Today, Bethesda offered a big update on how the studio is mapping its future.
Xbox’s massive cuts have left many of its subsidiaries reeling, with fans worried that Microsoft may have cut the legs off many of the industry’s most beloved franchises. id Software sought to reassure fans on the topic this week, and now Bethesda is also doing its bit on top.
One piece of news that might go under the radar here a bit is on Creation Engine 3, which Bethesda is developing specifically for Elder Scrolls VI and Fallout 5. I recently caught up with Todd Howard to learn a bit more about how the studio is positioning Creation Engine 3, Creation Club, and how it’s becoming an increasingly critical part of Bethesda’s future.
“I can’t say enough about our tech team. It’s just incredible.”
Creation Engine has been a bit controversial in some corners, with some gamers feeling it lacks the fidelity of engines like Unreal or the cinematic qualities of in-house engines like RE Engine.
Creation Engine has always been more of a sandbox play in my view, designed for extensibility first and foremost and rapid iteration on huge-scale worlds. It’s also designed for modding at its core, with Creation Club members earning over $10 million in revenue since the platform’s inception.
I caught up with Todd Howard recently to talk about a variety of topics, including how Creation Engine 3 is being leveraged in Fallout 5 and Elder Scrolls VI, and how he’s thinking about the platform given the rise of Roblox and Minecraft’s own platform-extensible features.
“When we build these worlds, it starts with the tech. A lot of people think engine, they think rendering, but there’s so much more that goes into it from a tool side and a system side,” Todd explains.
“For the kind of worlds that we want to build and also knowing that we were going to be doing Fallout 5, and just how do we do those simultaneously in a way where it’s not start and stop. And we’re really happy. I can’t say enough about our tech team. It’s just incredible. Our designers ask for so much crazy stuff, and our tech team finds a way to do it. And I think that’s really defined our games where you feel like anything is possible.”
I mentioned the stat Bethesda brought up: $10 million has been paid out to creators in the Creation Club program across games like Fallout 4 and Starfield. Given the rise of Roblox as a user-generated content juggernaut, I asked if these industry shifts have informed how Creation Engine 3 will show up.
“If you go back, something we’ve been super passionate about since we sort of started this run with Morrowind, I was adamant that I wanted the Elder Scrolls Construction Set to come with the game, like as a separate disc. And we’ve been doing it for decades. We have a creator group that have been doing it for decades, it’s what’s kept games like Skyrim alive after fifteen years.
It harkens back to when you played D&D and you can make your own adventures. That spirit of creation. It takes a lot of different flavors, so it’s really about supporting all those different flavors. I think we’re in an awesome spot with Creations, with verified creators, and they’re getting that revenue. It has risen all boats, free modding too, with those things being more popular. You see people who maybe they were a hobbyist on the side now becoming a professional. The the content in there blows us away. They just do an incredible job. And for some, now this is their career, and that makes us ecstatic.”
Could Creation Club and Creation Engine be another answer to Xbox’s Roblox problem?
On the Xbox layoffs, Todd Howard lamented for friends who will no longer remain at the studio with visible hurt, but noted that the game industry more broadly is undergoing a massive shift. He called back to 2016, just before the Xbox acquisition, on Bethesda’s sprint towards mobile and multiplayer as gamers seemed to be shifting away from single-player titles en masse.
That similar change now revolves around user-generated content in a lot of ways. Roblox is now bigger than Steam and PlayStation combined, as creators build out entire games and worlds and build entire businesses inside Roblox itself. Bethesda’s Creation Club was a pioneer in that space to some degree, alongside Minecraft, giving the modding community ways to turn their hobbies and passions into careers that pay the bills.
It’ll be interesting to see how Creation Engine 3 shows up in Fallout 5 and The Elder Scrolls VI, but we’re probably going to be waiting a while to see how it all shakes out.
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