How the video game Fallout became a backdrop for live Shakespeare shows

https://www.theguardian.com/culture/2023/jan/25/the-open-worlds-a-stage-how-the-video-game-fallout-became-a-backdrop-for-live-shakespeare-shows

by helsinkiandrew • 3 years ago

118 53 3 years ago

theguardian.com

josephduffy• 3 years ago

Fallout has been a great game for those wanting to invest heavily in the role-playing aspect of a game. Fallout 76 and its groups are an example of how the internet can be fantastic.

IGN released a good video on some of the players of Fallout 76, including the Wasteland Theatre Company featured in the article: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B0wccxcmrlA

orbital-decay2• 3 years ago

Paradoxically, this mostly happens because Fallout 76 doesn't have much to offer after finishing the story, so players found other ways to amuse themselves than perpetual grinding in a glorified slot machine.

xen2xen1• 3 years ago

Ha. I'm starting a chain store of vendors near train stations (run 6 copies of the game and sell stuff to other players) for pretty much that reason.

LegitShady5• 3 years ago

The game is overmonetized trash, and the fallout game doesn't seem to add anything at all to the theater company's performance. It might as well be second life or vrchat or any of a million other games that aren't abusive microtransaction garbage.

Fallout 76 was a real turning point from bethesda, where they went from inept buggy RPGs to actively evil over monetization on a game that should never have been released in that state.

orbital-decay2• 3 years ago

Bethesda is the company that invented microtransactions (horse armor in TES IV Oblivion) and coined the term "DLC" if I'm not mistaken, so I'm not sure if that was that different from what they were doing before.

petetnt2• 3 years ago

I agree on the "should never been released in that state" part, but currently Fallout 76 is by far the best Fallout game Bethesda has made. The newer campaigns are fun and engaging, well written even and there's lots to do. Best of all the community is super friendly and non-toxic: something that is almost impossible to find in 2023.

Sure, there are things that are grindy and made grindy on purpose (eg. getting gold bullion or legendary scrip which are capped daily) and there are things that have worked and things that have not, but as far as monetization goes the game lets you enjoy every single piece of content without grinding or spending a single dime outside of the initial investment. I have played the game hundreds of hours and didn't feel like I was missing anything - I have even bought all of the cosmetics I have wanted purely just by using the currency the game occasionally drops you.

The game is currently -75% off on Steam (https://store.steampowered.com/app/1151340/Fallout_76/) and while it still might not be on par with the likes of 2 or New Vegas, I highly recommend it to anyone that were disappointed in Fallout 4 or even 3.

ehnto2• 3 years ago

It was always meant to be a game as a service, they had to monetize it long term and they have been adding free content regularly.

I think the mistake they made was not calling it Fallout Online in order to set expectations and of course, release a complete game at launch.

shrimp_emoji• 3 years ago

Required watching for anyone curious about how bad the launch of 76 was: https://youtu.be/kjyeCdd-dl8

Blizzard and Bethesda used to be my favorite game companies, and I'm grateful they noticed my migration to Linux and decided to make it easy on me by making me either not want to play their games at all or wait for years until they're available on Proton and I can buy them cheaper with all DLCs and bugfixes.

footlose_3815• 3 years ago

That whole video watched like an ad, it made me sick.

beardog2• 3 years ago

Is this the metaverse?

ByThyGrace• 3 years ago

Or perhaps a covert Fallout 76 ad?

Barrin92• 3 years ago

That's fantastic. Reminded me immediately of Emily St. John Mandel's Station Eleven as well. During the pandemic I spent a fair amount of time with VRChat and the platform has a lot of theatre or performance art related people on it as well.

There seems to be an increasing overlap between immersive online games and the arts.

smolder• 3 years ago

I wondered if the article would make mention of the parallels to Station Eleven. Neat.

It's always nice to see players create their own game or story on top of what they're given. I'm reminded of a RP focused telnet MUD I played in the dialup days. There was a sort of roleplay credit system where you'd earn points from other players for contributing to the overall story and atmosphere. You'd get prizes from the admins such as custom content (sort of the textual equivalent of cosmetics in graphical games) after earning enough points.

komali22• 3 years ago

That's a really awesome idea, I was just thinking coming into the thread that it'd be cool if there was a way to actually motivate players to do this more, and frankly, "play the game" less.

The most fun I ever had in multiplayer games was when things went against the game itself. Funny interactions with reps in WoW, working with the enemy faction in WoW to ensure that literally nobody is allowed to leave a given town of either faction because, why not? Walking around CS source maps and just speculating about wtf the maps actually were, like, is de_dust2... just... a road in some town?

Anyway I'd love to hear about more games with these kinds of interactions. According to what I see on youtube, the final fantasy MMO seems to have this kind of things in droves. I wanted to explore it but I found the actual gameplay to be mind numbingly grindy and was turned off by that, plus lots of people telling me it sucks until level cap.

KVFinn2• 3 years ago

There's a huge community of roleplaying GTA 5 custom servers. Some take it pretty seriously and have really talented actors/performers.

Aaronstotle• 3 years ago

This is the first time I've read anything positive relating to Fallout 76

tnel77• 3 years ago

It breaks my heart thinking about Fallout 76. It’s just so bad and it seems like everyone I talk to has the same response. Who is playing this game?

beardog2• 3 years ago

It improved since launch (much less bugs, NPCs added, less PvP focus). I liked the story and exploring the world but I find the combat to be too grindy compared to 3/4/New Vegas. I also don't like there is no way from the UI to pick a server or make free community servers.

