so emagin if bethesda were able to take 10 years to make the next TES game insted of 5 or 6 with demo that were made to the public or a select few maybe some thing like you would have to signe up for it every 6 months or so after the first 5 or 6 years so they could get the players feed back on how they were doing with it and would ask them to point out any flaws bugs or to say what they dislike about it what they think should be added or emproved upon and the people testing would be from the most hard core of TES gamers ( people who have played them since arena ) to the casual gamer ( people who started playing them from skyrim ) and in between. so that in the end result it would be the best or at least try to be the best TES game ever made so that parts of it for the people who want it to be an actual rpg and would get what they wanted and so parts of it would for the people who kinda don't care that much about the rpg aspect would get what they want. what do you all think

I think Bethesda pays more attention to what its customers want than some people think.

In particular, they have built-in feedback in the form of mods. We know that Bethesda pay extremely close attention to how their games are modded. They have incorporated a great many of those ideas into both Oblivion and Skyrim.

well yeah but i was just adding that in there because if they were to take 10 years to make a game well at least IMO if i were to take that long on some thing as big as TES i would want to know what my fans thought about what i was doing as i went along

if they put a solid three years full work with 6 months tech research and at least 6 months bug-squashing, it would likely be one of the greatest games of all time

I don't think they can stay in production for such a long time, that would hurt their relevance on the market unless they produce other IPs which would still be bad for TES. 10 years can skip a console generation entirely which would also be a risk, they could lose customers to other open world rpgs that would fight to take this niche. I think a 3-4 year development cycle is great for both their business and TES fans.

well it was just a what if question and not a matter of what would actually happen if the spent 10 years making a game and i did also say that they would be making other games to put out inbetween the 10 years but as i was saying think of it as if nothing bad would come of it and that they wouldn't loos money at all or wouldn't loose any customers ether
or lets say that the go out and say that skyrim is the last elser scrolls that they were ever gonna make but were actually gonna use that lie to make the next TES for 10 years and when it finnally comes out they might even make more money than they ever did with the past games


idk if that would actually happen if they did that but just a thought

Scary thought
I couldn't live another 10 yerars without new TES chapters. Well, I guess I could, but don't give them ideas
Your idea about long term testing with fans input would be ideal, but I don't see Bethesda (and especially Todd Howard) letting people mess with their plans. Besides, who will make the tester selection, and who decides what feature is good and what isn't... I mean only by reading these very forums one can see the TES fans have very different perspectives on what's good and what's bad in this series.

well yeah you have me there but like i said it was just a what if question that would end with the best of results

For Beth working together with the fans to make a TES game could be as detrimental to Beth as Beth not paying attention to fans at all. Working with the fans will open up a Pandora's box bringing unexpected results. Results that more likely will be against Beth best interest.

They would run out of money and Skyrim would be the last TES game until EA or Activision bought the IP and turned it into an MMO or shooter.

That's absolutely not how software engineering works. You have to take at least as much time for testing as for building the thing. With 6 months testing, it would be a real disaster.

Beth isn't blizzard so 10 years is unrealistic. Could it be done, yes but it wouldn't be the best business idea. Blizzard could do it because of WOW as that's an almost guranteed money source.

Although I'm sometimes not sure how close. They were apparently surprised that many people used more than 50 mods (they said so when the Steam Workshop issue came up), they've only recently acknowledged the Navmesh thing, which has been around since navmeshes were introduced (Fallout 3, I think) and which required some creative workarounds, and so on.

It took 3 years of active development to make Skyrim.
It should take 5 years for TES VI.
I don't mind waiting as long as I get something actually good.

yeay thats pretty much what i'm saying with this post i don't care how long it takes as long as they can make it even better then i'll be happy

Taking 10 years would probably generate a ridiculous level of hype that no company could possibly fulfil.

It would be just like Skyrim, only there would be more dungeons and a bigger world. Not sure about the bigger world.

