Bethesda ignored Fallout nutjobs when making Fallout 3

Bethesda has come under fire from many an obsessed Fallout lunatic, accused of ruining the game by daring to take it in a new and interesting direction. Anything that isn’t exactly like the Fallout of yesteryear is treachery and should be destroyed. Well, Bethesda has wisely chosen to ignore the lunatic fringe, instead concentrating on its own vision for the Fallout IP and waiting for opinions from those playing the game, not those who refuse to play it because they’re too busy pretending to be fans of the series.

“You have to take feedback from the people who are actually playing the game,” explained Bethesda’s Pete Hines, who also had this to say when asked how much input his team had taken from fans:

“Not much. When you’re designing a game, you have this group of people on the inside who are working on it every day and who know everything about the decisions that are being made. You don’t just take a chunk of that, throw it out to the community and say, ‘We don’t know how this question works, so let’s ask the fans.’ You’re working and changing every day – it’s a constant, fluid process. It’s not like we say, ‘Okay, everything is done now, let’s see what they say then go back and change it.’

We’re big believers in playing the game, putting things in and then letting folks see how it feels, as opposed to ‘Oh, that sounds terrible!’ It turns out that ideas that sound terrible, when slightly tweaked, can be f**king awesome in the game. And it’s sometimes the case that awesome-sounding ideas will suck when you actually put them in. You’re never a slave to how something is written on paper – you put it in the game an play it. You have to take feedback from the people who are actually playing the game.”

Sounds like a good plan. Let’s face it, if Bethesda had listened to “fans,” we’d have a carbon copy of the very first Fallout game. Then people would complain that Bethesda had done nothing new.