Fallout 76 is a very different sort of game to that which Bethesda is accustomed to creating. While the shift from single-player to multiplayer is a key aspect, there are also major changes to how Bethesda plans to deliver content. For example, the game will feature cosmetic micro-transactions, which will allow all DLC to be free. Speaking in a recent interview, Pete Hines spoke about Bethesda’s Fallout 76 timeline and said that he wants the game to last “forever.”
The Fallout 76 Timeline Post-Launch
The Vice President of Global Marketing at Bethesda, Pete Hines, recently spoke with Metro about a variety of topics, including Fallout 76. At one stage he addresses the studio’s plans for micro-transactions; he clarified that they would be cosmetic only, and can also be bought with in-game currency as well as real-world money. Moreover, he explained how the micro-transactions will fund the game’s DLC being free for all players. All of this contributes to the studio’s new content delivery plan; a plan which aligns with the concept of “games-as-a-service”. Although Hines was clear that these sorts of major changes were not guaranteed for future projects, it seems that Bethesda may be using Fallout 76 as something of a testbed.
When Hines was asked how long he thought Fallout 76 might last, he responded; “forever. I’m not being ironic. Like, forever. Because other people have said, ‘Is your timeline two years or five years?’ And I said, ‘Well, they’re still playing Morrowind and you go online and look at how many people are playing Fallout 4 and Skyrim. Those games have been out for four and seven years, and there are literally hundreds of thousands of people playing those games every single day, ever single month.”
The Fallout 76 Timeline: Adapting With the Fans
According to Hines, Bethesda plans on adjusting as things progress depending on the audience; “Part of our thing,” he says; “is we need to get people in the game and see how they respond. We’ve even taken this approach for past DLC. I don’t know if you remember Fallout 3? The big consumer reaction when we launched that game was that they were all upset that it had an ending. And we were like, ‘All the previous games had an ending! We thought we were sticking to what that franchise is…’ But they didn’t want an ending and we had a couple of DLCs in the works but the third one we did we were like, ‘Well, we need a DLC that removes the ending of the game and allows you to continue on.'”
So Bethesda will be looking to the audience to see what people want going forward after launch. As such, the studio probably doesn’t have a concrete Fallout 76 timeline. Given the studio’s experience with The Elder Scrolls Online, it seems likely that the studio will aim to be reactive when it comes to content delivery; adapting to provide gamers with what they want to see in the game long-term. Delivering content in the manner of an MMO could certainly sustain Fallout 76 for many years, especially now that Bethesda has expanded as a studio.