This week's Inside the Vault is with Bethesda's Jason Bergman. Jason is a Senior Producer on Fallout: New Vegas, which means he does a lot of inter-office coordinating. Here are the highlights:
What is your job at Bethesda Softworks?
I’m the Senior Producer on Fallout: New Vegas. Which is a fancypants title that means I’m the primary point of contact for Obsidian Entertainment (the external developers working on the game) here at Bethesda.
My job is weird and varied. The easiest oversimplification is that it’s my job to make sure Fallout: New Vegas comes out on time and meets the standards we have for the game. When any of the various departments (QA, marketing, finance, etc.) here at Bethesda needs something, it’s me they go to. And then when Obsidian has issues, they talk to me. And of course I get to raise issues all on my own because I’m a troublemaker and that’s what I do. Plus I get to manage the budget and make sure people get paid, which is easily the most glamorous part of my job.
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What is the best part about being a producer? The worst part?
The best part is that I get to work on a Fallout game. That’s mindblowingly awesome on so many levels. Plus I get to talk to guys like Chris Avellone and Todd Howard. They’re so dreamy.
The worst part is having to deal with budget stuff, but really, it’s not too bad. The days I spend entirely in Excel are a necessary part of the job and I’ve learned to live with that.
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What is your personal favorite game of all time?
That question isn’t fair. The greatest game of all-time is Tetris. Anyone who says otherwise is lying. It’s like chess, and we will probably never see anything so singularly perfect ever again. But it doesn’t count.
- My three favorite RPGs are The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind, the original Fallout, and Planescape: Torment.
- My four favorite shooters are DOOM 2, Half-Life, Duke Nukem 3D, and Painkiller.
- My three favorite text adventures are A Mind Forever Voyaging, The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, and Suspended.
- My three favorite turn-based strategy games are Heroes of Might & Magic, Sid Meier’s Civilization IV, and X-COM.
You can check out the whole interview here. |
