Finally, I explore three broad videogame-play experiences: ludic play, narrative or dramatic pleasure, and paidic curiosity and exploration.

Critics must acknowledge and respect the varied play practices of various kinds of players in exploring what any given videogame means. Following from this, I develop a framework which considers the role of the player as part of the game system, whose attitude will influence their relationship with the videogame. The analysis of various approaches to videogames, from ludology to unit operations and simulation, places each approach alongside each other to compare and contrast what is gained and lost by adhering to each perspective. This thesis is a critical examination of videogame theory and of videogames. While the engagement with history, most notably the Revolutionary War and slavery, relies on ironic detachment and celebratory excess, its engagement with the present hints on resting anxieties with legacies of slavery and pollution. Ultimately, it is shown that Fallout 4 is a game negotiating US history and its present. Among them is the game’s plot, its nostalgic retrofuturistic aesthetic, its ruins and ecology as evocative spaces, its stylization of the gameworld as frontier through its mechanics, and tangible neoliberal ideologies present in its levelling system. Drawing from various theoretical approaches, salient narrative and ludic aspects of the games are investigated. Tracing arguments from the fronts of the ludology/narratology debate, this paper adds the conception of videogames as commodities of a culture industry to provide a critical perspective on the meanings and ideologies negotiated in Fallout 4, one of the most successful games of the last decade. As videogames are set to become the dominant pop-cultural medium of the 21st century, this paper aims to provide approaches to a critical reading of Bethesda’s Fallout 4, informed by perspectives of cultural studies.

Fallout shelter sex porn