Public said:
Thou hast asked and I shall deliver upon thee true greatness... but it might take a few days.
So this is pretty much a transcript of the presentation so it'll be broken up into parts. I'll edit in parts 2&3 later (either later tonight or tomarrow) as this takes a fair amount of time. Also, should I reserve a post or two after this so that I can edit in the later parts or is there no length limit on posts here?
Added part 2 3/19/09
Format:
Things in [] are what he said
Things in () are my comments
Quotes next to slides are what he says when he brings up the slide
Note that all of the ums, you knows, and other such crap along with stuttering are being removed (sorry if I put one or two in) for the sake of readability but bad grammar and mispeaks will be included where I feel like it
Part 1:
Introduces himself [who he is, where he works, what his position is there] and says that he's been there since 1994 and the last three games he led were TES III, IV, and Fallout 3 (I believe the only games he's led)
Says quieter "I was backstage giving out more awards to Little Big Planet," clears throat, says even quieter "they didn't have enough."
Says that he's giving an inside look at development and design philosophies
Slide 1: "This is kinda what it's like to make a game"
Picture of a guy in a yellow and red suit labeled "You" leaping over a bunch of babies labeled "Innocent Babies (fans)" with an old guy with crossed arms watching labeled "Your Boss" [says that this is the "great leap you have to make when you make a game"]
Slide 2: "There are many people you have to please"
Picture of a young Asian girl with a cat pawing her face with the caption "pimp cat is not statisfyed make more money!!!!" on the right [says these are internal]
Picture of a note that says "Fallout 3 NO DLC For PS3? Bullshit!" labeled "(Actual Fax)" ["We get lots of good mail" he says he took a picture of it with his I-Phone]
Slide 3
"Why Fallout?" with a picture of Vault Boy ["Why are you guys doing Fallout? You know this is kind of a niche game that didn't sell that well. And our answer was 'Look it's great, great ideas never, never die. And we were in love with the first game and felt it needed to be done again.'"]
Slide 4: "When your pitching your ideas or coming up with them, you're going to get shown lots and lots of charts and there is no chart, and Micheal Pack and I disagree, that will prove your idea good. You know, should you do this game, because there is no data that will prove it valid."
Slide 5: "The other thing I like to say at work is Install base really doesn't matter"
"Install base doesn't matter."
Picture of a pie chart on the left with sales for the three consoles labeled "39.4 Million"
Picture on the right of a table labeled "63^2 Gafriggingoogillion"
["'You should make it for this!' and my comeback is 'Well if install base mattered then we all should make board games because there's a lot of tables.'" followed by crowd laughing]
Slide 6: "You know, you gotta go for it and do something that you really believe in"
"Go for it!"
Animated gif on the left with a pole vaulter going up and coming back down because he failed to make it to the top, crashes on the ground
Animated gif on the right with a skateboarder going up a quarter pipe, falling off of his skateboard, crashing on the ground, and having his shoes fly off [Todd draws people's attention to this]
["You gotta be fearless when you make your games"]
Slide 7: "What is our mission internally at Bethesda Game Studios? What do we strive for as a group?"
Bethesda Game Studios logo with "Mission:" underneath
"Excellent People. Excellent Games." [reads text and says "These two things go together. I'm a believer you can't have one without the other."
Slide 8: "Excellent people make excellent games"
Picture on the left of a 1950s (?) family
Picture on the right of the XBox 360 cover of Fallout 3
Slide 9
Picture on the right of a fat guy wearing sunglasses with a shirt that's labeled "I'M #1 NO WHY TRY HARDER"
"Excellent People
1. There is no substitute for self-reliance" ["One of the things we look for," reads text "If you have to overly manage your people and get them to do good, that's probably not a path to success. You need people that know to do it."]
"2. Culture of quality" ["You have to have," reads text "It has to be in your studio. If you have a plan that says 'This is how we get quality,' that might get you there but ultimately, you want a culture."]
