Matt Firor The Fantasy Master

OXM SPEAKS TO THE FOUNDER AND HEAD OF ZENIMAX ONLINE STUDIOS ABOUT HIS CAREER, THE SUCCESS OF THE ELDER SCROLLS ONLINE AND HIS LOVE OF SOCCER

- Adam Bryant

Creating an MMO or online-focused game is a massive task for game developers, and not for the fainthearted. While the initial development period can be as difficult as any other project, it’s the months after an online game’s launch where the real battle begins. a constant stream of improvements and additions are needed to hold the interest of its players, which is hard enough by itself, but even harder when you’re dealing with such a beloved and established franchise as the Elder Scrolls. but Matt Firor, with his 28 years of experience delivering entertaining and successful online fantasy games, and with the scars to prove it, makes it look easy. With The Elder Scrolls Online reaching its fifth birthday on Pc and fourth on Xbox One, and the imminent launch of the game’s latest chapter, Elsweyr, the game has gone from strength to strength over the years, and Firor has been its driving force.

Let’s begin at the beginning: how did you first get started in the games industry?

Wow, how long do we have? I’m almost as old as the PC game industry, not as old as the videogame industry, but for as long as there have been PC games, and the first game that I was paid to make was in 1986. I was young, but my high school hired me to do some educational reading games, so I did that. But it was really in college, in the late ’80s, that I got into it. At the time there were multiplayer role-playing games, but they were all dial-up on the modem, BBS-type systems, so however many phone lines you installed or got in your house was how many people could play the game. And my first games were for that. Then that led me to form a small hobby company with some friends, and that led to merging with another company, and that became Mythic Entertainment and we did Dark Age Of Camelot. Then I was in the bigger part of the industry.