Todd Howard (video game designer)

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Todd Howard
File:ToddHoward2010sm.jpg
Todd Howard
Born (1971-04-25) April 25, 1971 (age 52)
Lower Macungie Township, Pennsylvania, USA
Nationality American
Alma mater College of William & Mary
Occupation Video game designer/producer
Employer Bethesda Game Studios
Known for The Elder Scrolls, Fallout 3, Fallout 4

Todd Howard (born April 25, 1971) is an American video game director, designer and producer. He currently serves as Game Director and Executive Producer at Bethesda Game Studios, where he has led the development of titles within the Fallout 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. Todd Howard is one of a small number of developers to have created three consecutive Game of the Year award winners 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 to and from school, but he was rejected and told that he needed to finish school as a prerequisite. After completing school, he went back to Bethesda for a job but was rejected again.[4]

Bethesda Softworks

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

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 this, he was the game director and executive producer of Fallout 3.[5][6]

He returned to the The Elder Scrolls series to lead development of the fifth installment The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim, which was released in November 2011. Skyrim received universal acclaim from critics.

Howard then directed Fallout 4, which was announced with the release of its first official trailer on June 3, 2015.[7] Fallout 4 was shown at length during Bethesda's 2015 E3 Showcase.[8] He also directed Fallout Shelter, Bethesda Game Studios' first mobile game, which was announced and released at the E3 Showcase, and reached #1 on Apple's App Store. [9]

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."[10]

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."[11]

Howard returned as a speaker at D.I.C.E Summit in 2012 as the keynote speaker.[12]

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.”[13]

References

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External links

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