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The following is a conversation with Todd Howard, one of the greatest video game designers of all time.
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He has led the development of the Fallout series and the Elder Scrolls series, including Arena, Daggerfall, Morrowind, Oblivion, Skyrim, and the future Elder Scrolls VI, and a totally new world in an upcoming game called Starfield.
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Many of these have won Game of the Year awards and have been some of the most celebrated and impactful games ever made.
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To me, Skyrim is quite possibly the greatest game ever.
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And now, a quick few-second mention of each sponsor.
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Check them out in the description.
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It s the best way to support this podcast.
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We got Shopify for e-commerce, Asleep for napping, InsideTracker for bio-monitoring, and Element for salty greatness.
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Choose wisely, my friends.
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And now, on to the full ad reads.
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Never any ads in the middle.
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I hate those.
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I try to make these interesting, but if you skip them, please still check out the sponsors.
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I enjoy their stuff, maybe you will too.
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This show is brought to you by Shopify, a platform designed for anyone to sell anywhere, anything, whatever they enjoy making, whatever they enjoy selling.
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It makes it easy to reach a huge audience.
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The whole thing looks super sexy.
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It s a great looking online store, and it allows you to take your idea, convert it into a product,
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and hopefully spread joy to other people who want to buy that product.
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And it gives you tools to do day-to-day management of that selling of the product.
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I ve been asked a bunch of times to do merch.
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Man, there s so much cool stuff, because I m a fan of merch myself.
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I m a fan of a lot of podcasts, a lot of shows, a lot of people.
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wearing things that I m a fan of.
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It s a kind of cool celebration of a beautiful thing.
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I just in general like celebrating others and merch is one of the ways to do that.
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Anyway, get a free trial and full access to Shopify s entire suite of features when you sign up at Shopify.com slash Lex.
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That s all lower case Shopify.
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This episode is also brought to you by Eight Sleep and its new Pod 3 mattress.
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There are very few things in life I enjoy as much as a nap.
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I am ultra-caffeinated at the moment, but shortly, or rather, shortly into the past, whatever the expression for that is, English is in fact my second language.
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I took a nap recently, I guess, shortly into the past.
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To the recent past, I took a nap that was about 20 minutes, I want to say, and I woke up completely refreshed.
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I think there s probably really good science on that, of just napping.
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Is there a book, not on sleep, but specifically on napping?
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On mastering napping.
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Master Napper.
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If there isn t a book, I m going to write one.
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It will forever be remembered and it ll be a short one.
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I really enjoy napping and my favorite thing to nap on is an Aidsleep bed because it cools it down with a warm blanket and it s just, it s heaven.
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Check it out and get special holiday savings of up to $400 when you go to aidsleep.com slash Lex.
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This show is also brought to you by InsideTracker, a service I use to track biological data that comes from my own body and gives me wisdom that only large-scale raw data can provide.
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The signal that s pulled off from that data using machine learning algorithms.
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And we re talking about blood data, DNA data, fitness tracker data, all kinds of data.
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I m actually going to a Neuralink event.
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very shortly, and that event is about extracting data from your mind.
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Long-term vision of brain-computer interfaces, two-way communication between computers, maybe artificial intelligence-enhanced computers, and the human mind.
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That data is extremely powerful to tell you what s going on in your mind, in your body, and I think Insight Tracker is at the cutting edge of what can actually lead to positive lifestyle changes using that data coming from the person, personalized to that person.
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All right, get 200 bucks off Inside Tracker s Ultimate Plan or 34% off the entire store when you go to insidetracker.com slash Lex.
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This episode is also brought to you by Element Electrolyte Drink Mix, spelled L-M-N-T.
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I drink a lot of Element.
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There s some guest that was on recently
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I might have been Grimes or Liv, I m not sure exactly.
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But they said they re a huge fan of element.
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Who was it?
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But they said we had like a debate about favorite flavors and what to drink and how much to drink.
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And they discovered that I drink like way too much element.
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from their perspective.
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From my perspective, never enough.
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So it makes me feel great in terms of diet.
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It makes sure that I get enough hydration.
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It makes water taste great.
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For all the crazy exercise and mental and physical stuff I do, diet stuff I do, it s just really important to make sure your electrolytes are done correctly.
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Get a simple pack for free with any purchase.
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Try it at www.drinkelement.com.
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This is the Lex Friedman Podcast.
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To support it, please check out our sponsors in the description.
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And now, dear friends, here s Todd Howard.
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Is it possible that we are currently living inside a video game that the future you designed, can you give hints as to how one would escape if this was a video game?
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How can a video game character escape to outside the video game?
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Are these things you don t consider when you design the game?
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Actually, we do, because in the kind of games that we make, we want it to be as open as possible.
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So, you know, when you start a game, you re always testing it.
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What can I do?
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What would the game allow me to do?
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And you check everything.
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You try to pick up the, you know, the mugs, you try every door, you collide with everything, like, hey, what are the rules of this world?
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We try to do games where, you know, we say yes as much as possible.
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That leads to some level of chaos.
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But if you were stuck in a video game, you would you would try everything.
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And usually you re going to find a door or a space where the designers didn t anticipate you piling all those crates up and getting over a wall that they didn t expect.
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Right, so it s not a designed doorway out, it s an accidental, unintended doorway out, and it s a happy bug.
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You could like Trim and Show, just get in the ocean and go till it s... It keeps going, it keeps going.
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But the more realistic the game becomes, the harder it is to find that door, the bigger the world, the bigger the open world.
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And then as we do it, we learn
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they re going to find a way.
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So just don t try to pen them in.
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Usually we leave like this developer test cell area in the game that we don t anticipate anyone will find.
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And they ultimately find it.
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It usually has crates of all the weapons in the game and things like that.
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The little hints you drop now will just drive people mad, which is something I enjoy deeply.
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So Skyrim NPCs have, at times, hilarious dialogue.
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What does it take to build a good NPC dialogue?
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The main thing is to make them reactive.
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A lot of times when you write characters for movies or things like that, you want to make that character interesting for themselves, right?
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What s their story?
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And there s some characters like that that the player definitely cares about.
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But the best characters are the ones that react to you.
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So you ll find a lot of people love our guards.
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And the guards are written almost purely to be reactive.
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Hey, nice tie.
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I like your jacket.
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Do this cool watch.
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You know, hey, what d you do?
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And so that, hey, you re the man as you walk by, that makes them interesting.
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Or the way they react to something that you do.
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Lydia in Skyrim, who everybody loves, I m sworn to carry your burdens, that s a generic line that all of the, you know, house carls have.
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And it just kind of lands when she says it.
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Why does it land?
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And did you anticipate it would land?
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There s a slight snarkiness in that particular read of it, and you re asking her to do something, and she s reacting to you.
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What about the...
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the trade off between maybe the randomness and the scripted nature of the dialogue.
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Like, is there any room for randomness of the dialogue tree?
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Oh, absolutely.
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We tend to write them in stacks with, you know, it s a, it s a very small, think of it as a small state machine that just says, okay,
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This is what s happening.
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Here s a random list of things I could say to that.
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And then some of that plays out in ways you don t anticipate.
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But we look at the things.
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What are the players doing that we could have the characters respond to that they don t expect?
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You know, jumping on tables or stealing stuff or...
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you know, sneaking in in the middle of the night, or those kind of things.
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The more that we can do, the more reactive and interesting the characters appear.
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And these state machines, how big are these things?
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Are these individual to the individual characters?
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It s just fascinating how you design state machines.
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Is it just a giant database?
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I would think of the AI as one big one.
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Yeah.
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For sort of everybody.
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So there s an AI.
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There s a manager for all the people.
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It s the people manager.
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Right, right.
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Nice.
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One of the things that makes what we do particularly unique is, and this is a trade-off for what people are seeing, because a lot of it s not on the screen, but we re using cycles to run this, which is we re thinking about everybody in the whole world.
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all the time.
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The ones that are further away at a much less tick rate, they go into low, but we know if they want to walk across the world and we re running every quest at the same time.
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Whereas in other open world games, you start an activity, the rest of the world s going to shut down so that they can really make that as impactful
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We re, I really prefer that the rest of it s going on.
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It s more of a simulation that we re building.
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So when those things collide, that s where it gets the most interesting.
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And so we re running all of those people and understanding where they want to go and their cycles and what they want to do.
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And the ones that are closer to you, we just update a lot more.
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It s one way to think about it.
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I mean, that s really fascinating.
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It s something that people had, they were wondering about to what degree it s possible to run the world without you.
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So there is a feeling to role-playing games that you re the central, you re at the center of the world and the whole world rotates around you, as it does in normal life.
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Like when we walk around, there s a,
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when you forget yourself, you start to take yourself very seriously, like you are the center of the world.
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You forget that there s 8 billion people on earth and you forget they have lives.
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That s actually a sobering realization that they all have really interesting life stories and they have their worries, they suffer in different, complicated ways.
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And yet,
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when you play a role-playing game, I mean, both computationally and from a storytelling perspective, you wonder if the world goes on without you.
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Like if you come back, if you take a break and you come back, is there still a bustling town that now has a history since you have last visited?
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So to what degree can you create a world that goes on without you or goes on at the same time as you do your thing, whatever the heck you re doing?
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We don t prioritize the stuff you can t see, so it s more like an amusement park.
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If you study, like, the design, our level designers did this, how do they build Disney World in these places?
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So it still exists for you, the player.
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So it is fairly, you know, when you re going to come in, this is what you re going to see, the shops are in the front, you re going to do this.
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It s just for us to make it far more believable and get some more emergent behavior that not just make that sort of the verisimilitude of what you re in for that moment, but you buy it all.
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I always say like, you know, we gotta do the little things so that you buy the reality of the virtual world you re in, so we wanna do something crazy.
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when a dragon lands or a death log comes out of the wasteland or those kind of things that you, it has the impact to you as the viewer that it would to the people in the world.
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Okay, but still you re simulating stuff that s close to you.
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It is a bit of a simulation going on.
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Oh, absolutely, yes.
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And so that creates some interesting dynamics then.
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And the stuff that we re looking at in the future, our plan is to push that even more, to think about how these things exist in the world first.
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And we do some of this, but even more so in the future to say, how do these things exist, take like a faction in the world?
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What is their role in the world as opposed to just their role is for the player to join it, go through a bunch of quests and become the head of the faction.
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You know, think a little bit deeper about the simulation and what would the Mages Guild be doing in a fantasy world, or the Fighters Guild be doing in a fantasy world, versus just sign up, do quests, get gold.
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And so that when you show up to that Mages Guild, it s a bustling guild full of stuff going on.
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It s not just that it s bustling, it s that they feel rooted in it.
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They don t feel like a storefront for come here, do quests, get experience.
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Is that one of the essential components of randomly generated worlds?
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So when I think back to Daggerfall as gigantic world, when I first played it, I thought like, I mean, you re just struck by the immensity of it.
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The immensity of the possibility.
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When you re young and you look into your future, it s wide open.
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You can do anything.
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And that s what Daggerfall felt like.
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The openness was gigantic.
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And Daggerfall is interesting coming off Arena, where Arena does the same thing, but Daggerfall in many ways is bigger, despite focusing on an area, because of how the density of, okay, this is how much physical game space we ll do for these villages and towns.
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And it does feel endless, even though you re looking at a map that has.
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constraints.
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And Daggerfall actually was a touchstone for us going into Starfield for how we do the planets because there is a different kind of gameplay experience when you just wander outside a city in Daggerfall.
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then follow a quest line and go to this place.
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And it s completely handcrafted.
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And everything around every corner, we ve kind of placed, like Skyrim.
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Starfield s a bit more like Daggerfall.
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And if you wander outside the city, we re going to be generating things.
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And you kind of get used to that game flow, different than we ve done before, and fun in a different kind of way.
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We ll talk about Starfield.
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So just for people who don t know, and how dare you for not knowing, but with Daggerfall, we re talking about the Elder Scrolls series that started, sort of talking about the big titles within the series, started with Arena in 94, Daggerfall in 96.
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I didn t look up the years before this.
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This is depressing or awesome.
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So all of these games,
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brought hundreds, probably for some of them thousands of hours of joy for me.
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So Arena, Daggerfall, Morrowind, Oblivion, and Skyrim.
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So I don t remember Arena being that open world.
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Well, it s all the provinces.
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It follows
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It follows kind of the same pattern.
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It just doesn t have all the number of villages and places that Daggerfall has while Daggerfall focuses on the Iliac Bay area.
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Arena does it all.
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It just changes the scale in terms of, you know, one block on the map equals this much space.
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There is something that, I mean, I m speaking to anecdotal experience, but I just remember it feeling wide open, Daggerfall.
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It definitely was, yes.
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In a way Arena didn t.
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I don t remember.
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Maybe because Arena, it was so cool to have just the role-playing game aspect.
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You re focused on the items and the character development.
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Daggerfall has a lot more depth, particularly in the character system.
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That s what it introduces, all of the skills and those kind of things.
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Arena, it s actually a game I love.
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And it s very, very elegant if you look at the first one where it s just an XP-based system.
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Do this, get XP, level up.
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Very classic role-playing game.
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Daggerfall digs deep into who s your character, how you re going to develop it, what are your skills, there s advantages, there s disadvantages.
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And the environment going full 3D from Arena, which is actually like a 2.5D Doom-style engine, I agree with you that Daggerfall feels like there s more possibilities when you re playing it.
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Were you able to, like, look up to the sky in Daggerfall?
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Yep.
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It s full 3D, yeah.
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So that s what full 3D means.
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And then you can go outside the city?
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You can walk outside the city.
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You can do that in Arena, too, but it looks more fakie, right?
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It s all going to be a flat plane.
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Here comes things, and then a dungeon entrance is, you know, 8-bit.
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Here comes a little flat coming at the camera.
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So before we go to the end and the middle, so from Starfield to Fallout and the Elder Scrolls series, let s go to the very beginning.
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What s the origin story?
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You know what, let s even go before then.
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When s the first time you remember the thing that made you fall in love with video games?
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Well, I think it s partly, you know, my age coming up with the arcades and playing, you know, Space Invaders at the pizza place.
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And then Pac-Man really... It s interesting about video games and what Pac-Man did for video games, where it popularized them in a way that was just insane at the time.
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Had a song, had a cartoon, had all of the things.
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Nintendo comes along.
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So it was always part of, you know, I think if you were a kid growing up then, it was such a newness.
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to playing things like that.
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I remember being in fifth grade when the TRS-80 was brought into the classroom, and there was a Star Trek game.
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And I was enamored with it, and they were going to start teaching some rudimentary programming.
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Like, OK, would you like to know how this is made?
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And I was hooked.
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I was like, I need to figure out how to make this stuff.
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And so I was a self-taught programmer, and my whole goal
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was to write my own video games.
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And by sixth, seventh grade, I had written my own much better Star Trek clone for the Apple II.
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And I really enjoyed programming on the Apple II then.
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And that, I think, was the right level of complexity at that age, where you could kind of, you were always learning, but you could still understand a lot of the problem set for like, this is what I want to get on the screen.
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And I was also into art, so I did a lot of art, and I did a lot of programming, and I was always making games.
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That was my hobby from the time I was 10 or 12.
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What was, to you, involved in making games?
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How did you think of it?
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Was it from a graphics perspective, like what shows up on screen?
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Was it how it makes you feel?
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Was it about the story?
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Was it the text-based stuff, and the dialogue, and the prompting?
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What does it mean to create a video game at that young age to you?
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Well, it was a way of experiencing things that I couldn t myself.
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So if you re playing Dungeons and Dragons at the time, too, where you really feel, even pen and paper, these are like, they feel somewhat, in quotes, real to you as you re playing them.
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You re very invested in your character and what you re doing.
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And then I loved the games, The Wizardry and Ultima, that were able to bring that to a computer so I could do it on my own time.
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It was very, very real to me.
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I d sit in my bedroom and then go to bed and think about it.
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And then, oh, no, I have to go to school.
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I want to come home and figure out how to do this problem in the game.
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And so whatever I was creating was something that I was excited about at the time.
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I made Raiders of the Lost Ark games.
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Like with graphics and everything?
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Yeah, so it was usually, you know, made a Miami Vice game, made a Gru the Wanderer game, made a Traveler game.
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But every time I was doing it, I wanted to figure out a new method on the Apple II of pulling it off graphically.
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Whether that was editing character sets to get graphics in different formats, or how can I enable the secret double high-res mode it had, or
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Just things like that where it became kind of this limitless, what can I make this do?
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And I had some friends who were doing the same thing.
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And then you get into who can impress each other.
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And I was kind of middle of the pack, I would say.
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But again, this was the time where they re bringing computers into the school and the apples come into the school and the teachers are learning it because they have to teach the students.
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But then I would say I was part of a group of students that were like way past that.
