If a creative profession gradually turns into a calendar full of meetings, it can diminish one’s enthusiasm for the job. A developer of Skyrim experienced something similar and now prefers to focus on his own game on Steam.
Who is it about? The developer Nate Purkeypile was once one of the key employees at Bethesda. He has been working for the company since 2007 and played a central role in the development of popular games like Fallout 3 and 4 as well as Skyrim.
At the company, he worked as a Lead Lighting Artist. He was responsible for designing and implementing the lighting in the game, ensuring that the atmosphere in the areas was right. However, over time, he became less and less fond of the atmosphere at his employer, Bethesda.
Here you can see the trailer for the developer’s own game:
More employees, more meetings, less enthusiasm
What changed at Bethesda? Nate Purkeypile was involved in the development of Starfield early on. At that time, he was one of 65 employees. However, as the development progressed, the team continued to grow. In the end, more than 500 employees are said to have worked on Starfield.
With the growth of the team, the number of meetings that Purkeypile found himself in also increased. The meetings and the many employees made his creative work increasingly difficult. He himself states, “There were too many meetings, and that was not my way of developing games.”
Is he alone in this opinion? No, probably not. Other former employees of Bethesda have expressed similar sentiments. The lead level designer of Fallout 76, Daryl Brigner, stated about his employer that “it is harder than ever to know who is doing what and who you are accountable to.”
The lead designer of Starfield, Will Shen, felt the same way. He said that “all departments are fighting over resources and respond to collaboration requests with ‘no.’ […] Something as simple as ordering a chair was not so simple.”
New studio, new game, more creativity
What happened next for him? Nate Purkeypile left Bethesda in 2021 to start his own development studio. At Just Purkey Games, he aims to develop smaller, more independent projects where developers have more freedom and creativity.
His new game The Axis Unseen also offers players a lot of freedom. Thanks to an open world that is said to be more than 5 times the size of Skyrim’s, players can discover a lot. The game is a kind of horror hunting game, where everything revolves around archery.
You take on the role of a hunter who battles monsters using a bow and arrow. Despite the vast open world, the game leaves nothing to chance, and the atmosphere is well-staged.
The Axis Unseen will be released on October 22, 2024, on Steam. However, you can already check out the free demo version of the game to see if the title convinces you.
Even without the developer Nate Purkeypile, work on Starfield continued. The space game has now received a new DLC. Shattered Space was released on September 30, 2024, and has elicited mixed feelings from players: Some consider Starfield: Shattered Space to be the best Bethesda DLC ever, but the reviews on Steam are weak.
