Bethesda teases new games at Arkane, Battlecry and id Software
"Is that coy enough?"
Will Bethesda Softworks announce one of its many secret projects this year? The answer appears to be "probably", though nothing is set in stone for the moment.
"It remains to be seen," the company's vice-president of marketing Peter Hines told CVG in an interview at a recent Wolfenstein: The New Order event. "Is that coy enough?
"I think it's rare that we let a year go by that we're not talking about something, but you know, we've got a number of studios at work on a number of things," he went on. "Battlecry, which we started up a year-and-a-half ago is working on a free-to-play thing we haven't talked about. Arkane and id [are working on projects], and even among folks that we do have announced titles for, there's lots going on. We'll just have to wait and see."
Bethesda has almost too many irons in the fire right now to count. There are the projects we sort of know about, such as Prey 2 - formerly the property of Human Head, which fell out with the publisher midway through development. It's rumoured to be in development at Arkane nowadays... alongside a sequel to 2012's hit new IP Dishonored. Id Software, meanwhile, is working on Doom 4 - pre-order Wolfenstein: The New Order and you'll get access to the beta. And then there's whatever Todd Howard is working on at Bethesda Game Studios. Fallout 4? The Elder Scrolls 6? Your guess is as good as ours.
As CVG's interviewer notes, the publisher has made a habit of flying in the face of publishing convention. It has, for instance, championed single player-only games despite much head-shaking on the part of EA, Ubisoft and Activision. To what does Hines attribute this contrary tendency?
"It's a good question," he said. "The best answer is, maybe it's just that we come at it from a different perspective. We were a developer first and a publisher second, if you go way back to the early days. We became a publisher to publish the games that we developed.
"Our approach has always been a dev-led one, and we've never aspired to be the kind of company that publishes twenty or thirty games in a year, and we don't sit around and have conversations about what's our Q3 shooter for 2015. We have a different approach, which is finding development studios that share a common philosophy or ideals regardless of genre."
Parent company Zenimax recently completed a run of studio foundings and acquisitions - it snapped up Tango Gameworks to develop The Evil Within, and MachineGames to work on Wolfenstein. Not much is known about Battlecry Studios, other than that it's hiring developers with both PC and console experience.
"If people have a passion for making something which is cool and different, we'll do anything we can to support this," Hines continued. "And whether that's one game a year in Dishonored or three games in a year, the chips will fall wherever they fall, as long as it's a good game. If new IP is a good fit, then let's do new IP. If it's a better fit to use something that's already existed or to reboot something, such as we are doing with Wolfenstein, then that's what we'll do.
"I think we were set up to be a different kind of publisher and as a result we just approach things differently to everyone else. It doesn't mean we're right or wrong - we certainly haven't gotten everything right during the 14 years I've been at Bethesda - but we're trying, and we continue to learn and evolve as we go."
"Is that coy enough?"
Will Bethesda Softworks announce one of its many secret projects this year? The answer appears to be "probably", though nothing is set in stone for the moment.
"It remains to be seen," the company's vice-president of marketing Peter Hines told CVG in an interview at a recent Wolfenstein: The New Order event. "Is that coy enough?
"I think it's rare that we let a year go by that we're not talking about something, but you know, we've got a number of studios at work on a number of things," he went on. "Battlecry, which we started up a year-and-a-half ago is working on a free-to-play thing we haven't talked about. Arkane and id [are working on projects], and even among folks that we do have announced titles for, there's lots going on. We'll just have to wait and see."
Bethesda has almost too many irons in the fire right now to count. There are the projects we sort of know about, such as Prey 2 - formerly the property of Human Head, which fell out with the publisher midway through development. It's rumoured to be in development at Arkane nowadays... alongside a sequel to 2012's hit new IP Dishonored. Id Software, meanwhile, is working on Doom 4 - pre-order Wolfenstein: The New Order and you'll get access to the beta. And then there's whatever Todd Howard is working on at Bethesda Game Studios. Fallout 4? The Elder Scrolls 6? Your guess is as good as ours.
As CVG's interviewer notes, the publisher has made a habit of flying in the face of publishing convention. It has, for instance, championed single player-only games despite much head-shaking on the part of EA, Ubisoft and Activision. To what does Hines attribute this contrary tendency?
"It's a good question," he said. "The best answer is, maybe it's just that we come at it from a different perspective. We were a developer first and a publisher second, if you go way back to the early days. We became a publisher to publish the games that we developed.
"Our approach has always been a dev-led one, and we've never aspired to be the kind of company that publishes twenty or thirty games in a year, and we don't sit around and have conversations about what's our Q3 shooter for 2015. We have a different approach, which is finding development studios that share a common philosophy or ideals regardless of genre."
Parent company Zenimax recently completed a run of studio foundings and acquisitions - it snapped up Tango Gameworks to develop The Evil Within, and MachineGames to work on Wolfenstein. Not much is known about Battlecry Studios, other than that it's hiring developers with both PC and console experience.
"If people have a passion for making something which is cool and different, we'll do anything we can to support this," Hines continued. "And whether that's one game a year in Dishonored or three games in a year, the chips will fall wherever they fall, as long as it's a good game. If new IP is a good fit, then let's do new IP. If it's a better fit to use something that's already existed or to reboot something, such as we are doing with Wolfenstein, then that's what we'll do.
"I think we were set up to be a different kind of publisher and as a result we just approach things differently to everyone else. It doesn't mean we're right or wrong - we certainly haven't gotten everything right during the 14 years I've been at Bethesda - but we're trying, and we continue to learn and evolve as we go."