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And it was very much of a self-taught, you know, how do you make this thing dance?
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I d like to ask a strange question.
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SPEAKER_00
So at that time, a lot of people consider you one of, if not the greatest game designer creator of all time.
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SPEAKER_00
You were middle of the pack then.
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Did you have a sense that this would be your life and you would also be creating, you know, the greatest games ever?
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Not in the slightest.
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No, I don t think anybody, but I was very much like that was my dream at that age.
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SPEAKER_01
But you don t think that that s a job.
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SPEAKER_01
You know, and as I got older, I was really going through college and I,
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Even the computer classes then weren t where I wanted them to be, so I was still kind of doing my own stuff.
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SPEAKER_01
And I ended up getting a business degree and then interviewing for some jobs, like finance jobs.
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Well, I guess I should do this to make money, and I can keep doing this on the side.
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SPEAKER_01
And I remember I actually got to the final level of this corporate finance job at Circuit City.
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SPEAKER_01
Nice.
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And they turned me down.
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And I was like, fuck them.
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I m just going to go make video games.
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SPEAKER_01
So thank you, Circuit City.
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SPEAKER_00
Yeah, I remember Circuit City.
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SPEAKER_00
I think they went bankrupt, actually.
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SPEAKER_01
They were based in Richmond.
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I was going to school close to there.
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SPEAKER_00
So what s the origin story of you joining Bethesda Softworks at the time?
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So I had gotten Wayne Gretzky Hockey 3 for Christmas from my girlfriend at the time, who s now my wife.
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I was in college.
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SPEAKER_01
And I noticed that it was, you know, in Rockville, Maryland.
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And, oh, that s on my way home over Christmas break, back to William & Mary, where I went to college.
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And I was at this point committed, like, this is what I want to do.
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SPEAKER_01
So I m just going to drive by and knock on the door, which is what I did.
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SPEAKER_01
So I drove by and knocked on the door.
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SPEAKER_01
It was Martin Luther King Day, 93.
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SPEAKER_01
And someone came out and met me and said, well, maybe what, and I said, well, I m in college.
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I m talking about when I m out of school.
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I m like, okay, well contact us then.
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SPEAKER_01
And I will say I was, I was, I would contact them every once in a while.
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I did work for a small software company right out of school.
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down in that area of Williamsburg, and still would contact Bethesda.
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Arena had just come out.
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So then we re in 94.
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Arena had just come out, and I loved it.
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So I was into sports games.
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SPEAKER_01
I like the hockey stuff.
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They did a basketball game.
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SPEAKER_00
Yeah, I m just looking at, they did a lot of, they did like six sports games, six, but that s the ten games, six of them sports games, NCAA basketball, hockey league simulator.
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SPEAKER_01
Hockey league simulator, yeah.
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So it was really like sports gridiron.
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which is like the first kind of physics-based football game at the time.
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And there s a famous story with Electronic Arts trying to do Madden and then hiring Bethesda before my time to make Madden, because they were struggling.
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When I started at Bethesda, I remember the owner had John Madden s Oakland Raiders playbook in his office.
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Like, ooh, can I see that?
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And I love sports, right?
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So I still play Madden to this day.
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I love it.
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SPEAKER_00
So there s an alternate reality where
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SPEAKER_00
I made sports games.
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SPEAKER_00
Yeah.
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SPEAKER_01
Yeah, absolutely.
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I wanted to make like the ultimate college football game.
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SPEAKER_01
Well, it s always like, you know, it s like music.
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You probably listen to lots of type of music, like you don t play every time.
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But I think of open worlds as fundamentally different.
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We sure.
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no source of happiness, entertainment, storytelling, world, gaming than Madden.
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SPEAKER_00
I mean, it s just, because I love both.
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SPEAKER_00
I love both worlds, but.
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They re two totally different experiences.
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Just like when you might watch a movie, you might be in the mood for Lord of the Rings one day, and then you want some other, I don t know, competitive show or game show or something like that.
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SPEAKER_01
Or watch football on TV, right?
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You watch football on TV, but then I want to watch, get really into Game of Thrones.
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So I think all those things have validity.
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And actually, one of the first things I worked on when I started at Bethesda was NCAA basketball, Road to the Final Four II.
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So that was kind of an external project was came in like, hey, you, you know, sports, get this game done.
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And then went on to but they were doing everything I loved.
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It was like, this is where I have to work.
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They re doing like the Terminator science fiction stuff.
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I love that.
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They re doing these open world role playing games like I love that.
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And they re doing sports like this.
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I have to work here.
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SPEAKER_01
Yeah.
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So I started there and you loved.
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I loved it.
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SPEAKER_01
Yeah.
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So when I came in, it had just come out and they were doing the CD-ROM version.
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SPEAKER_01
So CD-ROMs aren t even out yet.
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SPEAKER_00
Oh, it used to be floppy disks.
1
SPEAKER_00
That s probably when... What was the release?
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SPEAKER_01
We would burn them in the basement.
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SPEAKER_01
We had the disk replicators.
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SPEAKER_00
Right.
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SPEAKER_00
So Arena was not released on floppy disks.
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SPEAKER_00
It was.
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SPEAKER_01
Yeah.
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SPEAKER_01
I believe it s six floppy disks.
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SPEAKER_00
Six floppy disks.
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SPEAKER_01
Maybe it was eight.
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SPEAKER_01
Yeah.
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SPEAKER_01
But in those days, the number of floppy disks was very, very important to what the money you were making.
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SPEAKER_01
So, you know, if you want to do a big, huge game, like, well, that s just too many disks.
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SPEAKER_01
So the CD-ROM became this, this jumping off point for the whole industry where, oh, it s unlimited data.
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SPEAKER_00
By the way, I played Arena
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SPEAKER_00
So that was, of course, attained legally, as one does.
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SPEAKER_01
By alternate means.
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SPEAKER_00
By alternate means on floppy disks.
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SPEAKER_00
And that was such an incredible, as you probably have seen, interacted with a large number of people.
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SPEAKER_00
It s a whole world.
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SPEAKER_00
It s a world that you escape to in a way, like your favorite book, like Lord of the Rings,
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SPEAKER_00
It was just, it was unlike anything else.
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SPEAKER_00
It was incredible.
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SPEAKER_00
It s probably, I mean, of course, as people say, the first game you play is the most, is the one that really sentimentally means the most to you.
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SPEAKER_00
I think the first role-playing game I played, and it was just changed everything.
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SPEAKER_01
Was Arena?
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SPEAKER_00
It was Arena, yeah.
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I think Daggerfall is what I really kind of really played, especially because like you said, the character development was really rich, but just like that you can feel like you traveled to this whole other world that s less about entertainment, like a shooting game, and more about a world.
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SPEAKER_00
It felt like it s a world, like you re literally there, you can travel there, you can live there.
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SPEAKER_00
You actually feel like that.
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SPEAKER_00
person, versus like a Pac-Man, like an arcade, fun, entertaining adventure game.
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SPEAKER_00
So you joined, you made it.
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SPEAKER_00
What did you work on first there?
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SPEAKER_01
I worked, well, everyone did a bunch of stuff.
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SPEAKER_01
So I worked on the basketball game really just to get it out the door.
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And Terminator Future Shock.
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SPEAKER_01
So we were doing Future Shock and Daggerfall at the same time.
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they were developing a new engine.
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So it was one of the first 3D engines, the X-Engine.
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There were a bunch of guys from Denmark, actually.
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SPEAKER_01
There s like a big Danish demo scene in those days on the PC.
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And so a bunch of the top programmers there.
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SPEAKER_01
Look, this is not big.
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This is not a big company.
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Maybe there s 20 people in development.
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And we were doing both Daggerfall and the new Terminator.
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SPEAKER_01
And so Daggerfall was a bit more, again, behind the Terminator game.
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So I was one of the main people on the Terminator team.
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And I don t know, things kind of worked out.
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I very quickly, I don t know why, like I quickly became the producer and I was making levels and doing all these things.
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And it was, it was awesome.
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SPEAKER_01
And I like looking back now I can understand it better But at the time I didn t appreciate it, which is no one quite owned the Terminator license.
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SPEAKER_01
It was in like this limbo Legally, so there was no one to tell us what like no you can t do that So we would you know pick apart the movies and how does he mention the gun he wants and the wattage of?
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SPEAKER_01
The laser and all these things and so future shock is a game that I still love today It does a lot of things that if you go back and look at it
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we re frankly still doing.
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SPEAKER_01
Like, it s a large, open world, post-apocalyptic, you know, landscape height map with instanced objects all over it.
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SPEAKER_01
And that is still a lot of how we build our worlds.
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SPEAKER_00
What s an instanced object?
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SPEAKER_01
It s, you know, some games, every
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you know, wall or building is kind of unique in its data, whereas we would just build, you know, these little husks of buildings and then place them all over the place.
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SPEAKER_01
So the memory and the way you render it is much more optimal.
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SPEAKER_00
So that allows you to build a bigger world.
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SPEAKER_01
It allows you to build a bigger world much faster and not, you know, not every single version of that building is in its own unique architecture that is going to take up memory and processing speed, et cetera, et cetera.
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SPEAKER_00
So you re there very much feeling the computational constraints of the system when you re creating these open worlds.
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SPEAKER_01
And you know what, that s the thing then, you see some of it now, but in those times I do feel like every year the technology moved, and maybe it s because, same thing, we re like that my age at that time, where every year somebody was coming up with some new method or some new game system and
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SPEAKER_01
It was every year that innovation, innovation, innovation, and then 3D acceleration comes along, and then these things come along, and then HD comes along.
1
SPEAKER_01
And it is true that as time goes on, there is visually a diminishing return in terms of what you re able to do on the screen.
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SPEAKER_01
There s a ton of work that goes into it now because just rendering this cup to the perfect shine and material and roughness and how does the global illumination off this wall, it s a ton of work.
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SPEAKER_01
But you can pretty much do what you want now if you want to put the time in.
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SPEAKER_01
Whereas then, okay, you can t do everything you want.
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SPEAKER_01
So pick your battles really carefully, and technically you can do what you want, if that makes sense.
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SPEAKER_00
How much trade-off is there now in how much effort you put into the realism of the graphics versus the
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SPEAKER_00
story, and actually not even how much effort you put in, but is there a trade-off in the experience, the feel of the game, in terms of realism and story?
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SPEAKER_01
Usually we will start with let the player have as much agency and do as many things as they can as possible.
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SPEAKER_01
And we will sacrifice some graphic fidelity for that, some speed for that.
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SPEAKER_01
You know, we could make a game that
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SPEAKER_01
You know, traditionally our games are, you know, we re okay with 30 frames a second as long as it looks really good and the simulation s running and all of those things.
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SPEAKER_01
So we ll sacrifice some of that fidelity for the player experience and the kind of things that I do.
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SPEAKER_01
But from like a manpower standpoint, the graphics programmers work on graphics, the artists work on art, and we have an awesome team of artists and designers and writers and programmers.
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SPEAKER_01
It s usually where we find, as time goes on, the amount of art time that it takes to create a cup.
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SPEAKER_01
compared to what it used to be, that has increased.
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SPEAKER_01
So we do use, like most people use, you know, art outsourcing as well so that we re not, we still relatively compared to our industry and what we re doing, have smaller teams.
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SPEAKER_00
What about the experience of the beauty of the graphics?
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SPEAKER_00
So like, one of the most amazing things about Skyrim, and maybe you could say that about some of the other games, but for me, Skyrim is the outdoor, when you step outside, it s the outdoor scenery.
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SPEAKER_00
So what does it take to create the feeling, especially of that?
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SPEAKER_00
being outdoors of nature and just like lost in the beauty, whatever it is when you go hiking and you feel the awe of it.
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SPEAKER_00
How do you create that awe?
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SPEAKER_00
Is that graphics?
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SPEAKER_00
What is that?
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SPEAKER_01
It s a lot of graphics.
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SPEAKER_01
It s a lot of mood.
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SPEAKER_01
We just talk about it in terms of tone.
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SPEAKER_01
And those are, again, going back to my previous comment,
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SPEAKER_01
The graphics are very, very important to us because, and we always push them, because when you re doing the kind of things we do where you step into a virtual world, it does have to have that moment of, wow, this feels real.
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SPEAKER_01
I ve never experienced this.
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And it s okay.
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SPEAKER_01
I think it s okay to let just like the time settle.
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SPEAKER_01
Meaning you step out.
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SPEAKER_01
How does the wind sound?
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SPEAKER_01
How are the trees moving?
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SPEAKER_01
How are the clouds moving?
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SPEAKER_01
I enjoy strolling and watching the sunset.
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SPEAKER_01
How does it land over the water?
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SPEAKER_01
Like, it doesn t have to be like, hey, let s go.
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SPEAKER_01
Let s finish a quest.
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SPEAKER_01
Let s go kill things.
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SPEAKER_01
Let s figure out the next step.
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Let s level up.
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SPEAKER_01
Like, I like the quiet moments a lot.
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And I think when you play our games, you can tell we spend a lot of time on them.
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Then you watch, like, the weather roll in.
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I think that s just part of being, being that character, being that person in that space.
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SPEAKER_00
Yeah, I saw that there s a mod that removes all enemies.
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SPEAKER_00
I ve been meaning to do that, to just do like a live stream where I for hours walk around Skyrim just and then answer questions and so on.
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SPEAKER_00
That just feels...
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SPEAKER_00
that s a completely stress-free environment.
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SPEAKER_00
It s just, you are, just like you said, in this moment in time.
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SPEAKER_00
And it s so incredible.
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SPEAKER_00
It feels as incredible as going hiking or something like that, but in another totally different place, like Iceland or something like that, this whole other surreal, ethereal place.
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SPEAKER_00
Yeah, it s incredible how you kind of create that.
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SPEAKER_00
So graphics is a part of that, but also letting it,
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SPEAKER_00
The temporal aspect of that, like the wind, the rustling sound and look and all of that.
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SPEAKER_01
The soundscape is really, really important.
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SPEAKER_01
And the sky, we spend a lot of time on the sky because it s taking up much more of the screen than a lot of people give credit for.
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SPEAKER_00
What about the rendering, the openness of it?
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SPEAKER_01
There s a lot of level of detail, streaming work.
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SPEAKER_01
And nowadays, it s getting more common.
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SPEAKER_01
Like, frankly, the systems are built better for it.
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SPEAKER_01
Hard drive speed is really prioritized.
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SPEAKER_01
Like, they re so blazing fast.
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SPEAKER_01
You take Skyrim and Oblivion and the fallouts of that 360 era.
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SPEAKER_01
It was a lot of time spent on how do we get all this data streaming in as you move, and then levels of detail so you can see all the way, but not crush the processor.
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SPEAKER_00
You know what?
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SPEAKER_00
Let s even step back, because you mentioned tone.
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SPEAKER_00
You mentioned tone a lot.
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SPEAKER_00
What do you mean by tone?
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SPEAKER_01
It s all of it together if you look at...
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SPEAKER_01
I think you can flip through, let s just take fantasy.
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SPEAKER_01
You know, you can sort of look at a couple images or things and know, how does Lord of the Rings different from Game of Thrones that is different than, you know, a theory in like Excalibur or your, you know, sci-fi channel, you know, series of the month kind of thing.
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SPEAKER_01
And so finding that what s going to make it kind of unique and usually I lean on something that is grounded in
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reality for what it is, and then have lesser kind of fantastical things, at least at the start, and then they kind of build.
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SPEAKER_01
So, even when we do Starfield, I mean, it s a science fiction game.
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SPEAKER_01
There are laser guns and spaceships that fly around, shoot each other, and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
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SPEAKER_01
But it s grounded, and you can look at it and say, okay, this is kind of an extension of things as we view them today in space.
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SPEAKER_01
And we sort of take the same approach with Fallout, where admittedly, things can get even a little bit crazier the longer you re developing Fallout content.
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SPEAKER_00
So just to linger on this, the tone starts at, or defining the tone starts at creating a realistic experience.
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SPEAKER_00
Like you feel like I could walk into this and this feels like life.
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SPEAKER_01
What s their technology level, like even for a fantasy world?
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SPEAKER_01
Like is magic, how prevalent is it?
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SPEAKER_01
Or are they making weapons and things and armor?
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SPEAKER_01
Is it for utility?
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SPEAKER_01
Is it for decoration?
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SPEAKER_01
How do they live their lives?
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SPEAKER_01
Does this feel,
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SPEAKER_01
like a place that you believe that has some grounding in our reality, whether that s historical or near future, or that it s grounded in some semblance of the reality that you and I understand so that it can feel, it s also making it feel a little bit welcoming.
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SPEAKER_01
Like, okay, I understand this.
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SPEAKER_00
Is that art or science?
2
SPEAKER_00
How do you know when he feels welcoming and everything fits and is grounded?
