The Elder Scrolls VI was announced back in 2018 during that year's Bethesda E3 showcase, and it may well be over a decade until it is released on PC and consoles like the PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X|S. While the long absence of the series has unnerved fans, the game taking so long to release may not be a bad thing, as Bethesda Game Studios veteran and The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim lead designer Bruce Nesmith warned that faster development times could lead to reduced features and polish.
"There is an old adage in software development about the process having three corners, resources, time, and quality (which includes both features and polish)," Nesmith told FRVR. "The studio decides two of them, which determines the third. If you lock down the resources (staff, equipment, etc.) and the schedule, that decides the quality you will achieve (number of features and polish). If you lock down the quality and the schedule, that determines the resources you will need to complete the project. You can’t dictate all three, only two. 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 allow for the shorter development time and thus the faster release of new entries in The Elder Scrolls and Fallout series which the new Xbox management are pushing for, resources have to be increased or features have to be cut, or both. As resources are already significant, speeding up development could lead to significant issues.
"In my opinion, the biggest risks of shortened schedules is quality, reduced features, polish, or bugs," Nesmith 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."
One way to avoid a repeat of The Elder Scrolls VI situation would be to have spin-off games developed by other studios in the vein of Fallout: New Vegas, or rely on asset reuse. While some Japanese development studios have successfully employed this, such as Square Enix with the Final Fantasy VII Remake trilogy and Ryu Ga Gotoku Studio with the Like a Dragon series, Western development studios haven't. Bethesda itself has been heavily criticized for doing so with Starfield, and Bruce Nesmith believes that, in this regard, the industry painted itself into a corner.
"Each new release has to be bigger, better, and more. 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."
With its long development time, The Elder Scrolls VI is expected to be the biggest entry in the series to date, but it will be very interesting to see if future entries in the series will indeed take less time to develop, and the price that will need to be paid to achieve this.
The series remains one of the most popular RPG series to date, but strong sales don't always translate into high player retention as highlighted by last year's The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion Remastered. And in a market where this sort of data determines the ultimate destiny of any gaming project, shorter development times could definitely have an impact on the future of a franchise, no matter how popular it is.
About the author: Francesco De Meo has been covering video games and technology since 2012, starting his career at small outlets like Gamersyndrome and GeekSnack. After joining Wccftech gaming section in 2015, he quickly expanded his video gaming coverage with in-depth reporting, interviews with iconic industry figures such as Grasshopper Manufacture founder and No More Heroes creator Goichi "Suda51" Suda, Resident Evil series creator Shinji Mikami, Team NINJA's president and Nioh series director Fumihiko Yasuda, and Silent Hill creator Keiichiro Toyama, reviews and on-the-ground coverage of major industry events such as Gamescom and E3. When he's not reporting or reviewing, Francesco can be found playing the genres he loves most, spending time with his six cats, reading, writing music, playing guitar and drumming for his progressive rock band.
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