Then the next Elder Scrolls will come with contacts that you pop in your eyes. All you need to do is lock your self in a room, put them in, and your in the next land of The Elder Scrolls VI: [Insert Name Here].

that would actually be kinda bad ass if they could do some thing like that. i i've thought a lot about what an elder scrolls game would be like if it were a vertual reality game

Ten year development cycles aren't practical. Consider games like Duke Nukem Forever or the original Team Fortress 2:
- The stuff you do at the beginning of the cycle is going to be obsolete by the end. See how little DNF resembles it's original iterations. Team Fortress 2 is an entirely different game than it's original military themed version.
- The technology doesn't hold. DNF was announced for the Quake 2 engine, and ended on probably some custom engine, after going through two cycles of the Unreal engine. Daikatana had similar issues, swapping from the original Quake engine to Quake II.
- The systems you're developing for aren't even relevant when you finish. Similar to the above, a timespan that long covers more than a full console generation. DNF was announced during the PSX/N64 days. It released two full console cycles later. We're obviously in the PC exclusive mod forum, but you can be sure Bethesda isn't going to plan around a development schedule projecting into a console that doesn't even exist yet.

Sometimes long projects work out. Half Life 2 took quite awhile after all. But it likely suffered from the redundancies and retooling that those aforementioned titles did too. Sometimes you just have to work on a goal and get it done, not endlessly spin your wheels hoping to create a perfect release. Especially with something like the Elder Scrolls games. They've rarely been the best looking games, but can you imagine them releasing Morrowind in 2012?

Would be good for quality and bugs testing and pretty bad for the old fans who will pass meanwhile.

Blizzard is doing a pretty damn good job with Diablo 3 for now.
Just sayin'.

I know what the title says, but I actually think that OP is just referring to TES VI release date, not an actual time spent on the development.
Even though Skyrim was released 6 years after Oblivion, it was in development only for 3 years.
A game like TES should stick to 5 years of development imo.

Wha,t so like 6 years of them making an engine, conception and doing the writing?! Then 4 years making a game with that engine and putting all their ideas into the game?

Maybe we would see some actual great writing from Bethesda and some interesting lore and quests. Also fewer bugs and a game that FEELS like it was finished.

Could work out pretty damned nicely but I think I would prefer 2-3 TES games in that time period. That is what they are currently doing anyways. Morrowind 2002-Skyrim 2011.

Hmm, sounded like "develop game for five years, then put it in periodic betas every six months, release at ten" to me.

Public beta testing would probably help nail down their chronically buggy releases, but I doubt they'd let you play it for five years before releasing it. Especially if mods weren't supported. You could definitely finish a mod-less Elder Scrolls games in a beta period that long.

Even if the next game takes 4 years, or 3 years to make, it will be for a console released this coming fall, and as such will have "mediocre" graphics- at least for the time of release. A game designed to run on a console that is already 3-? years old. Sort of like Skyrim designed for PS3 and Xbox.

What they need to do to ensure a quality product is release a few very substantial content expansions for Skyrim. Possibly a smaller one first, followed by a much larger one, followed in 1.5 to 2 years time by a massive one with a re-release of the whole "collectors edition" of the entire game, FORMATTED FOR THE NEXT CONSOLE. (Yes, the collectors edition should not be playable on PS3, whiners be whinin'- that console would be 8 years old by that time, its already 5+ years old.) This would keep fans in the loop, happy and entertained with more new stuff and stories and places to explore. If you dont think a game can endure that kind of lifespan, I invite you to look at WoW or City of Heroes, or past TES games. lol, I would bet money if they released an expansion, even a mediocre one without any actual mechanics changes- to morrowind they would sell it. And Skyrim would only be 2 years old at that time, not like a decade old like morrowind is.

it would also give them the ability to possibly skip the next console(not really skip if they release a huge skyrim expansion for it) without massive money loss or fanbase loss. The time between now and 3.5 years from now when PS5 comes out could be used to work on new code for better NPC actions, code to make it so levitation and climbing wouldnt break the game, you know rather difficult time consuming things so when TES 6 comes out, it is truly improved over Skyrim in all regards. As that 3.5 to 4 years from now approaches and the new console models also come closer they could then get a feel for what they would be capable of. So you know, they could release a game that wasnt totally hampered by a 5 year old hardware limitation.

I wouldn't want any more than 6 years of development (not counting time in between games when something different is being worked on), for the reasons mentioned in a few above posts. But 3 years is not enough, I think.