General:Eye on Bethesda

Eye on Bethesda
(link 1 2)
Medium/Format	Online Magazine
Date	February 22, 1998
Interviewee(s)	Christopher Weaver
Interviewer(s)	Jordan Thomas
Hosted By	Adrenaline Vault

History

Of all the enigmatic bands of designers, coders, and artists, not a single one has incited so much simultaneously positive and negative discussion as Bethesda Softworks. They have raised countless eyebrows, both from rapt interest and critical disdain. In all ways imaginable, they are a different kind of game company.

In the days of yore, Bethesda's programming team broke the 3D mold in many ways. They designed a game engine which is not confined to the room-based boxy philosophy of so many other shooters and action titles. Outdoor terrains were made entirely possible, and actually appeared believable as we saw in Terminator: Future Shock and its sequel, Skynet. The XnGine is quite unorthodox technology, and has certainly offered a new look on virtual worlds. However, it is plainly obvious that most of the titles released for this proprietary system have been plagued with bugs and incompatibilities.

With the release of their ground-breaking 3D RPG series entitled The Elder Scrolls', Bethesda brought a new open-ended game psychology to a genre composed largely of step-based or top view navigation systems. The first game in the series was entitled Arena. While limited by the technology of the time, it allowed you to explore a continent of cities and dungeons, going on quests for various nobles and vagabonds. Then, in 1996, the team expanded upon this theme with the oft-debated Daggerfall, a sprawling, unrestrained adventure that allowed players to literally choose their own destinies. It must be reinforced that this title had a great deal to offer. Players were able to explore a vast fantasy world, and interact with hundreds of NPC citizens. It brought the world of role playing into three dimensions, and included a mouse-drag combat engine whereby the motion of the mouse controlled weapon attacks.

More recently, the gates to the long-anticipated Battlespire were thrown open, and throngs of vapid adventurers rushed in to try their swords and spells against the vicious Daedra lord Merhunes Dagon. The title represents the first in a new series of action / RPG hybrids within the Elder Scrolls world, but not as a direct part of that more detailed series. These titles are known as the Elder Scrolls Legends. Battlespire is undeniably prettier and more technologically advanced than its predecessors. However, it has a considerable share of blemishes on that crisp SVGA face. It is still a DOS based executable, and the 16 bit graphics are quite slow without 3D acceleration, a feature which was unexpectedly dropped right before the final release. It ends up performing far worse than Daggerfall did in low resolution VGA. For some opinionated background info on this title, check out my review of it.

Bethesda has mustered a strong following of dedicated Elder Scrolls enthusiasts, who eagerly anticipate even the vaguest rumor of what is next to come in the series. But both of the aforementioned games were absolutely riddled with glitches, and system-coma inducing crashes. Daggerfall took a long series of patches to reach its full potential, many months after the initial release. Many gamers argue that the game itself wasn't really playable until the most recent patches were installed. Thus, this small Maryland software group has become both famous and infamous for their work, acquiring almost the same level of biting criticism as they have been given praise.

Recently, I took the opportunity to interview the key players in this hazy, uncertain situation. I received comments from several RPG connoisseurs, as well as some of Bethesda's own beta testers, who have requested to remain anonymous. To balance out the elements in this murky formula, I interviewed the president of Bethesda, Chris Weaver. I feel that it is time to allow both sides to make their cases, and to clear away some of the obscuring smoke. The first section denotes the gamers' perspective, and the inside data from the testers. The secondary segment will be comprised of Bethesda's general response to many of these vociferous queries.

The Gamers Cry Out

I corresponded at length with Eric Liebl, an avid contributor to the RPG newsgroups, and a somewhat distraught fan of Bethesda's game designs. He had a great deal to say about the general performance he's seen from Bethesda. When I asked him about his personal thoughts on their titles in general, he responded,

"Bethesda has delivered a mixed bag of goodies to gamers over the past few years. Their RPGs in particular bring some great elements together (character development, large world, well developed game history), but seem to fall short in their technical execution. Bethesda's releases have been excessively buggy due to poor beta testing. It is puzzling why Bethesda releases such products when they must know from experience that they will alienate a great number of their customers.

