The Elder Scrolls Travels: Shadowkey Wrap Report

Areas for Improvement Greg Gorden: In hindsight, aspects of the development process needed improvement. The tight development schedule required the game content be created before the 3D game engine was completed. As such, the design and art were being created separately from the team programming the engine. When the design engaged the engine, of course, this resulted in much work that needed to be redone.

Our processes for building the levels were also less than completely efficient. Multiple iterations of the game engine resulted in every level being redone from the ground up at least once. Of course, the engine also needed adaptation to meet with the revised levels, and so on and so on. It was also realized late that the game was too big, resulting in further level revisions.

Elder Scrolls fans have, in general, applauded the game, saying it is worthy of the property, and are consistently happy about the size and feel of the game.

Lessons Learned Greg Gorden: If there were three important lessons learned in developing Shadowkey, they would perhaps be encapsulated as follows:

The impossible may not yet have been defined, but it's still there. Paraphrasing, perhaps the reach of the game exceeded the engine's grasp, but what else is gaming heaven for?

Quickly distinguish between the impossible and the merely difficult. Throughout our development process, possibility triage was performed often and effectively to maximize what the game could do, rather than waste resources on what it could not. Practical insights and prompt control measures were invaluable.

No area benefits from getting it right the first time more than communication. We had teams and members in Texas, Oregon, Maryland, California, Vancouver BC and Dublin, Ireland. As the communications process was smoothed out, the project followed.

Audience Response Douglas Frederick and James Parker: Audience response to the game has been mixed. Online game magazines and reviewers had praise for the depth and size, but had mixed reviews about the engine, specifically framerate and draw distance. Gamers seem to be very happy to have received a gameworld this large with so much gameplay. Elder Scrolls fans have, in general, applauded the game, saying it is worthy of the property, and are consistently happy about the size and feel of the game. Of course, the real audience response will be measured in terms of units sold, and it's too early to have a sense of these results.

Much development bandwidth was directed at building the enormous worlds, but in hindsight, perhaps we should have balanced time a little less on building the world and a little more on the engine side.

We were surprised to see reviewer feedback regarding the need for an auto-targeting system, because this is simply inaccurate - the game has one. We ask ourselves which early version of the game the reviewer tested, because it was not the final.

Personal Thoughts Greg Gorden: Every project has a tipping point. Late one night, Shadowkey tipped for me. I was at home, working on one of the levels, Broken Wing, when a new version of the game was posted on the secure server. When I went to get it, I couldn't find my development QD anywhere. When searching and cursing proving equally ineffective, I decided to call it a night. I went in to say goodnight to my son and discovered him under his covers playing Shadowkey. So, we must have gotten something right.

Douglas Frederick Producer, The Elder Scrolls Travels: Shadowkey President, Vir2L Studios

Greg Gorden Lead Designer, The Elder Scrolls Travels: Shadowkey Vir2L Studios

James Parker Producer, The Elder Scrolls Travels: Shadowkey TKO

[Since introducing them in November of 2003 to offer post-release viewpoints from the respective teams, it has been our pleasure to publish Wrap Reports on a good number of other titles, primarily within the RPG, online world, action and strategy categories. A complete list of the previous ones may be found on the next page. - Ed.]