User:Famous Hobo/sandbox

Development

The origins of Fallout 76 date back to 2013. During the development of Fallout 4, Bethesda Game Studios began conceptualizing what a potential multiplayer game mode would look like. The ideas presented were considered too large in scope, and were set aside in favor of the single-player campaign. During this period, Jason Hasenbuhler of the recently formed BattleCry Studios in Austin, Texas, met with Bethesda executive producer Todd Howard. Hasenbuhler noted that several developers at BattleCry had experience with large multiplayer games like Star Wars Galaxies, and asked Howard to let the studio work on a Fallout multiplayer game using the ideas proposed. It was not until after the release of Fallout 4 in November 2015 that Bethesda greenlit the project. Bethesda had already begun work on downloadable content for Fallout 4 as well as preliminary work on Starfield, and felt a Fallout multiplayer game would help fill in the downtime between their games. BattleCry had recently placed their upcoming free-to-play game BattleCry on indefinite hiatus, and agreed to Bethesda's request.

Bethesda provided BattleCry with Fallout 4's Creation Engine, a game engine that had been exclusively used in single-player games. The Creation Engine proved difficult to work with, as it was still using code written for The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind in 2002, and any part of the map the player was not currently in would not be loaded. BattleCry believed their best option to retrofit the engine with multiplayer capabilities was to implement the netcode used in older Quake games. While BattleCry worked with the engine, a small team at Bethesda's main studio in Rockville, Maryland began brainstorming the premise for the game. They decided the map needed to be larger to compensate for multiple players, and chose the Appalachian region of West Virginia as the setting. The last two Fallout games developed by Bethesda were set in major cities along the East Coast of the United States, and the team wanted to instead explore a more rural location that would not have been targeted by nuclear warfare. This meant the local flora and fauna would have largely survived and mutated, and forests could encompass parts of the map.

Fallout 76 takes place just 25 years after the Great War, which affected some decisions regarding the gameplay and plot, the largest of which was the decision to not include human non-player characters (NPC). A behind-the-scenes documentary about the game gave two reasons for the decision. From a lore perspective, Bethesda reasoned it would take longer than 25 years for hostile factions to form and take control of the area, and from a gameplay perspective, the team wanted players to know that any human characters they ran across were in fact other players and not NPCs. Bethesda compensated for the lack of gun-wielding enemies by creating a new type of ghoul enemy that still had some mental faculties and knew how use weapons. In a 2022 retrospective article published by Kotaku, anonymous developers stated that nearly everyone at BattleCry disliked the decision to not include human NPCs, although Howard was insistent on their removal until after the game released. Executives at Bethesda felt it would take a significant amount of time to update the engine for multiplayer capabilities, and decided that replacing NPCs with text-based storage devices and moments of environmental storytelling would convey the same level of narrative storytelling.

Troubled development

According to anonymous developers, Fallout 76 suffered from a lack of proper leadership, and Bethesda executive Todd Howard was criticized for his approach to management.

The anonymous developers interviewed for the Kotaku article outlined the game's troubled development history. One developer stated, "No one wanted to be on that project because it ate people. It destroyed people ... The amount of people who would go to that project, and then they would quit [Bethesda] was quite high." To compensate for the turnover rate, some developers working on Starfield and the Arkane Austin game Redfall were moved onto Fallout 76. One reason why the game struggled to retain workers was the lack of leadership. Some members of BattleCry were led to believe Howard was in charge of the project, although he was in fact working on Starfield. Howard would occasionally visit BattleCry but his involvement was deemed inadequate by the developers. One developer stated he shot down any new ideas proposed by the design team, while another developer claimed he leaned too heavily into the "bigger is better" design philosophy with no thought given to how it would work.

