Zenimax Online has been secretly working on a video game for the past four and a half years. The video has remained unannounced, but we have assembled what information can be possibly be collected about the game, that can be confirmed is not about their other projects, such as Starfield.
To be clear, this is no rumor. Zenimax creative director Ben Jones confirmed that this game exists, and also revealed the four and a half year development period, starting around roughly 2018. Ben describes it as a large scope project, with a considerable investment. Ben’s connection to the project is doubly relevant here because he also confirmed more details about this project on LinkedIn.
On LinkedIn, Ben shared a job opening originally posted by Zenimax themselves for a lead quest designer. Seeing as job titles in the game industry are superfluous, and different companies use different names for jobs, it’s best to read the job description to understand who they are looking for.
“ZeniMax Online Studios is seeking a Lead Quest Designer to join our studio for the development of our next AAA game. This is a chance to join an experienced group of developers in pre-production for a new IP. This role will collaborate with the Lead Content Designer, Lead Narrative Designer, Design Leads, & Lead Environment Artists to drive quest content. A developer in this role serves as a key part of the content direction for a new IP and will help drive a holistic approach to quest development that includes gameplay moments, combat encounter design, and scripting.”
In fact, the company has been doing a large scale hiring spree, an unusual action given the tech industry itself, including some video game companies like Microsoft and Meta, have been laying off considerable numbers of their workers.
This is all relevant for one reason; this project is expected to not only pay for all the new hires, but to need a considerably workforce to produce, and possibly maintain.
Now, Zenimax’s specialty has been MMOs like The Elder Scrolls and Fallout. It would be reasonable to hypothesize that this new project is also an MMO, but there are other possibilities as well.
As Sony has indicated in their financial reports and press events, the big genre in the industry now is live service games. It is possible, that for the same reasons that Sony purchased Destiny developer Bungie, Zenimax has scaled up to make live service games of their own.
Seeing as Zenimax is no longer being mum on the subject, we may learn more about this very soon.
Source: Exputer
