Why is no one ever talking about Zenimax?

[Top Sämmel Bun]

Zenimax is the parent company of Bethesda, so whatever gets made, how it's financed and certain game design aspects were dictated by them. We have Zenimax to thank for:
- The GTA online wannabe that is Fallout76.
- Paid mods.
- The constant re-releases of Skyrim.
- "Workshop "DLCs"" for Fallout 4 that feel like they were cut from the basegame.
- Mobile games like 'Elder Scrolls: Blades' and 'Elder Scrolls: Legends' that no one wanted.
- Not greenlighting and financing the development of a newer and better engine.
- And for keeping Bethesda understaffed compared to other AAA studios.

All these things happened after Zenimax were actively and aggressively looking to be bought up by another company, yet no one ever makes Zenimax rightfully responsible for any of these. The discussion is always around Bethesda exclusively. It's like screaming at the waiter because you're unhappy with the restaurant.

I believe Starfield to be a victim of Zenimax as well, the game was in development under them for 5 1/2 years after all. The "over a thousand procedural generated planets" is a sentence solely appealing to executives and shareholders. I simply refuse to believe, that anyone at Bethesda thought it was a good idea to abandon their hand-crafted worldbuilding, the one thing that Bethesda excels at and has traditionally carried them over the years.

Obviously it's impossible for us to know just how much influence Zenimax exerted over gameplay decisions, but we can assume that they certainly weren't hands-off, given this constant push for monetizing mods and the convenient "modders paradise" approach.

Only with The Elder Scrolls 6 can we truly see, what a non-Zenimax Bethesda game looks like. Until then, I pray that I'm correct with this assessment. Tho the new revamp for creation club make me afraid, that Microsoft is at least somewhat interested in continuing this ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥.

[AdahnGorion]

The parent company is Microsoft.

[Top Sämmel Bun]

Originally posted by AdahnGorion:

The parent company is Microsoft.

Only a little less than 2 years now. During the vast majority of Bethesdas existence it was Zenimax. But Zenimax still exists, the board of directors is thankfully completely fired now tho.
The current hierarchy from top to bottom goes like this:
- Microsoft
- Zenimax
- Bethesda Softworks
- Bethesda Game Studios

[MadDawg2552]

It depends on how much control Zenimax really has. They could just be an umbrella corporation use for money laundering and tax evasion purposes.

[EvilReFlex]

Zenimax is also the parent company of ID, and the new Doom Games are awesome.
Bethesda sucks!

[TheCr33pur]

I use to play ESO, but got tired of it and yeah its a money pits too. But only if you decide it, they didnt force anything to you though.

I would rather play ESO over this piece of crap!

[Jarsonne]

It's hard to say, some dev com in public said that Starfield wasn't since start with 1000 planets and procedure generated stuff. It only appeared later in middle of project.

I don't see any parent company pushing to such a huge change in middle of a project.

And it's this shift that allowed them try give up on hand crafted wide area.

My bet is they get cornered when trying spread Slyrim area on multiple planets. They could not make 5 or 6 Skyrim, and quite smaller areas for each planet could only fail build the illusion that setup games as Skyrim.

For ZeniMax in past, I don't know, but clearly now it's just Microsoft and Bethesda. No way Microsoft can make even a half successful Starfield, and they struggle to have multiple owned big dev. So I bet Microsoft try pressure somehow Bethesda to avoid errors, but no way they can say do this or do that.

Next one to three years will tell, they give up or can't improve the SF blueprint, then they'll revert to chain clones of Morrowind. Or they achieve something with SF, then everything can happen for ES6.

[AdahnGorion]

Originally posted by 「Synoh」:

Originally posted by AdahnGorion:

The parent company is Microsoft.

Only a little less than 2 years now. During the vast majority of Bethesdas existence it was Zenimax. But Zenimax still exists, the board of directors is thankfully completely fired now tho.
The current hierarchy from top to bottom goes like this:
- Microsoft
- Zenimax
- Bethesda Softworks
- Bethesda Game Studios

So what is the argument? Should I hate on Media Technology Limited, everytime I get angry about Home Alone or where's waldo?

[p0k314NET]

Originally posted by EvilReFlex:

Zenimax is also the parent company of ID, and the new Doom Games are awesome.
Bethesda sucks!

Good point. I agree.

[Jarsonne]

Originally posted by AdahnGorion:

Originally posted by 「Synoh」:

Only a little less than 2 years now. During the vast majority of Bethesdas existence it was Zenimax. But Zenimax still exists, the board of directors is thankfully completely fired now tho.
The current hierarchy from top to bottom goes like this:
- Microsoft
- Zenimax
- Bethesda Softworks
- Bethesda Game Studios

So what is the argument? Should I hate on Media Technology Limited, everytime I get angry about Home Alone or where's waldo?

OP has no argument for Starfield, it's know that Microsoft pushed them delay one more year, and started try help them in testing.

It's no Microsoft that designed any thing in the game, even less dev anything or for QA and commercials.

Many players argue it should have been like Skyrim but fail explain how one game could include at least 4 or 5 Skyrims, sigh.

[Top Sämmel Bun]

Originally posted by Jarsonne:

It's hard to say, some dev com in public said that Starfield wasn't since start with 1000 planets and procedure generated stuff. It only appeared later in middle of project.

I don't see any parent company pushing to such a huge change in middle of a project.

And it's this shift that allowed them try give up on hand crafted wide area.