In general, Bethesda did not provide enough information about important aspects of the game, such as the maximum amount of players per server, or how griefing would be handled. Those interviewed also claim there was a level of resentment toward BattleCry from the Rockville studio, particularly for Bethesda's decision to structure Fallout 76 as a live service game. The free-to-play Fallout Shelter had grossed over $100 million in four years, and as a result, Bethesda took a greater interest in games that could continuously generate revenue after their release. Emil Pagliarulo was singled out as a designer from the Rockville studio that ignored BattleCry. One developer said, "[Pagliarulo] didn't seem to want to be involved with the product at all. He didn't want to have any contact with it ... or read anything that we put in front of him." The issues of resentment were compounded as some members from the Rockville studio that were brought in to work on Fallout 76 were dismayed that they were working on a multiplayer game despite joining a studio that had exclusively produced single-player games. One developer said, "[Bethesda] has a lack of respect for folks who are working on things that they consider theirs."

Members of the game testing department were also interviewed for the Kotaku article, and shared similar stories about the game's development. Testers were subject to significant crunch, and the exhaustive work took a toll on their mental health. Testers dealt with what they described as "voluntold overtime", because if no one volunteered for weekend overtime hours, then everyone within the department would be called in. Peer pressure became commonplace among testers, as those who did not complain about the crunch had increased odds of being converted to full-time employees instead of contract workers. When these issues were brought up to the studio's parent company ZeniMax Media, it was either ignored or outright denied. Testers claimed their breaks were timed, and some testers went as far as to claim they were followed into restrooms by what they described as "chronic snitches".

Nearly every build for Fallout 76 during its development suffered from glitches, most of which stemmed from the Creation Engine. When asked what parts of the game were subject to glitches, one developer said, "Tongue in cheek: the whole game. In general, every major bug in 76 [that appeared at launch] was known by [quality assurance]." The engine was poorly optimized, and simply updating to a new build could potentially break the game. Game testers were forbidden from discussing problems found in the game directly to the developers, and instead had to bring up any issues with the quality assurance department. This in turn delayed work on game-breaking glitches for sometimes months. Developers assumed Fallout 76's would be delayed, but Bethesda and BattleCry worked on tight schedules, and would not delay any preset deadlines.

Release

Pre-release

Promotional material for Fallout 76 at Gamescom 2018

Fallout 76 was announced on May 30, 2018; the announcement was preceded by a twenty-four-hour live stream on Twitch showing a Vault Boy bobblehead toy in front of a monitor with a "Please Stand By" test pattern screen, a signature image of the series. This stream was watched by a total of over two million people, with more than one hundred thousand people watching at any time.

Details of the game were announced by Bethesda Executive Producer Todd Howard during Bethesda's press conference at E3 2018 on June 10, 2018, including its anticipated release date of November 14, 2018. As it is Bethesda Game Studios' first experience with a fully online game, Howard confirmed that there would be an open beta phase, beginning on October 23, 2018, for Xbox One, and October 30, 2018, for PlayStation 4 and PC.

In response to the announcement that Fallout 76 would feature only multiplayer, a petition was created by fans of the series which called for the game to include a single-player mode. The petition received thousands of signatures within a day. Following the game's announcement, there was a burst of interest in tourism in West Virginia. The website "West Virginia Explorer" reported an increase of fifteen times the visitors to the site in the days after the announcement, while management of the Camden Park amusement park said there was an increase in people looking to purchase park merchandise.

The teaser trailer shown at E3 2018 featured a cover version of John Denver's song "Take Me Home, Country Roads". Fans of the series expressed interest in the song, prompting Bethesda to announce plans to release the song on digital musical services, with all proceeds from it being donated to Habitat for Humanity, assuring a minimum US$100,000 donation. In Australia, a free Fallout 76 vinyl containing the cover of "Take Me Home, Country Roads" was included as a promotion with the December 2018 issue of Stack magazine, available at retailer JB Hi-Fi.

References

Sources

• The Making of Fallout 76 - Noclip Documentary. Noclip. June 12, 2018 – via Youtube.