"…what Bethesda needs to do is take a hard look at what their strengths are: plot, art, character creation, and game detail. [They should take] an equally critical look at their weak areas. Their games are a bit too action oriented, poor XnGine, poor testing. [They should] try to create a balanced game that RPG purists would appreciate. It is clear that Bethesda is interested in this market segment...they already have demonstrated this with Daggerfall."

His sentiments are mirrored throughout the gaming community. The old RPG soldiers are long-tired of cheap action hybrids. While most are simply dying for an enjoyable experience within their genre of choice, they wax most unforgiving when these long-awaited 3D dungeon crawls crash irrevocably on them. Nor do they respond well when their beloved new purchases do not even perform well enough even to be considered playable, let alone on par with the industry standard.

Still others would argue that there is no industry standard for games of this type. While fantasy romps like Hexen 2 and Mageslayer are slick as troll skin and simply sparkle with 3D acceleration, they don't contain even an inkling of the depth found in the Elder Scrolls series. They are not, in fact, RPGs in the true sense. From all the gamers have seen, nobody but Bethesda has even tried. Many of their most loyal fans grumble about the low framerates, but will hold fast to the point that there are no other 3D RPGs of this caliber, regardless of the performance.

One particular facet of Bethesda's programming style has caused continual confusion in the shady virtual alleys of the newsgroups and chatrooms. Many disgruntled murmurs have risen to a boil regarding their strange practice of continually releasing titles for MS-DOS, ignoring DirectX acceleration, and even intrinsic Win95 32 bit code. This baffles the technology junkies, who wonder why anyone would write for an archaic operating system.

Liebl continued, "Bethesda needs to move away from DOS as a gaming OS. Programming games for Windows [95] and DirectX would reduce a lot of the hardware issues that have occurred in their titles. Some of the bugs, like the spelling errors in Daggerfall's text, are inexcusable. A sure sign that the games are not tested fully before release."

This is the second half of the wailing cry which has risen up deafeningly from outraged gamers. These are fans who would likely be staunch Bethesda advocates if not for the constant irritation of glitches, bugs, and flat-out lockups present in some of the company's best titles. Inflammatory accusations and rumors have circulated throughout the pulsing vascular system of the net. Many gamers feel that Bethesda doesn't seem to test their releases at all. Overwhelmingly, the fans feel that the company's beta processes are not thorough enough to optimize their code to the point where it will withstand even a fraction of the stress it will undergo in the public possession.

The facts are these. Daggerfall would run smoothly on a high-end system, with regards to graphics. However, this is primarily because the engine was represented in simple, albeit distinguishing VGA. It was, in many gamers' opinions, a stellar role-playing game with an incredibly diverse world of quests, monsters, politics, and power. Out of the box, however, it would crash no matter what you did. Skeletons would scream their unearthly battle cries at you, and charge madly down the hall...backwards. Innumerable Causeway DOS errors would greet you at every turn, blowing the game code to smithereens and returning you to the dreaded command prompt. Saved games would corrupt seemingly without reason, destroying hours, even days of work. A long, painstaking series of patches filled in these considerable ragged gaps, and months later the gaming world could consider the title stable.

Now, with Battlespire, an almost diametrically opposed set of bugs face the players who dare to enter the darkened tower. While there are a good number of crashes, and on some systems the title simply will not run, most of the bugs are plot-oriented and can halt your progress entirely.

Mr. Liebl obviously found himself a victim of a few crashes as well, and noted, "I would prefer stability. Too many games are rushed to market as it is. Games are meant to be fun, and not an exercise in frustration as you struggle with hardware conflicts and system crashes. Bethesda has disenchanted a lot of people with their release of Battlespire...right in time for the holiday rush, but fraught with problems."

Jason Hoffoss, another dedicated player of both games, mentioned that he found the event-disabling bugs a more daunting burden yet.

"'Battlespire's bugs are worse, since they have stopped me from being able to go any further in the game. I will have to start again from scratch now I think, and I've decided to stop playing it for a while instead and pick it up again later (if ever)."

