Todd Howard (video game designer)

Todd Howard
Todd Howard
Born	Lower Macungie Township, Pennsylvania, USA
Nationality	American
Alma mater	College of William and Mary
Occupation	Video game designer/producer
Employer	Bethesda Game Studios
Known for	The Elder Scrolls, Fallout 3

Todd Howard is an American video game designer, director, and producer. He currently serves as Game Director and Executive Producer at Bethesda Game Studios, where he has led the creation of Fallout 3 and The Elder Scrolls video game series. GamePro magazine named him to the Top 20 Most Influential People in Gaming over the last 20 years.^[1] He has also been named one of IGN’s Top Game Creators of All Time.^[2] He received one of the industry’s highest awards by being named Best Game Director by the Academy of Interactive Arts and Sciences in 2012.

In 2014 he received the Lara of Honor, Germany’s lifetime achievement award for gaming. Howard is one of the only developers to create three Game of the Year winners in a row with Oblivion, Fallout 3, and Skyrim. ^[3]

Early life

Howard was born in Lower Macungie Township, Pennsylvania in 1971, and developed an interest in computers, particularly video games, at a very young age.^[4] He considers Wizardry and Ultima 3 to be inspirations for his future games.^[4] He is a 1989 graduate of Emmaus High School in Emmaus, Pennsylvania. In 1993, he graduated from The College of William & Mary in Williamsburg, Virginia, where he double majored in engineering and finance despite his desire to create video games, saying "it seemed like the easiest path to get through college".^[4] After playing Wayne Gretzky Hockey he requested a job from a Bethesda office he encountered each day on his commute from school to home, but was told to finish school then apply again. After he was done with school he went back to Bethesda and asked for a job again, but was denied.^[4]

Bethesda Softworks

Beginning and other games

Howard joined Bethesda Softworks in 1994. His first game development credit for Bethesda Softworks was as producer and designer of The Terminator: Future Shock and SkyNET.

The Elder Scrolls

Howard's first development credit for The Elder Scrolls came in the form of the CD-Rom of The Elder Scrolls: Arena, released in 1994, and followed by design on The Elder Scrolls II: Daggerfall, released in 1996. He was also the project leader and designer of The Elder Scrolls Adventures: Redguard released in 1998.

Howard would then become the project leader and designer of The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind and for the expansions that followed. He led the creation of The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion and all of its downloadable content.

After taking a break from The Elder Scrolls and developing Fallout 3, he returned to the series to lead the fifth installment, Skyrim. It was released in 2011. The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim received universal acclaim from critics.

Fallout

He was Game Director and Executive Producer of Fallout 3. As of April 2013, Howard and his team have moved on from Skyrim and have turned their attention on their new game. However, Howard said on February 19th, 2014 that a new Bethesda game will not be announced "anytime soon".^[5]

Speaker

He is a frequent speaker at industry events, and his games have been featured in everything from Newsweek, CNN, USA Today, and The Today Show, to magazine covers worldwide. Howard has stated that Bethesda's philosophy for the Elder Scrolls games is to allow people to "live another life, in another world."^[6]

Notable appearances

Howard spoke before developers at the 2009 D.I.C.E. Summit, sharing his three rules of game development:

Great games are played not made. – "You can have the greatest design document ever made, and you're going to change 90 percent of it as soon as you play the game."
Keep it simple. – "Doing something really well takes time, more time than you think it will. Simple systems acting together create complexity that players can appreciate."
Define the experience. – "Don't define your game by a list of bullet points… define it by the experience you want people to have."^[7]

Howard returned as a speaker at D.I.C.E Summit in 2012 as the keynote speaker.^[8]

He also said that developers should ignore demographics and installed base, and follow their passions, saying “if install base really mattered, we'd all make board games, because there are a lot of tables.”^[9]

References

↑ "Around the Web: Interviews edition | Bethesda Blog". Bethblog.com. 2009-05-07. Retrieved 2013-04-16.
↑ "IGN - Top 100 Game Creators of All Time". IGN. Archived from the original on 2013-11-04. Retrieved 2013-04-16.
↑ "Bethesda Blog - LARA to Honor Todd Howard". Bethesda Blog. Archived from the original on 2015-02-03. Retrieved 2014-05-12.
↑ 4.0 4.1 4.2 4.3 Hanson, Ben (2011-01-13). "Road To Skyrim: The Todd Howard Interview". Retrieved 2014-03-12.
↑ Makuch, Eddie (2014-02-19). "Fallout 4: Don't expect an announcement anytime soon". GameSpot. Retrieved 2014-03-12.
↑ Howard, Todd. "The RPG for the Next Generation". Archived from the original on 2010-01-24.
↑ Totilo, Stephen (2009-02-20). "DICE 2009: The Following Colorful Wisdom Is From Todd Howard". MTV. Retrieved 2014-03-12.
↑ "Todd Howard D.I.C.E. 2012 Opening Keynote Address". Retrieved 2014-03-12.
↑ Remo, Chris (2009-02-20). "DICE 09: Bethesda's Howard On Supreme Playability". Gamasutra. Retrieved 2014-03-12.