My bet is they get cornered when trying spread Slyrim area on multiple planets. They could not make 5 or 6 Skyrim, and quite smaller areas for each planet could only fail build the illusion that setup games as Skyrim.

For ZeniMax in past, I don't know, but clearly now it's just Microsoft and Bethesda. No way Microsoft can make even a half successful Starfield, and they struggle to have multiple owned big dev. So I bet Microsoft try pressure somehow Bethesda to avoid errors, but no way they can say do this or do that.

Next one to three years will tell, they give up or can't improve the SF blueprint, then they'll revert to chain clones of Morrowind. Or they achieve something with SF, then everything can happen for ES6.

I sadly don't think that such unrealistic changes in the middle of a project are that uncommon for publishers/parent companies. The most extreme case of this I've ever seen was with Overkill's The Walking Dead, which just randomly changed the entire engine of the game during late development. But yeah, Microsoft has been very hands-off with their current developers. I hope this continues.

[Top Sämmel Bun]

Originally posted by AdahnGorion:

Originally posted by 「Synoh」:

Only a little less than 2 years now. During the vast majority of Bethesdas existence it was Zenimax. But Zenimax still exists, the board of directors is thankfully completely fired now tho.
The current hierarchy from top to bottom goes like this:
- Microsoft
- Zenimax
- Bethesda Softworks
- Bethesda Game Studios

So what is the argument? Should I hate on Media Technology Limited, everytime I get angry about Home Alone or where's waldo?

If you're unhappy with how many unnecessary and cheap sequels they released of Home Alone, trying to milk the franchise for every penny.... yeah sure.

[Jarsonne]

Originally posted by 「Synoh」:

Originally posted by Jarsonne:

It's hard to say, some dev com in public said that Starfield wasn't since start with 1000 planets and procedure generated stuff. It only appeared later in middle of project.

I don't see any parent company pushing to such a huge change in middle of a project.

And it's this shift that allowed them try give up on hand crafted wide area.

My bet is they get cornered when trying spread Slyrim area on multiple planets. They could not make 5 or 6 Skyrim, and quite smaller areas for each planet could only fail build the illusion that setup games as Skyrim.

For ZeniMax in past, I don't know, but clearly now it's just Microsoft and Bethesda. No way Microsoft can make even a half successful Starfield, and they struggle to have multiple owned big dev. So I bet Microsoft try pressure somehow Bethesda to avoid errors, but no way they can say do this or do that.

Next one to three years will tell, they give up or can't improve the SF blueprint, then they'll revert to chain clones of Morrowind. Or they achieve something with SF, then everything can happen for ES6.

I sadly don't think that such unrealistic changes in the middle of a project are that uncommon for publishers/parent companies. The most extreme case of this I've ever seen was with Overkill's The Walking Dead, which just randomly changed the entire engine of the game during late development. But yeah, Microsoft has been very hands-off with their current developers. I hope this continues.

+1 on positive comments about Microsoft and bought dev, thir history seem show they know manage it a lot better than some others.

Even for an engine change in middle of project, I don't see any parent company pushing to it.

And for me hand crafted to procedure generated is a much more impactful change.

[Top Sämmel Bun]

Originally posted by EvilReFlex:

Zenimax is also the parent company of ID, and the new Doom Games are awesome.
Bethesda sucks!

Yeah good point.
I can still imagine that id Software just didn't had the "Golden Cash Cow" appeal to Zenimax as Bethesda had. Given that Doom only ever had a sixth of Skyrim and a tenth of Fallout 4's peak concurrent players, wouldn't surprise me if id Software was just left in the corner on their own, this thankfully led to pretty good games.

[AdahnGorion]

Originally posted by 「Synoh」:

Originally posted by AdahnGorion:

So what is the argument? Should I hate on Media Technology Limited, everytime I get angry about Home Alone or where's waldo?

If you're unhappy with how many unnecessary and cheap sequels they released of Home Alone, trying to milk the franchise for every penny.... yeah sure.

You don´t seem to understand. Bethesda made a Home Alone game back in the 90´s for NES and the Parent company was Media Technology Limited. Zenimax came in 1999... Bethesda have existed since 86´

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mgHr_vkJGVQ

[[238]Blade]

Originally posted by 「Synoh」:

yet no one ever makes Zenimax rightfully responsible for any of these. The discussion is always around Bethesda exclusively. It's like screaming at the waiter because you're unhappy with the restaurant.

Obviously it's impossible for us to know just how much influence Zenimax exerted over gameplay decisions, but we can assume that they certainly weren't hands-off

Actually, we can have a fairly good idea. With Fallout 76 we have dev videos talking about how much they wanted to try making a multiplayer game, how they basically admitted they had no idea what they were doing, but did so anyways.

We had articles from Jason Schrier with dev statements on game developments talking about how EVERYONE voiced concerns (including high level devs) about game designs and lack of NPCs, but that Todd Howard didn't give them a choice and forced it.

We have statements from Todd in the past to the effect that he gets almost full autonomy within Bethesda to do whatever he wants because of earlier games' success. Hell, he even made the statement that he wanted to make a Fallout game so daddy Zenimax bought it for him to make.
--------------------------------
TL;DR, Zenimax wanted to be bought out, but most everything is on Todd for vision, Emil for terrible writing, other high level developers (Todd and Emil) for lack of cohesion and individual devs for lack of talent.

Edit: Hell this is all stuff myself and others had voiced back when Bethesda still had their own forums.