While Microsoft undoubtedly wishes that Bethesda could speed up the development of its next games in the Fallout and The Elder Scrolls franchises, former Bethesda developer and lead designer of The Elder Scrolls 5: Skyrim, Bruce Nesmith, believes that rushing development could risk “disappointing fans” of the franchises. In an interview with FRVR, Nesmith spoke about the difficulties of game development and what Bethesda is likely facing despite the long time it’s taking to make its games.
“There is an old adage in software development about the process having three corners: resources, time, and quality,” Nesmith explained. “The studio decides two of them, which determines the third. If you lock down the resources and the schedule, that decides the quality you will achieve. If you lock down the quality and the schedule, that determines the resources you will need to complete the project.”
“A less well-known aspect of this is a rule of diminishing returns. The three corners need to be roughly balanced. You can’t ask the project to be done in a month by throwing a million people on it. Over-committing to any one of the corners increases friction and becomes less effective. Allowing ten years for a project creates a cycle of endless reinvention and ultimate failure.”
To reduce development times would mean “either increasing resources or reducing features, or both,” explained Nesmith, who went on to say that “resources in most big studios are already quite large, and it takes time to onboard them.” However, while shorter development times may have benefits, such as more frequent releases, they can lead to lower-quality sequels, resulting in fan disappointment.
“In my opinion, the biggest risks of shortened schedules are quality, reduced features, polish, or bugs,” he said. “The things that are done last end up getting set aside to complete the game on time. And of course, faster dev times would result in faster sequels. But that’s the wrong question. Those sequels risk disappointing fans.”
As for whether Bethesda could potentially mitigate these issues by getting other studios involved in the development of The Elder Scrolls 6 or Fallout 5, Nesmith didn’t want to make any blanket statement on the matter, since he doesn’t work at the company anymore. He did, however, note that “you can’t just hand it to anyone. I also think that it serves a franchise well to let the ground fallow for a while. A franchise that releases too many titles too quickly risks fan fatigue. Of course, too much time between releases can also be a problem.”
Ultimately, Nesmith believes that “the industry has painted itself into a bit of a corner” due to its emphasis on expanding on its games with bigger sequels rather than refining what it already has. “Each new release has to be bigger, better, and more,” he says. “Which requires more time, resources, and features. Publishers demand it. The fans demand it. But bigger isn’t linearly harder to make. It’s geometrically harder. To put it more simply, you get diminishing returns by adding staff and time. Twenty percent more staff or time gets you less than a twenty percent improvement.”
In the meantime, Bethesda employees who aren’t currently working on The Elder Scrolls or Fallout are rumored to be at risk of impending layoffs at Xbox.
