Most of the original Fallout's dark humor was added just to make co-creator Tim Cain laugh

One of the most influential RPGs in history came about thanks to a team of developers who simply wanted to make each other laugh. This was revealed by Fallout creators Tim Cain and Leonard Boyarsky, along with Interplay co-founder Brian Fargo in a recent Game Informer interview.

Reminiscing about the conception of Fallout, which was originally intended as a sequel to Interplay's Wasteland, Cain noted that many of the team's ideas arose solely to spark a positive reaction from colleagues.

"You weren't trying to impose your idea; you wanted to come up with an idea that everybody on the team would go, 'Oh, I love it! That's really cool. You have to have that!' That's the reaction you wanted, not 'I don't know about that,' and then you have to convince them," said Cain. "You'd come in in the morning and go, 'I had this really cool idea, and I think everyone's gonna like it.' And that went for everything from humor to monsters to weapons to unusual quest ideas."

One of Fallout's defining characteristics became its dark humor, which also emerged from the team's desire to make Cain laugh. For instance, the Radiation King brand of TVs originated because Cain and Boyarsky were huge fans of The Simpsons.

"A lot of the humor that came from me and [technical art director] Jason [Anderson] was literally stuff that we just wanted to try and make Tim laugh, like the Radiation King television," said Boyarsky. "I didn't tell him I was doing that."

Boyarsky added that Anderson would get irritated when he and Cain started throwing Simpsons quotes back and forth in meetings.

"So, I'm like, 'I'm going to call this a Radiation King,' and didn't tell him. He didn't see it until he saw the intro, and of course, he laughed because he thought that was a funny Simpsons reference."

This story evokes nostalgia for a time when studios were groups of enthusiasts experimenting with ideas without worrying about focus groups and analytics that largely drive the modern industry, turning art into calculated sets of requirements to please the widest possible audience.

This approach still characterizes small indie developers, but modern AAA releases are created by hundreds, if not thousands of people across multiple departments. This leads to games being made by committees rather than emerging organically from something as simple as wanting to make each other laugh.