It’s not often in video games that you get the chance to damage a video game executive’s real belongings. And yet, just last month, as you may have heard, Xbox head Phil Spencer’s Fallout 76 CAMP had an entire atomic bomb dropped on it by a player.
While the perpetrators were quick to reveal that the nuclear detonation wasn’t – as some had speculated based on the timing – some sort of response to Xbox shutting down a group of studios led by Redfall developer Arkane Austin and Hi-Fi Rush developer Tango Gameworks, it’s still a pretty interesting thing to have happen in the game.
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So with that in mind, while speaking to Bill LaCoste at the Skyline Valley expansion preview, I asked the Bethesda 76 team’s lead producer what it felt like for the game’s developers to see what they had created.
“I mean, it’s interesting,” the developer said. “I think the cool thing about it is that Phil can now launch nukes, too. So I think more importantly, Phil plays the game a lot and gives a lot of feedback, and it shows the fans that Phil is a fan of the game and he’s commented a lot on 76, and they’re all very positive comments.”
“I think a lot of people might see that as a negative or a [of] Like, ‘I’m going to show Phil,’ but for us, that’s really not the point,” he continued. “You know, we find it funny because I think Phil finds it funny, too, and he’s like, ‘Well, now that I’ve been nuked, I’m going to go nuke some people. ‘ So, I think a lot of it is just for fun, and I think it’s great because, again, it’s going to get more attention for Fallout 76.”
While Spencer has so far not responded to user real1090jake’s nuke attack with atomic firepower of his own, it’s cool to see LaCoste hint that it’s something he and Team 76 might be happy to see. When your boss unexpectedly becomes the final boss of the game, you certainly can’t blame the developers for seeing him kind of embrace the role, at least in the eyes of some hardcore players.
Hopefully, if Spencer does, he won’t bite off more than he can chew and end up getting defeated by a group of Level 1000 Vault Dwellers who have enough weaponry to recreate the big fight.
