I think the closest I come to understanding Vault-Tec is when I consider how tempting it would be to run Fallout 76 in part as a social experiment by assigning karmetic values to certain actions. On one hand, you could wind up with servers full of people who just want to collaborate and fix the wasteland together, shining paragons of what humanity can accomplish when they unite for a common goal. On the other, players who’ve regularlly been blocked for griefing or harassing behavior that drops their karma deep into the negative digits wind up in the Bad Place server… where you can only move to a better server by raising your karma. Which means the only way out of the Bad Server is learning to cooperate with others or at least to live and let live. “Fallout 76 is a terrifying hellscape full of bitter assholes!” one game reviewer says, having little idea he’s just revealed he, too, is an asshole. How long before the players wise up to the scheme, and if they do figure it out, who could they really hold accountable other than themselves?