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SPEAKER_01
I don t know.
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SPEAKER_01
I guess it s personal taste.
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SPEAKER_01
Some people like things that are weirder, that have more fantastical from the get-go.
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SPEAKER_01
Even a game like Morrowind, where we get into some more fantastical things, it intentionally starts a little more grounded.
2
SPEAKER_01
There s a very classic medieval-looking town that you come into, but you look just beyond it and there
2
SPEAKER_01
mushroom trees and giant insects and things like that.
2
SPEAKER_00
So in Skyrim, when you put a dragon in it, what are your thoughts about dragons and tone?
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SPEAKER_00
How does that fit into tone?
2
SPEAKER_01
That s a great question.
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SPEAKER_00
The... It s a ridiculous question, but yeah, I just love dragons, so I wanted to bring it up.
2
SPEAKER_01
No, no, no.
2
SPEAKER_01
These are the things that we debate with... Do we include a dragon?
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SPEAKER_00
Why didn t you include a dragon in Daggerfall?
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SPEAKER_00
That s what I want to know.
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SPEAKER_01
I think there s dragon, there s dragonlings.
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SPEAKER_01
They were hard to do.
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SPEAKER_01
Dragons are hard to do.
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SPEAKER_01
So when you start Skyrim, say, hey, look, you know, dragons are going to be a theme.
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SPEAKER_01
Start visually.
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SPEAKER_01
You can make the argument that dragons existed.
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SPEAKER_01
Okay, what would they look like?
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SPEAKER_01
How close to dinosaurs would they be?
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SPEAKER_01
And ours are less, I believe they re less fantastical looking in general.
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SPEAKER_01
They look like beasts that could exist in that world.
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SPEAKER_01
And then how we introduce them, it s kind of a little bit of a slow roll in Skyrim.
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SPEAKER_01
And that the people in the world are reacting to the dragons appearing.
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SPEAKER_01
And that s somewhat, you know, mirrors, you want something that mirrors the player experience as well.
2
SPEAKER_01
It says back to you, like, hey, no, these are, this is, have you heard this?
2
SPEAKER_01
Someone saw a dragon.
2
SPEAKER_00
That s what Daggerfall, is there, isn t there mentions of dragons or something?
2
SPEAKER_00
Because I remember, I remember being sure that there s dragons in Daggerfall as I m playing it and I m searching.
2
SPEAKER_01
Pretty sure
2
SPEAKER_00
Is there a dragon in Daggerfall?
2
SPEAKER_01
There s dragonlings in Daggerfall, to my memory.
2
SPEAKER_01
Look, I guess someone will probably correct me.
2
SPEAKER_01
Like, actually, there is a dragon here.
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SPEAKER_01
But I m pretty sure they re not.
2
SPEAKER_01
And then, game I did, Redguard, which we bring back a dragon.
2
SPEAKER_01
It takes place beforehand, so we have a dragon there in that game, and that was unique to that at the time.
2
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, just a brief tangent on that.
2
SPEAKER_00
I thought Redguard was a really, really good game.
2
SPEAKER_00
I played it.
2
SPEAKER_00
Again, you don t, you forget stuff, but I remember getting, I guess it was the first in the Elder Scrolls series to put it into that world, but it was like an adventure game.
2
SPEAKER_00
It reminded me of another game I really love, like Prince of Persia.
2
SPEAKER_01
That was one of the inspirations.
2
SPEAKER_01
Prince of Persia is one of my favorite games.
2
SPEAKER_00
I apologize if I m forgetting, but you can jump in buildings and stuff.
2
SPEAKER_00
There s a dynamic, airy nature.
2
SPEAKER_00
It s a park type of situation.
2
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, it was an incredible game.
2
SPEAKER_00
Why do you think, let me ask sort of a dark question, why do you think that game was a flop?
2
SPEAKER_00
Not a dark question, it was.
2
SPEAKER_01
Well, a lot of reasons.
2
SPEAKER_01
Game that I love, and really got us going on a handcrafted world, so we re coming off of Daggerfall, Morrowind is sort of in design,
2
SPEAKER_01
And then you know part of our development teams broke up to do different things game with the battle spire red guard was my game.
2
SPEAKER_01
And I wanted to do something a little more Ultima feeling, handcrafted world.
2
SPEAKER_01
I really like things that blend up genres.
2
SPEAKER_01
So I know it s in the adventure game category, but it really does a lot of things.
2
SPEAKER_01
It s a love letter to Prince of Persia.
2
SPEAKER_01
There s a little Raiders of the Lost Ark in it.
2
SPEAKER_01
There s a lot of Ultima in it.
2
SPEAKER_01
And really see what we could do with the engine.
2
SPEAKER_01
But it s very much, I think, plays like it would have had a much better home on, say, PlayStation or Xbox.
2
SPEAKER_01
This predates Xbox, right, where it s much more like constantly Tomb Raider had come out.
2
SPEAKER_01
So you see those influences of Tomb Raider on that game and.
2
SPEAKER_01
3D effects cards had just come out.
2
SPEAKER_01
And so, okay, we can do.
2
SPEAKER_01
And it was the last, I think it s one of the last like DOS games in a Windows world.
2
SPEAKER_01
So I think it missed kind of a technology window as well as ultimately not what people wanted from us, you know?
2
SPEAKER_01
And I felt I was really kind of, the company let me make that game and it was a big flop.
2
SPEAKER_01
Battlespire hadn t done well, the company was in really bad shape and I felt really like personally responsible.
2
SPEAKER_01
Like they let me do this creative thing, it didn t do what we needed it to do and now we re in a very, very bad situation.
2
SPEAKER_01
Company almost went out of business.
2
SPEAKER_01
And that s when it got reformed with ZeniMax Media, and Robert Altman came in, and we were starting Morrowind.
2
SPEAKER_01
We had just sort of started, and it was sort of that whole experience that made you sort of realize, someone says to you, okay, you re gonna get another shot.
2
SPEAKER_01
And that s where you re like, okay, we re gonna make Morrowind
2
SPEAKER_01
and make the biggest, best RPG we can make.
2
SPEAKER_01
We know what the audience wants from us.
2
SPEAKER_01
We know what we could do.
2
SPEAKER_01
Building a world, so there s like callbacks to how we built the world in Redguard.
2
SPEAKER_01
Morrowind is a large-scale, handcrafted, but if you were to put it pixel per pixel with Daggerfall, you wouldn t even see Morrowind, because Daggerfall is so big.
2
SPEAKER_01
But the impact of playing it, I think, is in many ways equal, but different.
2
SPEAKER_00
Just you personally, psychologically, did you have doubt about yourself from the performance of Red Guard?
2
SPEAKER_00
Do I even, do I know what it is?
2
SPEAKER_01
Of course, of course.
2
SPEAKER_00
Where do you get the, how d you overcome that?
2
SPEAKER_01
I don t know.
2
SPEAKER_01
I would say this, honestly, I enjoy it so much.
2
SPEAKER_01
I m so heads down, that becomes, for better or worse, my life.
2
SPEAKER_01
Yeah.
2
SPEAKER_01
And,
2
SPEAKER_01
It s just something that I wanna play so much, it becomes like there s a little bit, you get a little obsessed with it.
2
SPEAKER_00
No, but I mean, you love Redguard, right?
2
SPEAKER_00
So like, doesn t that mean, isn t there a kind of self-doubt about, do I know what it takes to create a great game?
2
SPEAKER_01
Well, no, I think Redguard s a great game.
2
SPEAKER_00
Right, so you were sure, even if it wasn t- Okay, so if you re in a debate like, do I like that game?
2
SPEAKER_01
It s about finding an a- Okay, so, I really love Redguard.
2
SPEAKER_01
Yeah.
2
SPEAKER_01
And the people who play it, it won a bunch of awards, and it, you know, it, like, critically was a pretty good game.
2
SPEAKER_01
Did not sell.
2
SPEAKER_01
And the reason for that, again, we probably made the wrong type of game and we missed a technology window.
2
SPEAKER_01
We also thought it was very conservative.
2
SPEAKER_01
We re going to do this.
2
SPEAKER_01
So my main takeaway was, I m not going to be conservative again.
2
SPEAKER_01
I m going to swing for the fences.
2
SPEAKER_01
And we ve had, you know, there ll be some rough edges in swinging for the fences and shooting for the moon, but we d rather do that and land where we land than be very, very conservative in what we re putting out there.
2
SPEAKER_00
You mentioned, just referencing this game on the Reddit AMA, that long time ago during Redguard, the lead programmer made me, made all the buildings hop up and down after you played for 10 minutes just to mess with me.
2
SPEAKER_00
Just a curious tangent, what s involved with programming an open world game?
2
SPEAKER_00
So we talked about,
2
SPEAKER_00
We will talk about design and so on, but specifically the programming, because I think this question came from, what are some interesting sticky bugs that you ve encountered throughout your life in creating these games?
2
SPEAKER_00
And this is one of them that you mentioned.
2
SPEAKER_00
So what are some of the challenges of programming these open world games?
2
SPEAKER_01
I mean, there are different flavors of them, right?
2
SPEAKER_01
Your GTAs will have different issues than the Ubisoft games versus our games.
2
SPEAKER_01
I can sort of speak to ours, which is you want to build systems, right?
2
SPEAKER_01
Because they re going to play the game for a very long time as well, which we ve learned.
2
SPEAKER_01
And you can t go through and touch everything by hand, per se.
2
SPEAKER_01
So you have to rely on some systemic level of creation and a lot of systems that are robust enough so that when they touch another one, things aren t breaking apart.
2
SPEAKER_00
What are the major systems?
2
SPEAKER_00
Is there like the physics of the game, the engine of how like stuff, yeah, like, yeah, the physics, the motion and maybe how light is rendered and all that kind of stuff.
2
SPEAKER_01
Right, so you have the rendering, right, of like, okay, this is how I m going to render the data that I have.
2
SPEAKER_01
So a lot of people confuse engines with rendering.
2
SPEAKER_01
I mean, they re combined, obviously, but there s the data you re going to give to a renderer, which is the thing, you know, that draws the pixels on the screen.
2
SPEAKER_01
So most of the engine is, how are you going to bring in that data and give it to the renderer to draw it?
2
SPEAKER_01
So you have that whole system of walking through the world, feeding in the data, and drawing it.
2
SPEAKER_01
You then obviously have the physics and the interactivity.
2
SPEAKER_01
What are the things that are there just to be drawn?
2
SPEAKER_01
And what are the things there that are meant to be interacted with and touched?
2
SPEAKER_01
We put a big premium on the ones that can be interacted with and touched, whether it s flowers, whether the trees move, whether you can sleep on the sofa, sit in this chair, pick up all this stuff, bake bread, blah, blah, blah.
2
SPEAKER_01
You then have the AI, which loops in the stuff we talked about earlier in terms of processing.
3
SPEAKER_00
everybody and combat systems, which is a lot of what people end up doing, combat systems on top of that AI.
3
SPEAKER_00
How do they react to those types of things?
3
SPEAKER_00
And then
3
SPEAKER_00
How do they look at the things that can be interacted with?
3
SPEAKER_00
One of my favorite things is when NPCs will go pick up weapons in the world, which you don t see in other games.
3
SPEAKER_00
And the first time you see it in one of ours, it s very unexpected.
3
SPEAKER_00
You can drop a crazy weapon, be in a fight, and an NPC runs over, picks it up, and uses it on you.
3
SPEAKER_00
It s not something you would expect.
3
SPEAKER_00
But I love that stuff.
3
SPEAKER_01
And that s integrated into a larger system, the ability to pick up, the NPC picking up, so it s not like a little quirk that s hard-coded in, it s part of a bigger system.
3
SPEAKER_00
They have their own AI for scanning the environment, and that s one of the rules.
3
SPEAKER_00
Hey, is there a weapon that is better than the one I have?
3
SPEAKER_00
I m gonna go get it.
3
SPEAKER_00
Now we do lock off if it s in a chest, and that s treasure we left for the player, but it s in particular,
3
SPEAKER_00
Because what you don t want, we actually had this problem started in Oblivion, I believe, which is we set up a level, hey, let the enemies go pick up the, you know, weapons if they re better.
3
SPEAKER_00
So we make a level and go in and all of the enemies are armed to the teeth and there s no treasure for the player because the enemies went and took all the good weapons.
3
SPEAKER_00
Okay, they don t take those, they take the ones that are dropped by other NPCs or the player.
3
SPEAKER_01
That s such a fascinating world of designing the experience for the NPC, because in part, that experience defines the experience of the player.
3
SPEAKER_01
So how they interact with their environment defines how the player experiences their environment.
3
SPEAKER_01
Is there room for further and further development of the AI that controls the NPC?
3
SPEAKER_00
Sure, we re always iterating on it.
3
SPEAKER_00
And again, as we look in the future, it s more about us finding those more reactivity to the player and also understanding their roles in the world.
3
SPEAKER_00
So they re not just there.
3
SPEAKER_00
They re not just there for the player as a signpost.
3
SPEAKER_00
for the player.
3
SPEAKER_01
But they re reacting to the player.
3
SPEAKER_01
But what about, you know, some of the richest experiences we have with people is like the chaos of it, the push and pull, the unpredictability.
3
SPEAKER_01
Is there something, I don t know if you ve been following, but the quick, amazing development of language models
3
SPEAKER_01
the neural network, natural language processing systems, dialogue systems.
3
SPEAKER_01
Do you think there s some possibility of using sort of these incredible neural nets that can have open-ended dialogue, basically chat bots?
3
SPEAKER_00
Yep, I ve seen some incredible demos.
3
SPEAKER_00
I do think it s coming.
3
SPEAKER_00
I don t know when.
3
SPEAKER_00
And there s a little bit of a question like what s ready for real deployment and release versus, hey, let s use that to generate some things that is then static that we re giving to the players.
3
SPEAKER_00
versus it s generated on the fly, but it s definitely coming.
3
SPEAKER_00
It s definitely coming.
3
SPEAKER_00
And I think you ll see it in the types of games that we do.
3
SPEAKER_00
It has great, you know, application.
3
SPEAKER_01
I love the idea that you d be using that to design different NPCs and then testing if they re good enough.
3
SPEAKER_00
If they re a little too crazy, you don t want the super- Right, but if we go back to it being reactive, some of that bot stuff, it s incredible.
3
SPEAKER_00
It s then translating that into voice, and then is that being done by the client?
3
SPEAKER_00
Is it being done on a server?
3
SPEAKER_00
Is it baked into the game?
3
SPEAKER_00
There s different flavors of it.
3
SPEAKER_01
So there s still computational challenges, like how do you actually make that happen?
3
SPEAKER_01
Well, what about, in terms of creating the feeling of an NPC, what s the role of voice actors?
3
SPEAKER_00
Awesome, yeah.
3
SPEAKER_00
We work with a ton of voice actors, and they bring so much to it, and that s the thing.
3
SPEAKER_00
They, you know, we can write some stuff and the best ones get in there and make it so much better.
3
SPEAKER_00
Or even ad lib things.
3
SPEAKER_00
And so we do a lot of voice recording.
3
SPEAKER_00
And we used to do it kind of like at the end of the project.
3
SPEAKER_00
And now we do it throughout.
3
SPEAKER_00
We start really early, and we just start recording.
3
SPEAKER_00
So we re recording for years and years, literally.
3
SPEAKER_00
Probably three years, four years.
3
SPEAKER_01
So part of the actual experience of the recording will help define the characters and the tone of the game.
3
SPEAKER_00
And we ll go back sometimes and, hey, we really like this.
3
SPEAKER_00
We want more of this.
3
SPEAKER_00
Let s write.
3
SPEAKER_00
Let s do another session.
3
SPEAKER_00
Or, hey, we don t think this character is actually working.
3
SPEAKER_00
We want you to do a different.
3
SPEAKER_00
You re going to be someone else now.
3
SPEAKER_00
Sorry, that got cut.
3
SPEAKER_01
try to sort of imagine that people fall in love with the characters, with the NPCs?
3
SPEAKER_00
I do.
3
SPEAKER_01
Like, do they get really attached to the... Oh yeah, I mean, I ve done it in games.
3
SPEAKER_01
These are like close friends, right?
3
SPEAKER_01
Like, you can, like, you miss them.
3
100%.
3
SPEAKER_01
Isn t that part of the thing you miss?
3
SPEAKER_00
I actually, like, whenever I m playing a game and there is, you know, if there s like a friendship option or make friends or a romance thing, I find those moments really,
3
SPEAKER_00
I enjoy them.
3
SPEAKER_00
I find them pretty impactful emotionally to what we re doing.
3
SPEAKER_00
And so we ve done a little bit of it.
3
SPEAKER_00
It s one of the things that we actually have pushed in Starfield.
