Tim Cain, the original Fallout co-creator, says that 'critique capitalism was never the purpose' of the games. Instead, they are about how 'wars are inevitable given human nature'.

What is Fallout all about? War? Nukes? Consumerism? Imperialism? How easy is it to lose close relatives? All of the above? This debate has raged on for decades. It's no wonder, Fallout is one of the most rich videogame series. You can find all kinds of messages in FO1, 2, and New Vegas. You can still find people arguing on forums about the best ending for the Mojave (Yes Man) 14 years after the game was released.

Here's what is not, or at least not by nature: anti-capitalism. Tim Cain, a co-creator of the original series on his YouTube channel, says as much. More specifically, Cain spoke about it in the comments of one of his recent uploads--a video prosaically titled "Capitalism"--in response to a fan asking about Cain's view on Fallout "as a critique on capitalist/corporative greed."

Cain's answer was unambiguous: "Critique capitalism was never the purpose of Fallout." How can you tell if it's true? "The game went out of its means to mention that other nations like China were also acting badly." It's true. In the original Fallouts, on which Cain was the lead, the US was a horrific dystopia. It was a chauvinist capitalist hellscape, which imposed its will upon the world, and shot anyone who disagreed. But it wasn't the only one. Fallout's China, which never abandoned the'smash old world and forge new world' ideology from the Mao Zedong Thought period, was also quite violent. In Cain's original plan, it was China that dropped the first bomb.

Cain says that Fallout is "a comment on the fact that war is inevitable due to human nature" and that the mode of production is not necessarily that important. Cain doesn't necessarily disapprove of a anti-capitalist reading. "I don’t think I have themes that run through all my games (maybe a mistrust of the power)," Cain said. "But people will interpret my games all kinds of different ways." It's okay. Everyone has their own perspective and a story may mean different things to people.

Honestly? Pinko that i am, i've always had an anti-capitalist view of the original Fallout games. But I'm not surprised that Cain didn't try to make an RPG isometric version of the Grundrisse in the 1990s. It's not surprising that he didn't care much about capitalist critique when he wrote The Outer Worlds, which was a satire of corporate life that didn’t really criticize capitalism or private property.

I guess that's fair enough. Cain is still responsible for some my favourite games, even if he does not share my interpretation of them. Plus, if the Marx-adjacents among us need help with anything, it's reading into everything anti-capitalism.