By now plenty of pixels have been written about the hottest video game to television-adjacent formats in recent memory - Fallout. The second most watched original series on Amazon Prime, has already driven a significant increase in game sales and users. In the classic style of thought leadership life cycles, an adaptation or extension of a game that has achieved economic and critical success and hit with audiences has attracted a fair amount of thought leadership hating.
As a bona fide veteran of the Buzzword Wars, it’s hard to get too worked up by FUD. Colleagues of mine know that I have my own particular form of cynical, beleaguered critique usually accompanied by deep, emotive sighing. *deep breath*… *sigh*.
But! My friend Matt Toner specifically reached out … asked me to weigh in… I operate by vampire rules and unless invited, tend to keep my thoughts to myself or in heavily illustrated strategic case studies. Why do I feel like I should weigh in? Someone asked. Have I been procrastinating? Of course. Do I write all day every day and it feels a little like homework? Definitely. bleah. But why do I have to weigh in?
In the legendary words of the Ghoul… I do this for the love of the game.
I have spent no small amount of my life working on retaining my capacity to simply enjoy books, films, games and TV. This is a reaction to the fact that my work revolves around relentlessly consuming, observing, deconstructing, reviewing and critiquing those things that I love. Anyone who has gone to a movie with a film student (especially other film students) will have experienced the singular pain of someone who cannot turn off their vocal critiques of something and simply let others experience the work - whatever its merits.
This is not to say I don’t have… thoughts… about the content of media. I do! Loud ones! but the content is the entire point of doing any of this. Content is where the ART lives. ART is what makes you feel things. Art that creates feelings and associations is the only reason any media has any value at all.
Conversations in media and technology often get so “medium is the message” and so inside baseball about the ins and outs of deal-making, these technical widget or business model that it’s impossible to break through the noise and have a real conversation about the ART of what’s inside that box.
So working in the entertainment industry, especially if you’re anywhere close to the business side you really have to ask - are you selling a box or what’s inside it?
Box selling has been big business for decades in media, new technologies have opened things up remarkably - being able to make the art has never been easier, getting it to audiences has never been easier, understanding what the like and dislike has never been easier.
The investment capital for the business of media is also absurdly consolidated, there are millions of people making a living making art in different formats and finding audiences… and there are a few gigantic businesses that are building decade-spanning multibillion dollar storyworlds. Working in these spaces, even if your job is identical in most of what you actually DO - is like working in different countries.
Big Franchises are beholden to the needs of the quarterly reports and revenue of corporations capable of employing tens of thousands of people and wielding 10 figure budgets. The ONLY reason to dedicate these kinds of resources to art projects that big is if it represents achievements and works that can span and inspire generations. Otherwise, it will and deserves to fizzle out of relevance. They can persist for decades and launch a wide range of related lines of business that sustain the core art and beyond.
But Caitlin, you’ll say, you’ve been talking about the box this whole time, the business baggage and talking about talking about the art. Aren’t you doing exactly the same thing you’re accusing others of doing? Yes. But it’s vampire rules and I was invited by at least one person - and you subscribed to my newsletter. You have some responsibility for reading this far already. So let’s get to it! Let’s talk about the ART.
There are very few art projects our global society does together.
Big media franchises are like cathedrals - they bring together fine artists from far and wide to work on something that - if they do it will, will live on into future generations.
Batman’s 85th Anniversary this year, at least 4 generations of people have told his story. Star Wars appeals broadly across the world, and while it’s only in its second or third generation of storytellers, you can go almost anywhere on Earth and have a conversation about it. These big stories are ones we hold in common, argue about and share.
The themes of these stories are universal, the motives of characters recognizable to all humans, even as new characters or interpretations of a given time period shift their meaning or presentation. They’re big enough to let people play in them, and create their own smaller scenes, plots or perspectives as a lens on what it means to be human to each creator.
Fallout as a game - hadn’t grabbed me - I was playing games when the first Fallout came out in 1997. I tried to play a few times and wasn’t engrossed. I was able to walk away and forgot to pick it back up. Plenty of people loved it from PC and Console gaming, but the show was the first time I felt a real connection to it.
When you shift the primary platform for storytelling from one big budget platform to another you’re not just looking for partnership investment and revenue. Which of course you are, and obviously Bethesda found with Amazon - and will reflect well on Q2’s revenue and 2024’s reports. You’re looking for a different emotional connection that hits audiences in a new and additive way.
What you’re really looking for with a show or film extension is for millions of people you otherwise couldn’t or didn’t reach to become emotionally invested in your story world. That’s what creates generations of fans. The benefit of a truly exciting piece of art is that it creates an emotional memory that will stay with that person for decades.