3
SPEAKER_00
So we have a number of companions, but for them we go, you know, I won t say super complex romantic, but more complex relationships than we ve had in terms of
3
SPEAKER_00
not just some state of they like you or they don t like you, but they can be in love with you and dislike something you did and be pissed at you temporarily and then come back to loving you.
3
SPEAKER_01
So that relationship status, if it s complicated, that they re existing in that gray area, it s complicated.
3
SPEAKER_00
We re not dating, we re just... Well, it s in a lot of games, in your previous stuff, you just work your way up, they like you more and more and more and more, and now you re in a relationship.
3
SPEAKER_01
Now you re in, yeah.
3
SPEAKER_00
And when you make them upset, you drift out of, like it never happened.
3
SPEAKER_00
You drift out of it, whereas
3
SPEAKER_00
We wanted one where, okay, we can be in a relationship and we ve committed to each other in some way, but I just did something that really made you angry.
3
SPEAKER_00
And as opposed to just drifting out of that status, you re in a temporary, I don t like what you did state.
3
SPEAKER_01
Well, so some greater degree of complexity in the relationship with the companions.
3
SPEAKER_00
A little, a little bit.
3
SPEAKER_01
A little bit, a little bit.
3
SPEAKER_00
I don t wanna oversell that part, but my point is, I think those things where you meet a character in a game and you do spend time with them, a companion in a game, and it leads to romance, you know, myself and others, and I find a lot of players, those moments are really, really impactful, and special to them because they did put in the time.
3
SPEAKER_00
That s another thing that I always come at it with, which is, I think people who don t play video games, they sometimes think like, oh, that s, I don t know, that s a waste of time, or that s not real, or that s not like, you re not getting a lot out of that.
3
SPEAKER_00
Like, well, you haven t really experienced it in the way that you can, because these moments that I spent in games, not the ones I made, other ones when I was growing up or even now, that is important time to me.
3
SPEAKER_00
Like, I love those moments.
3
SPEAKER_00
I felt really, like, proud of what I accomplished.
3
SPEAKER_00
And we want people to have that in our games.
3
SPEAKER_00
And the fact that they have had those experiences and we hear from them and how important it is to them, it s like, no, this is really, really special.
3
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, it s fun.
3
SPEAKER_01
I mean, from a game design perspective, I wonder if you can honor the time you spent together with the game.
3
SPEAKER_01
Because
3
SPEAKER_01
You know, sometimes there s a heartbreak at the end of the game, like when you re, when you leave a game, there s a, yeah, it s a really complicated relationship, actually, because when you leave a game, it s almost like leaving a romantic partner, because it s like you spent so much meaningful time together.
3
SPEAKER_01
and there s a sense in which it was ephemeral.
3
SPEAKER_01
This is not, this doesn t.
3
SPEAKER_01
It didn t happen.
3
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, it didn t really happen.
3
SPEAKER_01
It was good, it was like you went to Vegas, you got drunk and stuff, and now life goes on.
3
SPEAKER_01
I wonder if there s a way to sort of always carry that with you.
3
SPEAKER_01
I mean, I guess with words you can kind of share with others.
3
SPEAKER_00
It s weird.
3
SPEAKER_00
Now that we re in the age where you have achievements and you can look at your library and see your hours in games,
3
SPEAKER_00
Like that s like, it s almost like a scrapbook now.
3
SPEAKER_00
Like I wish, one of my wishes was like, I wish I had that achievement list for everything, like back to the late 70s.
3
SPEAKER_01
Like every game you played.
3
SPEAKER_00
Right.
3
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, like you, I mean, that s one of the cool things with Xbox, like we re moving towards that direction.
3
SPEAKER_01
It d be cool to be from like childhood, the first time you play a video game, it will actually tell you what is the first game you played.
3
SPEAKER_00
But you know what?
3
SPEAKER_00
Kids today, they will have that.
3
SPEAKER_01
that we ll have that and see.
3
SPEAKER_00
But you could look back and see, oh my God, I put 1,000 hours in Daggerfall.
3
SPEAKER_00
What is the first game?
3
SPEAKER_00
And my last save was.
3
SPEAKER_01
1997.
3
SPEAKER_01
Man, I don t know, Golden Axe maybe?
3
SPEAKER_01
I m trying to think what was the first game I ever played.
3
SPEAKER_01
No, it s probably Commodore 64 games, yeah.
3
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, arcade games.
3
SPEAKER_01
Okay.
3
SPEAKER_01
You mentioned Starfield.
3
SPEAKER_01
What is Starfield?
3
SPEAKER_01
And what s the origin story of this game?
3
SPEAKER_00
We had always wanted to do something where you explore space, you know, the explore space role-playing game.
3
SPEAKER_00
So, take the kind of games that we make and give it a little bit of a different spin.
3
SPEAKER_00
And, you know, the other games that I love, there was a pen and paper RPG I love, Traveler.
3
SPEAKER_00
It was one of the first games I made for the Apple II.
3
SPEAKER_00
I never finished it, right?
3
SPEAKER_00
I m just doing it on my own.
3
SPEAKER_00
And I love this game.
3
SPEAKER_00
Starflight was one.
3
SPEAKER_00
Star Control 2 was a game that I loved.
3
SPEAKER_00
Sun Dog was a big one in the Apple II days that a lot of people don t know that I loved.
3
SPEAKER_00
And so, a lot of us in the studio felt it was time to do something new.
3
SPEAKER_00
You know, we re going between Elder Scrolls and Fallout and going back and forth, and I mean, we love that, but hey, we ve always wanted to do this explore the galaxy science fiction game.
3
SPEAKER_00
You know, now is the time to do that.
3
SPEAKER_01
And that s a brave move.
3
SPEAKER_01
So Fallout is post-apocalyptic on a single planet.
3
SPEAKER_01
Elder Scrolls series is on a single planet.
3
SPEAKER_01
So this is going out into the open world of many star systems, many planets.
3
SPEAKER_01
I saw that it s thinking about 100 star systems and 1,000 planets available to explore.
3
SPEAKER_01
What is that world of stars and planets like?
3
SPEAKER_00
Well, you mentioned Daggerfall.
3
SPEAKER_00
We go back to some of that.
3
SPEAKER_00
Well, the first when we did it was, how are we going to render a planet, like pull it off for the player?
3
SPEAKER_00
Like, can we?
3
SPEAKER_00
Or do we have to sort of do it where you can t land on all of them, where you re landing in a very controlled, small world space that we, you know, kind of craft and you would have a very limited set of those.
3
SPEAKER_00
You go back to tone, like, well, that s probably the wrong tone.
3
SPEAKER_00
And how can we say yes?
3
SPEAKER_00
Like, I want to land on that ice ball.
3
SPEAKER_00
So we started the game right after Fallout 4, so 2016.
3
SPEAKER_00
And the first thing we did was, how can we have a system to generate these planets and make them look, I ll say, reasonable, as opposed to fractally goop?
3
SPEAKER_01
Well, what s the technical definition of goop?
3
SPEAKER_01
Fractally goop?
3
SPEAKER_00
Fractally goop, you ve probably seen a lot of simulations, whether they re space things or landscape things, where they re using fractals and just the landscape does not look real, it s just like highs and lows and it s muddy.
3
SPEAKER_00
And so we did find a way, we came up with a way, had prototyped of building tiles, like large tiles of landscape, the way we would usually build them.
3
SPEAKER_00
we kind of generate them offline, hand do some things, and end up with these very realistic looking tiles of landscape, and then built a system that wraps those around a planet and blends them all together.
3
SPEAKER_00
And we had pretty successful results with that.
3
SPEAKER_00
And so we thought, yeah, we could do this.
3
SPEAKER_00
And so there was a big design
3
SPEAKER_00
kind of problem to solve in terms of, well, what s fun about landing on a planet where there s potentially nothing?
3
SPEAKER_00
Because there s a lot of planets and moons, if you kind of write in reality that, well, there s nothing on them except resources.
3
SPEAKER_00
And so we spent a lot of time figuring out, okay, let s just lean in on that can A, be a lonely experience, as long as we tell the player, here s what s there, here are the resources that are there, go find them.
3
SPEAKER_00
But I equate it to that moment of we said about listening to the wind go and watching the sunset.
3
SPEAKER_00
And I do think there s a certain beauty to landing on a strange planet, being somewhat the only person there, building an outpost, and we are modeling
3
SPEAKER_00
all of the systems, because that s how we like to do things.
3
SPEAKER_00
So you can watch whatever that gas giant or moon, it will rotate and go and sunrise, sunset, and all of those things that you would expect, and it s all really happening.
3
SPEAKER_00
And most people probably won t notice or appreciate all of that, but I think it gives them the ability to say,
3
SPEAKER_00
I wanna go do that and see that on that place, as long as we tell them, hey, the quest leads over here, here s where the handcrafted content is that you would expect, and then here s more of the open procedural planet experience.
3
SPEAKER_00
Long answer, I don t know if I answered your question.
3
SPEAKER_01
There s no, the questions are stupid and the answers are brilliant, so that s how this works.
3
SPEAKER_01
So this is the world s most immense simulator of the human condition of loneliness.
3
SPEAKER_01
Because I can t imagine a more lonely experience.
3
SPEAKER_00
I mean, you put it that way.
3
SPEAKER_00
I don t know if that was the goal, but.
3
SPEAKER_01
just on a planet alone, that must be, I mean, a deep embodiment of what loneliness is like.
3
SPEAKER_01
I mean, both on, like when you hike alone, there s a deep loneliness to that.
3
SPEAKER_01
It s humbling that this thing will last much longer than you, it s been here way before you.
3
SPEAKER_00
Is it the line from the moon landing?
3
SPEAKER_00
Beautiful desolation.
3
SPEAKER_00
Buzz Aldrin, is it?
3
SPEAKER_01
Beautiful Desolation, is that what he said?
3
SPEAKER_00
I think so.
3
SPEAKER_01
Beautiful Desolation.
3
SPEAKER_01
Well.
3
SPEAKER_00
Something like that.
3
SPEAKER_01
But that s just words.
3
SPEAKER_01
There s a feeling to it.
3
SPEAKER_01
And you want that feeling to be real.
3
SPEAKER_01
You just hear, there s some resources here.
3
SPEAKER_01
I just feel like it ll hit people at a certain moment, like it does for me with Skyrim.
3
SPEAKER_01
Like, holy shit, I m here alone.
3
SPEAKER_01
And whatever cruel nature that s out there, it doesn t really care about me.
3
SPEAKER_00
Exactly.
3
SPEAKER_01
That s the experience.
3
SPEAKER_01
So you want to create the whole planet, and you want to have many of them.
3
SPEAKER_00
We have, we do have many, but once you build that system, I think the numbers become, I mean, honestly, a little bit, we wrap it in so we can name them all and have a finite set, even though it s a very, very large number, but a set that we can, you know, validate and know about, even though it s a huge number.
3
SPEAKER_00
But once you
3
SPEAKER_00
Once you re building a system that can build a planet, I mean a planet is sort of infinite space, we go back to the dagger fall analogy, right?
3
SPEAKER_00
If you have systems to build that much space, doing a hundred planets or a thousand or ten thousand or a million planets is not, it s just, you just press, you just change the number and press the button.
3
SPEAKER_00
But you can t, you can t name them all, you can t control, like, when you re getting in really big numbers.
3
SPEAKER_00
Hey what is what is the system way out here feel like if you take your ship and jump that far.
3
SPEAKER_00
We do level the systems when you go to system you ll see oh this is like a level 40 system and us being able to at least control that scale is how we kind of ended up with the hundred ish systems we have.
3
SPEAKER_01
What are the levelings?
3
SPEAKER_01
What do you mean by levels?
3
SPEAKER_00
It would be like when you look at a map in a game and it says this is the area for low level players, this is level 1.
3
SPEAKER_00
Oh, got it, got it.
3
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, so we do that on a system basis.
4
SPEAKER_01
Star system.
4
SPEAKER_00
I read that space travel is considered dangerous in this game.
4
SPEAKER_00
Can you explain?
4
SPEAKER_01
That s more of, that goes back to a tone thing, right?
4
SPEAKER_01
When you actually play the game, because it s a game, like, we don t really kill you when you fly out into space.
4
SPEAKER_01
But it has a tone of, there s some effort involved.
4
SPEAKER_01
And we ve dialed it back as we ve been making the game, whereas we used to run out of fuel, you d jump and get stranded, which on paper was a great, like, it s a great moment when you get stranded and you have to press this beacon and you don t know who s gonna come.
4
SPEAKER_01
Turns out that s not like, it just stops your game.
4
SPEAKER_01
We found you d be playing the game and I ran out of fuel.
4
SPEAKER_01
Okay, I guess I ll just wander these planets trying to mine for fuel so I can get back to what I was doing.
4
SPEAKER_01
It just, you know, it s a fun killer.
4
SPEAKER_00
That s too realistic of a simulation of the human condition.
4
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, no, the idea was, well, it s for, you know, games do that.
4
SPEAKER_01
If you had like a hardcore, you re right, a hardcore survival mode, that s the kind of thing you would do.
4
SPEAKER_01
Maybe we ll do it in the future.
4
SPEAKER_01
But it s more of like a tone, how they build their ships.
4
SPEAKER_01
Do they have all the right things for safety?
4
SPEAKER_01
We do get into environmental things on the planets, you know, in your space suit, obviously a lot of different space suits and buffs for, you know, the gases or the toxicity or the temperature on various planets.
4
SPEAKER_00
Are there robots?
4
SPEAKER_01
Yes.
4
SPEAKER_00
Those companions, are they robots by chance?
4
SPEAKER_00
Can you say?
4
SPEAKER_01
One of the companions is a robot, Vosko, yeah.
4
SPEAKER_00
Okay, so they have a name and a personality and so on.
4
SPEAKER_01
Vosko does, and then there s a whole bunch of, I call them generic robots.
4
SPEAKER_01
Like, we use them for utility, you know, okay, people, we actually dialed them back, because if you think about, well, you know a lot about this more than me in terms of- I m offended right now, you re calling robots generic and- No, no, no, the ones we use, the ones we use, we made them more generic, we didn t- Sorry, I m very sensitive about this.
4
SPEAKER_01
I understand.
4
SPEAKER_01
If you were to chart the future, you would say robots would have a much bigger role in our future than we are presenting.
4
SPEAKER_01
But that was a tone thing.
4
SPEAKER_01
So most of our robots are there as utility robots, and there are some combat ones as well as enemies.
4
SPEAKER_00
So it s a deeply human world.
4
SPEAKER_01
Very much, yes.
4
SPEAKER_00
In terms of tone.
4
SPEAKER_00
So have you talked to Elon about this game?
4
SPEAKER_00
A little bit.
4
SPEAKER_00
How much of reality, like the work of SpaceX, is an inspiration for the decisions made in this game?
4
SPEAKER_01
I wouldn t say it s for the decisions we made, but, you know, visiting SpaceX and walking in there, it was
4
SPEAKER_01
It s like the Avengers meet NASA.
4
SPEAKER_01
It s like the most amazing.
4
SPEAKER_01
And here we re building the next gen, like see the dragon stuff before it was, you know, other people saw it.
4
SPEAKER_01
Like just, I was really in awe.
4
SPEAKER_01
you know, this giant machine that looks for imperfections on the surface of these giant, you know, fuselage, just, you know, whenever, and because, you know, we re in DC, go to the Air and Space Museum a lot, and so whenever I look at those kind of things, or, you know, you ll visit the space shuttle, sort of overcome with how big it is, and I go stand back by the engines and think about that thing leaving orbit,
4
SPEAKER_01
You know, and one of the things Elon really impresses, like, we re reaching the edge of physics on a lot of this stuff where how hard it is to leave orbit, the gravitational pull.
4
SPEAKER_01
And like, so, the engineering that has gone into that, our space program, what he s doing now, I just marvel at.
4
SPEAKER_01
I don t understand, right?
4
SPEAKER_01
I m not at that level, but I marvel at the kind of human ingenuity and scale
4
SPEAKER_01
I was on the Delaware coast last month, and I went outside, I was outside for some reason, it was dark, and I saw this crazy light in the sky.
4
SPEAKER_01
And I thought it was like a helicopter, and then it didn t go away, and I m like, is someone, what is that?
4
SPEAKER_01
And I call my, we had some friends, hey, does everybody see this?
4
SPEAKER_01
What is that?
4
SPEAKER_01
And we just stood dumbfounded looking at this thing in the sky.
4
SPEAKER_01
And
4
SPEAKER_01
Like that is a UFO, nobody takes their phone out.
4
SPEAKER_01
Everyone, I m with like four people, everyone is too dumbstruck.
4
SPEAKER_01
You would think, why don t you take a picture of this thing?
4
SPEAKER_01
And the next day we found out it was in the news, it was the SpaceX launch in Florida.
