Douglas Goodall follow-up to Interview Thread Post

After the interview was posted, there was a thread in the Official Forums made about it. Douglas made the following post there:

"There's no easy way to express creative disagreements politely. When I was asked about doing an interview, I figured I'd try. I also figured I wouldn't succeed and people would see more accusations than mea culpas. So I'm not surprised by the reactions here. Nevertheless, I feel I should respond to them, surprise or no surprise.

Perhaps I should have "cheated" and told Sinder Velvin (who did a very good job on the interview, by the way) a few good questions to ask. Or perhaps I should have been dishonest or taken the easy route and refused the interview (although it's very difficult for me to avoid any invitation to talk about myself at great length).

The key point is that I failed, not just with the interview, but with Morrowind itself. No one else burned out on Morrowind. I did. Everyone turned into vitamin-D deficient zombies, but only I became obnoxious. I disagreed about a great many things, but I thought Morrowind would do poorly in the marketplace, and it did rather well. I was wrong.

Basically, Morrowind was a worse game than it could have been because I was stubborn and cared too much about consistency. I let the fans down because I was too wrapped up in what the fans of Daggerfall would think that I wasn't paying enough attention to what the future fans of Morrowind would think.

I disagreed with Ken partly because I was stubborn (and because I enjoy arguing--I did mention that, right?) and partly because I didn't understand what he was saying most of the time. This is not his fault, but mine. We came from very different backgrounds and had different vocabularies. I'm not a very "academic" game designer. I say "Rock-Paper-Scissors," not "Intransitive Power Balance Relationship." Ken probably wouldn't say that either, but in the absence of any legitimate game design vocabulary, most designers make up their own words for things. I stole my game design vocabulary mostly from game theory and board games. Ken came from a tabletop RPG background (Runequest, Paranoia, etc), so he had entirely different terms for the same concepts. I could have put more effort into understanding where he was coming from, but I didn't. For no good reason, apart from a lack of time.

I disagreed with Todd a lot because Todd and I do not like the same kinds of games. This is not his fault or mine. Whether it is more fun to smash things with a huge axe or coax secrets from obfuscated texts is pure opinion. Whether it's better to play against dice or against an intelligent designer is pure opinion. Frankly, most gamers are more like Todd. It is in Bethesda's best interests to appeal to those gamers, instead of making a game that appeals to me. I selfishly didn't want to work on a game that didn't appeal to me, but that wasn't my job. My job was to work on Morrowind, regardless of whether I liked it or not.

Besides that, I was the new guy on the team. I should have deferred to Ken and Todd instead of arguing, regardless of my personal feelings about Morrowind and the Elder Scrolls series. If I didn't argue as much, I would have gotten more work done, and I think the game would have been better. I should have given up on Morrowind being the kind of game I enjoy when I read the design docs my first day there. Instead, I was pigheaded. I still feel that Ken was squeezing a Hermaeus Mora shaped Vvardenfell into a Roman Province shaped space. But he was the lead designer. If he wanted to do that, it was his business. I should have gone along with his plan, instead of trying to change the map. Just keep in mind that from his perspective, it was the other way around. From his perspective, I was the one who was trying to cram the moldy and flaking third claw of Hermeaus Mora into a Roman Province.

Even I stole from history when I was in a hurry or feeling uncreative. Sermon Zero came from the Rennes-le-Chateau hoax. The Bal Molagmer came from the Carbonari. Etc.

I expected disappointment from lore fans about things like Divine Metaphysics, but I think it's better to know the truth. This is just a personal opinion, but as long as real mysteries remain unsolved, I'd want someone to tell me when I was wasting my time. I should have done it sooner. In fact, I did do it sooner, but no one believed me the last dozen times I've said Dwemer books were probably random letters, and I don't expect that to change.

I didn't make the Dwemer books myself, but I did have a hand in them. One of the artists made the books. I didn't give him any particular message to include. I just said to make some drawings based on the design documents and put some Dwemer letters in it. This is something else that was my fault. I should have included an actual message, but I wasn't up to the task. I can't write Dwemer the way Michael Kirkbride does. I know. I've tried it (see "Hanging Gardens" as a particularly bad example of me trying to write Dwemeri style). I decided that random letters were better than another bad attempt at writing like MK, or writing something like "drink your Ovaltine," so that's what I did. Besides, I figured it would be obvious that it was just random letters... In retrospect, this was another mistake.

As for there not being any official answer to several lore puzzles, I can see that upsetting people, too. In this case as well, I think it's better to know the truth. Look at it this way: If the official lore isn't perfect, if the official lore is ever-changing, you can do whatever you want.

In fact, since there wasn't an official answer to several things, debates on forums like this may alter the "official" lore more than you know. If you have a really good (or cool sounding) argument about what really happened at Red Mountain, it can influence the designers. Far from making such debates meaningless (in that no one will ever be "right"--no one ever wins a debate anyway), it makes lore discussions much more important.

I'd still prefer an internally consistent game world, but unless you keep the same lead designer for every game (or hire only designers with unusually small egos and an unusual respect for stare decisis), that's not going to happen. Tamriel is not a living game world because it has deep, well-documented consistencies (like Tolkien). Tamriel is a living game world because it has very little consistency.

Think of Tamriel as a plate of spaghetti that a dozen designers have cut, chewed, and swirled around on the plate. Not a pretty thought? Maybe not, but it means that anyone else can come by and cut off a string or add a few strings or push the fork around a little without ruining the plate. I prefer artificial worlds that are more like Legos. Legos that glue themselves together, so that you can add new Legos, but you cannot alter or remove what's already there. But that's another personal opinion, and if you have to remove one of the Legos near the bottom (say, for technical reasons), you're in bigger trouble than you are with spaghetti.

Before I worked at Bethesda, I thought about writing Elder Scrolls fanfiction and putting some of my characters up on Andel Crodo's Fashion Gallery (after several name and ownership changes it is now The Imperial Library, though I believe the original stories and biographies are gone). The only thing that stopped me was fear. I was afraid I'd make mistakes or have egg-of-time on my face when the next game came out, since I didn't know the lore as well as the creators. When I got to Bethesda, I discovered that I did know the lore as well as the creators. The same is probably true of most lore-oriented Elder Scrolls fans. So if you have an idea for a plugin or a story, but you don't want to contradict the lore, just do it. Don't worry so much. If it contradicts a future game, so what?

This is a lesson I learned after leaving Bethesda: don't worry about the fiction. Tamriel isn't a carefully constructed pyramid of magically sticky Legos. Tamriel is spaghetti. It can be anything you want it to be. That is a plural "you," including the fans as well as the current designers. If I learned that while I was still working for Bethesda, or if I was just a little less obsessed with Daggerfall, I might still be there.

Doug "AFFA MU" Goodall
Game Designer Emeritus
Dark Lord of Negativity

P.S. I'm not angry with Bethesda Softworks anymore. If I were angry, it would be unmistakable. Anyone who knows me can confirm that."