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shouldn’t end, I want to keep
going’ concept going on. So,
the third DLC was a response
to that idea, because we
have to now account for what
players had done in the game
- a lot of people end up dying
at the end of that game when
they play through it. That
DLC could not possibly have
existed until we got that initial reaction
of, ‘I don’t want the game to end;’ so it’s
a good example of listening to players,
what they want, what they like, or what
they don’t want. ‘I want to increase the
level cap’, ‘I want to remove the game
ending’ – a lot of it is up to the player’s
responses.
As far as the teams behind the DLC
go, it’s always the same folks that
have worked on the base game. You
have a team working on a project, and
they are often working on it in very
different ways. So, when you get to
the end of the game, you have lots of
programmers that are working on it just
trying to fix bugs, but you also have all
these people, like artists and writers,
who are now done, because no-one’s
letting them touch the game anymore.
“No, you can’t add another texture
for that building, you might break the
game. Stop touching it. Leave it alone.”
While these guys are waiting for the
programmers to be finished, they’re
often sitting around writing up new
quests and new dialogue, and that’s
usually where the DLC comes from.
They’ll come up with their own little
strike teams where they talk about what
they might want to do, and eventually
go to the programmers with their new
ideas. You look at
Fallout 4
- all this stuff
that they’ve added with contraptions
and everything else, it doesn’t just work
like that. Somebody had to add the
functionality for different devices and
stuff. It’s a collaborative effort amongst
a variety of folks, either maybe ideas
that they pitched for the original game
that didn’t make it, or again, things that
they see people wanting; folks
really like this, let’s do this, or
let’s do that. It’s always a mix.
Finally, how do you go
about preventing things
leaking to the public
perhaps before you want
them to?
Part of that is born out of
the fact that we’re a private company,
so we are already used to holding things
close to the vest anyway. Doing things
our own way. It’s just kind of part of
who we are, to be a little secretive
and to not sort of talk about our stuff
until it’s time. Our success level of
that varies depending on who you ask,
because one person might say there
were no leaks, but I always end up
seeing things out there; some of which
can be true, some of which were not
true, but all of which make me insane.
You know; having to come up with 10
different project names for a single
game just because you can’t even trust
all of the same people to use the same
code word - you have to mix it up. It’s
ridiculous. I just wish people would be
quiet and not talk about it.
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Skyrim Special Edition
Skyrim Special Edition