4
SPEAKER_01
And I m seeing it from Delaware, Maryland area.
4
SPEAKER_01
It was one of the most, it was incredible.
4
SPEAKER_01
It s just even just that, I am in complete awe of.
4
SPEAKER_00
Is there some aspect to that that you can replicate the majestic nature of that in the video game?
4
SPEAKER_01
I wish I had the answer to that.
4
SPEAKER_01
I think some of it we re doing when you re standing on a planet and you see the other moons go by, and then you realize, I could get in my ship, blast off, and land there and build myself a home.
4
SPEAKER_01
I think that s pretty cool.
4
SPEAKER_01
There s a minor thing we do, which is we have other ships come and go from the starports when you re there.
4
SPEAKER_01
So you ll be in a city, and then you hear this, and you hear the engine.
4
SPEAKER_01
You look up, and a ship is taking off or coming.
4
SPEAKER_00
That s great.
4
SPEAKER_01
There s nothing for you to do, but I think it s awesome.
4
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, yeah.
4
SPEAKER_00
And then that s all about creating the soundscape to feel.
4
SPEAKER_01
Seeing it and like, oh, that s real.
4
SPEAKER_01
That s a ship that, or you jump into a system and you see these freighters and sometimes they contact you.
4
SPEAKER_01
It s not all just like jump in and combat.
4
SPEAKER_00
Do you ever think about the fact that science fiction seems to make, it has a way of creating reality, not just kind of predicting it or imagining it?
4
SPEAKER_00
It s almost like the thing you put out there with a video game like this, like Starfield, that you kind of anticipate, it kind of fuels people s imagination of what is possible.
4
SPEAKER_01
Maybe, I don t know.
4
SPEAKER_01
I don t know, I can t say.
4
SPEAKER_01
You re making me think now about other science fiction that, movie I love, Minority Report, it s more of like a, not a space movie, but more like looking at the future.
4
SPEAKER_01
If you look at a lot of the things in that movie, it s almost like, I think those are coming true.
4
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, I mean, is that the one that you do interface this, like,
4
SPEAKER_01
It s the interfaces and then the way he looks at his child is more like a holographic almost AR, VR kind of thing, or digital billboards, or trying to predict human behavior.
4
SPEAKER_01
There s just a lot of future stuff in that movie.
4
SPEAKER_01
As it comes to sci-fi, to your other question, I don t know.
4
SPEAKER_01
I don t know.
4
SPEAKER_00
Well, I think it does, and it s interesting.
4
SPEAKER_00
I mean, I suppose you re trying to create the most realistic, sticking to the tone, the most immersive, realistic world, and almost by accident, you create the thing that is possible.
4
SPEAKER_00
Because you want it to be realistic in some deep sense, so accidentally it can become the possible.
4
SPEAKER_00
And then that places that idea in people s heads.
4
SPEAKER_00
I mean, if humans are ever to become a multi-planetary species,
4
SPEAKER_00
We need to play games.
4
SPEAKER_00
We need to read sci-fi to help imagine that that s possible, to look outside of Earth, to look outside, look up on the stars, then we can actually travel out there.
4
SPEAKER_00
I don t know, there s power to sci-fi to do that.
4
SPEAKER_00
I guess you shouldn t feel the pressure of that.
4
SPEAKER_01
I don t know if I d make the leap now, that s all, that what we re doing might, no, maybe, you know,
4
SPEAKER_01
One of our, hopefully, it might inspire some young people who are headed in that direction, like, oh, I thought about getting into space and space exploration and being an engineer, doing these things, and I played this game, and it really sparked that interest in me, so I m gonna go take that as a field, and maybe that s the person who goes and does some of these things.
4
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, because in the next couple decades,
4
SPEAKER_00
likely a human being will step foot on Mars, which are the first steps towards us becoming multi-planetary.
4
SPEAKER_01
And if you read some of the stuff they re doing with the James Webb telescope, and them being able to look for signs of life on other planets, it s quite fascinating.
4
SPEAKER_01
And you know, recent stuff I read say they think in 20 years they will.
4
SPEAKER_01
So it s actually quite encouraging to think, I suppose it s a dream of mine, like in our lifetimes that we discover life on another planet.
4
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, especially if it s intelligent life.
4
SPEAKER_00
I ve been talking to a lot of biologists and a lot of folks.
4
SPEAKER_00
I imagine there s life everywhere out there.
4
SPEAKER_01
The numbers would say so, yes.
4
SPEAKER_00
The challenging question is what it looks like and how much of it is intelligent.
4
SPEAKER_00
So a lot of biologists tell me the big difficult leap is from the prokaryotes to the eukaryotes, so like the complex life.
4
SPEAKER_00
It could be that a lot of our universe is just filled with bacteria.
4
SPEAKER_01
I believe, if I m understanding it right, that there s two ways they re going to look at planets.
4
SPEAKER_01
When they can look at, you know, they can read, hey, this planet has this kind of gas.
4
SPEAKER_01
They can now look at the ones that are created by potential life forms, and then the ones that are created, the byproducts of industry.
4
SPEAKER_01
There s only certain ones that are created if you have a society there.
4
SPEAKER_01
and that they can start looking in these types of star systems and these planets.
4
SPEAKER_01
But it takes a lot of time, because you have to book time on that telescope, you have to look at that planet over a long period of time.
4
SPEAKER_01
But in theory, given enough time, given the amount of space out there, we would find one.
4
SPEAKER_00
That would be a cool thing in this short life of ours to find out definitively that there is an industrial intelligent civilization out there before you contact them.
4
SPEAKER_00
So like die, end your life, not knowing the rest of the story, but just know that it s out there.
4
SPEAKER_00
That s a cool, and then if you have kids, be like, well, this one s on you.
4
SPEAKER_00
F this, I m out.
4
SPEAKER_01
And I m fascinated by what it would do to the way, I think in a positive way, the way humanity thinks about itself here.
4
SPEAKER_01
Like, no, there is a definitively other life out there.
4
SPEAKER_00
I mean, both things, if there isn t life out there, that s also a huge responsibility.
4
SPEAKER_00
Both are super exciting.
4
SPEAKER_00
If we re alone, it s super exciting because there s a responsibility to preserve whatever special thing we have going on here.
4
SPEAKER_00
Whether you call it the flame of consciousness or whether it s consciousness or intelligence, that s a special thing.
4
SPEAKER_00
Preserve it, have it expand.
4
SPEAKER_00
But if there s others out there,
4
SPEAKER_00
I mean, that sparks that drive for exploration, of reaching out into the stars and meeting them.
4
SPEAKER_00
Most of them probably wanna kill us.
4
SPEAKER_00
But luckily, we have the military industrial complex on Earth that builds bigger and better weapons all the time.
4
SPEAKER_01
We have Space Force.
4
SPEAKER_00
Space Force.
4
SPEAKER_00
It will both protect us and destroy all our enemies.
4
SPEAKER_00
This is 100% a video game we re living in.
4
SPEAKER_00
Okay, back to dragons.
4
SPEAKER_00
So blink once if you know when Elder Scrolls VI is coming out.
4
SPEAKER_00
but are not going to tell me?
4
SPEAKER_00
I have a vague idea.
4
SPEAKER_00
Okay, vague idea.
4
SPEAKER_00
So like if you have the quantum mechanical interpretation that allows for multiple universes in the universe where you didn t blink, what would that, Todd, tell me about the year it s coming out?
4
SPEAKER_00
Would it be 2025?
4
SPEAKER_01
That s a trick question.
4
SPEAKER_00
Or 26?
4
SPEAKER_01
I ve been asked that question many ways, but never like that.
4
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, I thought I would try to sneak it.
4
SPEAKER_00
I mean, there is, of course, no answer, because... I wish it was soon, you know?
4
SPEAKER_01
Like, we don t... we want them out too, you know?
4
SPEAKER_01
And I wish they didn t take as long as they did, but they do.
4
SPEAKER_01
And look, I mean, if I could go back in time, it would never have been my plan to wait as long as it s taken for it.
4
SPEAKER_00
So you love that world, the Elder Scrolls world?
4
SPEAKER_01
Well, look, it s part of why I ve spent more time there than anything else in my life probably, right?
4
SPEAKER_01
So I deeply love it.
4
SPEAKER_01
We all do.
4
SPEAKER_01
It s a part of us.
4
SPEAKER_01
You know, when you aren t doing it for a while, you really do miss it.
4
SPEAKER_01
And when I look at what we re doing, have planned for that game, and that was a meeting yesterday, I was like, I just want to play all this right now.
4
SPEAKER_01
But it, you know, we re going to make sure we do it right for everybody.
4
SPEAKER_01
And we do have to approach it.
4
SPEAKER_01
People are playing games for a long time.
4
SPEAKER_01
You know, Skyrim s 11 years old.
4
SPEAKER_01
still probably our most played game, and so we don t see it slowing down.
4
SPEAKER_01
And people will probably be playing it 10 years from now also.
4
SPEAKER_01
So you have to think about, okay, people are gonna play the next Elder Scrolls game for a decade, two decades.
4
SPEAKER_01
And that does change the way you think about how you architect it from the get-go.
4
SPEAKER_00
What are some elements that changed the way, like, how do you make a game that s playable for 20 years?
4
SPEAKER_01
Well, we re trying to figure that out.
4
SPEAKER_00
But there are some elements, I should pause on that, you know, pardon me, I m of course asking jokingly, I m excited for it, but I think Skyrim is an amazing game still.
4
SPEAKER_00
You know, I really enjoy it still.
4
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, and you know what?
4
SPEAKER_01
The content, even if you step away from it for a while, then play what I ll put, say, the vanilla version without mods.
4
SPEAKER_01
If you go and haven t played in a while, there s always a new way to play it.
4
SPEAKER_01
But then if you look at the mods and what creators are doing to it,
4
SPEAKER_01
We think that is just awesome.
4
SPEAKER_01
It s something that we ve always supported.
4
SPEAKER_01
We re going to keep supporting.
4
SPEAKER_01
We ve hired a large number of modders that are now professionals.
4
SPEAKER_01
We want to support the people who are doing on their own so they can be professionals on their own.
4
SPEAKER_00
How do you create a world that s moddable?
4
SPEAKER_00
So you think of designing the game from the start as that enables mods?
4
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, absolutely.
4
SPEAKER_01
So it starts with us, like everything we re doing, okay, a modder, a content creator is going to have to do it, use our tools.
4
SPEAKER_01
Now we do clean them up for release, you know, because if you re like a developer in-house, you can deal with some kludginess when you re putting stuff together.
4
SPEAKER_01
When you put it out for people, we do clean a lot of it up and there s still a lot, obviously a learning curve there.
4
SPEAKER_01
But we have, look, we have people been doing it for 20 years with us.
4
SPEAKER_00
What s involved with modding?
4
SPEAKER_00
I m actually quite noobish at this.
4
SPEAKER_00
And I m almost afraid to ask, because now that you explained to me, I fear I will spend a very large amount of time creating mods.
4
SPEAKER_01
Well, we have an editor you can download on Steam, the creation kit for our games.
4
SPEAKER_01
And then it loads up the world and you could do something really, really small, like change the color of the weather.
4
SPEAKER_01
And it creates a little plugin file, we call it, you know, a modification to the game.
4
SPEAKER_01
And then you can run your game with that.
4
SPEAKER_01
It s on console now, the mods, not the editing.
4
SPEAKER_01
And it s just been incredible.
4
SPEAKER_01
Our community there has been amazing what they do with the games.
4
SPEAKER_00
So a lot of it is the visuals.
4
SPEAKER_01
A lot of people do visual things, because it s the easiest thing to do first, or they re building new space.
4
SPEAKER_01
There s some great things with like, I love the Khajiit follower mod for Skyrim.
4
SPEAKER_01
It s awesome.
4
SPEAKER_01
There have been quest lines.
4
SPEAKER_01
Those things just take a really, really long time.
4
SPEAKER_01
And so someone who s going to do that,
4
SPEAKER_01
That s almost like it takes them a long time.
4
SPEAKER_01
It s more than a hobby.
4
SPEAKER_01
And we re always looking at ways that we can make it like, hey, they can turn a career into it because it s just awesome.
4
SPEAKER_00
What about is there any possibility?
5
SPEAKER_00
in doing a mod for some of the AI stuff.
5
SPEAKER_01
There is, and I ve seen some, but to really move it along, if they re using the tools that we already put out there, so to really move the AI along, you d have to get in the code, which some people have figured out ways to hack in and do things with script extenders, but for the most part, like really pushing it, it does take us, which is why you see when we have a new game come along, the palette that they have is there s so many more things they can do.
5
SPEAKER_00
Well, I ve built bots that play driving games, but they do that by just reading the screen and doing basic, not basic, it s actually pretty complicated, but computer vision, doing the control, but you re basically simulating the human player.
5
SPEAKER_00
to do that for Skyrim or for some of the open world games.
5
SPEAKER_00
That s literally, you have to create AGI to be able to play those open... Well, maybe not.
5
SPEAKER_00
Maybe you can create a super dumb, like, just a two-handed sword and just keep swinging until everybody s dead.
5
SPEAKER_01
Look, there s some bot stuff out there that does it.
5
SPEAKER_01
We have some very, very dumb bots that we use to run through the world to test it.
5
SPEAKER_01
that we ll deploy on a whole bunch of servers just to, you know, we do it every day.
5
SPEAKER_01
We run through every space, we re doing Starfield.
5
SPEAKER_00
And it s just running, they re all out there.
5
SPEAKER_01
Well, it does it very quickly.
5
SPEAKER_01
It loads up every place, every
5
SPEAKER_01
every place in the game and runs around a little bit, and then loads the next place and runs around a little bit.
5
SPEAKER_01
We re just testing, like, did it crash?
5
SPEAKER_01
What s the memory growth?
5
SPEAKER_01
Get a report.
5
SPEAKER_01
Here are all the places where the frame rate wasn t up to snuff.
5
SPEAKER_01
And then we do have one that will play on its own.
5
SPEAKER_01
It s heavily scripted, but it lets us test
5
SPEAKER_01
Every time we make a build, there s a bot that runs through the first one or two main quests.
5
SPEAKER_01
It ll just play it.
5
SPEAKER_01
That way we know, did we break anything?
5
SPEAKER_01
Because you don t want to waste QA s time.
5
SPEAKER_01
You guys broke it again within five minutes, so yeah.
5
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, so that s for broken stuff.
5
SPEAKER_00
I wonder if you can build a bot that estimates the quality of the experience.
5
SPEAKER_01
Oh my gosh, okay, can you do that?
5
SPEAKER_00
I don t know, but just the number,
5
SPEAKER_00
Like how boring or not boring, the boring meter.
5
SPEAKER_01
How many times you die?
5
SPEAKER_00
How many times you die?
5
SPEAKER_00
Is death boring or exciting?
5
SPEAKER_00
That s the question.
5
SPEAKER_00
I mean, I don t feel like there s a balance to be struck there, because you always want to be in fear of death.
5
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, we always, we have this chart at work we use, which is like, if you think about any game that you ve played that you ve put down, it s either about a frustration slash confusion or boredom.
5
SPEAKER_01
You got to put the player right in the middle of that.
5
SPEAKER_00
But I ve sometimes put down games from frustration only to return, again, stronger.
5
SPEAKER_01
Dark Souls, yeah.
5
SPEAKER_00
Yeah.
5
SPEAKER_00
So I mean, the challenge, that s part of it.
5
SPEAKER_00
Well, I don t know.
5
SPEAKER_00
Actually, Skyrim, I m one of those, I mean, I m sure there s all kinds of humans that you ve interacted with about what they enjoy.
5
SPEAKER_00
But to me, I could enjoy Skyrim on any difficulty level.
5
SPEAKER_00
It doesn t, all of it,
5
SPEAKER_00
So it depends, the open world nature of it is what s really compelling.
5
SPEAKER_00
Not necessarily the challenge of the particular quest and so on.
5
SPEAKER_00
But I m not sure if that s the same experience for everybody.
5
SPEAKER_01
Do you play the survival mode?
5
SPEAKER_01
There s a survival mode in Skyrim.
5
SPEAKER_01
It was a creation club thing.
5
SPEAKER_01
It does like some hunger, it does hot and cold.
5
SPEAKER_01
It does some other systems that make it, you know, in our minds more believable.
5
SPEAKER_01
And it was actually a creation club thing made by an external creator who is now full-time with us.
5
SPEAKER_00
So can we actually, thinking about Starfield, thinking about Elder Scrolls VI, go through the full life of a video game you ve created?
5
SPEAKER_00
So what s it take to take a game from the idea to finally the final product?
5
SPEAKER_00
What are the different steps along the way?
5
SPEAKER_01
Great question.
5
SPEAKER_01
Well, usually it starts with, I mean, honestly, lunchtime conversations with a number of us.
