Public said:
25 minutes with Todd talking?
No thanks...
I'm going to watch as much as I can stand but keep in mind that we already have reports about the interview so there really shouldn't be any new info.
EDIT2:
Legend:
Text within () are my comments
Text within [] are Todd's comments, usually paraphrased
EDIT:
BS about Fallout not selling well (this part was quoted before)
The rediculous argument about boardgames and tables (quoted before)
Bethesda Mission: Excellent People. Excellent Games. (ego trip)
Excellent People
1. There is no substitute for self-reliance
2. Culture of quallity (clearly lacking from Bethesda)
3. Low 'Asshole Quotient' (proven wrong by Todd and Pete)
Excellent Games
1. Great games are played, not made (already quoted but this is where he talks about how worthless design documents and ideas are)
2. Keep it simple
3. Define the experience [don't do this by a list of bullet points, do it by the experience you want the player to have] (that makes no fucking sense)
Your plan is not as important as your culture (BS, both are equally important)
Your ideas are not as important as your excecution (if only they followed through on this claim in their own games)
3. Define the Experience
The new Power Armor was one of the first images they made and is apparently really important
He claims they went back and played the old games (demonstratably untrue as applying to the whole team)
He talks about how violent it was
Talks about reading old reviews (already quoted and talked about) and goes on to say that you can look at old reviews of Arena and black out mentions of the name and it could apply to any TES game (what a thing to brag about, how innovative...)
He talks about reinventing the vaultsuit and the pipboy
He wanted to make looking at stats entertaining with the pipboy (failure)
Talks about wanting to make VATS always fun even if it's repetive (failure)
Shows some pretty cool concept art (really a story board) that shows what they thought VATS would be
2. Keep it Simple
Internal: Doing something really well takes time, more time than you probably have (justifying crappy design I guess)
External: The player won't appreciate or understand your complicated idea (certainly not if it's not done well but I think that complex games prove this argument wrong)
We can do anything, we just can't do everything
Make marketing part of your process [talks about bouncing ideas off of Pete to hear how consumers will respond to them] (already quoted and not a part of good game design)
Make marketing part of your process (this is business advice, not good design advice, what he talks about here is all marketing stuff and really has jack to do with game design)
1. Great Games are Played, not Made
5 months of art team playing the game not making art
Talks about editing to improve the game and about removing half of DC in order to make it work
Admitting your mistakes is essential (also something they fail to do, at least not until they are marketing for their next game)
4 levels of player experience
1. Learn [how do you make that fun? He claims that learning tends to not be fun]
2. Play [want to just play and have fun]
3. Challenge [mastered skills, people like to win (winning has no worth without losing)]
4. Surprise
Repeat [claims that too many developers focus on numbers 3&4 and sites Nintendo as doing it well by focusing on 1&2 (which is true, the problem is that they tend to put little focus on 3)]
Growing company as a publisher with a picture with the caption "Lost in Translation" and calls the dialogue salty
"Nerd Rage perk"
Translator:
The choice of the German term hinges mainly on what sort of nerd characteristics are dominant with the nerds in the game. Is it their profound geek-like knowledge of all things computer and technical? Or is it their boringness and tendency towards social exclusion? If there is one trait more dominant than the other, it would help to know. [giggling audience, not sure why...]
"You'll see plenty of my adult-sized stones when I'm pissing on your grave."
Translator:
What are adult-sized stones? [more giggling]
Reply: This means testicles. Large, adult-sized testitcles, as compred to the smaller testicles of a child. [more giggling] (this was apparently for laughs and demonstrating translation difficulties but it really doesn't add anything of any value as he fails to discuss solutions)
Layers of game from outside in:
Bugs and Polish (failure)
Game Balance [very small] (failure)
Amazing Game
Perfect Game (not sure what the hell this or the previous one were about)
Shows three images with the first two circles becoming smaller (balance disappearing)
Shows a picture of the PS3 with huge first circle, tiny others then shows the same as the last in previous slide
He talks about Blizzard drilling to the center of the circle by still releasing patches to improve their older games (too bad Bethesda doesn't put in this kind of effort...)
He says that they chart their progress on these circles and displays a crappy graph which the line keeps going past the top of the graph [talks about how you need to keep going and improving the game (they don't do this, as is clear by their lack of patches)]
The amount of copyrighted material used is rediculous, he's lucky he didn't get sued over it.
He talks a lot but says nothing!
