14 ms·

It seems pretty clear to me that in the video games industry (and pretty much any 'art' industry for that matter) great results are driven by singular, great pe

It seems pretty clear to me that in the video games industry (and pretty much any 'art' industry for that matter) great results are driven by singular, great people. Todd Howard was the mind behind TES and Fallout 3/4. Hidetaka Miyazaki was the mind behind Souls / Elden Ring. Shigeru Miyamoto was the mind behind Mario. And it's because these people really care about the product they are making. They have PASSION. When it comes to a game like 76, which was clearly mandated by some greedy executives who don't play games, the lack of passion permeates the whole game. From what the article describes it seems like nobody wanted to work on this thing - not the QA, not the devs, not the managers. The end result is no surprise. Nobody cared. If I was a games exec, I would do everything to empower the great minds that produce great games to pursue the projects they are passionate about. Unfortunately there are a lot of very successful companies out there that do the exact opposite of that, but the tide seems to be turning. EDIT: I want to clarify that part and parcel with being a talented passionate game director is the ability to build a great team and keep the team motivated. Obviously passion isn't the only ingredient to make a great game. As with any other massive undertaking, teams of humans are what get the job done. I simply observe that these singular figures have the two-part gift of understanding what makes a great game, and also being able to attract others who can help execute that vision.

