I was browsing Reddit the other day when I came across an interesting story posted by user /u/thefatch1cken. Apparently he came across a post on Imgur, an image hosting website, where a man apparently spent the last seven and a half years of his life collecting various beer bottle caps. He’s not going to recycle or collect them, instead he is attempting to purchase the new Fallout video game with them. If this makes absolutely no sense to you, it’s okay. But as a fan of both video games and the Fallout series, I can fill you in as to why this is interesting, and pretty amusing.
Fallout is a video games series and franchise that was originally created and developed by Interplay Entertainment back in 1997. There have been a variety of games within the series, but the franchise gained considerable levels of traction with the release of Fallout 3 back in 2008. While the original games were developed and published by Interplay and Black Isle Studios, Fallout 3 was both published and developed by Bethesda. Bethesda is often hailed as arguably the best video game publishing and developing company in the world. There are responsible for a variety of smash titles, including the recent Fallout games and many of the video games within The Elder Scrolls franchise (Oblivion, Skyrim). Fallout 3, Oblivion, and Skyrim have all been awarded the “Game of The Year” award, which is essentially the best award a video game can receive. Their games are praised for their detail plot, immersive world, and incredible graphics. It’s not uncommon to rack up over 200 hours worth of gameplay within their video games, that’s how big these fictional worlds are. I am a huge fan of anything Bethesda touches, and can personally attest for just how great these games are.
Fallout 3 and the recently announced Fallout 4 are open-world, action role-playing video games. The general plot of the storyline within the Fallout franchises is that the Earth experienced a massive nuclear war that destroyed the planet, killing most of the human population. Fallout 3 picks up the story with a member of a surviving faction that has lived in a nuclear shelter underground for a number of years. The player, who creates their own character, finds themselves escaping from the “vault” and entering into the post-apocalyptic world that is filled with monsters, roaming warlords, enemy factions, mutants, and other humans attempting to make ends meet and reconcile with the horrors of this new world. The reason these bottle caps collected by Imgur user GatorMacheteJr are relevant is because the currency used in the video games are bottle caps themselves. So he figured that Bethesda might accept them as money to pay for the game.
As Fallout 4 was just recently announced, people are undoubtedly extremely excited for the game. Bethesda takes a long time to put out games, and considering Fallout 3 came out in 2008, anticipation for this game has been mounting for some time. So much so that user GatorMacheteJr has been saving up bottle caps for the game for seven and a half years. He exclaims that these bottle caps came from all the beer he drank in college and then graduate school. In total there are 11.2 pounds of bottle caps. He proceeded to box them up and then ship them to Bethesda with a note saying:
“If it’s not already obvious, I’m a pretty big fan of the series. Needless to say, I got pretty excited when I started seeing more and more about Fallout 4. I’ve also noticed that you’re now acceptingpreorders. I only saw prices listed in pre-war dollars, and I wasn’t exactly sure what the exchange-rate is these days, so I went ahead and sent everything I’ve been able to save since I played Fallout 3 for the first time. Using my bathroom scale and a number I found on Wikipedia, I’m thinking this is somewhere in the range of 2,240 caps. That ought to cover it, right? If caps are not an acceptable form of payment, let me know and I’m sure we can work something out. Thanks for taking the time to read this, and here’s hoping 7.5 years worth of bottle cap hoarding doesn’t just end up in the Bethesda trash can.”
He also tells us that it cost a considerable amount of money to ship 11.2 pounds of bottle caps to Bethesda, but didn’t disclose a price. So far there is no news or response from Bethesda, but they do have an interesting situation on their hands. This is an extremely great opportunity for a positive PR move, not like they need it, as Bethesda is absolutely loved by their fans. So we will just have to wait and see as to how Bethesda responds.
Fallout 4 will take place in the post-apocolypic world surrounding the Boston area of the United States. It will be available on the PC, Playstation 4, and Xbox One and the set release date is on November 10, 2015. The game focuses heavily on customization and its immersive world, and is bound to be a commercial hit. If it’s anything like the last game, and with what we know so far it should be even better, Bethesda will knock this one out of the park yet again. Pre-orderds for the game have currently gone up, and the game is priced at $59.99. For more information, head on over to their website or check out the post by GatorMacheteJr, or watch the trailer for the game:
Photos from Fallout4.com, Imgur user “GatorMacheteJr”
