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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 the game where
they’re 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, being the infamous
publisher that you are, 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