Elder Scrolls Online: Building a $2bn game by breaking the rules

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How the Elder Scrolls Online survived a difficult launch to become a quiet gaming success story.

Ask anyone to name a successful online multiplayer game and you're likely to get a handful of names in response.But there's another title, celebrating its 10th anniversary this year, that's been a relatively quiet success.

Creative director Rich Lambert and studio director Matt Firor tell BBC Newsbeat the first version of ESO failed to fully land with either Elders Scrolls fans or MMORPG players raised on those titles."We tried to appeal to both, and we didn't particularly meet either of their needs as much as those groups wanted."

"But they also did lots of things that I called virtual world activities. They got together and chatted, they danced and played drums and musical instruments.Matt says this observation made the team realise that what players really wanted was "an Elder Scrolls virtual world where they can establish an identity and go from there".

"That's the hashtag we use, because we're such a big family and everyone's so loving and wonderful," she says. "I haven't really been playing anything else at the moment because I can't be bothered dealing with toxicity." Matt says the game's freeform direction means it has "the opposite problem" to competitors, where newbies are forced to play catch-up with years of past content."If you ask five Elder Scrolls Online players to describe the game that they're playing, you will get five different games described to you," he says.

 

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A beginner's guide to The Elder Scrolls Online in 2024Robert is a freelance writer and chronic game tinkerer who spends many hours modding games then not playing them, and hiding behind doors with a shotgun in Hunt: Showdown. Wishes to spend his dying moments on Earth scrolling through his games library on a TV-friendly frontend that unifies all PC game launchers.
Source: pcgamer - 🏆 38. / 67 Read more »