5
SPEAKER_01
Hey, we think we want to do this.
5
SPEAKER_01
This is what it s going to be like.
5
SPEAKER_01
I mean, look, with an Elder Scrolls, you know you re going to do it.
5
SPEAKER_01
It s a matter of when.
5
SPEAKER_01
So, OK, what s the tone we re going for?
5
SPEAKER_01
Right.
5
SPEAKER_01
Where is it set?
5
SPEAKER_01
So we usually start with the world.
5
SPEAKER_01
And then we re always overlapping.
5
SPEAKER_01
So while we re making one game, as we re
5
SPEAKER_01
you know, getting in the throws of it or wrapping it, you know, probably by the midpoint of one game, we ve had enough conversations to understand what the next one s going to be.
5
SPEAKER_01
What are the big ticket, like, where s it set?
5
SPEAKER_01
What s the tone?
5
SPEAKER_01
Is there a big ticket feature or two that make it really unique?
5
SPEAKER_01
And then when we re finishing one game, we start, um,
5
SPEAKER_01
Prototyping.
5
SPEAKER_01
Sorry, before that, we start concepting.
5
SPEAKER_01
So we ll do concept art.
5
SPEAKER_01
And for one reason or another, I usually have the beginning of the game worked out.
5
SPEAKER_01
I like to think about, OK, how s the game start?
5
SPEAKER_01
What s the player do first?
5
SPEAKER_01
We do music early.
5
SPEAKER_01
So take Elder Scrolls 6.
5
SPEAKER_01
We figure out where it s set.
5
SPEAKER_01
What s the tone?
5
SPEAKER_01
What are the big features?
5
SPEAKER_01
We discuss the beginning of the game, which we ve had for a very long time.
5
SPEAKER_00
Where s this set again?
5
SPEAKER_01
I m just kidding.
5
SPEAKER_01
Yep.
5
SPEAKER_01
In Tamriel.
5
SPEAKER_00
Dammit.
5
SPEAKER_00
Well, at least we know we narrowed it down that.
5
SPEAKER_00
That would be epic if it was like a portal into another dimension.
5
SPEAKER_00
Anyway.
5
SPEAKER_01
Then I like to do music.
5
SPEAKER_01
So we ve already done a take on the music for Elder Scrolls VI.
5
SPEAKER_00
So you can sit there with the concept art and the music and you can feel it.
5
SPEAKER_01
No, no, the music, we put in the teaser for it.
5
SPEAKER_01
This was 2018.
5
SPEAKER_01
We ve taken that further, obviously.
5
SPEAKER_01
And again, we re working on the world.
5
SPEAKER_01
You re then doing concepting and design for the world.
5
SPEAKER_01
And then once we re wrapping up one game, we can really start prototyping the new one.
5
SPEAKER_01
And you re usually building your initial spaces.
5
SPEAKER_01
And so we do like to do a first playable, a smaller section of the game.
5
SPEAKER_01
that we can sort of prove out and show to people, hey, this is how it feels different.
5
SPEAKER_01
This is what it looks like.
5
SPEAKER_01
This is what s unique about it.
5
SPEAKER_01
Then we turn that into a larger chunk when more of the team comes on when the other game is done.
5
SPEAKER_01
And that s still what we call a VS, vertical slice.
5
SPEAKER_01
So you still don t have the full team on it.
5
SPEAKER_01
And it s a larger chunk of the game that you can play.
5
SPEAKER_01
And then once you feel good about that, you re going to bring on the rest of the team.
5
SPEAKER_01
And we re fortunate that the other games we ve done are popular enough that we can be doing DLC and content and those kind of things while we re getting the one going.
5
SPEAKER_01
And then we re at full production, where we re sort of at maximum size.
5
SPEAKER_01
We just call that production.
5
SPEAKER_01
That s like the full production period.
5
SPEAKER_01
And that, depending on the game, you know, can run a year, two years, maybe more.
5
SPEAKER_01
And then you kind of have a finalizing final six months to a year on a game, which is, OK, we ve built everything now.
5
SPEAKER_01
And usually it needs a lot of glue, where we have a lot of very different elements that maybe aren t clicking together the way you want outside of the regular polish for levels and features.
5
SPEAKER_01
And we re shaving and gluing and sticking things together so that it s not the schizophrenic game experience that things flow from one end to another.
5
SPEAKER_00
in terms of story, like on that level?
5
SPEAKER_01
It s really, no, usually the story, the designers have done a really good job.
5
SPEAKER_01
It s more about game features, you know, and then how they interact with the story, or, hey, I went from this experience to this experience, or picking flowers in alchemy feels like a different game than, and then how is another character referencing that, and how is that intersecting with the skill system and the interface?
5
SPEAKER_01
Like,
5
SPEAKER_01
The skill system and the interface is the party host.
5
SPEAKER_01
If you think about a game, most games, particularly what I like to do,
5
SPEAKER_01
is that s your person who says, welcome, do this, go here, check this out.
5
SPEAKER_01
And the skill system and the way it reacts on the HUD, the interface of the game, is sort of leading you to the next thing.
5
SPEAKER_01
And once you get that flow down and the rate at which the game is giving you activities, then you re in like what we describe as a game flow.
5
SPEAKER_01
And it s not till really that last year
5
SPEAKER_01
Before that, the game flow was just, it doesn t even exist in the way that you see it in the final game.
5
SPEAKER_01
And that s what we were working on a lot that last year.
5
SPEAKER_00
So at which point is like the set of skills, a skill tree, the characteristics of the role-playing aspect of it, when is that set, the ideas?
5
SPEAKER_01
We usually have it in the beginning, but it s just, we know it won t be done until that last year.
5
SPEAKER_01
We ll have one, but we know it s gonna get honed
5
SPEAKER_01
Because it s not until you really see, okay, how impactful is that one?
5
SPEAKER_01
How much are you doing it?
5
SPEAKER_01
Like, how much are you really... And the main combat ones, they always win.
5
SPEAKER_01
You always know the players will drift toward the combat type skills, because every character needs some amount of that.
5
SPEAKER_01
But okay, well, how important is cooking?
5
SPEAKER_01
How important is alchemy?
5
SPEAKER_01
How important
5
SPEAKER_01
is these other type of activities, and then how do you balance them where when you load up the skill menu, it isn t automatically, give me plus 10 damage.
5
SPEAKER_00
How do you get the, what about the combat system?
5
SPEAKER_00
That does seem to be an important part of a lot of games.
5
SPEAKER_01
You start it in the beginning, yeah, every time, yep.
5
SPEAKER_01
So usually when we re making that first playable, it s an area you can go through, some amount of dialogue, some amount of combat.
5
SPEAKER_00
How do you get the combat right?
5
SPEAKER_00
What s the secret to a great combat system?
5
SPEAKER_01
Well, first on a control side, helping the player when they don t realize it.
5
SPEAKER_01
There s a lot of tricks you can do with magnetism in terms of the controller and where the attacks go.
5
SPEAKER_01
So it has to feel, the minute to minute has to feel really good in your hand.
5
SPEAKER_01
So there s a lot of animation time, right?
5
SPEAKER_01
And changing animation so they re impactful and they happen at a rate that the player feels like they re really doing it.
5
SPEAKER_01
And then ultimately, it s the illusion that the enemies are smart.
5
SPEAKER_01
but they really are there for you to kill them, right?
5
SPEAKER_01
So they do a lot of things to just let themselves get killed.
5
SPEAKER_01
They re not as near as smart as we can make them, because it turns out that is not fun.
5
SPEAKER_00
Right, so there s a balance between, but there s a, that is, I guess, a kind of AI, and it s a very intimate interaction with an AI, because there s a lot of stuff going on.
5
SPEAKER_00
It s not just very kind of shallow, like a dialogue or something like that.
5
SPEAKER_00
It s like, there s a time-critical nature of it.
5
SPEAKER_00
A lot of stuff is happening, and if anything feels off, it s gonna feel wrong.
5
SPEAKER_01
Yep, all the games do it.
5
SPEAKER_01
You know, it s not unique to what we do in terms of how they handle combat scenarios.
5
SPEAKER_01
And there s some games that just do it extremely well in terms of even in multiplayer where you re playing bots and most people don t know it, or how
5
SPEAKER_01
a multiple enemy scenario is really, you know, they don t all shoot you.
5
SPEAKER_01
They trade off.
5
SPEAKER_01
They re going to wait.
5
SPEAKER_01
I was like, I ll just wait my turn because we don t want to overwhelm them.
5
SPEAKER_01
But he feels like you feel like you re overwhelmed when there s six enemies.
5
SPEAKER_01
But, you know, a good game will know they re going to they re going to take their time.
5
SPEAKER_00
Is there a science to it?
5
SPEAKER_00
Is it art?
5
SPEAKER_00
Is it like... Yes, yes.
5
SPEAKER_01
I mean, it s all of that.
5
SPEAKER_00
So it s like an iterative process where you try different things, you have different ideas, a mixture of animation.
5
SPEAKER_01
There s a lot of timing, animation work, HUD work also.
5
SPEAKER_01
How does the reticule change?
5
SPEAKER_01
What are the little sound effects?
5
SPEAKER_00
What about like the game if I like that it s fun?
5
SPEAKER_01
Again, that goes back to the winning, you know.
5
SPEAKER_00
The winning is fun.
5
SPEAKER_00
Yes.
5
SPEAKER_00
Death is not.
5
SPEAKER_01
Yes, let the Wookiee win.
5
SPEAKER_00
I like how you have to dumb down the AI to make it fun for humans.
5
SPEAKER_00
Because if you didn t, it would just be slaughter nonstop for all humans.
5
SPEAKER_00
That s good to know.
5
SPEAKER_00
What about things like, you said cooking, like crafting, making potions and poisons and smithing, weapons and armor, cooking?
5
SPEAKER_00
How do you get that right?
5
SPEAKER_00
What s interesting there?
5
SPEAKER_00
It s such an interesting like, you know, a lot of games don t have that kind of thing.
5
SPEAKER_00
So what role does that play?
5
SPEAKER_01
You know, I think we really cracked it in a way I like with Fallout 4, actually, where when we re doing Elder Scrolls, we have like the flowers and things, and you have alchemy, and we took this to, okay, if it s post-apocalyptic, what if everything in the world
5
SPEAKER_01
was an alchemical ingredient in some kind, so breaking it down of their components.
5
SPEAKER_01
So when you walk around a world like that, again, we like the simulation, we like the forks and spoons and the cups and all that.
5
SPEAKER_01
Okay, how can I use those to create?
5
SPEAKER_01
So I love how it starts working in Fallout 4, where, okay, all these things I find, they have some value in creating or crafting outside of a cup is worth one gold piece or one cap.
5
SPEAKER_00
By the way, I have to be honest, I haven t played Fallout 4.
5
SPEAKER_00
I played Fallout 3.
5
SPEAKER_00
I thought that was a legendary game.
5
SPEAKER_00
Can you make a case for Fallout 4?
5
SPEAKER_00
Or should I just wait until Fallout 5?
5
SPEAKER_01
I think you should play Fallout 4.
5
SPEAKER_01
I d love to hear your thoughts.
5
SPEAKER_01
It s a different game.
5
SPEAKER_00
Skyrim is too, I mean it s... We try to make them all different.
5
SPEAKER_00
They are fundamentally different.
5
SPEAKER_00
They all have their own tone.
5
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, so Fallout 3 and Fallout 4 are intentionally a very different tone.
5
SPEAKER_00
Oh, really?
5
SPEAKER_00
Interesting.
5
SPEAKER_00
So what s that world like?
5
SPEAKER_00
What s the post-apocalyptic world of Fallout?
5
SPEAKER_00
If you can just briefly take a stroll into that world, tone-wise.
5
SPEAKER_01
Well, there s, look, in entertainment, there s a lot of post-apocalyptic stuff.
5
SPEAKER_01
And what makes Fallout tick is
5
SPEAKER_01
the world that was left behind, the world that blew itself up, this utopian world of nuclear energy and it all goes wrong.
5
SPEAKER_01
So I love the American dream of that, like how they visioned the future in the 50s and that blowing itself up.
5
SPEAKER_01
I think that s like a super interesting place to explore, which is why we always wanted to play in that world.
5
SPEAKER_01
And it does an amazing job of sort of weaving
5
SPEAKER_01
you know, the drama and darkness of a post-apocalyptic world with B-movie humor.
5
SPEAKER_01
You know, it winks at the camera sometimes, often actually, and that when you re in that world, it just has its own unique flow and vibe outside of anything else kind of in that genre.
5
SPEAKER_00
So Elder Scrolls has, or at least Skyrim has some humor.
5
SPEAKER_01
Has a little bit.
5
SPEAKER_00
But Fallout leans into it a little more.
5
SPEAKER_01
A little bit more, a little bit more.
5
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, yeah it does.
5
SPEAKER_01
It s like ironic humor.
5
SPEAKER_01
It s the duck and cover.
5
SPEAKER_01
It s a get under your desk if the bomb comes and everything will be fine.
5
SPEAKER_01
It s that type of humor.
5
SPEAKER_00
So the funny thing is, I do think Fallout 3 is one of the greatest games ever.
5
SPEAKER_00
You ve said that, quote, when we started Fallout 3 in 2004, we obviously had big ideas of what we could do with it, and I talked to a lot of people, from ex-developers to press folks to fans, what made it special?
5
SPEAKER_00
What are the key things you d want out in a new one?
5
SPEAKER_00
The opinions, and I ll put this mildly, varied a lot.
5
SPEAKER_00
but they would all end the same, like a stern father pausing for effect, but do not screw it up.
5
SPEAKER_00
How do you not screw up a game?
5
SPEAKER_00
You have not screwed up many games, yet.
5
SPEAKER_01
I mean, back to the Fallout one.
5
SPEAKER_01
Yeah.
5
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, that was, look, that, I remember that we were met with a lot of skepticism in terms of, oh, what are they going to do with this?
5
SPEAKER_01
It was a beloved kind of isometric turn-based role-playing game, you know, awesome for when it came out.
5
SPEAKER_01
And actually it was announced, we had finished Morrowind but not announced Oblivion.
5
SPEAKER_01
But because we d acquired the rights, we had to announce it, because I think Interplay was a public company,
6
SPEAKER_01
I don t remember.
6
SPEAKER_01
I just remember we had to announce it, and we re thinking there, well, we re gonna piss off all the Elder Scrolls fans, because we re announcing a Fallout game, we re probably gonna piss off the hardcore Fallout fans, because we didn t make the original, and clearly we ll probably make a different kind of game.
6
SPEAKER_01
So I do remember, you know, there was a lot of concern with all of our fans, and fans of Fallout at the time.
6
SPEAKER_01
And so,
6
SPEAKER_01
I think it was pretty rewarding for us that that game found the audience and success that it did.
6
SPEAKER_01
It s one of my favorite projects that I ve ever worked on.
6
SPEAKER_01
And because it was so fresh for us, and we had a very clear, like, even before we had the rights, like, this is the game we re going to make.
6
SPEAKER_01
Like, this is the kind of thing we re going to do.
6
SPEAKER_01
And we had done more when then we were working on Oblivion.
6
SPEAKER_01
And it was kind of a breath of fresh air to do it.
6
SPEAKER_01
And what s kind of remarkable is Fallout 3 comes out just, you know, two and a half years after Oblivion.
6
SPEAKER_01
And we did all this DLC for Oblivion.
6
SPEAKER_01
So we were really, really kind of prolific in how our development, how it was going.
6
SPEAKER_01
So I just remember enjoying making that game so much because it was everything we were doing was new.
6
SPEAKER_00
Which, as to the world creation, was there some innovation, like, technically that was happening?
6
SPEAKER_01
The world creation, like, it was, you know, obviously a different look, even though some of us, very few of us, had worked on the Terminator things.
6
SPEAKER_01
The VAT system, the skill system, and we loved the original game so much, so you felt this responsibility
6
SPEAKER_01
to bring it back in a big way and reintroduce it in a way that, you know, as much as we could scratch the same itch when you played the original game that had the same tone.
6
SPEAKER_00
Are there some favorite things to you about that world that just kind of connect you to the humor?
6
SPEAKER_01
Fallout 3, I love, again, I usually start with the beginning.
6
SPEAKER_01
I love the beginning.
6
SPEAKER_01
I love the character generation.
6
SPEAKER_01
If you played it a lot or you re developing it, it starts to feel really long.
6
SPEAKER_01
But the first time you play it or second, I just think it s awesome.
6
SPEAKER_01
And this idea, it s a hard thing to say, okay, we want you to feel like your character on the screen.
6
SPEAKER_01
Even when you play like a Skyrim, you don t know what you were doing before that.