"3. Low 'Asshole Quotient'" ["And this is something we look for too. We have a very," reads text "Egos don't work. You know, when you're making a game, everyone has to respect each other, something we preach in the studio. When you're talking to somebody about an idea or you wanna change something, you don't like how something works, treat them with respect, their work with respect, and each other."
Slide 10: "That's it, we want Gorillas and Sharks high-fiving. Nice!"
Picture of a gorilla high fiving a shark ["I'm not sure is that art, in programming, I just like that image, that's my image for the team working together really well."
Slide 11: "Here's the team that made Fallout 3. We've grown to about 80 people, a lot of them I've worked with for over a decade, some of them are here today. Really great group of people who really give it their all to make something that we believe in and that makes all the difference."
Picture of the team from the first blog post about Fallout 3 (?)
Slide 12: "What are our three rules to making excellent games [guessing "in", was mumbled] development"
"Excellent Games
1. Great games are played, not made" [Reads text "You can have the biggest design document ever, like" in a deriding voice "''This is genius, look at me.' You put it in the game and your going to change 80-90% of it as soon as you play it. So we kind of you have to play your game, you have to be ready to throw out the ideas that you think are the greatest."]
"2. Keep it simple" [Reads text "To do features on these platforms and what we're doing, it takes a lot of time, more time than you probably have. So you wanna keep it simple."]
"3. Define the experience" ["Lastly," reads text "Don't define your game by a list of bullet points 'These are the features the game is going to have,' define the experience that you want the player to have.]
Slide 13: "Excellent people. Excellent games."
Same as slide 11
Slide 14: "There's our excellent people"
On the left, gorilla-shark picture again with subtitle "Your plan is not as important as your culture." ["And the thing with that is that," reads text "If somebody comes to you and says 'Look I have this schedule. Here this schedule is perfect, the game is going to be great, here's the schedule," they're wrong! There's going to be problems. There's always a problems in the schedule and your culture is what is going to solve those problems."]
On right, man leaping babies picture labeled "Your ideas are not as important as your execution." ["Then your great game, there it is," reads text "So again this goes to the great game being played, not made. That you need to be able to execute your ideas really well."]
Slide 15: "So we're gonna step back through those the rules we have."
"3. Define the Experience" [Reads text "Most people, and I sit in some pitches, they'll define their as the..."]
Picture on the left of "Awesome" motivator with StarWars cast playing in a bad and picture on the right of "Coolness" with a guy with four popped collars [in a dramatic voice "'Awesome and cool,' that isn't like the experience." gets distracted by audience laughing at images and comments on them "So obviously everyone wants their game to be this but you know."]
Slide 16: "What is the experience of Fallout?"
Picture of new power armor ["This is one of the very first images we made. It was made by Istavan Pely, our lead artist. Where's Ist, I saw him, there he is right there. (I'm assuming pointed him out to the audience) This was made in 2004. Give it up for Ist. [audience applauds]"]
Slide 17
Picture on left of Ist labeled "IST LOVES" ["Ist is very even keeled, our artists. Is Ist like that? I made this to show when Ist loves something."]
Picture on the right of Ist with angry eyebrows, sideburns, and a frown labeled in bold "IST HATES" ["We made this when Ist hates things."]
Slide 18
Todd Howard looking like someone with down syndrome (no offense intended, I'm being literal) ["We do our research, I ("want" is what it sounds like but it's mumbled) an embarrassing picture of myself to offset that, this is from 2004 as well."]
Slide 19: "So we really look at the old games, what is the experience of Fallout?"
Picture of Vault Dweller talking with a women in a recreation room (?) of a vault ["So obviously we go back and play the old games. But there's this aging quality to them. Here you see the Vault in Fallout 1. You see the vault suits which we, you know, are very, very iconic Fallout."]
Slide 20: "Another one here you see some of the violence."
Picture of Vault dweller shooting a death claw with a minigun (I'm guessing somewhat here, it's small and low res) ["Which if you played it now it doesn't register with you because it's, you know, sprites and their arms rip off. But for the day it was incredibly violent."]
Slide 21: "And lastly the dialogue, how it was handled. One of the very first games to have 3D animated heads with voice, lip syncing, showing emotions, and this was in 1997."
