Elder Scrolls Online: Build a $2 billion game by breaking the rules

Ask anyone about a successful online multiplayer game and you’ll probably get a handful of names in response.

Fortnite, Call of Duty, League of Legends, Roblox, Helldivers II.

But there’s another title, celebrating its 10th anniversary this year, that has been a relatively quiet success.

The Elder Scrolls Online (ESO), a spin-off of the hugely popular fantasy RPG series from Fallout makers Bethesda, has been played by 24 million people and has earned $2 billion since launch.

Developer Zenimax Online Studios began working on the game in 2007, following the huge success of the single-player game The Elder Scrolls: Oblivion two years earlier.

At the time, massively multiplayer online role-playing games, or MMORPGs, were all the rage, with World of Warcraft, Everquest and Dark Age of Camelot attracting millions of players.

So an Elder Scrolls version of the genre seemed like a bull’s-eye to many on paper.

But the game didn’t live up to expectations when it was first released.

Creative director Rich Lambert and studio director Matt Firor tell BBC Newsbeat that the first version of ESO hasn’t fully landed on Elders Scrolls fans or MMORPG players who grew up with these titles.

“We didn’t really choose a job,” Rich says.

“We tried to appeal to both, but we weren’t meeting their needs as much as those groups wanted.”

MMORPGs are traditionally all about improving your character by completing quests and other tasks to gain experience and unlock new areas.

This was a key feature of early ESO versions, and Rich says it made it harder for friends to play together.

“That creates this friction, something very painful for you and your friends, where you always have to be in line,” he says.

Although the game’s initial reception was below expectations, Matt says it was successful enough to attract a “hardcore group” of players who logged in daily.

Matt says this spurred the team on, but also revealed something surprising.

“They were searching and exploring,” he says.

“But they also did a lot of things that I called virtual world activities. They got together and talked, they danced and played drums and musical instruments.

“Players, even back then, spent a lot of time living in the game with a virtual character.”

Matt says this observation made the team realize that what players really wanted was “an Elder Scrolls virtual world where they can establish an identity and move on from there.”

These days, ESO features standard story missions and battle arenas, but some players will spend most of their time on various side activities, including house building, a card game, and a detailed fashion mode.

“We have a whole in-game economy of players who are home decorators,” says Matt.

But the decision to make this pivot was divisive within the studio, which, according to Matt, employed many “old-school MMO developers.”

“There were a lot of meetings and a lot of whiteboards,” he says.

‘At a meeting I stated that I wanted ESO to be more like Grand Theft Auto.

“Does anyone care what level they are in Grand Theft Auto? No, they just log in and play. And that we have to copy that feeling.

“Looking back, it was the right decision. But it wasn’t an easy decision.”

Rich adds, “Honestly, it wasn’t until people actually started playing it that they really started to understand where the magic was.

“But those first few months were definitely challenges within the studio.”

Streamers KayPOWXD GeekyCassie and Dawnwhisper tell Newsbeat that the game’s sense of community keeps them coming back.

Kay, who got into gaming thanks to her father and has been playing ESO since the beginning, says long-term players call themselves an “ESO fam.”

“That’s the hashtag we use because we’re such a big family and everyone is so loving and wonderful,” she says.

Dawn says the game’s players are mature, “not in the sense of the age of the players, but in the way they interact with each other.”

“There is less trolling, which makes new players feel less and more involved, which keeps them coming in.”

Cassie, one of the founders of Black Twitch UK, has been playing ESO for about three years and says that toxicity from other players is usually a big concern for her when starting a new game.

But she says the ESO community has been a much “warmer” place for her.

“It’s not about who you are,” she says. “It’s just about having fun while gaming.

“I haven’t really played anything else at the moment because I can’t worry about toxicity.”

Jessica Folsom, ESO’s director of community management, tells Newsbeat that Zenimax has teams that can intervene if players experience harassment.

But she says, “When toxicity surfaces, our players often stamp it out before we ever have to take action.”

A recent one report from US analytics firm Newzoo found that the most played games of 2023 in terms of monthly users were largely older, established titles such as Fortnite and Call of Duty.

While ESO doesn’t quite have the same high-profile brand recognition, it already has a decade’s head start on others scrambling to create the next big online hit, but it also needs to attract new players.

Matt says the game’s freeform nature means it has “the opposite problem” of competitors, with newcomers forced to catch up on years of previous content.

At ESO, he says, there is an “overwhelming amount of choice” when they first log in.

“If you ask five Elder Scrolls Online players to describe the game they’re playing, you’ll get five different games described,” he says.

That’s by design, but Rich says the “metric tons” of activities in the game can be difficult to communicate.

“It’s likely that we’re not good at uncovering all these things,” he says.

“And that’s something that we need to work on and will certainly focus on in the coming years.”

Community Manager Jessica agrees that “one of our biggest challenges in giving new players a shot at ESO is the misconception that new players – or even players who haven’t entered in a few years – will fall woefully behind.”

With so many “great games out there these days,” she says, “it can be quite challenging to get people’s attention amidst so much chatter.”

Rich and Matt say that Newsbeat’s ability to turn around ESO’s early fortunes owes much to former Zenimax Online Studios boss Robert A Altman, who passed away in 2021.

Matt says he “saw the magic in the game and gave us the support and time we needed to do what we thought was right to improve the game.”

Rich adds: “Making games of this scale is difficult. And it is very expensive. So there are many risks involved.

“Had I worked at other companies before, I don’t know if we would have had the luxury of that.”

When asked if they could do it again if they started all over again today, Rich believes it is possible.

“I always say we’re smarter now than we were then,” he says.

“Every time you do something you learn and we are still learning.

“And that’s the nice thing about game development. That it’s not an exact science.”

Listen to Newsbeat live at 12:45 and 17:45 weekdays – or listen back here.