Meet the Fallout 3 devs - Gavin Carter What ' s your job at Bethesda ? Lead producer for Fallout What prior projects have you worked on ? Interned on Morrowind and Tribunal . Came on full - time to work on Oblivion just a few months after the project began in earnest . What have you drawn on for inspiration in developing Fallout 3 ? Books , movies , music , etc would be fine , if you don ' t want to name any games . I posted a good number of references over here . Aside from that the best reference is replaying Fallout 1 and 2 . Good times , good memories : ) How is the work - environment ? Is it competitive or co - op ? Do the different teams talk together ? Everyone talks except for me . I nail boards over my door and write " KEEP OUT " in unnecessarily evil script . Thinking about getting some heads on pikes . Nah , it ' s fine . We have a pretty open environment so it ' s rare not to walk down the cube rows here and not see people huddled around a monitor conferencing over some issue or looking at some new feature or area . Then they throw a shiny object in my direction and I run and chase it and forget what I was doing . What is your favorite type of game to play ( RTS , FPS , RPG etc ) I play most everything , although not the biggest RTS fan . I love any type of game with a huge area to explore and a lot of freedom , whether it comes in the form of an RPG or action game or even a big platformer . I play most everything from big name releases down to stuff like Peggle ( which is awesome btw ) . Right now I ' m playing loads and loads of Catan on Xbox Live . It ' s really well done . Also I ' ve gotten big into collecting classic games from my childhood and have a big shelf in my office with boxed copies of old Ultimas , Might and Magics , Wing Commanders , and of course Wasteland and the Fallouts . How long have you been playing Fallout , and how would you describe your feelings towards the franchise ? I first played Fallout probably about a year or so after it came out , shortly after Fallout 2 was released I believe . It was right around where I got back into gaming after being out of it for a year or two , so I OD ' d on the Fallouts and Baldur ' s Gates and a lot of the older LucasArts stuff I missed . So I get nice warm and fuzzy feelings when I think of that time and those games . I ' m assuming you weren ' t working in game development at the time that you took a year or two off from gaming . What made you stop playing ? What brought you back in ? Did the games that brought you back like Fallout influence how your career has run so far ? Hardly in game development - I was in high school : ) It wasn ' t that long all things considered , and was just a combination of some other things in my life taking priority , and the fact that the aging computer I was using had crossed that line that we all know where the only option is starting from scratch . Also I think the N64 , Zelda excluded , single - handedly killed off any love I had for consoles at the time . Anyway as college approached , needing a computer was a definite reality , and I managed to convince the powers that be that a fancy graphics card and fast processor are necessary to really churn out those term papers . Once I had the power , I was able to go back through some of the games I had missed out on initially . I had a good gaming friend in college who would show me cool stuff , and I ' m pretty sure that ' s where I found out about Fallout . I remember for some reason I went all melee at first and quit right around the Radscorpion caves : ) After I got some tips , I saw the light . Fallout and it ' s ilk definitely influenced my love for the genre , though interning at Bethesda came about mostly from persistence on my part and a lot of dumb luck : ) Considering that much of the game will probably be in a wild wasteland , do any of you spend much time hiking , camping , etc , and if so where ? I don ' t get out as much as I like though I come from a family of big fitness masochists . My parents live in Utah and lead hiking groups all around the Grand Canyon area . They ' re fond of stranding me out there with them for hours on end whenever I visit . I ' ve done a five - day trek on the Inca Trail in Peru , and a few low - altitude treks around Italy and Britain . Hoping to do some high - altitude stuff in Tibet or Africa in the not - too - distant future . Gotta start saving ! What ' s the last game you bought ? Did you like it ? Hmmm . . . Not counting Xbox Live stuff like Catan I imagine it was Guitar Hero 2 which is just great fun . Before that I think it was Supreme Commander which , while obviously quality , did nothing to change my feelings about RTS games unfortunately . What games are you looking forward to on the horizon ? I ' m looking forward to Forza 2 , Mass Effect , Bioshock , Assassin ' s Creed , and Blue Dragon on Xbox . Don ' t have a PS3 yet but I imagine I ' ll get one eventually for Metal Gear or Final Fantasy . On PC , looking forward to Hellgate , Witcher , Dragon Age , Spore , and maybe Elveon if it turns out good . Crysis looks visually unbelievable but I doubt I ' m going to be able to run it . Hoping that one day there is a nice GUI done for Dwarf Fortress too . Seems like an amazing game , but you know , hard to get past that initial hurdle . Other than videogames , what are your interests ? ( Board games , reading , music , etc ) I read an absurd amount . I enjoy painfully obscure foreign movies . Listen to the devil music ( a lot of Slipknot lately , though my tastes change frequently ) , and play guitar very poorly . I ' m big into stock trading and apparently enjoy frequently losing money on dubious companies . I ' m also a health nut and fitness freak so I spend an embarrassing amount of time in