I think there’s more to it than that; ultimately, Bethesda needs Fallout. What’s more, they need Fallout 3 to please the fans. They didn’t need Fallout before announcing they had started work on the game, but they do now. It’s quite a journey getting to that conclusion, but take a seat next to this burning oil drum, help yourself to some rotgut… well, it’s mostly rotgut; don’t worry about the lumps… and let me explain.​

There’s a fundamental key that any developer or publisher bravely striding into the Fallout universe should know, and if they don’t, they’ll learn it by the time their game is released: Fallout is all about the fans. The decent games stopped coming almost ten years ago; what’s left is a fanbase that’s notorious amongst geek and gaming culture for being rabid, mutated, angry, discordant, for infighting and for being argumentative and perverse. In other words, a fanbase that’s assumed many of the characteristics which placed Fallout outside the cosy campfire circle of Tolkien-themed fantasy worlds, an ugly, rejected duckling that turned into a beautiful two-headed swan. And the point, for an aspiring developer, is this: the route to any Fallout game’s success is through those fans.​