Well, it turns out that Bethesda’s executive producer Todd Howard and I have at least two things in common—we’re both roughly 5 feet 6 inches tall, and we’re both chronic Reddit lurkers. Admittedly, I only have IMDB to go by when it comes to the height thing. Maybe it’s wrong! But the Reddit thing is 100% true, because he went ahead and said it himself.
Howard gave the folks of r/Games a surprise jumpscare last week, making only his second public comment on the site in the last three years. It was, unsurprisingly, under a post sharing Bethesda essentially vomiting out every single thing it’s currently working on, which came shortly after the announcement of parent owner Xbox’s catastrophic layoffs.
“Hey Reddit. I’m a professional lurker and read your comments all the time. Many here do and we deeply appreciate the passion for our work,” Howard wrote. “I know I don’t really post, and we’re usually very quiet. Today’s info was an attempt at changing that and letting everyone know what we’ve been working on the past several years, and a look at what’s coming. So know we’re constantly listening and keep telling us how to be even better.”
Howard then goes on to say: “You’d be surprised how many great ideas I get from Reddit. So upvote and we’ll do it. Maybe.” Well, huh. I do have to wonder if Howard is taking screenshots of comments and projecting them onto the wall during meetings, or simply jotting down little comments he reads here and there. I wonder what ideas Reddit is churning out that were so smart Howard felt the need to take note of them in the first place.
More importantly, what subreddits is our man lurking in? Does he just cycle through all the Bethesda-relevant ones? Is he sneaking looks at what people think of the competition? Is he also getting fed posts for subreddits he’s never even heard of, like r/GirlDinnerDiaries? Seriously, why am I getting so many r/GirlDinnerDiaries posts in my feed?
Whatever he’s getting up to over there—and whatever calculated business decision was behind him cropping up in the comments of a random Reddit post to begin with—is a secret that will remain between him and his Google Chrome history, I suppose.
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