Alexander Hurezeanu is a PhD Candidate at Toronto Metropolitan University in the Communication and Culture Graduate Program and a faculty member in the Centre for Preparatory and Liberal Studies at Toronto’s George Brown College. His research examines cultural production and representation in video games. Alex is particularly interested in how gameplay experiences produce new opportunities for transcultural communication in Eastern and Western cultural contexts.
Hope after the Bombs: Exploring Transcultural Imaginaries through Classic Fallout Mods from the former Eastern Bloc
FROG 2024 – Talk
The concept of apocalypse is a difficult and often misconstrued one. For future studies scholar W. Warren Wagar, the origins of the eschatological imaginings of apocalypse lie in the religious-historical tradition of prophetic vision and the desire for prophecy, suggesting that apocalypse should be as much about revelation as it should be about visions of a devastated future. As the study of utopia is often associated with visions, dreams, or desires of a better time and place, the study of modern eschatology similarly favours visions that foretell a better tomorrow rather than doom and damn the future. To what extent then, are games about the apocalypse useful to the concept of utopia? How can games about the apocalypse encourage unique cultural contexts through which we may envision novel utopian forms? This paper presentation explores the classic post nuclear role-playing games, Fallout 1 and 2, as unique transcultural experiences from the perspectives of players, designers, and modders from former Eastern Bloc countries. Utilizing Mikhail Epstein’s and Ellen E. Berry’s transcultural interference framework, I argue that Interplay’s Fallout games emphasize “an open system of symbolic alternatives to existing cultures and their established sign systems” (Epstein & Berry 24) as demonstrated by classic Fallout mods, such as Fallout: Nevada, Fallout: Resurrection, Fallout: Sonora, and Olympus 2207. Each of these mods, produced by developers from the former Eastern Bloc, are exemplary transcultural negotiations that seek to transcend Fallout’s predominantly apocalyptic American cultural forms in order to produce utopic transcultural imaginaries.
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