A picture of a conversation with the Overseer ["So one of the things we do, and you can use on your franchises, is read old reviews. So we find old reviews, it removes the aging from what people thought of it. You know, the violence and the animation in these games are just crazy and amazing and the dialogue and the voice acting and all those things. If you, you could actually pull up a review of our first Elderscrolls game, Arena, just black out a few words and you cannot tell what Elderscrolls game that is. You can't tell if it's Daggerfall or Arena or Morrowind or Oblivion. And it really, really helps you get down to what is the experience of that game. There's a great chapter I found in the Fallout 1 hint book that was-is called 'One woman's journey through the wasteland' and it's written just from the perspective of somebody doing it, there's no 'What's the interface?' and really gives ya a good sense of the world."]
Slide 22: "And what is the experience of Fallout?"
Concept art of Washington Monument ["For us it was to make it more real, obviously the game was in DC."]
Slide 23: "And this sense of loneliness."
Concept art of the wasteland (looking at a crater/canyon with a house on the left?) ["And the wasteland is a character. This work is done by Craig Mullens, who we love, the last image of the capital is one of the pieces of into the pixel."]
Slide 24: "So to show ya some of the work."
Concept art of aircraft carrier ["And this stuff was done four and a half, five years ago. Really as kinda the benchmark for the vibe of the game."]
Slide 25
Concept art of the Lincoln Memorial (I think, I could be wrong) [silence]
Slide 26: "Here's some raiders and they have a brotherhood of steel guy they captured."
Concept art of the people in the wasteland with the billboard and such
Slide 27: "And then we go through, we just do tons and tons of concept on the key elements of Fallout"
Concept art of the vault suit
Slide 28: "so the vault suit"
More concept art of vault suits
Slide 29: "I donno how many of these we did,"
Even more concept art of vault suits
Slide 30: "this is just a sample,"
And more
Slide 31: "I mean we did, ugh I don't even remember, too many."
And more
Slide 32: "but to really"
And more
Slide 33: "bear down to"
And more
Slide 34: "what is the essence of the vault suit?"
And more ["How do we reinvent it, what would it really look like, to make it new again."]
END PART 1
Slide 35: "We did the same thing with the Pipboy"
Concept art of Pipboy 3000 ["Big believer that whatever you're doing in a game, for us, with role playing, you look at your stats a lot"]
Slide 36: "To make something that's repetitive... So the player's going to look at his stats all the time, right? So you wanna make that entertaining."
More convept art of Pipboy 3000
Slide 37: "So we knew we had to spend a lot of time on the Pipboy"
And more
Slide 38: "(mumbled) That's close to the final design (refering to art)"
And more
Slide 39: "And then VATS. Another thing you're going to do a lot in any of these games, that we do, you're going to kill guys a lot, right?"
Picture of Fast Shot trait Vault Boy with "V.A.T.S. (Vault-Tec Assisted Targeting System)" written above and unreadable text below, looks like a scan from some document ["So we wanted to do something that new there"]
Slide 40: "And make the repetitive action of shooting people, this is one of our early designs for VATS (crowd laughs)."
Picture of 50's style art of a little girl pointing a gun at a little boy who has the VATS % hit markers ["You got the humor, you got violence. We don't let kids kill eachother though (trails off into mumbling, sounds like "that's"). You know, to make it fun every time, make that simple activity of killing enjoyable."]
Slide 41: "This is... These were two of the inspirations aswell."
Picture of car crashing (Burnout?) on the left and a boxer (CGI) getting punched ["You know, we'd sit around like... 'It's like crash mode,' and then like finding the guy's head's blown up"]
Slide 42: "This is concept art from 2004."
Concept art of two Super Mutants in the DC ruins ["How many people... have you all played Fallout? (crowd cheers and claps) Okay, has anybody not? Come on, yeah there we go, your it (mumbled sounds more like "yerit"). Truth teller."]
