New Vegas Director Says Finishing Games Isn’t Important

Fallout: New Vegas, Pillars of Eternity and Pentiment director Josh Sawyer is an ever-willing repository of development knowledge, a professional always willing to give his opinion and insights on various matters. In a recent Q&A video on his YouTube channel, Sawyer responded to a viewer who asked whether data that suggests players stop playing games before completing them affects studios’ approach to development (nice spot, GamesRadar+).

“Ultimately, we want people to be happy,” Sawyer begins. “We want them to be happy that they bought the game and played the game. We want the player to play the game and whatever amount they play, we want them to come away and say “I’m glad I bought the game, I enjoyed it.” Just having someone’s money is not good enough, that’s very short-sighted. We have reputations to maintain, and we want people to think well of us.”

Sawyer goes on to speak about how developers need to patch games to stay in their customers’ good graces, and reflects on Obsidian’s reputation as “Bug-sidian.”

The Journey, Not The Destination

Sawyer continues, “We want people to think about our games and our studio and have a positive experience. So, something that I thought was interesting… and I’ve told this anecdote before—I remember talking to a useability group, we were talking about the size of our games. We like to make them pretty big and pretty long even if a lot of the stuff is optional. One of the researchers said, “We found two-thirds of people don’t finish the games they start.” He went on to suggest that we should make shorter games, and I asked what I thought was an obvious question, “How did that correlate to the enjoyment of the player?”

The researcher concedes that they never asked the test participants that question. Sawyer then emphasises that player satisfaction is a far more important metric than player longevity: “One of the most notable games where this is really important is a game like Skyrim. A game where a lot of people never finish the critical path [main quest], they don’t get very far in the critical path at all. They restart the game over and over and over, and they just wander. They never finish it, they never see more than a third of the map and its locations… but they love it.”

Not every player is overly concerned about finishing, they can derive enjoyment from playing slices of a game. Sawyer adds that an important psychological aspect of an RPG is that a world feels endless, even if that’s not necessarily true. He finished by saying that he doesn’t personally believe that players want games that are “six times bigger than Skyrim.” We’ve essentially reached the point where making a game bigger is going to result in diminishing returns.

This appears to be the prevailing thought process for many developers. We’ve already heard CD Projekt Red say, in its early descriptions of The Witcher 4, that the next instalment’s map will be of a similar size to The Witcher 3. Considering the size of The Witcher 3, I don’t think anyone is going to be complaining about a lack of content.

As for Obsidian, the studio has two big releases in the coming year. Avowed is set for release on February 13, while The Outer Worlds 2 will arrive at an unspecified date later in the year. Josh Sawyer is not directly involved in the development of Avowed, though he has been acting in an advisory role, understandable given that he’s partially responsible for creating the game’s setting, Eora. It’s unknown if Sawyer is currently working on any projects at Obsidian.

One of the all-time greats, The Elder Scrolls 5: Skyrim redefined the concept of the Western RPG. With countless awards under its belt and releases on almost every platform imaginable, you’ll find yourself engrossed in a colossal open world in your role as the Dragonborn. You must face your destiny and save the land from a formidable foe.