Is Fallout supposed to make you think about society? I’d argue that at best it does, and capitalism is an obvious candidate to explore, given the unwaveringly corporate American setting inspired by the atomic age and the whole resource war that led to the bombs being dropped. Although, according to co-creator Tim Cain, it’s not Fallout’s central thematic focus.
An experienced programmer said this in a comment (thanks, Computer gamer) ON the latest movie was posted to his YouTube channel — which I highly recommend anyone interested in games and how they’re made checks out — as part of a response to a fan’s request to share his thoughts on reading Fallout “as a critique of capitalist/corporate greed (Vault-Tec et al.) and over-militarization.”
Manage your cookie settings
“Fallout was never about criticizing capitalism,” Cain wrote. “In fact, the game went out of its way to mention that other countries, like China, were behaving horribly as well. If anything, Fallout is a commentary on the idea that war is inevitable because of basic human nature.” So yeah, the whole war thing never changes, which is ironically more of a corporate slogan than anything else these days.
Cain also added some explanation for his stance, saying, “I always decide on story over mechanics, because the latter serves the former in my games. I don’t think I have any common themes across all my games (maybe distrust of authority), but as you’ve seen, people will interpret my games in different ways. And that’s okay. Everyone brings their own perspective, and story can mean different things to different people.”
So that’s frosty, even if I strongly disagree with that approach. After all, you can critique capitalism as a central theme of your work – as even the Fallout TV series does in a nice way, even if it may not do much to present any alternative ideas that the people of the wasteland could come up with to replace the very system that at least contributed to the explosion of their world – while also saying that China plays a role in it. Without that, I would argue that you’re left with an interpretation of the world that the games depict that, even if you don’t think “people will always fight” is a bit of a reductive viewpoint, is pretty depressing and, at least to me, pretty uninteresting.
In case you’re wondering, the video that Cain discussed this topic in the comments was pithyly titled “Capitalism,” which is one of the best and most on-topic titles you’ll find for Cain. However, I don’t think the video lives up to Cain’s usual standards of insightful, thoughtful discussion and observation.
As many commenters have pointed out, the overall view of capitalism that Cain presents in this article seems to place the blame for the bad shit that many companies do squarely on the “bad apple” consumers and employees, without taking into account any of the power dynamics and broader circumstances that might affect how individuals in the system have to play the game he’s presenting. To be fair to Cain, he said in response to another comment that underscores this: “I read all the comments and agree with what you said. I’ll take a closer look at the non-consumer side in the future.”
Do you think about capitalism when you play Fallout? Let us know below!
