, kinda like Stardew Valley.

All the NPCs in the game are ruthless, violent bastards, but don't present any harm to the player unless provoked.

Violence is entirely optional, but strongly encouraged by the world around you. Non-violent players can peacefully enjoy the beautiful countryside and chill while exploring the story threads. Violent players can still experience the story (or the parts that allow it), but should be constantly pursued by people seeking to avenge the death of someone they killed. If you kill the pursuers, someone will come to avenge them, and so on.

Like the book, the game should present the message that violence is everywhere and heavily encouraged, but needless and unhelpful.

Could it be modded into Red Dead Redemption II somehow? That game already has the setting and many of the skills the characters in the book perform, except scalping, I think. I’m not sure. You can skin animals you kill, so, close? Scalping has always been controversial though, so I doubt the game could support it natively.

I'm not sure you could faithfully adapt it to a game, or if it needs it. I just couldn't see there being much enjoyment in it when so much of the book is basically one-sided slaughter. A film would perhaps work.

If you were to do a game, I think something more like a separate story set in the same world would work better. Some other gang influenced by the Judge in which morality plays a large part, and you might gradually feel yourself being corrupted by the Judge depending on your actions. I'm imagining a Mass Effect-esque western shooter with lots of quests.

Videogames are uniquely situated to make statements on violence and agency, being an art form where your agency is centered and the long history of most games being about a form of combat or another.

On one hand this would be perfect framing for blood meridian, on the other it's also perfect conditions to completely walk past the point and fuck up the mission statement. It's like the thing where it's impossible to make anti-war war films.

It would have to be at least as inflammatory as SpecOps the Line, to get it right. Another commenter mentioned Rdr2 which I haven't played but sounds like it has great exercises in banality that punctuate its own treatises on violence

A Blood Meridian game would have to nail that oppressive, mythic desert feel, and the Judge as a force of nature rather than just a villain. I'd want the violence to feel heavy and consequential, not like a power fantasy. Maybe more of a survival trek with philosophical choices than a straight shooter?