Slide 43: "So we did this, this concept art"
Closeup of one of the mutant's head in same concept art with VATS box around it
Slide 44: "in 2004 "
Closeup of one of the other mutant's head in same concept art with VATS box around it
Slide 45: "This is what VATS is going to feel like."
Picture of female vault dweller shooting a (rifle? energy weapon? from behind her head?) [""]
Slide 46: "You know, what is the experience of VATS, it's not like a heavy design, it's like 'You target the stuff thing, then it goes and fun"
Concept art of a Super Mutant getting a hole shot through his head with his buddy running next to him
Slide 47: "and people, their heads blow off."
Concept art of a guy charging with an axe next to his buddy with a burning skull for a head (continued from the last)
Slide 48: "Everybody claps, yay."
Concept art of the charging guy geting one of his arms blown off with the vault dweller visable and shooting
Slide 49: "Okay, rule number 2, so that was define the experience, rule number 2 is 'keep it simple'."
Reads "2. Keep it Simple"
"Internal: Doing something really well takes time, more time than you probably have." ["Internal reason for doing this," reads starting after 'internal']
"External: The player won't appreciate or understand your complicated idea." [reads "One of our rules internally too is"]
"We can do anything, we just can't do everything." [reads "This works well with team members who are like (in a mocking voice) 'Why don't you like my idea?' 'It's not that I don't like your idea.'"]
Slide 50: "Another thing to do with keeping it simple is"
Slide reads "Make marketing part of your process." [reads]
Picture of Pete Hines ["This is Pete Hines whose the product manager on Fallout 3, where's Pete? The best in the business at this. (mumbles) There in the back he's waving. So Pete's really, really part of the team and he's a good guy. He has a great since of 'How will the consumer react to this?' so I'll go to him with features and 'Okay, it's like this, what do ya think?'"]
Slide 51: "(in a voice) 'Oh no, that's bad,' and then you keep 'Okay well, how about this what do ya think about this?'"
Slide reads "Make marketing part of your process."
Different picture of Pete
Slide 52: "and Pete's excited that people will think this."
Slide reads "Make marketing part of your process."
Different picture of Pete, this time is an animated gif
Picture of cover of GameInformer with Fallout 3 cover ["And the other thing with marketing to realize is that everything you do from the begining is part of the player experience, that's how we view it. So the ma- you know, when you run your first cover story, that's the first experience of Fallout 3"]
Picture of Bethesda's Fallout website ["and then your website"]
Screenshot from teaser trailer ["and then the teaser trailer"]
Screenshot from X-Play or Attack of the Show interview ["and demos you give"]
Picture of XBox 360 cover of Fallout 3 ["and then they see the box on the shelf. You know, that's an experience- that's experiencing Fallout, what does the box look like?"]
Picture of XBox 360 cover of Fallout 3 instruction manual ["What does the manual look like? Is it in the tone of the world?"]
Picture of XBox 360 Fallout 3 play disc ["What does the actual disc look like? So by the time the player has put your game in, they have already experienced all of this stuff, they have an expectation, they've already learned things if they're savy enough, and most of them are. So you kind of have to work all of that into your process. And again, keep it simple."]
Slide 53: "Alright, so the big one."
Reads "1. Great Games are Played, not Made." [reads "Again this is... it sounds fairly easy, right? You play your game and then you change it to the parts you don't like, I mean everybody does that to some level. We do it alot so for the last five months of Fallout, the entire art team doesn't make art, they're playing the game. Everybody plays the game a lot, internally, 'cause it's the game we want to make and play. So finding things that are wrong and agreeing on them is the hard part"]
Picture of "REALITY CHECK AHEAD" caution roadsign ["that you have to look for the signs, okay? And they'll come up and you'll want to ignore them"]
Pictuer of Gandaulf cautuin roadsign that reads "YOU SHALL NOT PASS!" ["'cause you like your ideas, they get less subtle"]
Slide 54: "and eventually just bad things happen if you ignore all that."
