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Revision as of 18:31, 1 November 2011

Todd Howard
Born	17 May, 1953 (age 58) Lower Macungie Township, Pennsylvania, USA
Nationality	American
Occupation	Video game designer/Producer
Employer	Bethesda Game Studios
Known for	The Elder Scrolls/Fallout 3/Skyrim

Todd Howard is an American designer, director, and producer. He is currently Game Director and Executive Producer for Bethesda Game Studios, where he has led the creation of Fallout 3 and The Elder Scrolls video game series. GamePro magazine named him to the Top 20 Most Influential People in Gaming over the last 20 years. He has also been named one of IGN’s Top Game Creators of All Time.

Early life

Howard was born in Lower Macungie Township, Pennsylvania and claims to have developed an interest in computers, particularly video games, at a very young age. He considers "Wizardry" and "Ultima 3" to be inspirations for his future games. He is a 1989 graduate of Emmaus High School in Emmaus, Pennsylvania. In 1993, he graduated from The College of William & Mary in Williamsburg, Virginia, where he majored in finance despite his desire to create video games, claiming "it seemed like the easiest path to get through college". After playing Wayne Gretzky's 3D Hockey he requested a job from a Bethesda office he encountered each day on his commute from school to home, but was denied.

Bethesda Softworks

Howard joined Bethesda Softworks in 1994. Most recently he was Game Director and Executive Producer of Fallout 3, the 2008 winner of E3’s Best of Show, and Game of the Year from the Game Developers Choice Awards, The Associated Press, Yahoo, Gamespy, IGN, PC Gamer, and more. Prior to that he led the creation of The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion, the 2006 Game of the Year winner from the VGAs, The Associated Press, G4, Computer Gaming World, AIAS, and more. Currently, he is working on the fifth installment of The Elder Scrolls series, Skyrim, which is due out November 11, 2011.

His other major credits include Project Leader and Designer of The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind (2002), Producer and Designer of The Terminator: Future Shock (1995) and SkyNET (1996), and Project Leader and Designer of The Elder Scrolls Adventures: Redguard (1998).

He is a frequent speaker at industry events, and his games have been featured in everything from Newsweek, CNN, USA Today, and The Today Show, to magazine covers worldwide. Howard has stated that Bethesda's philosophy for the Elder Scrolls games is to allow people to "live another life, in another world."

Howard spoke before developers at the 2009 D.I.C.E. Summit, sharing his three rules of game development:

Great games are played not made. – "You can have the greatest design document ever made, and you're going to change 90 percent of it as soon as you play the game."
Keep it simple. – Doing something really well takes time, more time than you think it will. Simple systems acting together create complexity that players can appreciate.
Define the experience - "Don't define your game by a list of bullet points... define it by the experience you want people to have."

He also quipped that developers should ignore demographics and installed base, and follow their passions, saying “if install base really mattered, we'd all make board games, because there are a lot of tables.”

External links

References

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