Once more unto PVP dear friends, once more!

Pictured: online gaming.

I should be upfront that while I am a video game person, I'm not an online video game person. That is, I don't play online games with other people unless I know them and it's Mario Kart or something. I'd like to say that it's for some kind of snobbish reasons, but really I'm just socially awkward in some ways and don't want to interact with strangers in a video game. Because gross. But I do admire the fact that performing plays, including some of Shakespeare's, is now a thing people are doing in MMORPG's. 

Above: Shakespeare's Globe with historically
accurate metal girders and Tommy gun.

Yup, a group called the Wasteland Theatre Company gets together and puts plays on in Fallout '76. The game is part of the Fallout series and is a post-nuclear apocalypse role playing game, so it's a lot of desolate ruins and, well, wastelands. The game is famously not great, but has attracted a cult following including, apparently, theatre nerds. They hold auditions, build the stage, including The Globe, sets, and costume the "actors," all using in-game assets and then perform using the game's chat.

Cheap shot? Sure, but I'm not wrong...

Theatre is best when you're seeing it live and in person, and I guess Wasteland's productions work the same way. They have a Twitch channel, but apparently you can also go see it in the game. Of course, that means you have to play Fallout '76. Because it's an MMORPG and in a consistent world where anyone can play, one has to be prepared for some rando to pop in and murder everybody. So it's a lot like what I imagine doing outdoor theatre in a Redstate is like.

I suspect most people catch them on their Twitch channel, although a recorded production of A Christmas Carol they did for charity back in December is up in its entirety and I watched some of it. Was it the best thing ever? No, it was not. The actors were a bit flat at times, and lost their places in the script, but it was definitely the best Dickens play I've ever seen performed in a video game. And I admire the passion and the nerdery it takes. Which, I mean, that's live theatre, right? Passion and nerdery.

"Out out brief candle! Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player that struts
and frets his hour upon the stage and then is heard no more. Until he respawns."

-Macbeth, World V, Level V