Document Type
Article
Abstract
In the video game Fallout 3, the nuclear wasteland is filled with the remnants of technology from before a globally cataclysmic nuclear war, but the prewar world is neither entirely historical nor entirely futuristic, an alternate history in which the 50s-era glorification of the possibilities of technology in the atomic age came true. This portrayal of technology in the wasteland contains inherent tension between the glorified possibilities of technology and the fact that the nuclear wasteland was brought about by those same technological advances. This paper examines the ways in which the game both looks backwards at the Cold War and forwards to a science fiction-styled future in order to highlight contemporary concerns about technology and progress.
The paper argues that the simulation of a retrofuturist world torn apart by nuclear war is an implicit critique of technology and our interface with it. The retrofuturist simulation gives rise to critiques of technology that players can easily recognize as contemporary technologies, while exploring the consequences of their technological dependence from within a safe simulation. By making the technological tension part of gameplay, the game critiques contemporary cultural notions of progress and modern reliance on technological advances. The Cold War-era themes help to create an ironically safe space to explore contemporary anxieties about technology, and the game becomes a place to play out those anxieties.
Repository Citation
Derrick, Rowan. "Destroying Yesterday’s World of Tomorrow: Playing in the Wasteland of Fallout 3." Reconstruction: Studies in Contemporary Culture vol. 12, no. 2, 2012, pp. 1–17. https://digitalcommons.odu.edu/reconstruction/vol12/iss2/5