Skyblivion Teams Advice to Bethesda: Enhancing Modding Support for Future Games

The development team behind the highly anticipated Skyrim mod Skyblivion has shared their valuable advice with Bethesda on how to better engage the modding community. Skyblivion is a large-scale project that recreates The Elder Scrolls 4: Oblivion using the modding tools and engine of Skyrim. While Bethesda is a major developer with many games across multiple genres, it is best known for its open world RPGs, such as Oblivion and Fallout 4. These games are highly ranked not only for their scale and play experience but also for their support for user-created modifications.

Bethesda regularly releases toolsets and documentation to support players who create new content for the games, which has led to Skyrim and Oblivion becoming evergreen titles as players spend years, even decades, playing through user-created mods and customized expansions. One of the largest such projects is Skyblivion, which attempts to create an enhanced version of Oblivion's campaign and content within Skyrim. The project was so highly anticipated that the Skyblivion development team was even invited to visit Bethesda directly in the wake of the launch of Oblivion Remastered, Bethesda's own official refresh of the 2006 classic.

According to an interview with PC Gamer, the team's visit to Bethesda's offices went well, with in-depth discussions of modding and mod tools. The Skyblivion team's visit was initiated by a chance encounter between team lead Rebelzize and a PAX East convention in Boston. Since Boston was located relatively near Bethesda's headquarters in Maryland, Rebelzize reached out and raised the possibility of a quick visit to "say hi." Bethesda opted to formally invite the entire team over to interact, with the visit lasting nearly five hours. During the visit, Bethesda was most interested in finding out how the Skyblivion team got along with the Bethesda-created tools it had created to support modding, such as Skyrim's creation kit.

One insight the Skyblivion team shared was a desire for more detailed, video-based documentation and help to accompany the release of a creation kit. Rebelzize shared that he missed the days when Bethesda would produce a series of videos helping new users come to grips with the Skyrim Creation Kit Suite, which included developer-led walkthroughs for basic projects like creating a new dungeon. Such learning aids for future Bethesda games like The Elder Scrolls 6 or Fallout 5 could get fans well on their way to producing high-quality content for those titles and extending their lifespan much sooner.

In conclusion, the Skyblivion team's advice to Bethesda on engaging the modding community is valuable and could lead to better support for future games and a more vibrant modding community overall. By providing more detailed, video-based documentation and help with creation kits, Bethesda can empower its fans to create even more impressive content and extend the lifespan of its games.