In this article, I unpack the ways in which Fallout's rules and narrative undercut the pervasive simulacra of its fictional world, suggesting the potential for videogames to transform the dominance of simulation for a posthuman future. However, to define videogames as solely simulacra, or even as solely simulation, is to ignore the complex interactions of fictional worlds, game rules, and narratives with player interaction that constitute games, and which move videogames outside the orders of simulacra and into the realm of Baudrillard's lost real. As such, Fallout creates a simulacrum that justifies the policies of the Global War on Terror (GWOT), while at the same time seeming to embody the ways in which videogames contribute to the perpetuation of images. The franchise overtly mocks Cold War nostalgia however, in the process, it positions itself as outside of that nostalgia, masking the ways in which US culture and politics are still characterized by Cold War ideology. Meanwhile, their existence as simulation positions them as integral to the creation of the hyperreal. The games present a totalizing projection of the future as imagined by the past, and are famous for their retrofuturistic gameworld.
Perhaps no popular text engages as determinedly with Cold War nostalgia as does the Fallout franchise. At the same time, the 21st century has been marked by Cold War nostalgia, and images from the American 1950s seem to be everywhere in US popular culture. This dominance corresponds in many ways to the predictions of Jean Baudrillard, who argued that society was moving into the realm of the hyperreal, even characterizing the collapse of the World Trade Center as image rather than real event (Baudrillard, 2002, pp. The 21st century has seen the dominance of the image, as visual computing becomes ubiquitous. Keywords: Simulacra, Nostalgia, Cold War, War on Terror, Fallout, technology, Baudrillard Finally, it explains how the loose narratives of the games create a pervasive atmosphere of distrust of technology that leads players to see through both the embrace of simulacra and the control of rule-systems. It then examines the way the games' rule-systems challenge those simulacra, undermining not only the nostalgia they support but the faith in technology they assume. Using the Fallout franchise as a test case, this paper examines the workings of Cold War nostalgia within the hyperreal environment of the series, unearthing the cultural concerns that the games' retrofuturist simulacra mask. The ubiquity of visual simulations, their self-referentiality, and their inescapability seem to be proving Baudrillard's warnings about the descent of postmodernity into the "desert of the real." This paper uses the framework of Baudrillard's theories of simulacra and simulation to examine the medial nature of videogames, putting Baudrillard in dialogue with videogame theorists who emphasize the importance of game rules for bringing videogames into the real, and puts both simulacra and rules in conversation with the messages implied by game narratives, to uncover how the medium of the videogame presents a possible way out of the mirror-maze of simulation. Computers and computer technology in particular have been the locus for much of this debate, in the form of everything from internet fora to drones, with videogames often coming under specific scrutiny. The post-September 11th period has seen a great deal of anxiety over technology even as nostalgia for the early Cold War period attempts to relieve that anxiety through a return to an optimistic appreciation of the potential of technological progress. The most poignant parallel between Bennett and Nixon is this: Bennett tells Adm.The Wasteland of the Real: Nostalgia and Simulacra in Fallout by Kathleen McClancy Abstract Both were investigated by Congress directly, and though Bennett's fate is unknown, Nixon resigned to avoid a certain impeachment and a likely conviction.
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Once caught, both attempted to claim that the president's authority would overrule the investigation: Ritter's "get out of jail free card" is a letter signed by the president, and Nixon attempted not to release the incriminating tape recordings citing "executive privilege" (the Supreme Court later ruled this void). Both were caught using then-modern media: for Nixon it was hidden tape recordings in his office, and for Bennett it was a computer file. John Clark) and took steps to separate themselves from the agents. Both hired agents to perform an illegal task (i.e. There are parallels between this plot with President Bennett and the real-life Watergate scandal with President Richard Nixon.