Kotaku articles on Fallout 1 and 3

[Hassknecht]

Yes, Fallout 3 had all of these things they took from the history of slavery -- but the game never connected those things to the actual history, nor to the racial backgound. "Yeah well the history books got burned" is a rationalization of the situation, not a reason to design it that way. It would have been perfectly plausible to have that slave leader talk about being inspired by his ancestors (hi oral history) instead of being inspired by a mangled version of Abraham Lincoln which conveniently forgot about the centuries-long oppression of black people.

Yeah, sure, although I'm still sceptical about the degree of historical knowledge left in the world. It's a world where people rarely even call cities by their original names (ok, more common in Fallout 3 and NV). And again, nuclear war. Teaching some american slave history over several generations to your kids doesn't seem plausiblly high on anyone's list of priorities. I'm not saying it shouldn't be in games, just that it makes sense this way in this particular series.
It's not a rationalization per se. It makes sense to design it this way. Lack of historical knowledge is a common theme in Fallout.
And how is the Railroad not a connection to the actual history? It's literally, LITERALLY the Underground Railroad for freeing slaves. Do they really need to explain to the player 'Oh yes, we call our organization The Railroad because of the historical organization hundreds of years ago that freed the black slaves from their white masters and brought them to safety in the North. Would you like to more?'
I don't have the highest opinion of the average intelligence of the average gamer, but c'mon. Give 'em some credit. Especially in the US people are able to understand that reference without having some educational mother penguin chew it up, digest it and vomit it in their brains.

And yeeeees, I fucking know that penguins don't chew.

 

[Sander]

Societies without the written word don't forget their history. And Fallout didn't lose all connection to its history, either. The world mangled a lot of it, they lost a lot of it, but you also continually see remnants of historical knowledge. Fallout 3 chose to have its anti-slave movement remember a mangled version of Abraham Lincoln, use some of those terms, and remember absolutely nothing of centuries of racial oppression. Not one thing. And all of that wouldn't be so bad, if those sorts of things didn't happen all the time in and outside video games. Then it becomes part of a trend of erasing a certain aspect of history from cultural products.

 

[Hassknecht]

Well, Lincoln was convenient because of the Memorial. And because he's one of the first people to come to mind when one thinks of 'freeing slaves'.
I mean, it's easy to understand why they went that way. It's a very nice way to show people how hard it is to preserve history properly. If you ask someone if we'll always remember Lincoln, they'd probably say yes. He's one of the most famous american people. It's shocking and funny to see how Hannibal Hamlin gets so much wrong about Lincoln, even though he's so famous even on an international level. Which is another reason why Lincoln was their choice, because he works for an international audience without further explanation.

 

[Gnarles Bronson]

That's an answer to "why don't we have that?". It's not an answer to "why shouldn't we have that?" There are plenty of profit-based (or profit-rationalized) reasons for why video games are the way they are.

For why shouldn't we have that, for one, I think it's not good to have white people telling minorities what their life experience is like.

Another reason is that its hamfistedness might decrease the quality of the game. I wouldn't want to be walking through the capital waste and then have some non sequitur lecture on why racism is bad shoved down my throat.

But, assuming we could get some good minority VG developers and publishers together then there's no reason why we shouldn't have a videogame with a minority viewpoint.

Fallout 3 chose to have its anti-slave movement remember a mangled version of Abraham Lincoln, use some of those terms, and remember absolutely nothing of centuries of racial oppression. Not one thing. And all of that wouldn't be so bad, if those sorts of things didn't happen all the time in and outside video games. Then it becomes part of a trend of erasing a certain aspect of history from cultural products.

To me, this just proves that no amount of historical acknowledgement would ever be enough for you. Site American slavery? Well what about Jim Crowe? Site Jim Crowe? Well what about the CRM? Site the civil rights movement? Well what about Ferguson? etc. etc.

 

[Sander]

For why shouldn't we have that, for one, I think it's not good to have white people telling minorities what their life experience is like.

That's a problem, but it can be mitigated with solid research and good editing and playtesting. People write "the other" all the time. There are a ton of resources out there for things like this. People constantly write things with which they have no experience.

