Todd Howard (video game designer)

Todd Howard (born 1971 in Lower Macungie Township, Pennsylvania, United States) is an American computer game developer. He is currently Game Director and Executive Producer for Bethesda Game Studios, where he is responsible for the development of the Fallout and Elder Scrolls series. The U.S. game magazine GamePro counted him in 2009 to the 20 most influential people in the computer game industry in the last 20 years. Also in 2009, he was ranked among the 100 most important game developers from the U.S. online games IGN.

Career

Training

Todd Howard was born in 1971 in Lower Macungie Township, Lehigh County ( Pennsylvania) and developed at an early age interested in computers, especially computer games. He called Wizardry and Ultima 3 as his sources of influence for its upcoming games. He graduated in 1989 his education at Emmaus High School in Emmaus ( Pennsylvania) from. Although he wanted to work as a game developer, he joined in 1993 to study at The College of William & Mary in Williamsburg ( Virginia) with a double major in Engineering and Finance from because " it looked like the easiest way to get through the study ". After playing Wayne Gretzky Hockey 3, he competed in a Bethesda office, which was on his daily commute between his residence and place of the school to a point. He was rejected and asked to try it after completing his studies again, but was once again rejected.

Activity for Bethesda Softworks

Howard was finally hired in 1994 by Bethesda Softworks. His first development work included his duties producer and designer of The Terminator: Future Shock and The Terminator SkyNET.

Howard was first introduced to The Elder Scrolls during the development of The Elder Scrolls II: Daggerfall in contact, which appeared in 1996. For published in 1998 offshoot The Elder Scrolls Adventures: Redguard he has already acted as project manager and designer. Howard was finally project manager and designer for The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind and its expansions downloads, as The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion.

For the developed after Fallout 3, he took over the task from the Game Director and Executive Producers. It followed the 2011 published fifth part of the Elder Scrolls series, Skyrim, which received high critical acclaim.

Howard is a regular guest speaker at industry events. His games are subject both world in general media formats such as Newsweek, CNN, USA Today and The Today Show, as well as magazines.

Design Philosophy

In his lectures at trade conferences DICE Summit 2009 and 2012 Howard presented his three principles of game development before:

• Great games are played, not made. - "You can design the best document of the world and you'll still change 90 percent of them again as soon as you play the game."
• Keeping it simple. - " To make things right takes time, more time than you think. When simple systems work together to create that a complexity that can appreciate the players. "
• Define the game experience - "Define not your game through a bulleted list ... Define it on the basis of experience you want to convey to the people. "

He advised developers also to ignore demographic forecasts or statistics on installed base and instead follow their own passion, because "if the installed base would be really relevant, we would develop all the games, because there are very many tables ". Howard called Bethesda's philosophy for The Elder Scrolls so that it should allow people " to live another life in another world ."

Ludography

• The Terminator: Future Shock (1995 )
• The Terminator: SkyNET (1996 )
• The Elder Scrolls II: Daggerfall (1996 )
• The Elder Scrolls Adventures: Redguard (1998)
• The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind (2002)
• The Elder Scrolls Travels: Shadowkey (2004)
• The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion (2006)
• Fallout 3 (2008)
• The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim (2011)