meheleventyone 4y ago
> It seems pretty clear to me that in the video games industry (and pretty much any 'art' industry for that matter) great results are driven by singular, great people. I can assure you from working inside said industry that this is not often the case, if ever. Edit to add: great results are driven by great teams.
- fnordpiglet 4y ago
  I agree. Producers and designers that frontline a successful project get the visibility but they have to be backed by highly effective teams of equally gifted folks that collaborate effectively. I don’t think this is different for any complex human endeavor. Often times the front liner isn’t the one who built the team - there’s often an anchor person more in the middle of the project that attracts talent and creates the atmosphere of collegial collaboration. Smart front liners bring those folks along to the next projects. From the article it sounds like that was Starfield, not 76, which is probably why it was so miserable.
  - swivelmaster 4y ago
    As soon as a project is known internally as the one the B team was assigned to because all the “favorite” people went to the “better” project, it’s basically doomed. This has happened so many times, the game industry has enough people who should know better, and yet…
- uejfiweun 4y ago
  That's a totally fair point, and I completely agree. I should have clarified this in my original post. If you're passionate about games, but nobody wants to work with you, then that passion won't permeate throughout the development team. All these gaming visionaries tend to have the gift of extreme charisma and strong passion for games - you need both IMO to make a great result. You may have a great idea, but you need to get people fired up about it too and articulate it in a way that can be understood.
  - meheleventyone 4y ago
    Even still this isn’t correct, even building a great team isn’t the work of one person and plenty of great games are built by teams lead by people who don’t get press as visionaries. You’re falling for marketing, both personal (where extreme charisma does help) and company lead where wheeling out a famous name sells units. Which isn’t to say famous people are all rubbish but that the hype and the reality are very different to one another.
- OrderlyTiamat 4y ago
  This sounds just like the great man theory in history [1]. I think we should be wary when a lot is attributed to a single person whatever the context may be: there are always people "behind the stage" as it were, without whom the show doesn't start. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_man_theory https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_man_theory
antisthenes 4y ago
> Todd Howard was the mind behind TES and Fallout 3/4. If your example of a great game is Fallout 4, then you've already lost the argument. It pales in comparison to Fallout NV, Fallout 2 and even 3 in many regards. It's an extremely dumbed-down RPG experience, plagued by a lot of the same issues that are present in 76, including lack of passion and generic, tropey NPCs and environments. I think it would be more fair to say that most studios and game designers have their masterpieces, and then most of their other work is mediocre, simply because it trends towards the mean. Some great studios and designers can replicate their initial success once or twice more, but those are extremely rare.
- uejfiweun 4y ago
  Haha, that's fair. I certainly didn't like it the first time I played it. However, I recently tried again on survival mode after a friend's recommendation, and it feels totally different. No fast travel and saving only at beds changes the game completely. Suddenly vertibirds are useful, settlements are mandatory, and the world feels absolutely gigantic rather than a sandbox separated by loading screens. Highly recommend checking it out (although it still won't scratch your RPG itch).
- JohnJamesRambo 4y ago
  I loved Fallout 4, I'm sorry. Every second. I think a lot of people see the older games through nostalgia lenses when their lives were better/minds were younger/they were first experiencing an engrossing RPG. I played NV after 4 and NV was good too. Fallout 3 I keep giving up on and I'm not a quitter. It just doesn't draw me in like the other ones. It seems crude and simple comparatively, due to its age I guess.
  - kaibee 4y ago
    Try Fallout 2.
  - ericd 4y ago
    It's not just nostalgia, go play Fallout 2, GoG has a copy that should work. It holds up extremely well, because it's just a much better game than the Bethesda versions. The writing, the humor, the world building, it feels a lot more alive and real than the much more technically advanced iterations. Fallout 1 is less polished, but also great. Fallout 3+ always felt like a reskinned Elder Scrolls to me.
Apocryphon 4y ago
Hero worship is bad in games development because it can lead to just as tortuous experiences for those working under a supposed visionary who takes the praise and becomes a megalomaniac.
Beltalowda 4y ago
> It seems pretty clear to me that in the video games industry (and pretty much any 'art' industry for that matter) great results are driven by singular, great people. Todd Howard was the mind behind TES and Fallout 3/4 There are also many great results that are a team effort. And according to this article Todd Howard was also part of the problem. For example: "[A]lmost none of the Bethesda designers wanted the game to launch without NPCs. The design teams at both Rockville and Austin wanted NPCs to fill out the world of Fallout 76, but they say executive producer Todd Howard was not willing to budge all the way up ‘til launch."
- uejfiweun 4y ago
  Yeah, its my bad for not articulating this in the post. Obviously, any giant product like a modern movie or game is made by teams. I think one hallmark of a great director is the ability to build a great team around you, which is just as important as being passionate and understanding the medium.
  - synu 4y ago
    I’ve never once experienced the “face” of a game doing all the hiring, or even being involved in too many interviews (except for marketing purposes, of course, but I mean hiring interviews). It’s quite a full time and important job to do the PR.
- bradhe 4y ago
  Having a vision is "part of the problem?"
  - kristofferR 4y ago
    If the vision is bad then obviously.
  - anigbrowl 4y ago
    Lots of visions are mediocre, incoherent, or superficial.
  - 4y ago
synu 4y ago
I worked in the video game industry for a long time. This is a story you’re being sold - it’s the teams who build great games, not some singular great passionate mind. It’s a way for marketing teams to build a brand, not much more than that.
izzydata 4y ago
I don't think it comes down to a singular person, but I'm pretty sure it is about passion. Modern large game studios have removed all the passion and turned game development into an assembly line of 100s or more people working on it. Creating a very large game and also having it be good seems more like an exception at this point. Games with small teams probably have a much easier time creating a game they are passionate about even if the scope of the game has to be smaller.
- urthor 4y ago
  I find the presence of the "auteur" is valuable because it's a signal to people. When there's a single leader who's highly motivated to do critically acclaimed work, it signals to talent that this is a project aimed at critically acclaimed work. Now, said auteur also makes great margin calls and leadership decisions. But keep in mind it's not just "great man syndrome."
  - synu 4y ago
    That’s why marketing teams work hard to create that perception in the audience.
    - urthor 4y ago
      The difference is that, having worked in the industry, I can say that film directors are given exactly the power they are advertised as having. The film industry has learnt through many trials and errors it has to happen this way. Software hasn't.
      - synu 4y ago
        So less that in the video games industry great results are driven by singular, great people today, but games would be better if they were?
        urthor 4y ago
pacetherace 4y ago
What you mean to say is that there are guys who get much more credit than they deserve when a game or for that matter any product becomes a success. Fallout 76 seems to be a classic case of unrealistic development and testing deadlines.
- LegitShady 4y ago
  Fallout 76 was deeply flawed as a concept. The concept of "remove the characters and story from the game and let them collect it with junk to basebuild" made the whole game deeply unenjoyable compared to a regular fallout game. Fallout 76 had problems with development and testing as well, but the problems with it began at its core concept - which they've since said 'oops' and put back into the game. The initial question of fallout 76 seems to be "how can we turn fallout 4 into a game with constant income" and every mistake started there.
127 4y ago
Only proof I've seen Todd being good at is marketing. That's it.
na85 4y ago
>It seems pretty clear to me that in the video games industry (and pretty much any 'art' industry for that matter) great results are driven by singular, great people. Todd Howard was the mind behind TES and Fallout 3/4. Pretty sure this attitude is what led to Daikatana. Cults of personality are universally bad.
seanhunter 4y ago
Firstly as other people have pointed out, teams build great products, not some individual with a messianic vision. That's just marketing. Secondly, Todd Howard is the greedy executive who pushed out Fallout 76 and keeps rereleasing skyrim year after year after year. He has passion yes, but it's for raking in the benjamins. Making great games is strictly secondary. Thirdly FO76 was such a total fiasco that people seem to have forgotten that Fallout 4 was insanely buggy at launch and even when they got through that was mediocre at best. In Fallout New Vegas there are interesting puzzles to solve and different ways to progress through the quest. In Fallout 4 you go places and then shoot people. Occasionally you get presented with 4 dialog options which are "yes", "yes", "no, but actually yes", and "close this dialog for now and be forced to come back later and be presented by the same choices".
robonerd 4y ago
> It seems pretty clear to me that in the video games industry (and pretty much any 'art' industry for that matter) great results are driven by singular, great people. Nah. What actually happens is you have one [or more] driven people and a team of others helping guide them and restrain their excesses. After a few commercial successes, the rest of the team gets forgotten or left behind eventually and the single celebrity creator, now unrestrained (and ego inflated by fans), starts producing crap. Hideo Kojima, I'm looking at you.
shrimp_emoji 4y ago
>Todd Howard was the mind behind TES and Fallout 3/4 He was one of the mindS behind TES, and probably the dumbest of the bunch. Since companies exist for profit, and the most profit exists in the lowest common denominator, he was eventually the only one left, which is how you get modern Bethesda.

