Something a little… outrageous has come up about Starfield, and the developers at Bethesda Game Studios had to talk about it in detail, because it’s something we can really say they got away with.
We’ve already quoted from MrMattyPlays’ YouTube video, in which Todd Howard has a lot to say, but since it’s an hour of footage, it’s no surprise that there’s more interesting stuff in the video. For example, the director of Starfield (who we last wrote about how often he releases addons for that game) says that they don’t want to rush the new Fallout games (you should ask Microsoft about that!).
“I agree with the statement that Fallout has never been more popular, looking at the number of players coming into these games and obviously the popularity of the TV show. We think a lot about franchise management. I spend a lot of time thinking about franchises that I love and what I’ve seen out there in terms of content. For us, it’s kind of game planning, number one, making sure that Fallout is relevant in the world. I think people are hungry for more. We’ve never stopped working on Fallout. A lot of that work obviously continues in Fallout 76. We just had the Skyland Valley update, so we’re really, really excited about where the game is. We’re really happy and the team, I’m so proud of the work that’s been done there.
For other Fallout games in the future, you know, obviously I can’t talk about them right now, but I would say rushing them or having to put out stuff that’s different than the work we’re doing on 76… We don’t feel like we need to rush any of that. Right now, the Fallout TV show fills a certain niche in terms of franchise and storytelling. I totally understand the desire for a new mainline single-player game. Look, these things take time. I don’t think there’s anything wrong with people missing things. We just want to get it right and make sure that whatever we do in a franchise, whether it’s Elder Scrolls or Fallout or now Starfield, that it’s a meaningful moment for everyone who loves those franchises as much as we do.
Our games are more popular than ever. Last month, we had 25 million players in our games. It’s just a staggering amount of people and players that we hear from, and our number one job is always: how do we serve that audience on a month-to-month basis so that we can take care of them while also developing new products,” Howard said. Howard said.
But you have to pay $7 for a single mission in Starfield’s Creations program. The game received the Starfield Creation Kit, and in the mission in question, you get to be a bounty hunter for the Trackers Alliance, with the promise of more similar missions in the future. The second such mission, The Vulture, is a paid mission that costs 700 Starfield Creation Credits. This costs $7, but the cheapest credit package is $10. This has not been well received, and many point to The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim (paid mods launched in 2015), but the paid horse armor introduced in TES IV: Oblivion in 2006 was similarly scandalous. Howard responded to this as well.
“We’re always trying to look at what else is out there and really make sure that we’re providing value to everybody, and where we’re not, hey, you know, we’re definitely going to adjust. I think we’re going to take a look at that and how we deliver content like that and whether we change the pricing or whether we split it up or what we should do there. So, great feedback from the community. We hear the feedback. We have to evaluate both pricing, what we put out for free, how we communicate what’s in something, and really hear from the community there.
We feel that a lot of [modders] have gone from being hobbyists to being professionals, and part of our job is to make sure that they can do that, and that they get paid, and that they see the monetary rewards of making great content. And so we had a great experience with Creation Club with our creators, and then the version that we’re doing now that first launched in Skyrim, everybody’s just responded really, really well. I think it’s important to us that part of it is that there’s a really healthy modding community where you have professionals and we’ve seen their content kind of “lift all boats” in that. It’s super important to us that all of that stays really, really healthy. We think it’s a big part of who we are as a studio, how we talk about modding, what our community is, and just making sure that we’re active and making sure that it’s as good as it can be for really everybody involved,” Howard added.
Howard is a pro at one thing: talking a lot about nothing.
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