Biography | Todd Howard — The Rockville Studio That Shipped Morrowind on 1 May 2002

On 1 May 2002 Bethesda Softworks shipped The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind for Windows in North America.

Todd Howard was project leader.

The game had been announced from this Rockville office on 30 March 2000, with Howard named as project leader in the company release.

An Xbox version followed on 7 June 2002.

Morrowind was the title that turned a mid-Atlantic PC studio into the company people now mean when they say Bethesda.

Howard had already led The Elder Scrolls Adventures: Redguard in 1998. Morrowind was larger: a first-person open world, a Construction Set shipped to players, and a crunch that staff later described as running through late 2001.

Polygon's 2019 oral history of the game, built from named interviews, puts Howard at the center of the systems and the schedule.

Ken Rolston was lead designer of the world and quests. Howard's job was to decide what the game was and whether it was done.

The studio that shipped it still published 1370 Piccard Drive as its address.

The building is an ordinary Rockville office block. The ship date is the event.

Two expansions followed from the same shop: Tribunal in November 2002 and Bloodmoon in June 2003.

A Game of the Year edition bundling both arrived in November 2003.

What visitors will find on Piccard Drive is an office park, not a museum. The work left through discs and later through downloads.

Photo: Todd Howard at Gamelab 2018, Gamelab Congreso Videojuegos, public domain, via Wikimedia Commons