However I would say if you liked fallout 4 then current 76 is worth it on sale especially if you have a friend to join.

jrootabega• 3 years ago

I tried three separate times to get into it and had to walk away in disgust every time. The netcode is and has always been terrible. The last time, the time when I knew it would be the LAST last time, was when my teammates fast traveled to me and caused all the super mutants I had just cleared out to respawn. Then the super mutants started phasing through doors I had closed to stay hidden. I couldn't think of any reason to ever play again. It was almost as if the game achieved sentience and hated me. Or perhaps it loved me and wanted me to spend my time better.

jhbadger• 3 years ago

At launch it was terrible. But these days it actually is pretty good. If you treat it like a single player Fallout game and not bother with the multiplayer or microtransaction stuff. It's basically just more Fallout 4, but with new quests.

ge96• 3 years ago

I do level 89. Got a camp setup, sell stuff. Scrap stuff to make ammo... Explored most places but still areas on map. I don't play it too much but yeah. I like running into lower levels and giving them stuff.

panzagl• 3 years ago

I play it, maybe one longish session a week (2-3 hours) with my brother. We'll bounce around to events, sometimes just pick a direction and start walking. Can usually find some detail we haven't seen before, or get into some sort of dust up with a bunch of monsters. We don't worry about min-maxing our characters, and I've never felt the need to put money into it, although my brother has a subscription. We've played since shortly after launch, and he felt like it was worth his support.

I liked the game much better before they 'fixed' it by adding NPCs- before that the desolation was just creepy, and there was a lot of storytelling in the notes and tapes you'd find. But it is pretty much just wandering around an open world- there are grinds if you want them, but mostly I've just used them to guide our meandering. And the main quest line is ok, it's just not as extensive as doing 3 or 4 with all the dlc.

What is weird is that people who don't like it just can't accept that it's just not to their taste, and that maybe they're not as big Fallout fans as they think- every post about it has people who act like it's a crime against humanity, whether they've played it or not.

baud147258• 3 years ago

The thread on Fallout 76 on the gaming forum I'm often browsing had a handful of people defending the game, especially once the wave of the original release had passed

KVFinn2• 3 years ago

This is the first time I've read anything positive relating to Fallout 76

It's actually improved a TON since launch. I'm not talking about a No Man's Sky situation where it's 100x better, but better.

Also two huge points: Fallout 76 is free on Game Pass, and works really well coop with friends. Those features go a LONG way.

komali22• 3 years ago

I had to do a hotel quarantine once and happened to have my VR kit and PC on me (bringing it into the country). Set it all up in hotel quarantine, noticed No Man's Sky in the steam library had a VR option, and then basically spent two weeks straight wandering around alien planets.

I am still flabbergasted at how far that game came along, and then on top of that added a whole ass VR mode that to date is one of the coolest, most fleshed-out "true gaming" VR experiences I've ever had. Not poorly implemented like "woowee you're playing the game but have full-directional vision, still have to click to swing the sword though," not gimmicky like a rails shooter or slice-to-the-beat game, just a whole ass videogame in VR like I hoped it would be as a kid.

I still don't understand how they funded continual development like that but I'm happy about it.

waltbosz• 3 years ago

I have a children's book of illustrated story versions of Shakespeare's plays.

After seeing how much my kids enjoyed the book, and how much they enjoy watching Minecraft role play videos on youtube, I wondered if there would be a market for videos of Shakespeare plays performed in Minecraft.

But, I suspect it would be hard to get traction. Minecraft youtube is a flooded market, and the popular channels are often really lazy with their content. They just churn out improvised drivel featuring other media properties that kids recognize.

luxuryballs4• 3 years ago

In case anyone hasn’t played it the original 1997 Fallout is still the best one, you can snag it on GOG, I believe it runs on DOSBox.

arp2423• 3 years ago

It's the Windows version; you can run it on Linux with Wine though. I'm not sure there ever was a DOS version of Fallout.

IMHO Fallout 2 was a lot better; it's a lot larger and has a lot more story to it. Neither game has aged especially well though. The UI in particular is awkward.

Underrail is a pretty good "modern Fallout", although it also shares some of the general problems (e.g. too much reliance on randomness, can be unfairly hard unless you already know the game well, bit of a walking simulator at times).

WA• 3 years ago

I liked Fallout Tactics a lot.

mdp2021• 3 years ago

aged especially well ... The UI in particular is awkward

Both views extremely subjective. Some judge the '97 and '98 as "excellence" and Vegas as "excellence bound to compromise with the times". And still dream of a proper sequel to the original (same line, style and features).

Oh by the way: https://i.pinimg.com/originals/a4/b0/ff/a4b0ff508d5e7fda4a6a...

gljiva• 3 years ago

It's highly subjective. Fallout 1 is quite enjoyable once you learn the ropes (Internet is your best help there, not the game), but I prefer Fallout 4 in terms of gameplay mechanics, content quality and amount of content. Fallot 4 was much more immersive and overall enjoyable.

If someone has enough time to give it a try: look up on the Internet the controls beforehand and have very balanced SPECIAL, otherwise you won't reach vault 15 (the first mission). Also, there is a gun behind a toilet in that vault, even if you can't see it when looking for it there. Don't bother trying to escape if the mutants capture you.

Those are the acivities I lost too much time figuring out, which can be quite a turn off in the start. I well spent much more time enjoying the game.

P.S. SPECIAL can't be upgraded later

luxuryballs4• 3 years ago

Fallout 3 was a great remake but I wouldn’t count it as a sequel for sure, but I remember when it came out and it was a real trip seeing the old isometric sprites come alive in 3D around you with essentially the same colors/textures. As a fan of Fallout growing up it was a real trip, but still a totally different game.

hiidrew• 3 years ago

Related and mentioned in the article - Station Eleven is a pretty good show. I have to admit though, the Shakespeare stuff was kind of lost on me but really enjoyed the dystopian surviving the virus scenes.

How the video game Fallout became a backdrop for live Shakespeare shows

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