Meet the Fallout 3 devs - Jay Woodward Jay " RadHamster " Woodward , I ' m calling you out for a post . Don ' t worry , we don ' t bite ( much ) . Well then ! Guess I can ' t just roll around in my protective sphere forever . You know what they say : nobody likes a blond in a hamster ball . . . What ' s your job at Bethesda ? Lieutenant Junior Grade in the Department for the Regulation and Control of Magical Creatures . What prior projects have you worked on ? Red Dead Revolver - - Rockstar ' s tale of bloody revenge in the lawless Old West . ( I anticipate minimal crossover with the Fallout fandom there , but feel free to surprise me . ) After that , about a year and half on another Rockstar project that ' s still under wraps . Oh , and a text adventure in BASIC when I was in fourth grade . Susan Lipscomb , Margaret Zuanich , if you ' re out there , I owe it all to you . . . and Roberta Williams and Shigeru Miyamoto . . . and Will Crowther and Don Woods . . . and Warren Robinett . . . But enough talk ! Have at you ! ! ! What have you drawn on for inspiration in developing Fallout 3 ? Books , movies , music , etc would be fine , if you don ' t want to name any games . Since I ' m one o ' them coding - type nerds , there are really two distinct categories of inspiration : the technical stuff ( which impacts my work directly ) and the creative stuff ( which made me want to work on Fallout in the first place , and which informs my conversations with the designers ) . On the tech side : the AI work of Tom Leonard , Damian Isla , John Abercrombie , Jeff Orkin , Fredrik Farnstrom , and my fellow Bethsoft AI devs ; the AI Game Programming Wisdom book series ; and the meditations of programming gurus Scott Meyers , Steve McConnell , and of course , Bjarne Stroustrup . Still awake ? Well , I tried . On the creative side , Cormac McCarthy ' s The Road is the only work I ' ve sought out specifically for being post - apocalyptic - - but as it happens , over the years I ' ve seen / read / played quite a few other excellent sources of inspiration . Some of them deal literally with nuclear war or weapons , while others approach the apocalypse metaphorically , by depicting the looming threat or tragic aftermath of an analogous catastrophe . Dealing with literal nukes , we have : Fallout [ but of course ] , Metal Gear , Defcon , Trinity ( Infocom ' s text adventure classic ) , WarGames , Doctor Strangelove ( which I ' d say has about a 70 % overlap with " the Fallout feel " ) , The Road Warrior ( which picks up the remaining 30 % ) , and Grave of the Fireflies . Approaching global doom from the metaphoric side , there ' s Deus Ex , Half - Life 2 , Halo , Chrono Trigger , The Terminator , Twelve Monkeys , Children of Men , Y : The Last Man , and of course , Watchmen ( a strong contender for the greatest story ever told in comic - book form ) . It ' s fascinating to me how many excellent works of modern fiction involve nuclear annihilation ( or the end of the world in some similar form ) . Here ' s my theory : throughout history , the richest , most captivating storytelling has resulted from humanity ' s brightest minds exploring the shape of our darkest fears - - and in the years after World War II , those fears coalesced into the shape of a mushroom cloud . Finally , I have to recognize two of the greatest wellsprings of inspiration : our extensive and detailed design documents , and the game itself . How is the work - environment ? Is it competitive or co - op ? Do the different teams talk together ? Beautifully collaborative . We save the competition for Game Night . What is your favorite type of game to play ( RTS , FPS , RPG etc ) Hybrids . There ' s just something I find appealing about games that choose to be awesome any which way they want . I ' m primarily thinking FPRPGS , like System Shock , Deus Ex , and Oblivion , but there ' s also good stuff like Puzzle Quest ( an RPG in which combat is an adversarial jewel - matching game ) and Planescape : Torment ( which isn ' t normally considered a hybrid , but as I see it , conversation is so pivotal in Torment that it can be considered as a hybrid of the conventional RPG and the " dialogue - based game " - - an almost entirely unexplored genre , inhabited primarily by Emily Short ' s Galatea