Todd Howard Quotes

You can polish and iterate and double down on what the magic was. You can make a much better thing. A much cleaner thing, a much more solid thing. And that's what 'Borderlands 2' is to 'Borderlands.'

I think it's very important to have a feedback loop, where you're constantly thinking about what you've done and how you could be doing it better.

I've always been trying to add stuff to my game.

To do something right it must be done twice. The first time instructs the second.

Instead of a dedicated room, my best trigger is the actual habit of reading over the texts from the day before. Marking. Changing. Fussing. This ritual amounts to a habit of trust. Trust that I can make it better. That if I keep trying, I will come closer to something true.

It took me 10 years to realize that I don't know 'em, 10 years to realize that it's possible to learn them, then another 10 years to learn how to do things.

Our job as the game creators or developers - the programmers, artists, and whatnot - is that we have to kind of put ourselves in the user's shoes. We try to see what they're seeing, and then make it, and support what we think they might think.

As a game creator, I'm not 100% satisfied when looking back at the previous game that I released.

Strive for continuous improvement, instead of perfection.

Over the course of those 12 episodes we discarded what didn't work and kept what did and that refined it.

Normal people … believe that if it ain't broke, don't fix it. Engineers believe that if it ain't broke, it doesn't have enough features yet.

I'd like to do some things over again. I never want to repeat anything that went well, though - I just want to do better at slightly different things.

How do I feel when I look back at prior work? Hmmm. I think, 'I tried to do the best I could do. It's not perfect. It will never be perfect.' And then I think, 'I want to try again.'

I want to try and get better in every facet of the game.

I just try to improve every series.

There are major benefits to building a game once and improving it over a long period of time based on user feedback and behavior. It's kind of depressing to have to build a game once, take all the user feedback, and then spend the next 3 years building another game.

The only thing that we can do is to work on all the aspects of our game.

Game development is very difficult. Nobody sets out to create a game that's not fun. It's all of the challenges and difficulties that happen throughout development that determine whether a game is a failure or a success. I think playing those thousands of games is the single best and easiest way to learn from my predecessors.

Most good work is a combination of parts you love and parts you could do better. My constant mantra is, 'Next time, next time, next time.'

I always look to get better in all three aspects of the game. I know I can keep getting better.

I've gotten better. I've added a lot to my game.

One thing that probably is unique at Activision is that we really spend a lot of time up front with our audiences, and in big quantities and with a very thoughtful process, to really try and draw out from them what it is that they would like to play. So we have a pretty good sense going in what the expectation of the audience is.

I think it's almost impossible to edit something to death. I think you can make things better almost indefinitely.

There's always things you can refine and polish.

It's important to learn from your mistakes and then to refine.