The Fallout series made me care about Fallout in a profound and fun way - it has changed the way I engage with everything it has ever released.
"The end of the world is a product."
ART TIME. SPOILERS. LET’S DO THIS
Fallout on the whole speaks to deep fears and dangers present in our own times - cataclysm, cultural factionalism, corporate greed, the commodification of everything and of course, that a small group of global elites would allow everything else to die to advantage them a small amount.
It’s an exciting place filled with horrors well within our comprehension - it makes it even more thrilling when you see people with a gun and a personal code bringing order to the irradiated wild west.
There’s something for everyone to be afraid of at the end of the world and beyond. Whether its having to marry your cousin, stoner jerks who want to harvest your organs, losing your moral and ethical compass and becoming a noseless immortal mutant, or horrifying pregnancy experiments - and that’s the first scratch under the surface level roving bandits, armor-clad-violence-bros and giant mutant bears/salamanders.
For many of us, living in a cynical age, the glimmer of hope that within the general hellscape around us - integrity, honor, consideration of others and cooperation can be the key to survival and the foundation for what comes next. If we look back at history and evolutionary biology, the themes have real merit.
Not that that’s easy. Lucy is a compelling character because she’s hyper-competent and naive but does what’s necessary with only the hesitation it takes to gird herself to say “Okey Dokey”. Maximus is motivated by honor and altruism, in a brittle, inflexible system that encourages deception to present a facade of strength and brutality - he literally reports to "Officer Shortsight”. There’s even a very good dog that follows its person around - even when its person is reduced to a head.
Watching Fallout in 2024 feels like what watching Western heroes must have in the duck and cover era of the 1940s - when epidemics were killing children and sudden, complete, global annihilation was suddenly a reality. It’s no mistake that The Ghoul’s story - played by one of my all time faves, Walton Goggins, was the star of those films. It’s explicit. His moral codes compromised long before the nuclear apocalypse, when corporate interests turned his character from noble sheriff who believed in justice to one who acts as judge, jury and executioner.
His arc is the arc of humanity in the lawless wastelands, and I’m excited to see how it plays out in future seasons. So far, Fallout has stuck the landing on every possible Western trope and the art of the story and setting, the craftsmanship of the scenes, the structure of each episode makes well trod plots fully engaging and exceptional.
The show also weaves the rules of a video game into the natural environment in a way that most other video game-based stories botch or simply discard. Mortality is high, people die easily, lose limbs and suffer mortal wounds all the time. It’s normal to the characters and it’s normal to us so it’s normal to the audience. Lucy does her own wound stapling and medical care - it’s clear that severe injury and medical knowledge are the baselines for her. Everyone has to be a badass to make it to adulthood, everyone is practiced with firearms. Amputations are commonplace enough that there are competing tool brands.
Mutagens and health packs are part of the ambient culture. It’s harder to kill folks who take immortality granting mutagens so gun fights have rules more in common with the game than real life. That said, the consequences still feel real, whether it’s The Ghoul fearing the loss of his humanity, or ensuring that an enemy is really down before moving on. The scarcity of the world is communicated to us by the character’s easy and immediate instinct to scavenge from downed enemies. They don’t have to tell us all the rules and stats - they show us how those norms exist through their actions.
I walked away from the last Fallout game after doing a bunch of milk-run missions in Filly. This weekend I’m diving back in because I have spent 8 hours in and around Filly with characters I’m now deeply attached to. I don’t need to meet them in the game, but when I find a familiar face, landmark or unholy terror - I’m going to get a rush of excitement. I’ll also being going knowing The Ghoul’s rule of the road, “Thou shalt be sidetracked by bullshit every time.”
New stories and experiences in a story world are opportunities to capture the imagination of new people, to bring them into your world and invite them to make their own journey of the map you’ve created. As stories get to a certain size the only way to grow is to become an artistic canvas that can inspire the best artisans to create the best art possible - anywhere it makes sense to the artist.
Looking at the numbers for Fallout all the short-term business reactions show that people are exploring this new territory that the series mapped for them. I’ll come back with some updates if I make my way through the dozens to hundreds of hours in the game world - but even if I don’t - I can confidently share a thumbs up with the hundreds of people who will don vault-dweller jumpsuits at cons and Halloween in the coming years.
A huge wave of new people CARE about Fallout in a new way. This adds huge amounts of value to its past games, comics, books, and anything it does in the future, laying the foundation for generations of successful new art.