ZeniMax Online Studios, the developer behind Elder Scrolls Online, is working a brand new triple-A game, in a brand new game engine. Neither are particularly far along, but job listings suggest development is ramping up.
The careers section of ZeniMax’s website is full of openings, from experienced to ground level, for people who know their way around game design, and building an engine. The jobs on the game dev side include Lead Level Designer, Lead Cinematics Designer, Senior Encounter Design, and Tools UI/UX Designer, the description for many stating up-front it’s for a new IP that’s in pre-production. The roles desire experience making open-world games, and the narrative design will contain “both open-world and ‘linear’ spaces”, with first-and-third-person perspectives.
The opportunities on the engineer side are similar, Senior UI Engineer, Animation Engineer and more making it clear you’ll be working on a “new engine for the studio’s next AAA project”. Since this has gotten some traction on Twitter, Alex Tardif, lead graphics engineer at ZeniMax, has commented that it’s an exciting time at the company. “Not much to say about this yet, but it’s been so much fun creating a brand new engine,” He writes. “With how rare this kind of thing is nowadays, I feel fortunate to be at this studio while we invest heavily in our own technology.”
This news was first reported last year, founder and studio Matt Firor mentioning ZeniMax had started work on a new engine and IP in an offhand comment. With the amount of hiring, it looks like the projects are starting to require dedicated teams alongside the maintenance and growth of Elder Scrolls Online.
Not much to say about this yet, but it’s been so much fun creating a brand new engine. With how rare this kind of thing is nowadays, I feel fortunate to be at this studio while we invest heavily in our own technology. https://t.co/hDrEjc3Z97
— Alex Tardif (@longbool) October 3, 2020
Parent company ZeniMax Media was acquired by Microsoft for $7.5 billion in September, meaning Microsoft now owns ZeniMax Online as well as Bethesda, and id Software. Speaking of ESO, the next expansion, Markarth, is arriving in November, and it brings an end to the Dark Heart of Skyrim overarching storyline. We consider Elder Scrolls Online one of the best single-player MMO games, and it’ll be fascinating to see what emerges from the studio’s own creative juices.