![]() “This game, the best we can tell, breaks away from the common practice of portraying West Virginians stereotypically,” Bowman said. Another goal of the research is to help West Virginians understand how representations of their spaces and cultures contribute to how people view them. The WVU Humanities Center is supporting the study. They’ll follow up with players in a few weeks to capture their thoughts as they’ve experienced the game and again in January for a final survey.Īfter collecting the data, the trio will analyze, write and present their findings throughout 2019 at various conferences and workshops. “For a research department that studies communication technology and how folks interact with a mediated world, this seemed too good to pass up,” Bowman, the principal investigator, said about the project. They’re conducting a three-phase survey of Fallout 76 players and are currently seeking participants’ predispositions of West Virginia with the first round of the survey.īecause there are no game-driven characters in the game (other than robots and creatures of folklore), every player controls an avatar that is, narratively, a West Virginian. It’s “Reclamation Day” and you must re-colonize the nuclear post-apocalyptic wasteland.įallout 76 features several iconic state landmarks such as The Greenbrier, New River Gorge Bridge, West Virginia State Capitol and WVU’s Woodburn Circle.īanks and her colleagues, Nick Bowman and Christine Rittenour, both associate professors in communication studies, want to know how players engage these representations of West Virginia and how they deal with the intersections of the social/spatial/historical aspects compared to the gameplay elements. ![]() You’re a survivor who emerges from Vault 76, a fallout shelter buried in the hills of West Virginia. Nuclear war had ravaged much of planet Earth some 25 years earlier. The premise of Fallout 76 is this: The year is 2102. But we don’t know very much about regional identities.” ![]() “We’ve studied avatars and gender identity and racial identity in games. “It presents a unique opportunity to look at how people experience the state and whether/how its culture is represented,” said Jaime Banks, assistant professor in the Department of Communication Studies. The game’s release will also keep busy three West Virginia University researchers who’ll target how these post-apocalyptic depictions of West Virginia influence perceptions of the state and its people. 14) release, although many eager gamers have already immersed themselves in beta versions of the role-playing shoot-em-up. Then, players just need to extract the modded files into their Fallout 76 data folder.Through the coming weeks, video gamers will be blasting away mutated monsters, exploring nuked country roads and rebuilding America, a noble duty that begins in virtual West Virginia.įallout 76 is the highly-anticipated prequel to the Fallout video game series slated for a Wednesday (Nov. The installation process is also rather straightforward, with players needing to make a backup of the original SeventySix - Startup.ba2 file to revert back to the original theme song later. To download it, players simply need to visit the Nexus Mods download page here. ![]() Nevertheless, for those who prefer a different cover of the song, this latest Fallout 76 mod allows players to download a version of the song sang by Andy and Dwight from The Office. Those who download this rendition of the song will hear it as the main menu music while playing the game. It's also worth noting that all proceeds of the song, purchasable on iTunes, go directly to Habitat for Humanity, a global nonprofit focusing on affordable housing. Fallout 76's theme song, which is a cover of John Denver's "Take Me Home, Country Roads," has received a lot of attention since the online-only multiplayer action RPG's initial reveal.
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