While Battlespire boasts some visually astounding SVGA texturing and gorgeous lighting effects, it all runs under a DOS-based engine. This, coupled with no acceleration options, forced veteran Tamrielans to explore their beloved world in a choppy, halting manner. This kind of compromise really irks the RPG crowd, given that they are possibly the most undernourished pack of starving animals in the gaming industry. Try throwing a copy of Fallout into a room of them, and watch what they do. But stand back. Stand way back.

Still, most of the fans remain relatively hopeful, if slightly depressed, when passing judgment. On the whole, they're crying for much more from Bethesda, and hope to see their wishes made flesh.

After a long, detailed list of complaints and critical commentaries on the releases, Liebl concluded, "Bethesda is a niche company who shows a lot of unrealized potential for greatness. Their RPGs are unique, detailed, nice to look at, and nice to listen to. Poor Q&A; testing has proven to be Bethesda's Achilles' heel however, and until they resolve this issue they will never capture the rave reviews and expanding customer base that they seek."

And so, the gamers have spoken. Let us now take a look behind the scenes, to the anonymous testers who have decided to voice their concerns.

The Men Inside

When I initially posted my review of Battlespire, I received an overwhelming amount of e-mail from fans and hecklers of the title, raving and raging in various fashions. One in particular stood out, and left a permanent impression on me. One of the beta testers had decided to share with me his personal perspective.

He noted that while on the testing team, he noticed a swelling problem within the infrastructure. According to his perceptions, the testers were not receiving any of the feedback that is assumed integral to the beta process. He would find a significant error, and make a suggestion as to the flow of gameplay, or a possible new feature. Other testers would reinforce the concept, and then they'd wait for a response from the programming team.

The response never came. Ever. In fact, from this tester's point of view, they as the beta team were doing nothing more than playing the game before it was playable. He felt that his contributions were summarily dismissed, and that the errors they found were altogether ignored. Apparently, he is not alone.

Recently, when I posted my "calling all gamers" message on the comp.sys.pc.games.rpg group, I asked for strong opinions on Bethesda, in any direction. What I found in my Inbox during the next consecutive days was most enlightening. The gamers had a lot to say, and you've seen most of that already. But it appears that the Men Inside have their own voices to raise, as two more of them decided to grant me some internal observations.

The first tester worked for Bethesda for a while on titles not directly related to Battlespire or Daggerfall, but he emphasized that the problems are present throughout. His principle point of complaint regarded an extreme power bottleneck between the designers and the programmers. He watched features show up in the titles he was testing, placed directly there by the coding team. The testers hated them, and complained that it ruined gameplay in the level. But, according to this tester, the programmer refused to disable the obstacle, and it stayed in the game.

What he wanted to say to the public was simply this: Bethesda needs to have somebody between the testers and the programmers who can act as an authoritative spokesperson, a producer of sorts, who has the juice to say, in his words, "this stinks, change it." The narrowing of project power is a problem that many teams face, because ultimately, it is the coders who turn ideas and art into a functioning program. If bugs and implementation issues are not given the attention they should be, it is obvious what the results will be in the final release.

Now, our second Incognitonian was even closer to the action, as a tester on Battlespire. He relayed some startling facts about the testing operation that the game underwent. The scene is as such: Beta Disc 4. Conditions are stressed. Most of the testers still can't even get the game to run. Those who could had to download massive patch files to coax functionality from the code.

He noted that many of the testers reported a particular crash when they attempted dialogue with any of the creatures and NPCs in the game. He felt that these repeated bug-warnings were completely ignored. Obviously, he was right in that respect. I can personally attest to this, simply because I have stopped playing the game due to this bug. I can't talk to anybody in the game, or I get a hardline crash.

And so, a mutiny began to rise. Many of the testers found themselves furious because they could not even do their jobs: to test a working beta for errors, and to help iron them out. There were talks of a flat-out refusal to participate in the testing process until a stable beta was released. But this was quelled, and the title went gold despite the confounded testers' warnings.

