Original Fallout co-creator Tim Cain says 'critique of capitalism was never the point' of the games and if anything they're about how 'war is inevitable given basic human nature'
Original Fallout co-creator Tim Cain says 'critique of capitalism was never the point' of the games and if anything they're about how 'war is inevitable given basic human nature'
But he doesn't mind if you take an anti-capitalist message away anyhow.
VaultTec being evil wasn't really part of the first game, but the evil megacorp exploiting (and encouraging) disaster to put profits over human lives, that's an obvious critique of capitalism. Maybe he didn't set out to make it a critique of capitalism, but that became part of the foundation in later games.
117Eh, does Vault-Tec care about profits or science? Almost everyone died, and the ones that didn't aren't paying anymore.
There are certainly some critiques of capitalism - the vaults being paid at all - but I think you're overselling it
45Of course it cared about profits. Profits right then. That's one of the key components of capitalism. The complete and utter lack of an ability to put long-term profit ahead of short-term profit. I can think of nothing more quintessentially capitalist then destroying the world in an effort to make a lot of money today.
52It needed the profits for even more radical science!
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Except for they don't care about profits at all.
The entire stick with the enclave/ valtek is they want to rebuild society from the ground up in an image that they deem to be correct and perfect. And the capitalism was just an end to a means
That would only be further reinforced by the slides from the X8 research facility in Old world blues if you complete all tasks.
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Tim Cain worked on the original fallouts, fallout 1 and 2. He has not been credited in the series since. The fallout series has passed through the hands of many others, who may have included a critique of capitalism as a theme.
If you're interested in Tim Cain's ideas on capitalism, he was the director of the outer worlds, which is far more focused on capitalism much more directly than fallout ever was.
93I can see where the critique and capitalism is coming from but that side of the games doesn’t really start until Fallout 3, post-Tim Cain
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Maybe the beauty of art lies in the infinite variety of unexpected interpretations…
28Or, in his own words
"I don’t think I have any themes that run in common in all my games (maybe mistrust of power)," said Cain, but "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."
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I think what a lot of people missed from the original video is that while it wasn’t the point, the first games did critique capitalism even if that wasn’t the main point. Would highly recommend people check out Tim’s videos directly - each one is usually about only 15 minutes long, but taken together is a masterclass on game dev and story telling.
25I think it's only really the show that highlighted how fucked capitalism is, which is ironic given who made it and who now owns the games.
23Ironic, or, ahem, fucked?
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FWIW, Ray Bradbury used to argue that Fahrenheit 451 wasn't about censorship at all, but the dumbing down of society.
Once work leaves the hands of an author, the author no longer controls the narrative, or how the narrative is interpreted.
16Fallout is about me, my dog, and my walking tank armor. Who cares about capitalism when i have ghouls and super mutants to hunt?
14not the point of the game ≠ isn't there in the game
12I thought that it was about how industrial food always ends up making you sick.
4That’s fucking stupid, sounds like he doesn’t even understand his own game
-40He made another game which is a direct criticism of capitalism. The dude is talking about the first few Fallout games, he hasn't worked on Fallout since Bethesda bought the IP.
42Did you start with Fallout 1 or 3?
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