6
SPEAKER_01
But Fallout 3, you
6
SPEAKER_01
You were born in the vault, and you raised in the vault, and you lived in the vault, but you experience a part of that.
6
SPEAKER_01
So it s a very different, when you step out, I think you re really, I mean, the visuals are the visuals, but the emotional moment of stepping out of the vault, you feel like you lived your whole life in the vault.
6
SPEAKER_00
And you feel like you have a sense of your past.
6
SPEAKER_01
Right, and I need to find my father.
6
SPEAKER_00
Isn t it possible to have that sense with like Elder Scrolls, like a life story, like childhood trauma and stuff?
6
SPEAKER_00
Back to the human condition.
6
SPEAKER_01
I mean, you d have to like, look, you do some of that stuff, but they go through menus.
6
SPEAKER_01
You know, pick your background.
6
SPEAKER_01
We re doing that in Starfield.
6
SPEAKER_01
Hey, pick your background.
6
SPEAKER_01
What were you doing before this moment?
6
SPEAKER_00
Can you pick your traumas and stuff?
6
SPEAKER_00
That s a mod, that s a mod.
6
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, thank you.
6
SPEAKER_00
Go for that.
6
SPEAKER_00
And then also make a mod for like a therapist.
6
SPEAKER_01
But a lot of it, you know, is in your head, so you re gonna do that, you re gonna pick this background, you re gonna do these things, and you re sort of like, this is who I was.
6
SPEAKER_01
And we intentionally with Elder Scrolls kind of make it as much of a blank slate.
6
SPEAKER_01
You know, Elder Scrolls is a little bit more of a blank slate game to who you are.
6
SPEAKER_01
which has a lot of positives, and fallout for us has been more of a, this was your life before, here s who you were, go be who you wanna be, but this is the background, it s a little more strict.
6
SPEAKER_00
Now this might reveal something about me, and speaking of childhood trauma, but I feel like there s a lot of,
6
SPEAKER_00
A lot of the meaningful experience of a role-playing game is not just the development of the character throughout the game, but the initial character creation, like you said.
6
SPEAKER_00
Is there something to that process that you found to be powerful?
6
SPEAKER_00
Like the design of that process, because you think so much about that beginning.
6
SPEAKER_00
how much should be controlled, how much should be defined, the interface itself, the visual appearance of the character too?
6
SPEAKER_00
Because I feel like that you re loading in, you start to load in the world that you re about to enter by creating that character, right?
6
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, we think about it a lot.
6
SPEAKER_01
It s a really, really good comment and question.
6
SPEAKER_01
And it s more than
6
SPEAKER_01
It has to set the whole stage, has to peak your interest for the world you re gonna enter.
6
SPEAKER_01
And we ve done it so many different ways in terms of when you actually go to make your character, when you re making the choice.
6
SPEAKER_01
And one of the things over time that we ve wanted to avoid is people starting over.
6
SPEAKER_01
So there s a lot of intentionality around the types of choices you have that can be undone or not undone.
6
SPEAKER_01
Because what game players want to do is, I ll play it and then I ll make a new character.
6
SPEAKER_01
But sometimes they do that because they realize they made the wrong type of character.
6
SPEAKER_01
And as a designer, you don t want that to happen.
6
SPEAKER_01
So...
6
SPEAKER_01
Some people who get this commonality goes like, oh, you simplified it.
6
SPEAKER_01
No, no, no, no.
6
SPEAKER_01
We move those choices into the gameplay so that you don t, you know, make this character in the beginning and then eight hours later realize you make a horrible mistake.
6
SPEAKER_01
And so, okay, I m gonna start out like that, to me is a really, really bad experience.
6
SPEAKER_00
So- Also like life itself, but yes, go ahead.
6
SPEAKER_01
But like life is, okay, so you can then- Fix it in game.
6
SPEAKER_01
Right, I wish I had learned archery.
6
SPEAKER_01
Well, I m gonna start tomorrow.
6
SPEAKER_01
Yeah.
6
SPEAKER_01
So you can do that, like the Skyrim character system is really designed around that.
6
SPEAKER_01
All you pick is like, what s your race?
6
SPEAKER_01
And that gives you some things, but there s nothing you can t get then on your own.
6
SPEAKER_01
It sounds weird, but you mostly want that beginning character generation to be visual, which you then can also change in the game, and some starting skills that get you off to the type of play that you want, but if you discover you don t like that type of play, as you play, you can move your character along.
6
SPEAKER_01
So we have...
6
SPEAKER_01
moved away post, you know, Oblivion to a classless, meaning you don t have a strict character class, warrior, mage, thief, whatever, in our games.
6
SPEAKER_00
And that s continuing.
6
SPEAKER_00
Are you thinking of Elder Scrolls VI, you re already thinking about that kind of stuff?
6
SPEAKER_00
So you think of early on, like you said, the first few experiences in the game, you re already thinking through them.
6
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, we know what the first few hours are like.
6
SPEAKER_01
We know what the character system is basically like.
6
SPEAKER_00
So, tonally, what s the difference to you between Oblivion, Skyrim, Morrowind, Oblivion, Skyrim, and Elder Scrolls VI?
6
SPEAKER_00
To me, man, stuff blends together.
6
SPEAKER_00
But Oblivion, that s when you can make spells and stuff.
6
SPEAKER_01
You could, you could do it in Morrowind as well.
6
SPEAKER_01
Oblivion has some more guardrails on it.
6
SPEAKER_01
Morrowind s where you can really go.
6
SPEAKER_01
And Daggerfall.
6
SPEAKER_01
I don t remember if you can make spells in Arena.
6
SPEAKER_01
I think you can.
6
SPEAKER_01
Someone will correct me.
6
SPEAKER_01
You definitely can in Daggerfall.
6
SPEAKER_01
It gets crazy in Morrowind.
6
SPEAKER_01
You can somewhat.
6
SPEAKER_01
And then we start putting guardrails on it, because people started breaking the game in certain ways.
6
SPEAKER_01
Yeah.
6
SPEAKER_00
I was about to break the game.
6
SPEAKER_00
Like, you always want it.
6
SPEAKER_01
Well, there s like one people love in Morrowind where you can make these recall stones and you could teleport to different areas, which is really neat in that game.
6
SPEAKER_01
It breaks so many quests.
6
SPEAKER_00
Yeah.
6
SPEAKER_01
And so any quests, we would do this exercise of designing a quest and then someone would say, and then I recall away.
6
SPEAKER_01
Okay, the quest is broken.
6
SPEAKER_01
And then one day someone says, can we just get rid of that spell effect?
6
SPEAKER_01
Everyone s like, yes, please.
6
SPEAKER_01
And so it allowed us to make better content.
6
SPEAKER_00
So the tangent upon a tangent upon a tangent, how do you create a compelling quest?
6
SPEAKER_00
Because there s all kinds of personalities of humans that play these games, right?
6
SPEAKER_00
Because I like the grind.
6
SPEAKER_01
Well, there s, look, there s multiple flavors of a compelling quest.
6
SPEAKER_01
You know some of them have very good upfront storytelling you just like the story and the NPC that s giving you this task and you ll go through a more handcrafted experience that.
6
SPEAKER_01
The designers have done a really, really good job on the space.
6
SPEAKER_01
It has some twist or surprise in the middle, and then the ending has some, you know, multiple options that the player feels like they got to do something, they made an interesting choice.
6
SPEAKER_01
But the best ones for me are actually where all of that was far more open-ended.
6
SPEAKER_01
The how I am going to accomplish this task is
6
SPEAKER_01
completely up to me and I m gonna find some ingenious solution.
6
SPEAKER_01
A silly, this sounds very basic.
6
SPEAKER_01
It s gonna sound quite cliche and silly.
6
SPEAKER_01
Go find me five daedric hearts or whatever.
6
SPEAKER_01
Find me X of something that s hard to get.
6
SPEAKER_01
It s a very simple, you can give a simple story set up for that.
6
SPEAKER_01
And we re not telling the player where to get those.
6
SPEAKER_01
Now where could I get those?
6
SPEAKER_01
And I actually find those to be just as rewarding as the really handcrafted, well-done, little bit more linear with an interesting choice at the end.
6
SPEAKER_01
If those objects are in the world in some believable way, that there s usually some challenge at getting them.
6
SPEAKER_00
How do you place objects in a world in an interesting way?
6
SPEAKER_00
Because it s a big part.
6
SPEAKER_01
We have a level design.
6
SPEAKER_01
You cannot, people, if they only knew how much we spend, we have a clutter group, a group of people who clutter.
6
SPEAKER_01
What s clutter?
6
SPEAKER_01
Clutter is all the stuff around.
6
SPEAKER_01
It s like interior decorators for treasure and stuff and trash.
6
SPEAKER_01
They go through every space and they clutter it.
6
SPEAKER_01
Our level designers think about it a lot.
6
SPEAKER_01
These also become landmarks for the player when you re walking through a space and, oh, this is the place with this.
6
SPEAKER_01
And there is a logic to making a good level, as they say, with even if you walk by like a little T intersection, that becomes like a decision point in the player s head, like, oh, I didn t go down that way.
6
SPEAKER_01
But the more you do that, it looks easy on paper, but when you re playing a game, you actually kind of want to limit those because he s trying to keep track of all these decision points, then they get lost.
6
SPEAKER_01
And yes, we have maps, but anytime the player is going to check a map in a place like that, I feel that it s more of like a backstop for certain players.
6
SPEAKER_01
If they need to check the map, I feel like we ve kind of failed.
6
SPEAKER_00
Got it, so there s a momentum to it, just pulls them in.
6
SPEAKER_01
And you know, look, you played a lot of games, you played a lot of levels where you re just like, I m a little confused, or I don t know, and you play other levels where like, man, I just, yeah, it was great, I went through it, it was well-balanced, I knew where I was going.
6
SPEAKER_01
And it s not, you don t wanna ever be mazy.
6
SPEAKER_01
As long as you know where you re going, as long as you know you made those choices, then it feels fine.
6
SPEAKER_01
But as far as the treasure and all of the loot,
6
SPEAKER_01
It is really an art.
6
SPEAKER_01
We will not do enough clutter, and then we will over clutter, and then there s too much stuff everywhere, and then we declutter every single game.
6
SPEAKER_01
I wish we got better at it.
6
SPEAKER_01
It would save us a lot of time.
6
SPEAKER_00
But you re constantly going by feel, like this is not, this is too much, this is not enough.
6
SPEAKER_01
Right, right, because the other thing is, look, it creates, people wanna pick everything up.
6
SPEAKER_01
They wanna click everything.
6
SPEAKER_01
So if you have too many things of importance in a room, it s like, it actually makes you feel a little tight as a player.
6
SPEAKER_01
You re like, well, I need, I m basically an idiot if I don t pick all this stuff up.
6
SPEAKER_00
You probably felt this way.
6
SPEAKER_01
And like, the moment where you decide that you re just like, I ve clicked so many things in this room, I actually am gonna leave that ammo canister there.
6
SPEAKER_01
But you feel like a dope.
6
SPEAKER_01
You ve probably experienced it.
6
SPEAKER_00
Yes.
6
SPEAKER_00
But also you have a joy from if there s not many items and you found the one and you got it.
6
SPEAKER_00
Right.
6
SPEAKER_00
And you feel good.
6
SPEAKER_00
I got it.
6
SPEAKER_01
And then it s finding like, oh, I stuck my head in this corner and I picked this lock and I opened this locker and oh, there was this thing I ve been waiting for.
6
SPEAKER_00
Yeah.
6
SPEAKER_00
What about like rare and rare items?
6
SPEAKER_01
That s an art, even more so of an art.
6
SPEAKER_01
I will say we have a ways to go there in terms of finding the right drop rate for special items.
6
SPEAKER_01
We call them your epic, rare, legendary.
6
SPEAKER_01
You look at games like so many games do it.
6
SPEAKER_01
And there are ones that you just play and love because they have it down.
6
SPEAKER_01
You know, Destiny, Destiny two is great at Diablo.
6
SPEAKER_01
a series I love, you know, sort of famously, Diablo III, which I think is great.
6
SPEAKER_01
And they did an update, it mostly just changed the loot drops, and it s like this whole new experience.
6
SPEAKER_01
And there s a really real art to it.
6
SPEAKER_01
I think that we re still learning.
6
SPEAKER_01
We re still learning a lot, and we re trying to get better at it, because it s one of those things where it drives you through the game.
6
SPEAKER_01
It s fun to get the treasure.
6
SPEAKER_00
Diablo and Skyrim have this interesting quality of
6
SPEAKER_00
being extremely popular.
6
SPEAKER_00
And there s a lore around like rare items.
6
SPEAKER_00
So it changes the dynamic of like, you could afford to have really rare items.
6
SPEAKER_00
And then somebody finds it and that becomes like a thing.
6
SPEAKER_00
I mean, as you release a game, there s, I mean, a lot of people play and they start sharing stories and so on.
6
SPEAKER_00
It s so interesting because that s part of the game experience is the stories of others, right?
6
SPEAKER_01
For us, 100%.
6
SPEAKER_01
Because we ve been classically, with most of our stuff, single player.
6
SPEAKER_01
that that water cooler shared experience, we would have a thing, like we call them did you know moments.
6
SPEAKER_01
Like we gotta have a bunch.
6
SPEAKER_01
So you meet someone, they do, what are you doing?
6
SPEAKER_01
And then they say, did you know?
6
SPEAKER_01
If you go here and do this, what did you know?
6
SPEAKER_01
And that to us is where a lot of our community has been sharing their stories and here s what you can do.
6
SPEAKER_00
Has there ever been a temptation to create not a single player game that s gigantic, that s open world?
6
SPEAKER_01
Well, we did Fallout 76.
6
SPEAKER_01
We have Elder Scrolls Online, not a game I created, but look, that started as a more classic MMO.
6
SPEAKER_01
Know the folks, they re part of our company who made that game.
6
SPEAKER_01
And it s insanely, insanely popular.
6
SPEAKER_00
It is, okay, so I should try it out.
6
SPEAKER_01
They do some great storytelling quests.
6
SPEAKER_01
Like, the actual mechanics aren t the same as Skyrim, but the world is awesome.
6
SPEAKER_01
They ve just done an incredible job.
6
SPEAKER_01
You know, it s about to be 10 years for that game as well.
6
SPEAKER_01
And it s just, you know, great community around that.
6
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, I haven t played, because there s a mobile Fallout game, right?
6
SPEAKER_00
I need to play that.
6
SPEAKER_00
I was thinking of playing Diablo mobile, too.
6
SPEAKER_01
I mean, you can debate the monetization, but I would not, it s, I think they did a phenomenal, it s really fun.
6
SPEAKER_00
On Fallout?
6
SPEAKER_00
No, Diablo.
6
SPEAKER_00
Oh, Diablo?
6
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, well, Fallout, I definitely recommend that one.
6
SPEAKER_01
Fallout Shelter, completely different game.
6
SPEAKER_00
Yeah.
6
SPEAKER_01
Diablo Immortal is, I was very, very impressed with that, I had a lot of fun.
6
SPEAKER_00
On the mobile?
6
SPEAKER_00
Yeah.
6
SPEAKER_00
What s the challenge of designing a game for mobile versus the PC and console?
6
SPEAKER_01
Well, obviously the screen size.
6
SPEAKER_00
Is that what you feel first?
6
SPEAKER_00
What s the fundamental change in the philosophy of design?
6
SPEAKER_00
Does it constrain, does it change the tone of the game?
6
SPEAKER_01
Well, we ve done a few things and we have a new mobile game that we re working on that we haven t announced yet that I m in love with.
7
SPEAKER_00
There are a couple things that you approach on mobile.
7
SPEAKER_00
Now, I can give you sort of the classic mobile gaming thing and then what we do.
7
SPEAKER_00
You know, a classic mobile gaming is really for short play sessions.
7
SPEAKER_00
Because
7
SPEAKER_00
For the amount of people you re going to get, the number that have the amount of time to sit there for a long time and play it, like a console game or a PC game, is lower because people are playing mobile games on the move or whatever.
7
SPEAKER_00
And how it onboards you, because obviously most of them are free, so the tutorial, how the tutorial works,
7
SPEAKER_00
how it gets you into the game.
7
SPEAKER_00
Because you haven t bought it, you haven t done this investment of buying it and then saying, no, I m going to learn it.
7
SPEAKER_00
People don t care.
7
SPEAKER_00
So really understanding how they get into the game.
7
SPEAKER_00
Those two things are really the magic to mobile gaming.
7
SPEAKER_00
We have found, though, with our games, particularly Fallout Shelter, people will sit there for an hour or two.
7
SPEAKER_00
They will just sit there and play it.
7
SPEAKER_00
Large numbers of people will play it for hours a day.
7
SPEAKER_01
So there is a more, I don t know, addicting element to the mobile, because I guess you can spend more time with it.