and Andrew Stern and Michael Mateas ' s Facade ) . How long have you been playing Fallout , and how would you describe your feelings towards the franchise ? Not as long as you have . But long enough to be in love . Besides the fanboyishness , I also feel that Fallout deserves my admiration , devotion , respect , and veneration . But moreover , it deserves my admiration , devotion , respect , and veneration . If you catch my meaning . Considering that much of the game will probably be in a wild wasteland , do any of you spend much time hiking , camping , etc , and if so where ? And subject myself to all that radiation ? What ' s the last game you bought ? Did you like it ? Catan , via Xbox Live . And yes : it ' s a first - rate translation of a beloved classic , and it ' s fantastic to be able to play with the old friends I used to play Settlers with in person . What games are you looking forward to on the horizon ? Bioshock , Spore , Assassin ' s Creed , Mass Effect , Halo 3 , and Carcassonne . I ' m also looking forward to someday returning to The Ur - Quan Masters ( a . k . a . Star Control 2 ) , and of course , playing more Fallout . Other than videogames , what are your interests ? ( Board games , reading , music , etc ) Board games FTW . 1n j00r h3x3z , t3h1f1ng j00r 0r3z . My wallet ' s the one that says " Bad Meeple Farmer . " The tricky part about having interests " other than games " is that , other than THESE games over here , there ' s always still THOSE games over there . Once upon a glorious golden age long ago , I finished every game I bought . Nowadays , the stack is always growing higher . Reading ' s good . There ' s a book stack , too . Actually it ' s more a book case at this point . Traveling is good too , though I don ' t do it often enough . When I drove here from San Diego , I made several stops in New Mexico along the way , at places that I think some of you might appreciate . If you ' ve never read Lucky Wander Boy , you should ; that ' s what inspired my itinerary . Have you played the VanBuren Alpha ? If so , what were your feelings on it ? You bet ! Unfortunately my computer froze up right at the part where all those mutants were flooding out of that giant wooden Brahmin . But man , pure genius ! Then IT came by my desk - - before I even contacted them , oddly . They were saying something about a huge spike in network traffic . . . I want all my answers with exclamation marks . Noted ! What is your favorite giant robot ? Stephen Hawking ? Okay , no , seriously . . . it ' s a toss - up between Pintsize and the ol ' Double F . Small , you say ? True . . . but they ' re giants in their own boot sectors ! What is your favorite horrible monster ? The Gnome Utensil Hound ! How would you describe , using ten ( most likely abstract ( yes , abstract words , like xylophone ( you ' re not allowed to include xylophone ( or another similar musical instrument ) ) ) ) words , the perfect gaming experience that Fallout 3 will bring ? Sorrow chaos Bart ; Bloodshot embrace overdrive . Chaos box caffeine . - - THE ! Did you ever eat ( part of ) a reptile ? If you answered yes to that , was the reptile still alive ? If you answered no to that , would you have prefered it if the reptile had been alive ? No . No . And I think I will amend an extraneous third " no . " Maybe if it was an amphibiSTILL NO ! Have you tried the New Bouncy Bubble Beverage ? If yes , is it an improvement over the original ? If no , why would such an exemplary citizen like you not drink the New beverage of exemplary citizens ? Tried it ? ? ? Nearly drank it ! [ badoompboom ] . If you were a Super Hero , what would be your SuperPower ? Coprokinesis . [ exclamation point . . . ] Plasma Rifle , Minigun , Combat Shotgun , Flamethrower or Gauss Rifle ? Wow . People , have we learned nothing of the perils of inexclusive " or " ? ! ? Whats the deal with airplane peanuts ? They replace some of the salt and protein you just lost in the matter - transference beam . You ' re in a street . The sun shines overhead . You see a fastfood restaurant to the west , a pizza joint to the north and a salad bar to the south . To the east you see endless wasteland . You have five dollars . You are starving . Source . Meet the Fallout 3 devs - Jay Woodward @ No Mutants Allowed