500 people and 9 years and they ran out of time.
this post was submitted on 20 Mar 2024
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I have zero hope for Elder Scrolls 6 now. How in the world can you not plan out a game given all those resources? And it was a blank slate too, they could have done anything at all with Starfield.
Every Bethesda game since Skyrim (and arguably Skyrim, depending on who you talk to) has followed the exact same script: exponentially longer development time to shart out marginal graphics improvements, dumbed-down mechanics and vastly less engaging storytelling.
Up until Starfield I had managed to enjoy all of them for what they were (with modders' help of course). But Starfield is so aggressively dull I had a free 30-day trial of Microsoft GPU and could only manage maybe a week of playing it on the cloud before I was literally too bored to bother.
Given Bethesda's trajectory, I have to agree with you. ES6 is going to be pure shit.
Don't forget, Starfield was Todd's dream game.
Yeah, he must have been dreaming it was a good game
To be fair, a blank slate can also result in collective choice paralysis.
If it had been clear from the start that they're just doing another Fallout, then they could have gotten started on a main quest surrounding a nuclear freak accident with post-apolyptic hardships and maybe a reunification side arc.
With Starfield, they first had to decide what problems might exist in this blank slate, before they could start telling about it.
It's too bad they didn't have nine years to think of something.
If you have 9 years to make a game and can't figure out how to make it fun until the last year (bethsoft devs have said this happened) what are you even doing making games?
I would love to have a job where I could spend a decade saying "I don't know what to do" and still get paid.
500+ people for a videogame is insane. That's kind of cool - despite the problems they faced. I feel like these games don't reflect the number of people being hired for them. I'm not sure it should linearly scale (probably not), but they seem like they scale down rather than up with an increase in staff.
I feel like modern producers are missing the forest for the trees. Games are not successful for being infinitely large. Skyrim is small by today's standards. So is Oblivion. So are hundreds of other contemporary indie games that have captured the hearts of thousands.
It's not about more content. It's about content that feels deeper. Depth over breadth. Baldurs Gate 3 proves that out. I don't think you can expect these large groups of 500 people to all work towards a deeper game without major changes in roles. I'm no expert by any means, but I am a software engineer with some side-hobby game development experience. I think games are flat because mechanics aren't growing with the power. We're getting graphics, dialogue, and places. But the places aren't any more "deep" than 5 years ago. The dialogue isn't more interesting. The graphics are nice - but hardly why people buy games. I want to capture the "anything is possible" feeling when I hop into a game. BG3 recaptured that illusion for me for a long time.
/Rant
TL;Dr developers can't throw more bodies at this problem. It's an artistic and structural problem. They need to reframe how they create the art. It can't be mass produced without ending up flat.
I feel like these games don't reflect the number of people being hired for them. I'm not sure it should linearly scale (probably not), but they seem like they scale down rather than up with an increase in staff.
This is what happens when game studios are being run by people that only view video games as a means to generate money. They do not understand the industry or craft involved and will blindly apply whatever the newest MBA management strategy is the new hotness, throw money and headcount at projects. And cannot understand that more is usually not better when it comes to video game development.
We cant have artists on the payroll, if they wanna get that creative juice flowing, they need to do it between firings so our stock holders are happier!
It's interesting playing indie games and seeing how a small or solo team can put out great experiences.
I kinda feel that a better pipeline for triple A games might be to start with small teams making indie scale games, and the ones that play test great can then get the triple A treatment to add art, music, dialog, additional content, etc. Games that fall short can maybe be released as "indie games" (game genre, obviously not indie published).
I feel like that would be a great idea!
Their workflow isn't designed to produce great games. I'm not sure what they're achieving
The game had a satisfying final quest? Did I miss it??
I'm surprised anyone would make it that far
For those that did finish the final quest – how was it?
It's probably the most interesting thing about the game and still just leaves you brainstorming ways it could have been done better.
If it's the quest I'm thinking of, it was pretty lackluster. If it's not, then I've completely forgotten it.
It was fine, just not anything all that amazing. I did finish it
Shit. You go through a butthole and wake up at the start of the game again
I actually liked Starfield but the main quest is terrible, worst main quest line Bethesda has ever made.
Starfield got so boring I stopped playing it
Starfield is basically a point and click simulator with barren planets
The only chance it has to rescue it are the modders
Modders don't want to touch it. What have they got to work with?
In the few years I've been making games for shits and giggles, the best rule I've developed is Always Be Shipping. You can tweak like crazy in the last hours of a project. You can build whole concepts only to throw them out. So long as you have A Game to push out the door, day-of, you are free to do whatever the hell you want.
Doing your first level first or your last level last is absolute rookie shit.
I don't quite understand what you're saying. Could you elaborate what you mean with "Doing your first level first or your last level last is absolute rookie shit."?
They are saying: do the most important bits first, so that if you run out of time, you still have the important parts in place.
This also goes for many things in general, not just gamedev. I used to be a teaching assistant at the University that I was studying at, and this was the main thing people seemed to get wrong in their projects. Instead of going for the basics and building from there, they just went for all the fancy cool features, or the most optimal algorithm. Then, when the deadline inevitably came around, they would have basically nothing working correctly. Sometimes I even warned them, and yet it still went wrong.
I think it's pretty clear they were struggling to incorporate all the elements together, which ate a lot of their time. In the end, that resulted in player colonies basically getting thrown out and the game being a lot smaller than if they had just dedicated all of their time to worldbuilding.