There are 17 people listed in the credits for Arena, but most of us were part-time, splitting our 80-hour-a-week work hours between two or three other projects during the same period. We had very short development times and very small teams. I had been hired on at Bethesda only about a year and a half before, with zero experience in making games, and by the time Arena came out, it was the third game I had released. We simply moved on to the next project, not thinking there’d be a sequel let alone a series. Remember, this was in an era where you didn’t download your game from Steam, you bought it at a brick and mortar game store, and if it wasn’t on the shelves in time for Black Friday and the holidays, you would only get a fraction of the sales you needed. The full title was The Elder Scrolls, Chapter 1: Arena actually, which suggests we anticipated that it would be a series, but that was wishful thinking more than anything.

It’s been 25 years since the first Elder Scrolls game which we titled Arena was released.

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