Is Fallout supposed to make you think about social issues? I think, at its best, it does, and given the main series’ unwavering Atomic Age-inspired setting, and the entire resource war that led to the dropping of the atom bomb, capitalism is an obvious subject to explore. However, according to co-creator Tim Cain, it’s not core to Fallout’s themes.
The veteran developer expressed as much in the comments of his latest video on his YouTube channel (thanks, PC Gamer) – which I highly recommend anyone interested in games and game making to check out – in response to a fan who asked him what he thought of Fallout, which was “a critique of capitalism/corporate greed (Vault-Tec etc) and over-militarization”.
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“The point of Fallout has never been to criticize capitalism,” Kane writes, “In fact, the game goes out of its way to mention other countries, like China, as also behaving badly. If anything, Fallout comments on the inevitability of war given human nature.” So yeah, the whole war thing has never changed, and ironically, it’s become more of a corporate slogan these days.
Kane also gave some explanation for why he maintains this stance, saying: “I always decide on the story first and then the mechanics, because in my games the latter serves the former. I don’t think there are common themes in all my games (maybe a distrust of power), but as you can see, people interpret my games in various ways. That’s okay. Everyone has their own point of view, and a story can mean different things to different people.”
So, that’s pretty cool, even if I definitely don’t agree with it. After all, you can criticize capitalism as a central theme of your work – as the Fallout TV show did in a fairly straightforward way, even if it probably didn’t do much to suggest any alternative ideas for the people of the wasteland to come up with to a system that at least led to the destruction of their world – and still say that China played a role in it. Without that, I think you can only make one interpretation of the world presented by the game, and even if you don’t think that “people will always fight” is a bit reductive in itself, it’s a rather depressing and, at least for me, uninteresting interpretation.
In case you’re curious, the video in which Cain discusses this in the comments is succinctly titled “Capitalism,” which is about as indicative of Cain’s views as you’ll find, though I don’t think the video quite lives up to Cain’s usual standard of insightful, thoughtful chats or insights.
As many commenters have pointed out, the general view of capitalism that Cain presents therein seems to blame many of the bad things that companies do entirely on “bad apple” consumers and employees, without taking into account any of the power dynamics and broader circumstances that might influence how individuals within the system play the game it presents. To be fair, Cain responded to another comment that highlighted this point by saying, “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.”
Does capitalism make you think about it when playing Fallout? Let us know below!