Imagine living in a world in which the only economy was an economy of war—where the only goods bought and sold at high demand (and from vending machines, no less) were guns, ammunition and mods and upgrades that made you a more efficient fighter.
On Pandora, the main world in the video game series Borderlands, this hellish possibility is a firm reality. As a Vault Hunter on Pandora, your existence serves only one purpose: you are on the planet to find what is known as a Vault, which is said to bring fame, money, and glory when opened. Along the way, you help the locals with their problems, and in turn, they help you get closer to the Vault. Everybody wins, right?
In the case of Pandora’s economy, not so much. I was playing the sequel, Borderlands 2, the other day, when I overheard a PA in Sanctuary (the one safe haven for non-bandit and non-Hyperion people on Pandora) rambling about guns. While most of the tidbits you hear on Pandora in terms of guns are usually referring to their efficiency, their cool specs, and how easy it is to kill with them, this particular tirade was a lot different.
It was from one of the many gun manufacturers with a presence on Pandora: Tediore. Tediore is a company well known for how shoddy their guns are. In fact, reloading a Tediore in Borderlands 2 involves you throwing the gun at an enemy and watching it explode. The inference is hardly subtle: Tediore’s guns are so cheap that it is literally more cost-effective to create a new gun from scratch than to reload an old one.
Pictured above: Boom.
Of course Tediore would play on this for a sell, but one of their ads broadcast over a random PA got me thinking about precisely what this means for Pandora and its numerous citizens. The ad discusses buying food, shelter, and medicine, arguing that buying a gun to protect oneself shouldn’t “break the bank.” It got me realizing that, as a Vault Hunter who didn’t need to eat, sleep, or do anything but run around and turn in bounties, I was in a pretty good part of business—and also incredibly privileged.
As a Vault Hunter in the world of Pandora, I was basically one of the galaxy’s best, if not actually the best, fighters and warriors. I started out the game immensely strong, despite having almost been murdered beforehand. I had a skill unique to my character that was an asset in the fight: nobody else on Pandora could do what my character could. And for me, a PC who doesn’t need to eat or sleep, the idea that people on Pandora were worse off than me didn’t cross my mind very often.
Sure, as a Vault Hunter, I was asked to allay a lot of strife and misery by doing people favors. I wiped out an entire clan of in-bred bandits; I liberated a small town from Hyperion control; I was the one-man army that destroyed an area known as the Wildlife Exploitation Preserve, which sounds as awful as it actually is, and freed every animal in it. I was a certified savant, a renowned warrior, and everyone came to me for help.
But beneath this layer of heroics was an underlying idea I didn’t really understand. I was often so focused on helping the people out who asked me and releasing them and others from the overt evils of my main enemies that I didn’t even consider the people who didn’t post quests on the bounty board; the people who didn’t die because Hyperion did this or a bandit known as Mad Dog did that, but who died because of starvation, who died because they had nowhere safe they could go, and who died simply because surviving on an uncivilized planet is one of the hardest things anyone could possibly do.
Simply put, I mean the people who died because Pandora’s entire economy is based on war profiteering, and literally nothing else.
There is nowhere on Pandora where you could spend money and not get something that helps you out in battle. The only vending machines on the planet give you ammo, guns, and shields and grenade mods. The slot machines give you guns, money, or a substance called Eridium, which you can use as currency on the black market for storage deck upgrades, which give you more room to carry ammo, store guns elsewhere, or—you guessed it—carry more guns on your person.
And these are just local vendors, which you find in Sanctuary and whose vending machines you find all over Pandora—but what about the big corporations on Pandora? Well, there are quite a few of those, and they function a little differently.
The game has a simple gun categorization setup that allows guns to be easily distinguished from one another in terms of type: you have pistols, shotguns, rocket launchers, submachine guns, assault rifles, and sniper rifles (for the sake of analysis, this will mostly revolve around Borderlands 2 manufacturers and gun types, hence why lasers are excluded). Once you have a gun type you like, you’d think you’re pretty much set, right? Unfortunately not: many different corporations manufacture those guns, and it’s up to you, as the user, to determine what manufacturer makes the gun type you use fit your own fighting style better.