meheleventyone 4y ago

> It seems pretty clear to me that in the video games industry (and pretty much any 'art' industry for that matter) great results are driven by singular, great people. I can assure you from working inside said industry that this is not often the case, if ever. Edit to add: great results are driven by great teams.

fnordpiglet 4y ago
I agree. Producers and designers that frontline a successful project get the visibility but they have to be backed by highly effective teams of equally gifted folks that collaborate effectively. I don’t think this is different for any complex human endeavor. Often times the front liner isn’t the one who built the team - there’s often an anchor person more in the middle of the project that attracts talent and creates the atmosphere of collegial collaboration. Smart front liners bring those folks along to the next projects. From the article it sounds like that was Starfield, not 76, which is probably why it was so miserable.
- swivelmaster 4y ago
  As soon as a project is known internally as the one the B team was assigned to because all the “favorite” people went to the “better” project, it’s basically doomed. This has happened so many times, the game industry has enough people who should know better, and yet…
uejfiweun 4y ago
That's a totally fair point, and I completely agree. I should have clarified this in my original post. If you're passionate about games, but nobody wants to work with you, then that passion won't permeate throughout the development team. All these gaming visionaries tend to have the gift of extreme charisma and strong passion for games - you need both IMO to make a great result. You may have a great idea, but you need to get people fired up about it too and articulate it in a way that can be understood.
- meheleventyone 4y ago
  Even still this isn’t correct, even building a great team isn’t the work of one person and plenty of great games are built by teams lead by people who don’t get press as visionaries. You’re falling for marketing, both personal (where extreme charisma does help) and company lead where wheeling out a famous name sells units. Which isn’t to say famous people are all rubbish but that the hype and the reality are very different to one another.
OrderlyTiamat 4y ago
This sounds just like the great man theory in history [1]. I think we should be wary when a lot is attributed to a single person whatever the context may be: there are always people "behind the stage" as it were, without whom the show doesn't start. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_man_theory https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_man_theory

antisthenes 4y ago

> Todd Howard was the mind behind TES and Fallout 3/4. If your example of a great game is Fallout 4, then you've already lost the argument. It pales in comparison to Fallout NV, Fallout 2 and even 3 in many regards. It's an extremely dumbed-down RPG experience, plagued by a lot of the same issues that are present in 76, including lack of passion and generic, tropey NPCs and environments. I think it would be more fair to say that most studios and game designers have their masterpieces, and then most of their other work is mediocre, simply because it trends towards the mean. Some great studios and designers can replicate their initial success once or twice more, but those are extremely rare.

uejfiweun 4y ago
Haha, that's fair. I certainly didn't like it the first time I played it. However, I recently tried again on survival mode after a friend's recommendation, and it feels totally different. No fast travel and saving only at beds changes the game completely. Suddenly vertibirds are useful, settlements are mandatory, and the world feels absolutely gigantic rather than a sandbox separated by loading screens. Highly recommend checking it out (although it still won't scratch your RPG itch).
JohnJamesRambo 4y ago
I loved Fallout 4, I'm sorry. Every second. I think a lot of people see the older games through nostalgia lenses when their lives were better/minds were younger/they were first experiencing an engrossing RPG. I played NV after 4 and NV was good too. Fallout 3 I keep giving up on and I'm not a quitter. It just doesn't draw me in like the other ones. It seems crude and simple comparatively, due to its age I guess.
- kaibee 4y ago
  Try Fallout 2.
- ericd 4y ago
  It's not just nostalgia, go play Fallout 2, GoG has a copy that should work. It holds up extremely well, because it's just a much better game than the Bethesda versions. The writing, the humor, the world building, it feels a lot more alive and real than the much more technically advanced iterations. Fallout 1 is less polished, but also great. Fallout 3+ always felt like a reskinned Elder Scrolls to me.

Apocryphon 4y ago

Hero worship is bad in games development because it can lead to just as tortuous experiences for those working under a supposed visionary who takes the praise and becomes a megalomaniac.

