Posted on: December 1, 2024, 03:23h.
Last updated on: December 1, 2024, 03:42h.
Getting to know Gordy Siddons, the man who inspired one of the most popular characters in one of the most popular video games of all time, is far from easy. He will straight out tell you “I don’t want to talk about that,” or “I don’t know,” and then let the conversation fall silent for 10-15 seconds until you fill it with a better question.
When videogame designer Josh Sawyer and writer Chris Avellone visited Goodsprings in April 2010 to gather inspiration and interview locals for their newest title, Siddons was one they couldn’t get enough of.
At the time, his job was dynamite blasting for a company that mined the rugged, sagebrush-dotted local hills for lead, zinc and copper.
“I was blowing the mountain up,” Siddons, 60, tells Casino.org while driving to his mother’s house for Thanksgiving. “I was living in a mine, mining a mine.”
That’s why Easy Pete, the character based on Siddons, offers dynamite to “Fallout: New Vegas” players. (If they choose to side with the town of Goodsprings in the Ghost Town Gunfight, they need to prepare to defend it.)
Goodsprings is the emotional center of “Fallout: New Vegas,” which takes place 200 years after a nuclear war has destroyed most of the Earth. Since its release in October 2010, it’s become one of the world’s most popular video games, selling almost 12 million copies.
Though key action scenes are set on the Las Vegas Strip and at Hoover Dam, Goodsprings is where players get introduced to the world of the post-nuclear Mojave Wasteland.
The characters based on Siddons and other Goodspringers provide unconditional support while players learn their role — as a courier embroiled in a power struggle among warning mafiosos, tribal governments, and a tech billionaire with his own designs.
“I thought he looked just like me,” Siddons replies when asked his reaction to seeing Easy Pete for the first time. “He acts like me, too — pretty much close, yeah. He never leaves the bar.”
Siddons not only hangs out the Pioneer Saloon, he also works there fulltime, doing “all sorts of stuff there — maintenance and stuff,” he says.
All Out for Fallout
Once a year for the past three, this town of 100 fills up with about 4,000 people. They mecca to its landmarks — the Pioneer (called the Prospector Saloon in the game), the Goodsprings General Store, the church and the cemetery — like Beatles fans to Penny Lane and Strawberry Fields in Liverpool.
For two days straight, Siddons and Pioneer owner Stephen “Old Man Liver” Staats, who is not featured in the game, lead tours of the landmarks and answer fan questions.
“People usually just tell me what the game means to them,” says Siddons, whose theory is that it is so beloved because it’s “about real people, real characters, I think.”
“I think everybody is a character, if you get to know them,” he explains.
Siddons says he still has yet to play “Fallout: New Vegas” for more than a few minutes at a clip.
“I catch little pieces of it when other people play,” he explains.
Plain as Pete
Siddons was raised near Fresno. He won’t say exactly where, of course, but assures us that he was “a good kid.”
“Trouble gets in trouble,” he explains.
He worked for years in the California desert as a landscaper before moving to Goodsprings about 20 years ago. It’s where his mother relocated, he says. She got a job bartending at the Pioneer and needed a hand fixing up her house. Now she lives in Laughlin, Nev.
“I’ve been there ever since,” Siddons says of Goodsprings, which is about 40 miles southwest of Las Vegas.
When asked what he thinks about the “Fallout” phenomenon, Siddons answers, with bemused restraint: “It’s fantastic, I guess.”
He was paid a flat fee, not a royalty, for the use of his likeness. When asked whether that plays into his feelings, Siddons replies: “I’m not upset at that — not at all. That’s probably why they called my character ‘Easy.’”
Pioneering Saloon
Before video games, the Pioneer, which opened in 1913, was mostly famous for the hosting a despondent Clark Gable during the saddest days of his life in January 1942. The A-list movie star used the bar as his base while awaiting word on the fate of his wife, fellow A-lister Carole Lombard. It’s said that his cigarette burns still dot the cherry wood bar top.
Gable didn’t get the news he prayed for. Lombard perished when TWA Flight 3 crashed into nearby Potosi Mountain.
Heartbreak also darkens Siddons’ backstory. There was once a Mrs. Gordy Siddons. For how long, he won’t say, but she died six years ago of cirrhosis.
“I think about her all the time,” he says, “but you go on.”
They have a daughter together, whom Siddons describes only as “already grown and gone.”
“I haven’t seen or talked to her for quite a while,” he says, indicating that he doesn’t know whether his bizarre form of newfound fame is something she even knows about.
Regardless, Siddons claims he remains unchanged by how much everything has changed around him.
“I’m the same old me,” he says, adding, “except I got a little bit more pull at the Pioneer now.”