This information strikes me as extremely distressing. Here we have a company with a unique philosophy and some core elements of brilliance that cannot be denied. Yet it is painfully clear that the fans are not satisfied. Furthermore, the internal troubleshooting team has, according to these testers, found itself completely ineffectual.

There are no easy answers. I compiled a list of questions which I must admit are somewhat akin to an all-too-chilly metal probe. Each query was based entirely upon the issues raised by the gamers I spoke with. Chris Weaver and his team have risen promptly to the occasion to address the public on these matters. We have heard from the game-players on both sides of the fence. The voices of the masses and the insiders have been heard. Now, let us listen to the word of the castle besieged.

Bethesda Speaks

Now, it is not an easy task to develop a game. The die-hard fantasy developers are taking on possibly the most challenging design genre in the market. Presently, RPG creators have the very worst end of the power line, simply because they must answer to all the industry requirements at once. A good role-playing title these days must synthesize a thorough, engaging storyline with a detailed mathematical system, intriguing character development and contemporary technical prowess. Whereas an action or even RTS clone can be hammered out addressing only the latest in graphics and sound, the RPG market seems hungry for everything at once. They are, to be sure, a discerning breed.

Chris Weaver, the president of Bethesda Softworks, took some time to consult with his team, and then explained his perspective on the problems that they as a game company face.

He writes, "Unlike developers of console titles, PC developers have to deal with a confused web of other software and hardware 'standards.' Every other week, the next great developer tool is released to much fanfare. All too often, developers are the last to know of device limitations. Yet, we are expected to work around them. Many times, however, this is simply not possible.

"No one, however, can say that Daggerfall was not a groundbreaking title. Even now, years later, (a "decade" in computer time), no one has even attempted to do what we did with Daggerfall. There are numerous technical reasons for this, but it all comes down to commitment and knowledge of how to make such a massive number of "systems" work together in a single game and not require a Cray."

The gaming public has also raised numerous questions regarding the continued choice of MS-DOS as the core operating system under which the XnGine is designed. Many of the technical glitches and performance issues are a direct result of this present choice. Weaver addresses the issue as simply a question of time and evolution.

He responded, "We are heavily entrenched in a massive redesign of our DOS based engine to Windows 95/NT. When we are through, we will have created another game engine powerhouse. The new engine is completely modular and expandable. It will support all DirectX features (Direct3D, DirectSound, DirectInput, DirectPlay, etc.). We are also adding native Glide and OpenGL support. We believe the current and future computer platforms will now be able to support 3D animations in real time and therefore will probably not be using sprites in the future. We are also incorporating binaural sound giving position information, incorporating light mapping, a skeletal animation system, transparent network support and much more. Software support, if any, will be minimal as we believe that by that time virtually everybody will have a 3D graphics accelerator in some form."

In regards to the question of time, given that many gamers feel that 3D engines should have been all converted to Windows based code already, Weaver essentially explained that the XnGine needed time to progress, given the variety of tasks that can be accomplished with the code.

He noted, "Are we really behind the curve? We do not think so. XnGine can do more at the same time than any other engine of which we are aware. Name another engine that can support a CRPG, action shooters, racing simulators, space simulators, and first person adventures. The problem stems from comparisons to other engines that have one tenth as much to do. Nevertheless, we are hard at work on a Windows engine so as to gain additional compatibility with all the new hardware coming out for the platform. Battlespire was caught in an in-between standards state."

As I mentioned before, several gamers I spoke with felt that Bethesda is largely unavailable as a corporate presence. They imparted many stories of attempting to contact the company's technical support through various means, and were left without any answers to the myriad problems they discovered in the games they had eagerly purchased.

Weaver writes, "In response to our technical support staff, our competitors and people who play our games have told us our tech and customer support is among the best in the industry. Why? Because we attempt to make our products right, even after the fact. As Daggerfall fans know, we dedicated people for over a year to keep Daggerfall patches coming no matter how small. That is commitment to our users, not lack of commitment to getting it right."