Obviously increasing diversity in the writing staff is even more important, but it's better to not be exclusionary than to create worlds with only white people because you're too scared to even try.

To me, this just proves that no amount of historical acknowledgement would ever be enough for you. Site American slavery? Well what about Jim Crowe? Site Jim Crowe? Well what about the CRM? Site the civil rights movement? Well what about Ferguson? etc. etc.

The point is that the historical, black perspective should be reflected somewhere. In Fallout 3, it isn't. And I'm not asking for much -- in fact, I gave a couple of examples of single line-inserts that would've made things much better. Because they would have acknowledged that there is a real history there and that they're not ignoring that. Instead, they manage to use the Underground Railroad and Abraham Lincoln and slavery in ways that are actually completely disconnected from that perspective -- a perspective that is always missing in video games.

Again: this wouldn't be a problem if you'd see this history reflected elsewhere in video games with some regularity. But it is constantly shoved to the side, ignored and erased.

 

[Gnarles Bronson]

So your problem is the disconnect between references of american slavery and black people themselves being slaves. Ok, fair enough.

Still, you can't blame videogames from shying away from sensitive subjects. I think for most people videogames are an escape, and while I consider them art, I don't think any has ascended to the level of say a schindlers list or glory. Because of it's escapist and fun-centric nature, I'm not sure it's the appropriate medium to tackle difficult topics such as real slavery or the holocaust in any sort of serious attempt.

Should Wolfenstein 3d have mentioned what was happening to the jews at the time? That would have been awful, and taken away from the fun of killing nazis for me.

 

[Ceratisa]

Colonial era slavery isn't worth mentioning in Fallout, there is literally zero reason for anyone to care about something that happened centuries ago when people are actively struggling to survive. you are being narrow minded in your view that human racial relations would have ANY lingering effects on something that from a historical stand point was a short and minor event is outstanding.


As far as North America goes it received less than 400,000 of the 10 million slaves successfully delivered to the new world. When most of the people in the world don't even know about the U.S. Civil War why would they give a shit? Sanders the year in Fallout 3 is 2277, the fact that you fail to look at it from that perspective alone is very telling.

 

[Stanislao Moulinsky]

And how is the Railroad not a connection to the actual history? It's literally, LITERALLY the Underground Railroad for freeing slaves. Do they really need to explain to the player 'Oh yes, we call our organization The Railroad because of the historical organization hundreds of years ago that freed the black slaves from their white masters and brought them to safety in the North. Would you like to more?'
I don't have the highest opinion of the average intelligence of the average gamer, but c'mon. Give 'em some credit. Especially in the US people are able to understand that reference without having some educational mother penguin chew it up, digest it and vomit it in their brains.

In Italy I seriously doubt that that is common knowledge. Personally I had never heard of its existence before your post.

 

[Sander]

Colonial era slavery isn't worth mentioning in Fallout, there is literally zero reason for anyone to care about something that happened centuries ago when people are actively struggling to survive. you are being narrow minded in your view that human racial relations would have ANY lingering effects on something that from a historical stand point was a short and minor event is outstanding.

As far as North America goes it received less than 400,000 of the 10 million slaves successfully delivered to the new world. When most of the people in the world don't even know about the U.S. Civil War why would they give a shit? Sanders the year in Fallout 3 is 2277, the fact that you fail to look at it from that perspective alone is very telling.

Did you just call slavery and white supremacy a "short and minor event"? The defining characteristic of the genesis of the most powerful state in the world for the past 200 years? A driving force behind some of the largest economic growth we've ever seen? A major factor in colonialism, which defines basically everything about political relations to this day, and would in Fallout's universe too? The institution that defines social relations in the USA to this very day? Really?

It's been 150 years since slavery was "abolished" and we're still talking about it every day. The United States survived until 2077 in the Fallout universe, just 60 years in the future. There is zero chance, none whatsoever, that slavery will not be seen as a major historical event then. And the history of the USA is all over Fallout 3. That history is everywhere.

But, again, I could kiiiiiiind of excuse all of this if we didn't see this deliberate erasure of history in nearly every game. Because then it's not just one game doing it. It's the entire games industry doing it.