A former Bethesda veteran says that all decisions at the studio “run through” director Todd Howard.
Fallout 76 Quest Designer Says The Studio's 'Hubris Caught Up' With Them When Discussing Troubled Launch
24.10.2023 - 21:31 / mmorpg.com / Bruce Nesmith
In a recent interview with YouTube channel MinnMax, Bethesda veteran Bruce Nesmith touched on Fallout 76's disastrous launch, stating that the team's «hubris caught up» with them. He goes on to say that the studio was starting to talk itself into thinking it was «infallible,» thanks to all the critical acclaim.
Nesmith, who has worked at Bethesda for much of its history, helping to build games such as The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim, The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion, Fallout 3, Fallout 4, and more. As a quest designer on Fallout 76, Nesmith had a front-row seat to the development — and then the fallout for the studio once the survival MMO launched nearly five years ago.
Fallout 76 struggled right out of the gate, with players not connecting with Bethesda's vision for its multiplayer Fallout game. Despite the rough launch, Bethesda has stuck with the survival MMO, bringing it back from the brink over the years. Last year, the team celebrated some hard-earned stats, counting 13.5 million players who emerged into Appalachia over the course of the game's life.
However, pride cometh before the fall, something the Bethesda team learned the hard way as Fallout 76 rolled out. Nesmith states it was a matter of the team riding high on their own press clippings, with the critical acclaim seeping into the company's ego, which got in the way of itself.
«I think the company's aim was not as focused as it probably should've been, and you can see the results of that in the way it entered the marketplace,» Nesmith admits. «To a certain extent, our own hubris caught up with us.»
He continued, describing a situation where the team started to allow the critical acclaim the studio had earned to affect how they looked at themselves, saying that they were starting to believe they were «infallible.»
«We had had so many, not just successes but literal game of the years, industry-wide accepted game of the years; not just in our own heads or in these two little magazines over there, but everybody is saying this is the game of the year. We started to talk ourselves into the fact [that] we were infallible. There was nothing we couldn't do. And clearly that's wrong.»
As Bethesda Game Studios' first multiplayer game, Nesmith admits that they didn't realize just how different it would be to develop compared to a standard single-player Fallout game.
«It was like, 'it's going to be the same Fallout. All we have to do is add multiplayer.' And with those words, we started down a path that was not as successful as we had before because it's not just adding multiplayer. Turns out it was adding so, so, so, so much more.»
You can catch the full interview in the embed below.
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