Bethesda’s Senior VP of Global Marketing and Communications, Pete Hines, wants people to skip sleep and stay up in order to play Starfield.
That’s what Hines said in a freshly published interview with Gamesindustry.biz. In this interview, which was conducted prior to last week’s Gamescom 2023 event, the Bethesda veteran talked about the studio, the highly-anticipated Starfield as well as prior game launches from the studio, complete with the bugs that the studio is known for.
In the interview, Hines was asked whether Bethesda becoming a part of Microsoft and the inclusion of Starfield on Game Pass on day one, has changed the way that Bethesda has marketed the game. According to Hines, Microsoft’s gaming subscription service certainly has had an influence on how the team thinks about bringing games to the market. Also, he said that Game Pass has added more value by integrating cloud gaming on PC and Xbox. As expressed by Bethesda’s VP, the team wants to have players feel that they need a certain Bethesda game in their lives.
“And truth be told, we would hear from players: “I’m at work, but all I want to do is play Oblivion”, he said. “I’m at work, but all I want to do is play Fallout 3.” I just love the idea of bosses walking through their office, and everybody during their lunch is playing Starfield. I look to lower productivity on this planet when we put games out. I want people not sleeping and staying up.”
Hines continued, “That’s how you know you’re doing a good job, when other game studio directors are emailing us, like, “I can’t get any work done on my game because everyone is exhausted from staying up all night playing Fallout 3 or Doom Eternal or whatever.” Good. That’s what we’re going for. We want games that gamers go to, “I have to play this. I need this in my life.”
We have a feeling that, given the rave reviews of Starfield so far as well as the length of the game, many players will, at least, miss out on several hours of sleep in the coming months or year.
Starfield is available now for Xbox and PC for those who purchased the Premium Edition or Constellation Edition of the game. For other players, the game launches globally on September 6. Here’s what we wrote in our launch review:
“With an engaging story, well-developed characters and lore, and a huge amount of meaningful content, Starfield is one of Bethesda’s finest games and one of the best role-playing games released in the past few years”.