There are eight manufacturers total in Borderlands 2, and each of them have carved a niche market for themselves in terms of what their guns offer. No two corporations capitalize on the same stats or effects, making the market broad and offering nearly-endless possibilities, resulting in a very personalized arsenal of weaponry for each person.
Notice what they aren’t doing? Trying to stop the conflict.
Pandora is a wild, government-less planet consistently enveloped in warfare, and even when the corporations aren’t directly involved (which I will get to in a second), the fight is still intense. There is almost nowhere in Pandora you can escape to that is free of bandits, and if you do find a place free of bandits, it’s most likely inhabited by creatures that also share a lack of concern when it comes to killing you. Skags, spiderants, rakk, scythids, bullymongs—the list goes on and on. Suffice it to say, everything on Pandora is designed to kill you, even including some of the plants.
Note: This firemelon is glowing. It is also a higher level than me.
Whereas it would seem logical that somebody would stop the fighting, nobody with any power stepped up. In pre-Borderlands lore, many corporations came to Pandora with only one goal: to turn a profit. While some corporations merely tore at the planet for resources, such as Dahl’s mining, other corporations, such as Atlas, came to the planet in search of superior alien technology. After the existence of the Vault and the Vault Key were discovered, war took hold among corporations, innocent civilians, and bandits alike, culminating in increased bloodshed. Put simply, Pandora was never a peaceful planet, and only attracted attention due to its ability to provide resources and ultimate power in the form of the Vault.
Since the beginning of Pandora’s inhabited existence, all that ever occupied it was war and bloodshed. And thanks to the way the corporations are set up, they are turning a profit off of it. As arms dealers, all of the corporations in the Borderlands series are war profiteers, unwilling to work at making the planet peaceful so long as they have something to gain from it.
One character, some would argue, is attempting to make the planet peaceful and prosperous by setting up heavily-guarded cities, working to fight the bandit presence on Pandora, and even working to open the Vault and utilize what is found inside to eradicate the less-civilized people present on the planet. Handsome Jack, antagonist of Borderlands 2, is head of the Hyperion Corporation, and is fighting tooth and nail to create what he believes is a better planet.
Meh. He's alright, I guess.
However, the manner in which Jack (and by extension Hyperion) is doing this involves turning a profit as well, with an added bonus of genocide. Jack’s golden city, Opportunity, is open to everyone… who can afford to pay the fee. Hyperion’s robotic construction workers double as a makeshift militia, with some even primed specifically for war (such as WAR-Loaders, GUN-Loaders, and JET-Loaders). While shelling out for all of its pet projects, Hyperion is still manufacturing and distributing guns. And Jack’s goal—to open the Vault—is based around the knowledge that there is a creature in there that will do exactly as Jack says so long as he opens the Vault.
As mentioned before, Jack’s wish is simple: to wipe out all of the bandits on Pandora and make it a peaceful planet. However, Jack’s version of the word “bandit” includes not only actual bandits, but also innocent civilians as well: people unable to afford Jack’s demanded payment for safety, and even people who disagree with Jack on a basis of diverging ideological views. In a thematic sense, Jack, a war profiteer who hypocritically sneers at the war he helps fund, wants to kill every person who cannot afford Opportunity (in all senses of the word).
Given the current political and economic climate in our real world, this lesson suddenly becomes very applicable. Big corporations will do anything to turn a profit, madmen at their helms will do and say anything to get what they want and a lack of government involvement in the activities of corporations results in the suffering of those unable to pay their prices. The fantastical and tongue-in-cheek Borderlands games highlight, in an exaggerated way, the very real effects of unhindered corporations and corporate minds who are so oriented on profit and money that they neglect humanity.
I’m not saying that it’s the Borderlands creators’ intent to thematically center their game around humanism by comparing a literal world war to letting corporations play a big role in current politics, neglecting the needs of people unable to share in their success, but their game does seem to lean a lot in that direction.
Which leads me to conclude thus: as we worry about the upcoming election, we can rest easily knowing that while Clinton, Trump, and Cruz profit from corporations who wouldn’t care if we lived or died, Bernie Sanders is our own personal Vault Hunter.
Senator Sanders, sir, you’re Pandora’s best hope.