the gym , and have just moved to cooking all my own food instead of buying cases of frozen stuff . I feel all grown up . Have you played the VanBuren Alpha ? If so , what were your feelings on it ? Yep , played it a while back . I don ' t like to comment on unfinished software . You can tell that the vision they had for the game still had a while to go before being realized , so it would be unfair to be critical of it . What would you consider to be the most exotic food ( or species : e . g . roast iguana ) that you have tried ? In Peru , there are street vendors who sell a peculiar meat - on - a - stick food known as cuy . It ' s actually roast guinea pig . You can get it in restaurants too , but there ' s nothing like straight off the grill ( pic not for the squeamish ) . Tastes a little like charred rabbit , I think . Had a few cuts of beef heart while I was there too . Also drank a glass of wine in China that had a whole snake sealed in the jar while it fermented . I was only about 10 or 11 at that point so I was more disgusted by the alcohol than the snake . Which matters more to you , a game that sells a lot and makes a lot of money or a game that ' s great and will be loved , maybe even worshipped by its fans ? This is a false dichotomy . There ' s infinite space for success between those two extremes . That said , if I had to choose between making a game that everyone loves but causes financial ruin to myself and my coworkers , and one that makes us rich , you better believe I ' d rather eat ; ) I don ' t believe success is anathema to quality , though . Far from it . Anyway , I hope someone ' ll answer my question . I already asked twice , and I think it ' s a really interesting one because it ' d show / say a lot about how the devs think / feel about dialog . . . What can change the nature of a man ? I played Torment and thought it was fantastic . I don ' t think the amount of dialog has much to do with a game reaching a mass audience . I think to reach people , all aspects of gameplay have to have something compelling about them . Also , I ' ll set up my own false dichotomy and say I ' d rather have better words than simply more words : ) What are the dev ' s favorite Fallout memory ? What one thing really sticks out when they think of Fallout ? Having the Master kill me in combat over and over and over again . Finally beating him , all but shouting for joy , then trying to escape and realizing both my legs were crippled in the fight . What do you have on your desk ? Do you have any figurines or maskots ? Books ? Other than the obvious , lots and lots of unorganized papers and the remnants of my lunch . I have a shelf where I keep all my classic games , and I like to put up tons of art on my walls so everyone knows just how pretentious I am ; ) I have the GIGANTIC eboy NYC poster framed on my wall . I also have some original art that one of our artists here did . I usually don ' t bring books to work other than for reference materials , but I ' ve got a library at home that makes me curse profusely every time I have to move . What wallpaper do you have ? http : / / hubblesite . org / gallery / wallpaper / pr2007016a / Who is the one Bethesda employee that could whoop your behind in a street fight ? We ' ve got at minimum two black belts , and that ' s just on the design staff . What , in your opinion , was the worst computer or video game you ' ve ever played ? Limit this only to games that where the maker actually tried to make MONEY by selling it . I ' ve played a lot of bad games but Urban Champion for the NES is the one that springs to mind . I remember once when I was a kid , my mom loosed me upon Toys ' R Us with every kid ' s fantasy marching orders - - I was to pick out any single game I wanted . I grabbed this one for reasons I still don ' t understand . It was basically an evolutionary ancestor to the fighting genre , in the same way that pools of primordial slime are evolutionary ancestors to human beings . Two dudes on the screen approached each other and punched . And that was it . Once in a while some lady would throw a flower pot down on you from a building . I was probably 7 or 8 at the time and was still bored with this game within ten minutes . This might not have been a truly terrible game , but the overwhelming despair I had upon realizing how I had wasted my choice sticks with me . This is closely followed by Might and Magic 9 for outright awfulness and disappointment . In many games , it can be said about them that they " failed to live up to their potential ; " in other words , they had one or more brilliant ideas for the sake of gameplay , storytelling , etc . , but they were executed in a flawed matter . Of what you ' ve played , what examples have you encountered ? This one is tough as I do hear that a lot but I ' m hard pressed to come up with examples off the top of my head . I think the older Hitman games probably fall into that category . The idea of playing a cold - blooded killer in an open environment is awesome but they really didn ' t hit their stride until Blood Money . Even that had its problems but I enjoyed it quite a bit . What ' s your favorite weapon ( okay , weapons ) from a computer or video game ? Piano wire in Hitman is the first thing I thought of , following on that last comment . Also , I was an ace with the Flak Cannon in UT . I could probably make a case for just about all the weapons in UT for this question : ) Have you played any Mega Man games ? I think I played 1 and 2 . Not sure about the rest . If you said " yes " to the above , have you ever " jumped while entering a boss door ? " If the answer to this is yes , you ' ll know what I mean . ALWAYS ! Who walks through those doors ? Source . Meet the Devs - Cart - Ga @ No Mutants Allowed