Beltalowda 4y ago

> It seems pretty clear to me that in the video games industry (and pretty much any 'art' industry for that matter) great results are driven by singular, great people. Todd Howard was the mind behind TES and Fallout 3/4 There are also many great results that are a team effort. And according to this article Todd Howard was also part of the problem. For example: "[A]lmost none of the Bethesda designers wanted the game to launch without NPCs. The design teams at both Rockville and Austin wanted NPCs to fill out the world of Fallout 76, but they say executive producer Todd Howard was not willing to budge all the way up ‘til launch."

uejfiweun 4y ago
Yeah, its my bad for not articulating this in the post. Obviously, any giant product like a modern movie or game is made by teams. I think one hallmark of a great director is the ability to build a great team around you, which is just as important as being passionate and understanding the medium.
- synu 4y ago
  I’ve never once experienced the “face” of a game doing all the hiring, or even being involved in too many interviews (except for marketing purposes, of course, but I mean hiring interviews). It’s quite a full time and important job to do the PR.
bradhe 4y ago
Having a vision is "part of the problem?"
- kristofferR 4y ago
  If the vision is bad then obviously.
- anigbrowl 4y ago
  Lots of visions are mediocre, incoherent, or superficial.
- 4y ago

synu 4y ago

I worked in the video game industry for a long time. This is a story you’re being sold - it’s the teams who build great games, not some singular great passionate mind. It’s a way for marketing teams to build a brand, not much more than that.

izzydata 4y ago

I don't think it comes down to a singular person, but I'm pretty sure it is about passion. Modern large game studios have removed all the passion and turned game development into an assembly line of 100s or more people working on it. Creating a very large game and also having it be good seems more like an exception at this point. Games with small teams probably have a much easier time creating a game they are passionate about even if the scope of the game has to be smaller.

urthor 4y ago
I find the presence of the "auteur" is valuable because it's a signal to people. When there's a single leader who's highly motivated to do critically acclaimed work, it signals to talent that this is a project aimed at critically acclaimed work. Now, said auteur also makes great margin calls and leadership decisions. But keep in mind it's not just "great man syndrome."
- synu 4y ago
  That’s why marketing teams work hard to create that perception in the audience.
  - urthor 4y ago
    The difference is that, having worked in the industry, I can say that film directors are given exactly the power they are advertised as having. The film industry has learnt through many trials and errors it has to happen this way. Software hasn't.
    - synu 4y ago
      So less that in the video games industry great results are driven by singular, great people today, but games would be better if they were?
      - urthor 4y ago

pacetherace 4y ago

What you mean to say is that there are guys who get much more credit than they deserve when a game or for that matter any product becomes a success. Fallout 76 seems to be a classic case of unrealistic development and testing deadlines.

LegitShady 4y ago
Fallout 76 was deeply flawed as a concept. The concept of "remove the characters and story from the game and let them collect it with junk to basebuild" made the whole game deeply unenjoyable compared to a regular fallout game. Fallout 76 had problems with development and testing as well, but the problems with it began at its core concept - which they've since said 'oops' and put back into the game. The initial question of fallout 76 seems to be "how can we turn fallout 4 into a game with constant income" and every mistake started there.

127 4y ago

Only proof I've seen Todd being good at is marketing. That's it.

na85 4y ago

seanhunter 4y ago

Firstly as other people have pointed out, teams build great products, not some individual with a messianic vision. That's just marketing. Secondly, Todd Howard is the greedy executive who pushed out Fallout 76 and keeps rereleasing skyrim year after year after year. He has passion yes, but it's for raking in the benjamins. Making great games is strictly secondary. Thirdly FO76 was such a total fiasco that people seem to have forgotten that Fallout 4 was insanely buggy at launch and even when they got through that was mediocre at best. In Fallout New Vegas there are interesting puzzles to solve and different ways to progress through the quest. In Fallout 4 you go places and then shoot people. Occasionally you get presented with 4 dialog options which are "yes", "yes", "no, but actually yes", and "close this dialog for now and be forced to come back later and be presented by the same choices".

robonerd 4y ago

> It seems pretty clear to me that in the video games industry (and pretty much any 'art' industry for that matter) great results are driven by singular, great people. Nah. What actually happens is you have one [or more] driven people and a team of others helping guide them and restrain their excesses. After a few commercial successes, the rest of the team gets forgotten or left behind eventually and the single celebrity creator, now unrestrained (and ego inflated by fans), starts producing crap. Hideo Kojima, I'm looking at you.

shrimp_emoji 4y ago

>Todd Howard was the mind behind TES and Fallout 3/4 He was one of the mindS behind TES, and probably the dumbest of the bunch. Since companies exist for profit, and the most profit exists in the lowest common denominator, he was eventually the only one left, which is how you get modern Bethesda.