Fiona S. Schönberg is a queer novelist, narrative designer, TV writer and researcher from Germany.
She holds an MA in Media Dramaturgy as well as a BA in Film Studies and English Literature and Culture from Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz, and is currently working on her PhD in Media Studies.
She is an Associate Researcher at Regensburg University’s Digital Area Studies Lab, and her research focuses on immersion in narrative games as well as the narrative and political potentials of game rules.
Man, Man Never Changes – The Limitations of Post-Apocalyptic Fiction in the Fallout Franchise and Beyond
FROG 2024 – Talk
From its inception, the Fallout Franchise has featured a number of narrative elements that can easily be read as downright anti-capitalist. Between the omnipresent themes of automation replacing labour in Fallout 67 and the implications of revelations from the Amazon Prime TV-show, it seems safe to argue that the franchise has fully embraced this line of political expression. Yet, in spite of these fairly overt leanings, the underlying logic of the setting and the underlying procedural rhetoric of the gameplay tell a different story.
Based on Mark Fisher’s Capitalist Realism and in an update to a previously published article, this presentation uses the Fallout franchise as a springboard to argue that the post-apocalyptic genre, in particular in games, has a deep seated neoliberal slant, one that permeates the assumptions and decisions underlying much of the worldbuilding as well as the game design, and that even the best of narrative intentions are bound to chafe against.
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