Skyrim Lead Designer Reacts To Game’s Enduring Appeal: “What The Hell?”

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Bethesda’s The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim, launched in 2011, quickly became a hit and has remained incredibly popular ever since. With over 60 million copies sold, it’s now the eighth best-selling video game of all time. Bruce Nesmith, the game’s lead designer, recently explained on the FRVR Podcast that Skyrim’s open-world design was groundbreaking for its time, and few games have attempted anything similar since.

Most games are quickly surpassed by newer titles, so it’s surprising that this one remained popular for so long – a year, then two, three, five, even ten years! It’s really quite remarkable, as IGN reported.

According to former Bethesda employee Nesmith, Todd Howard, the director of Skyrim, used to share updates in meetings about the game’s continued success, even a decade after it was released. Nesmith no longer works at Bethesda.

Nesmith explained that Bethesda knew Skyrim wouldn’t be perfect and expected some glitches. They also understood that fans were okay with that. He put it this way: ‘Expect some strange things to happen, and if you’re accepting of that, you’ve earned something special.’

Bethesda’s Todd Howard jokingly said that they’ll keep releasing Skyrim on new platforms as long as people continue to buy it. It’s become well-known that Bethesda will release the game on practically anything, even devices like Alexa.

Bethesda is working on both The Elder Scrolls 6 and Fallout 5, but fans shouldn’t expect The Elder Scrolls 6 to be released anytime soon.

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2025-10-15 16:09