Is Fallout supposed to make you think about society? I’d argue that, at its best, it is, with capitalism being an obvious candidate to explore, given the mainline series’ unflinchingly corporate American atomic age-inspired setting and the whole resource war that led up to the bombs being dropped. Though, according to co-creator Tim Cain, that isn’t the central crux of Fallout theme-wise.
The veteran developer has said as much in a comment (thanks, PC Gamer) on the latest video posted to his YouTube channel – which I’d definitely reccomend checking to pretty much anyone who’s interested in games and how they get made – as part of a response to a fan asking for his thoughts on reading Fallout “as a critique on capitalist/corporative greed (Vault-Tec and others) and on excessive militarization”.
“Critique of capitalism was never the point of Fallout,” Cain wrote, “In fact, the game went out of its way to mention that other countries like China were also behaving terribly. If anything, Fallout is a comment that war is inevitable given basic human nature.” So yep, the whole war never changes line that, rather ironically, is more of a corporate slogan than anything else nowadays.
Cain did also add a bit of explanation as to why he olds this position, saying: “I always decide on story before mechanics, since the latter serve the former in my games. I don’t think I have any themes that run in common in all my games (maybe mistrust of power), but as you’ve seen, people will interpret my games in all kinds of ways. And that’s ok. Everyone brings their own perspective, and a story can mean different things to different people.”
So, that’s cool, even if I’d definitely disagree with the take. After all, you can criticise capitalism as a central theme of your work – as even the Fallout TV show does in pretty on the nose fashion, even if it maybe doesn’t do much to present any alternative ideas that the people of the wasteland might come up with to replace this system that’s at least contributed to their world getting kaboomed – while still saying China has a role in things. Without that, I’d argue you’re left with an intepretation of the world the games present that, even if you don’t think ‘people will just always fight’ is a bit of a reductive point to make on its own, is fairly depressing and, to me at least, pretty uninteresting.
In case you’re wondering, the video Cain was discussing this in the comments of was one succinctly entitled “Capitalism”, which is as good an unmistakably to the point Cain vid title as you’ll find, though I don’t think this one that quite lives up to Cain’s usual standards of insightful, considered chat or insight.
As a lot of the commenters on it have pointed out, the general take on capitalism Cain presents in it seems to place a lot of the blame for the bad s**t many companies do entirely at the feet of “bad apple” consumers and employees, without considering any of the power dynamics and wider circustances at play which might influence how individuals within a system have to play the game it presents. To be fair to Cain, he has said in response to another comment highlighting this: “I’m reading all the comments, and I agree with what you’ve said. I’ll look more closely at the non-consumer side in the future.”
Do you think about capitalism when you play Fallout? Let us know below!