Now, the central question that remains is that of testing techniques. As we've seen from general public opinion, and from the inside perspectives of the testers themselves, the majority view is simply a questioning one. Are Bethesda's testing techniques up to industry guidelines? Weaver's response was that there are concerns that perhaps the gaming public are not entirely aware of:

"We could have spent years playtesting Daggerfall and (because of its sheer size and lack of restrictions), it would still not have been a perfect product. It is simply too big and the vast majority of problems we run into are hardware related anyway. However, if we had taken a year with thousands of different testers, you can be sure that by the time it was released, Daggerfall would have been pirated all over the world and republished in other countries without Bethesda receiving a dime after fifty person-years of work.

"Probably the number one problem in the industry for developers is lack of a common hardware standard. As creator[s] of high-end multimedia software, we are expected to program hundreds of thousands of lines of code and make our programs work flawlessly on the millions of possible combinations of hardware and software resident on user systems. There is a statistical imbalance between 100 testers playtesting a product on 100 different platforms vs. 250,000 users on thousands of different platforms using standard and non-standard hardware. That is the wonderful thing about consoles such as Nintendo and Sony Playstation; your testing can be directed to the software, and hardware is a given. Not so with [the] PC."

And finally, we have the problem of the dropped 3D acceleration support with Battlespire. The facts are that advertisements were run for several months, with a bold 3Dfx logo firmly in place. Press releases and general corporate FAQ info all seemed to indicate hardware support, and the gamers were psyched. Bethesda's side of the story is far different than many gamers may expect.

Weaver commented, "Ironically, no one wanted Battlespire to support 3D acceleration more than Bethesda. We worked on all manner of ways to accomplish this right up until our (testing and) production schedule shut down further attempts in late November 1997. We determined that without requiring all users to have a minimum of 64MB of system memory, all the foreground objects would be severely pixelated. It came down to a case of severe technical limitations melding our proprietary (DOS-based) XnGine technology with the present two megabyte 3Dfx video memory limitation.

"Most people may not be aware that magazine advertisements are submitted anywhere from two to four months in advance of the publication date. By the time we realized that we would not be able to offer XnGine compatibility within 3Dfx memory limitations, it was far beyond those cut off dates. There was certainly no intent to mislead, only a logical expectation that our programmers would be able to work around the limitations of the 3Dfx card.

"Given the nature of Battlespire and the fact that the vast majority of our customers see the immense value in what we have created, we have been fortunate that most people have understood we did our best but were unsuccessful in our 3Dfx version. This will not be the case with our future products..."

Weaver also included a prospective release list, including the status of 3D support with each upcoming title:

"Burnout: Championship Drag Racing. The first drag racing simulation for the PC. Incorporates 3Dfx support. Extraordinary physics simulation that allows you to tweak over 60 different components on your vehicle. We've included 20 actual tracks from across the country in Burnout.

"The 10th Planet. The ultimate space combat/strategy game. The 10th Planet lets you build your ship, fly non-linear missions, and control the entire fleet to defend our solar system. We've recreated our solar system based on NASA data. Having been in development for a few years, The 10th Planet is in DOS, but will have 3Dfx and force feedback joystick support.

"Redguard: An "Elder Scrolls" Adventure. Enter the world of Tamriel as you've never seen it before. An entire island is free for you to explore and is busy with life. Flags wave in the wind, ships rock on the rolling waves in the harbor, and townspeople go about their business everyday. You can swashbuckle with pirates, deal with shady political figures, and escape from deadly traps. Redguard is a nonlinear adventure that has it all. Redguard has also been in development for the past few years, is still in DOS, but will take full advantage of 3Dfx.

"'Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind. Morrowind's design documents are now over 800 pages in length and climbing! It is being programmed for full Windows 95 compatibility using the powerful updated XnGine as described above. It will be worthy of the Elder Scrolls name. More will be released later in the year. Stay tuned."

And so, we have examined this story at length, and from the intensely varied eyes of Bethesda's beholders. Clearly, the gaming public is largely unsatisfied, but they have been given the promise of brighter days from the head of Bethesda himself. As for where I stand? I believe that the gamers, myself included, will await Bethesda's future performance with open eyes, anticipating. But not without a single eyebrow raised, born of interleaved skepticism, interest, and hope.