Fallout 3 Interview
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Fallout 3 is an interesting case, because it inherits separate longstanding and communities from both the Fallout franchise and Bethesda's own past games. Can you speak to the challenges of working with those, as well as presumably attempting to draw in new community members?
I don't know if Pete means to do it, but when he hires a new employee they seem to be thrown into the fire right away. When I started, I had two days to familiarize myself with things before we opened our Fallout 3 forums.
I remember that first week when Pete introduced me to [executive producer] Todd Howard. I forget exactly what he said, but it was something along the lines of "Good luck, meat shield." In the first few months, handling Fallout was definitely a challenge for me, but more importantly, it was a challenge for the community.
You know, you had this passionate fan base that had waited years for a sequel, and once we started to promote the game, they wanted to know everything about the game. With limited information on the game released, there was plenty of speculation, arguing and sometimes total mayhem in our forums. If I could have a dime for every time I heard "Oblivion with guns" or read a topic called, (What is the definition of an RPG?)...
To make things more interesting, the idea of "Oblivion with guns" was pretty appealing to our existing Elder Scrolls fanbase -- so there was a culture clash when the Fallout boards opened in our existing forums.
Over time -- especially after the game was released -- I think the two sides have come together and strengthened our community. It's especially cool to me to see our Elder Scrolls fans, who are pretty familiar with modding, help Fallout fans with modding the game.
As for me, I think I've come a long way too. I still feel like a meat shield, but at least I know what to expect. Fallout 3 was more or less my rookie season in community management, a memorable one at that.
