Fallout 3 is coming! Fallout 3 is coming! Oh, wait, no it’s not. A game called Fallout 3 is coming, but Fallout 3 will never be.
The video game industry, like the movie and television industry, trades names and ideas in a way that makes me scratch my head. And as if there were some magical power in the name of a game or movie, fans obediently froth at the mouth when offered the opportunity to enjoy more of the same name. But games aren’t names, they’re artistic products crafted by specific people.
Fallout 3 is just a name, and Bethesda cannot make an actual Fallout 3 by owning the letters F, A, L, O, U, and T arranged in a specific combination. Games are designers, artists, and coders and if those people change, the series changes. Bethesda is not comprised of those who designed the first two games and as such cannot create the third. This does get a slippery since the original people rarely all stay even in a game that is a legitimate sequel, but surely it is apparent that if a different company is creating a sequel (company culture matters a lot in game design) and zero people who worked on the previous games are involved, well then it’s not actually a sequel. → All I want for Christmas is my PSP.