Meet Zachary Wilson, Senior Level Designer on Starfield at Bethesda Game Studios.

From starting a fan site for Civilization II to entering his 7th year at Bethesda Game Studios, Zach Wilson has stepped into the role of Senior Level Designer for Starfield.

This month Zach shares his inspirations, tips for joining the video games industry, his formative gaming experiences, and some of his favorite aspects of Starfield.

What is your role? What does a normal day look like for you?

My credited role on the game is Senior Level Designer, but like most people at Bethesda Game Studios know, we wear many hats. In addition to building most of the spaces for the United Colonies faction questline alongside my Quest Design collaborator Liam Collins, I also did design work for space content, the activities and encounters the player has while flying their ship around the galaxy. I also helped build supporting content for the planet exploration team, as well as working with the tools team to prioritize tools requests from the level design team.

I split my time between working in the editor, jamming out cool content, and working with other teams to prioritize and refine features that we need to bring the game over the finish line.

What's your favorite space encounter or activity?

There are a couple that I really like but that I want to keep under wraps until after the game releases so that they can be a surprise to players. One that I’ve always loved features a hapless tour guide leading a bunch of excited townies out for a space tour and are very excited to meet a “real captain”. The dialogue is hilarious. We also have Legendary Ship encounters – these are huge, high level enemy ships that will dramatically outclass the player through the early part of the game that you have to build up to being able to destroy.

I also really like our derelict ships – we built a bunch of handcrafted derelict ships that focus on the tragedies and perils of space travel that the player can explore and discover the stories behind. The best part about these is we solicited stories from people outside the design team for their contributions, so folks who don’t normally get to contribute content to the game were able to put their unique stamp on the game. One of our designers that came from the modding scene, Kris Takahashi, also built several really exciting ship encounters.

Age Required

What was your path into your role? Any specific acknowledgments or inspirations?

I got my start in games working with a friend to build a fan site for Civilization II. We were in high school at the time and the site was so popular – more than 3000 views a day! – that it crashed the servers of the community college where it was hosted. I was somehow able to parlay that into an internship at Firaxis working on Civ 3, and from there I got involved in environment and texture art at EA Tiburon working on Madden and NCAA Football stadiums and uniforms. I moved into design when Superman Returns came to the studio which was an inauspicious start to a career I am otherwise quite proud of, but at least it was all up, up, and away from there.

**How long have you been with Bethesda? And what advice would you give someone who wants to be this industry? **

I’ve been with the team for seven years now and my advice has always been the same; if you want to make games you have to make games. There’s never been a time where the tools were more democratized, documented, cheaper or easier to use. Everything you need to make the next great game is out there, the only thing that’s missing is your hard work, dedication, and great ideas.

If you don’t have industry experience and you want to work at Bethesda, the best way to get started is to download our mod tools and start making content for one of our games. Get your foot in the door by joining a mod team and make content that we can play, that the community can play, that lets us understand that you know what a finished product looks like, that you understand the kinds of games we make, and that you have the technical skill to learn our somewhat esoteric toolset. We regularly hire modders to work on our teams; in fact, right now I am helping onboard a level designer who came to us from the Fallout London team; he’s one of a number of modders with no industry experience that we’ve hired recently.

And you never know, you might like managing your own teams and be able to turn it into a studio of your own, like the team behind The Forgotten City or the folks that made Enderal did. You might also be able to turn it into a more freelance thing – there are people who’ve developed work for the Creations Club team that have turned this into a full-time job here at Bethesda Game Studios.

Do you have a favorite mod?

There are a couple of classics that I love. Frostfall for Skyrim is an immersive survival mod that really changes the way you play the game, and it was done by David Pierce, who came on board Starfield and has handled a lot of our economy design. I’ve also had a ton of fun with Sim Settlements in Fallout 4, it really warms up that part of my brain that games like Satisfactory do so well. Of all the mods that I’ve used over the years though my favorite has to be Rumpled Rugs mod for Skyrim. It’s this hilarious mod that gives enemies a chance to trip over the corners of rumpled up rugs. It’s just the kind of thing that you would never even think to build in a mainstream AAA game but it adds this element of surprise and zaniness that I find deeply satisfying.

What's been your favorite project to work on so far?

NCAA Football 2003 has always been a standout moment in my career. It was a very different time in my life and in the world of game development and I’ll always remember it very fondly. It’s a game that people (including our own Todd Howard) still mention to me as one of their all-time favorites.

What do you enjoy most about your job?

I love collaborating with other developers to bring a game to life and solve problems. Games are really a series of problems and each game and each component of a game is a unique thing that you’re working through for the first time, every time. It combines the most challenging aspects of storytelling and software engineering into a bespoke, cohesive whole. There’s also a component of usability that’s unique to game development – a person has to pick up a controller and use the game to tell their story without any help from you.

What’s your favorite game or game(s) that inspire you?

I would say that my favorite game of the past few years has been Satisfactory. There’s something deeply enjoyable about building a big factory, seeing all my doodads and metals and stuff zip around on conveyor belts that I really like.

I am also deep into my first playthrough of Baldur’s Gate 3 – it’s got a great mix of classic CRPG elements with some really nice modern touches and really captures the feeling of playing a D&D campaign.

What’s your favorite thing about being at Bethesda Games Studios?

My favorite thing about Bethesda Game Studios is the creative freedom that we give to individual devs. It actually takes a bit of getting used to, but you can do almost anything you want (within reason). There’s a charm to Bethesda’s games that comes from having a variety of voices talking about the same thing in very different ways.

What are you working on next that you’re excited for everyone to see?

Obviously, I couldn’t be more proud of the work that the team has done on Starfield. It really is a huge achievement that we’ve been able to make a game of this scope and complexity. There’s also another project that I am very excited to start contributing to.

Do you have any fun stories from working on a Bethesda Game Studios game?

One of the things that they don’t tell you in Game Development school is that video games are kind of a mess for a lot of production. Even if you’re building content for a perennial title with an established code base, you’re still rebuilding parts of the plane while it’s in flight. There are stretches of time where it looks awful and plays even worse and part of the job is peering through the chaos to see the light at the end of the tunnel.

My favorite moments on any project are when all of that hard work comes together – suddenly the new lighting model comes online, or the terrain stitching system starts to work and the game snaps into focus and you get the glimmers of the thing that you’re going to make.

We had one of those moments on the space team – we tried to playtest every week with the whole team and I still remember the first time I got in my ship at New Atlantis, took off into space, found another ship and attacked and boarded it, stole it and then flew away all in one playthrough with no cheats or console commands. Moments like that are electrifying, when suddenly you can say to yourself “I think this might actually work”.

Age Required

Do you have a favorite aspect (quest, character, moment, theme) of the game you’re currently working on so far?

There’s a moment early in the United Colonies questline where we introduce a specific creature that’s pretty cinematic. I think people are going to enjoy that and the classic sci-fi references it points to.

We also have a number of space encounters that are the kind of thing that you would only find in a Bethesda game. I won’t spoil anything.

Thank you so much to Zach for taking the time to answer our questions. Check out more from our team here at Bethesda Game Studios. If you want to work alongside Zach or anyone else at Bethesda Game Studios, visit our careers page and apply today!