7
SPEAKER_00
And if you look at, you know, if you look at kids these days, they can stare at their phone for hours, that s all they do.
7
SPEAKER_00
That s where they watch everything.
7
SPEAKER_00
So it s also like a demographic thing.
7
SPEAKER_00
The younger audience, they would rather sit and stare at their phone than play it on a big screen.
7
SPEAKER_01
I would just love to sort of list out throughout human history the evolution of sentences that began with, if you look at kids these days.
7
SPEAKER_00
It s true, it s true.
7
SPEAKER_01
The kids, the kids of the kids these days will probably be talking about, be doing like virtual reality.
7
SPEAKER_00
Like I love mobile games though.
7
SPEAKER_00
I play a ton of them.
7
SPEAKER_00
I am, like the game, my favorite game this year is Marvel Snap.
7
SPEAKER_00
this card game from the folks who did Hearthstone, you should really play it.
7
SPEAKER_00
Do you like card games?
7
SPEAKER_01
Do you like superheroes?
7
SPEAKER_00
It s genius.
7
SPEAKER_00
You don t like superheroes?
7
SPEAKER_01
No, I don t like superheroes.
7
SPEAKER_01
I never understood, listen, this is growing up in the Soviet Union.
7
SPEAKER_01
What, I don t understand the, all right, well, I don t understand, you re wearing a costume, it s silly to me, I can t, so you have to suspend, like, you have to be able to immerse yourself, and for some reason, there s something about costumes, it doesn t get me.
7
SPEAKER_01
But then again, I m like into elves and dragons, so I don t understand, and I m fine.
7
SPEAKER_01
I think I get it.
7
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, but the rest, at least the American, the Western world disagrees with me, so.
7
SPEAKER_01
Even Batman, you have like little ears, but that s fine.
7
SPEAKER_01
Well, back to Elder Scrolls Starfield.
7
SPEAKER_01
So one thing I didn t ask you about, when you look at the timeline of five, six, seven, eight years, whatever it is to create a game, what s the role of the deadline internally, not publicly announced?
7
SPEAKER_01
Do you try to keep in your own brain a deadline, for the team a deadline?
7
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, all the time.
7
SPEAKER_01
And when you set that deadline early in the development, do you try to set deadline like that s really tough to reach?
7
SPEAKER_00
No, we try to make it like, hey, this is our best guess.
7
SPEAKER_00
If you make it tough to reach, it s sort of, you know, you re going to miss it.
7
SPEAKER_00
It s arbitrary.
7
SPEAKER_00
We really try to, you know, keep ourselves honest because it will let you know where you re at, right?
7
SPEAKER_00
We want to have first playable.
7
SPEAKER_00
We want to be done with prototyping or design by this date.
7
SPEAKER_00
We want to have first playable this date.
7
SPEAKER_00
We want to have this.
7
SPEAKER_00
But look, you know, things happen.
7
SPEAKER_00
Pandemic happens.
7
SPEAKER_00
People go home.
7
SPEAKER_00
It throws everything off.
7
SPEAKER_00
you know what you needed to do because we re not just like making a game and then moving everybody on you know what you needed to do like Skyrim was so popular we kept people on that game for longer so it delayed a little bit we were doing a Fallout 4 at the time because we can t we re you know hey we really shouldn t move the people on the Fallout yet because we re doing these things in Skyrim and we should so it just sort of keeps you honest for where you re where you re at
7
SPEAKER_01
Does it get super stressful as you get closer?
7
SPEAKER_01
Are you trying to avoid announcing anything?
7
SPEAKER_01
Is there a temptation to announce that?
7
SPEAKER_00
Well, I ve done it all ways, right?
7
SPEAKER_00
I ve announced Starfield.
7
SPEAKER_00
We were pretty loud with a release date that we then had to delay.
7
SPEAKER_00
Was that tough?
7
SPEAKER_00
It was, it was, but it was the right thing to do.
7
SPEAKER_01
And... How do you know it s the right thing to do?
7
SPEAKER_01
Like when you sat down and looked at it like, this is not ready?
7
SPEAKER_00
It s not an exact science, but you can look at what needs to be done and the amount of time you have.
7
SPEAKER_00
And, you know, we ve done it in the past where we can get it done.
7
SPEAKER_00
We believe we can.
7
SPEAKER_00
And so you re fighting that personal belief that you can get something done.
7
SPEAKER_00
But there s a lot of things that go into release date with marketing and publishing.
7
SPEAKER_00
And, you know, we ve reached a point where, on Starfield, where it was pretty clear to us, even though you want to say you can get it done, that the risk involved with that to the fans, to the game, to the team, to the company, we re part of Xbox now, to everybody, was we should really move it and give it the time it needs.
7
SPEAKER_01
So you mentioned part of Xbox.
7
SPEAKER_01
Microsoft bought Bethesda and ZeniMax for $7.5 billion.
7
SPEAKER_01
Well, what s it like joining the Xbox team?
7
SPEAKER_01
You ve, I think, written about it.
7
SPEAKER_01
What are the exciting aspects of that?
7
SPEAKER_00
When your company goes through a change like that, no matter what it is, even if it s somebody that you ve worked with for a long time, you never know what you re in for.
7
SPEAKER_00
You hope.
7
SPEAKER_00
And I had worked with them for, since we started doing console stuff with Morrowind was, you know, they came to us, came to me and said, hey, you should make this game for the Xbox.
7
SPEAKER_00
And so when they were making that console, had a great experience with them.
7
SPEAKER_00
And then on the 360 with Oblivion.
7
SPEAKER_00
And so I guess the point is, we felt that we had a very good relationship with everybody there.
7
SPEAKER_00
And we understood what their culture was, but you never really know.
7
SPEAKER_00
And I mean this honestly, it s been awesome.
7
SPEAKER_00
The culture inside of Microsoft and Xbox that people see from the outside is the culture inside.
7
SPEAKER_00
The way they talk about players, the way they ll invest in the players, the risks they ll take.
7
SPEAKER_00
the thoughtfulness from Phil Spencer on down has been, you know, Phil really, really lucky.
7
SPEAKER_00
And then a game like Starfield where, look, we ve had a lot of success with the games that you talked about, but we ve never been kind of the platform seller, you know, the game for a platform for a period of time.
7
SPEAKER_00
And so, you know, there is a lot of pressure there.
7
SPEAKER_00
There s a lot of responsibility there to make sure we deliver for everybody.
7
SPEAKER_01
Is there a chance that Starfield is exclusive to Xbox?
7
SPEAKER_00
It is, it is exclusive.
7
SPEAKER_00
It s officially right here.
7
SPEAKER_00
Yep, yes.
7
SPEAKER_01
So you re, I get it.
7
SPEAKER_01
So extra pressure also creating a new world.
7
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, it s new, but keep in mind, for us, that exclusivity is not unique.
7
SPEAKER_00
Even though we ve done PlayStation stuff, and I think the PlayStation 5 is just an insane machine.
7
SPEAKER_00
They ve done a great job, and we ve had great success on PlayStation.
7
SPEAKER_00
We were traditionally a PC
7
SPEAKER_00
developers in the beginning.
7
SPEAKER_00
We transitioned to Xbox, became our lead platform.
7
SPEAKER_00
Like, Morrowind s basically exclusive to Xbox.
7
SPEAKER_00
Oblivion was exclusive to Xbox for a long period of time.
7
SPEAKER_00
Skyrim DLC was exclusive.
7
SPEAKER_00
So, we ve done a lot of, like, our initial stuff is all Xbox.
7
SPEAKER_00
So, we get into development and saying we re focused on Xbox and it s not abnormal for us in any way.
7
SPEAKER_00
It s been kind of the norm.
7
SPEAKER_00
And from a development side, I, you know, I like the ability to focus.
7
SPEAKER_00
So our ability to focus and say, and have help from them, you know, the top engineers at Xbox to say, we are going to make this look incredible on the new systems is like, from, from my standpoint, it s just awesome.
7
SPEAKER_01
What s the difference in creating the console versus the PC?
7
SPEAKER_01
I also have to admit, I ve never, is this shameful?
7
SPEAKER_01
Actually, you should recommend to me.
7
SPEAKER_01
I ve never played Skyrim or any of the games you ve created on Xbox.
7
SPEAKER_00
Really?
7
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, and on console.
7
SPEAKER_01
I mean, I ve played very little Xbox.
7
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, sure.
7
SPEAKER_00
I mean, look, there s the obvious interface part between mouse and keyboard and then a controller, but when you re looking at hardware, PCs, it s tough, right?
7
SPEAKER_00
Because you re looking at, well,
7
SPEAKER_00
What are their driver versions?
7
SPEAKER_00
What kind of monitor do they have?
7
SPEAKER_00
What is the actual refresh rate of X, Y, and Z?
7
SPEAKER_00
We re used to it.
7
SPEAKER_00
But if anyone will tell you, give me the hardware that I know I m writing it for.
7
SPEAKER_00
You know this.
7
SPEAKER_00
And the Series X is just a incredible machine.
7
SPEAKER_00
And now that- And you know what it is, you know- You know what it is, and now that we re part of Xbox, getting the people who built it to show you how to make it really, really dance is just awesome.
7
SPEAKER_01
Is there a case to be made?
7
SPEAKER_01
Do you get people that enjoy, people that do both PC and Xbox, that enjoy Xbox more?
7
SPEAKER_01
If they have a choice, do they enjoy it?
7
SPEAKER_00
I think that depends on
7
SPEAKER_00
And look, now that you can kind of cross, you can take your save and go between and all those things.
7
SPEAKER_01
You can?
7
SPEAKER_00
Yeah.
7
SPEAKER_00
If you, depends on if... For which games?
7
SPEAKER_01
So for Skyrim?
7
SPEAKER_00
if you have the Game Pass PC version of it versus Steam.
7
SPEAKER_00
Not via Steam right now, not via Steam.
7
SPEAKER_01
Got it, got it.
7
SPEAKER_01
And so there s the Game Pass.
7
SPEAKER_01
So I m like learning about this, so there s a Microsoft, so this is gonna be on Game Pass, and then you can, yeah, if you can take it from PC through Game Pass.
7
SPEAKER_01
But I think it depends on like,
7
SPEAKER_00
Like, for me, like, what s my physical mood?
7
SPEAKER_00
Do I wanna lean back on a sofa?
7
SPEAKER_00
Right?
7
SPEAKER_00
The actual physicality of it is what determines where I wanna play.
7
SPEAKER_00
Do I wanna be two feet from a thing right now?
7
SPEAKER_00
And sometimes I like that.
7
SPEAKER_00
I am more of a console player just because I sit at my PC at work all day.
7
SPEAKER_00
Like, I play a lot of video games.
7
SPEAKER_00
So when I get home and I wanna play something, I was like, I am a sofa screen controller person.
7
SPEAKER_01
Let me ask you a ridiculous question.
7
SPEAKER_01
So you ve created some of the greatest games ever.
7
SPEAKER_01
I think the question would be, what s the best game of all time?
7
SPEAKER_01
All right, just give me a second.
7
SPEAKER_01
Tetris.
7
SPEAKER_01
Tetris?
7
SPEAKER_01
All right, yeah, that s interesting.
7
SPEAKER_00
Have you read the book on Tetris?
7
SPEAKER_00
No.
7
SPEAKER_00
You should read it, particularly for someone who grew up in Russia.
7
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, I m sure there s an interesting story.
7
SPEAKER_01
The fact that there s a book about Tetris is fascinating.
7
SPEAKER_01
Is there a book about Mario?
7
SPEAKER_01
I would love to find out more, but I think I would put, personally, I would put Skyrim.
7
SPEAKER_00
I ll take that.
7
SPEAKER_00
Good answer.
7
SPEAKER_01
At number one for me, which is tough, however you put it, because you could also make the case out of the Elder Scrolls series, like, what do you actually value more?
7
SPEAKER_01
If you put Tetris and Super Mario up there, then like,
7
SPEAKER_01
the credit goes to Morrowind maybe over Skyrim.
7
SPEAKER_01
I don t know where the biggest leaps are, but overall I think it s Skyrim.
7
SPEAKER_01
But for you, if you re not allowed to pick any of the games you were involved with, what are some interesting candidates for you that are just games that inspired the world, impacted the world, shook the world in terms of what video games are able to do?
7
SPEAKER_00
I m just sort of like, hearing you say that you think Skyrim s the best game of all time is quite, like, thank you.
7
SPEAKER_00
And it s, you know, incredible thing to hear.
7
SPEAKER_00
And, you know, when I think about, well, there s a couple answers.
7
SPEAKER_00
There s ones that are like personal to me.
7
SPEAKER_01
Ultima VII is probably my- Yeah, can you talk about Ultima?
7
SPEAKER_01
Like, you said that as an inspiration.
7
SPEAKER_01
I never crossed that world.
7
SPEAKER_01
Well, it was... What kind of game is it?
7
SPEAKER_00
It s a role-playing game, you know, circa 1992, 93, 94.
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Ultima Online, first, you know, really visual online world in that way.
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But for me, that was a virtual fantasy world where I had, you know, you could bake bread, you could pick all this stuff up.
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I mean, anyone who s played Ultimas and plays our stuff can see the kind of touchstones and callbacks to that or inspirations.
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And the other thing that I loved about Ultima was, they were all different, right?
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That they iterated and there weren t necessarily what I ll call a plus one sequel outside of Ultima VII Part II, clearly a plus one sequel, but they each had their own tone.
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I love like the boxes, you know, it s something that we get into as well.
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I love this idea that a game also is this tangible,
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thing.
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Oh, when you buy it... You know, the cardboard boxes and the way they were designed, and Ultima VII is black, and Ultima VIII is the fiery gate, and the paintings on them, and I just, you know... Does that break your heart a little bit, that that culture is a bit gone?
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A little bit, a little bit.
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And that s also why I like
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You know, this goes to video gaming or any other digital things where digital ownership has great value to people.
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So I like looking at my collections of games, even digitally.
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I want to see nice, you know, in the same way you want to see nice album art.
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I want to see nice cover art for our games.
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And we spend a lot of time in them so that, you know, take a look at Elder Scrolls and Morrowind, Oblivion and Skyrim.
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We want those boxes to look good next to each other.
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Going back to the video games, I always mention Tetris because I think it s, obviously I love virtual worlds and those kind of things, but for the time and what an interactive video game, sort of the simplest form, I sort of think you can put Tetris in front of just about anybody and they ll enjoy it.
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and it s got some moment of challenge, and it s just so elegant.
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It s like, to me, this very pure game that only works because it s a video game.
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SPEAKER_01
And I think mobile games figured out some of the magic of Tetris, the simple.
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SPEAKER_01
Some of them have, yeah, yeah.
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But Tetris did it a long, long time ago.
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SPEAKER_00
Right.
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You can really create that immersive experience without.
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But for me, you know, the ultimate civilization.
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Yeah.
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As far as, you know, a grand strategy game, you know,
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Pac-Man I mentioned in terms of bringing games into the mainstream in a way that captured people that nothing before it had.
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Super Mario, Donkey Kong, everything.
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Nintendo, probably the best game makers in the world still.
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They know who they are.
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They know what they want to do.
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Always in awe of what they create.
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SPEAKER_01
I gotta ask you about a game I haven t played, but people put up there as one of the greats, Zelda Breath of the Wild.
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SPEAKER_01
Have you gotten a chance to play it?
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SPEAKER_00
A lot of it, yes.
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SPEAKER_00
Yes, it s fantastic.
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SPEAKER_00
It s fantastic.
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SPEAKER_01
What do you think about, I mean, it s a very different experience.
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SPEAKER_01
I ve played other Zeldas than the open worlds you ve created, but it is also an open world.
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SPEAKER_00
It is.
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It s my favorite Zelda, because obviously I like open world stuff.
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And the one thing that they do really, really well is they don t constrain you.
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Some people, you know, even some of the things we do constrain you a little bit more.
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Zelda says, here s the whole thing.
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And you are constrained by the actual
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player abilities you haven t earned yet, not some arbitrary barriers.
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And so I think they just did a phenomenal job.
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It s a magical game.
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It really feels open.
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It s because it truly is, yes.
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SPEAKER_01
What about, I mean, I just like asking about some open world.
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SPEAKER_01
A very different one is the world of either Grand Theft Auto or Red Dead Redemption.
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SPEAKER_00
Both love.
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I would put GTA 3, Grand Theft Auto 3 up there with the landmark kind of usher in the open world.
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SPEAKER_00
When that comes out on the PlayStation 2,
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SPEAKER_00
even though there was GTA 1 and 2, this was an all-new thing with the mobster storytelling.
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SPEAKER_00
Is that the first 3D version, I guess?
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SPEAKER_00
It was.
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SPEAKER_00
Then Vice City is kind of a fast follow, which could be my favorite one.