Screenshot of Oregon Trail game (I think, I've only played the Mac version of the original) [crowd laughs "You wanna sort of solve it before you get to that point, one of the great examples in Fallout was"]
Slide 55: "we had built a lot of Washington DC, I mean a lot, and we went to play it and it was just too much space, we had done all of this work and we took about half of the downtown DC out of the game."
Picture of a bulding being demolished in four parts on the left
Pictuer of a kid crying on the right ["Removed work that all of these people had done and it makes people upset, right? So you gotta watch your team members, we're from Maryland so we like pictures of Duke Fans crying, make us happy. (crowd laughs) And again, you got- these are big moments, you're going to delete, from the game, 'Hey the last six months? Click.'"]
Slide 56: "You have to treat people with respect okay, you can't go around just take it, we know what we're doin', we'll do what we want. Okay?"
Picture on the left of soldier with "HOW ABOUT A NICE BIG CUP OF SHUT THE FUCK UP"
Gorrila/shark high five picture ["Sharks, gorrilas high fivin', respect your team, be nice."]
Slide 57: "You got to admit your mistakes, like look, this was a bad call, okay?"
Reads "Admitting your mistakes is essential."
Pictuer of newspaper clipping that reads "Correction - A headline on an item in the Fb. 5 edition of the Enquirer Bulletin incorrectly stated 'Stolen groceries.' It should have read 'Homicide.'" ["You have to be very open with your mistakes." pauses while crowd laughs "I actually think this is my favorite slide. And this is really hard to do, believe it or not, okay? It sounds easy but when it comes to your stuff it's hard to do."]
Slide 58: "Now we're gonna go through the four levels of player experience. So what do you looking for when making these changes."
In reverse order reads: "1 Learn" ["The first level, a player is starting your game the first thing they're doing is learning it."]
Picture of a cat with a 360 controller with text that reads "I played your guy and he died." ["How do you make that fun. When people play your game, they... there's this anxiousness when you play, right? So you have these moments when you buy a game, when do actually start having fun? You put the game in well it's like 'I don't quite get it yet,' 'I'm learning the controls.' This is a big thing that the industry has to tackle, how to let people have fun while they're learning."]
Picture disappears, arrow appears above learn pointing to "2 Play" and a picture appears on the right of Mario and Luigi from a game ["And then they get to actually playing. So now they're playing your game, alright?"]
Picture is replaced by a snowman with a sign reading "I'll be dead soon" ["They aren't neccessarily worried yet about dieing. They just wanna play and have fun."]
Arrow appears above play pointing to "3 Challenge" ["Once you're into this stage you move up and then you can start challenging them. It gets harder in some way, they've mastered these skills."]
Picture is replaced by a toddler holding up a pen having written all over a baby's face reading "OWNED!" ["It's not 'till your through that- people wanna win. I love this," crowd laughing "So people like to win, right? So even though they're being challenged, one of our rules is that 'Challenge the player but give him all the tools to win.' A lot of players if you give them stuff, in Fallout we give you this, you know, nuclear (he pronounces it nu-cu-lar) bomb launcher and these shells where people go 'Cool!' as they try it once and then they hold onto the nukes, we know they're gonna do this, and then they run into something hard and they're like 'Well I don't wanna be a wussy, I'm not going to use my nukes yet.' They have a way out, they just don't wanna use it yet, they finish the game with pile of nuclear (same pronunciation) bombs, but that's a good device to always give the player a way out. He can always win."]
Picture disappears, arrow appears above challenge pointing to "4 Surprise" and a picture of a fortune cookie with a fortune reading "Now you know what a cat tastes like." ["It's not till you get through that that you can then surprise them with something new." crowd laughs "I think that's my second favorite one."]
Picture is replaced with a picture of an arrow from 4 back to 1["So now you've shown them something new and the whole thing repeats. Now they're learning the new thing. Too many of us focus on number 3 and 4, 'cause we're trying to impress our coworkers who understand the game. The really good game makers, Nintendo is the best at 1 and 2, okay? So you can take a que from them. Games that do this cycle really well, if you look at Half-Life 2, does this cycle really well, 'Here's a new enemy, here's a new weapon.'"]
END PART 2
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