Bethesda Softworks focuses on secrets for its success

The video-game industry has been through ups and downs in the past few years, and even the arrival of Microsoft’s Xbox One and Sony’s PlayStation 4 hasn’t prevented some developers from folding, some publishers from contracting.

But Bethesda Softworks is growing, and has seven studios working under its banner. For Pete Hines, the Maryland-based company’s vice president of public relations and marketing, the success is a result of designers creating games they want to make.

In April, The Elder Scrolls Online was released for OS X and Windows. The first-person shooter Wolfenstein: The New Order, released on May 20, extends the franchise that began in 1981. Coming later this year is The Evil Within from Shinji Mikami, who created the survival-horror genre with 1996’s Resident Evil.

“We just do stuff that stays true to who we are,” Hines told the Georgia Straight at a Santa Monica hotel last year. While other developers have been trying to find a way to work multiplayer modes into every game, Bethesda has been content to stay with what’s worked. “Single-player is good,” he said. “Wolfenstein? Single-player. Evil Within? Single-player.”

The Elder Scrolls Online is the publisher’s first massively multiplayer game. It’s been in development since 2007.

Hines said that Bethesda studios don’t release a game until they feel it’s ready. “We’re going to take the amount of time it takes,” he said.

Allowing for a flexible development schedule is something that may be easier for Bethesda because it’s privately, not publicly, owned. “Just because we’re privately held doesn’t mean we don’t have shareholders,” Hines said. “We’re not beholden to a public market, but we still have people who own this company who want to know what is it we’re doing, how is it we’re using their money, and what is our plan for growth.”

But Hines did allow that Bethesda’s owners “understand that at the end of the day, if the game isn’t great, then everything else is a giant waste of time”.

While Bethesda has had success with games such as Fallout 3, The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim, and 2012 sleeper hit Dishonored, it has also published games that haven’t been received as well, including Brink, Rage, and Wet, which starred Eliza Dushku.

Lately, there have been more hits than misses. According to Hines, Bethesda is committed to making games better by cutting out elements that are not central to the game being made.

“Focus is the thing that ultimately determines how successful you can be,” Hines said. “You can do anything, but you can’t do everything.”