Todd Howard

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About

Todd Howard is an American video game director, designer, and producer, most notably known for his work on the games in The Elder Scrolls and Fallout series.

History

Todd Howard was born Lower Macungie Township, Pennsylvania in 1971. Todd Howard joined Bethesda Softworks in 1994. one of his first gaming projects was being the producer and designer for the 1995 FPS game The Terminator: Future Shock^[2] and The 1996 follow-up standalone game The Terminator: Skynet.^[3] Todd first began working with The Elder Scrolls since Arena^[4] which was released in 1994 and Daggerfall^[5] in 1996. He first started becoming project leader of the Elder Scroll series with The Elder Scrolls Adventures: Redguard^[7] which was released in 1998 and he has since became project leader of the franchise. He is also credited as the game director for Fallout 3^[6] which received critical acclaim upon release in 2008.

Reputation

Throughout his career, Todd Howard has receive much praise and criticism for his work. He was named one of the best game developers by IGN^[10] and one of the top 20 most influential game developers by Gamepro on March 7th, 2009.^[8] On May 12th, 2014, he was awarded the LARA of honor lifetime achievement award for his work and influence in the industry^[9]. 2 of his games (The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion and The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim) won the title of game of the year in the Spike Video Game Awards in 2006 and 2011 respectively^[11] while Skyrim also won the title of game of the year in the 2011 D.I.C.E Awards.^[12] Despite his reputation, Todd Howard has also received criticism primarily due to most of his games being bug ridden upon release and his tendency to lie in interviews regarding the features and state of his game projects.

Online Presence

Though Todd Howard does not personally have a social media account, several parody accounts of him can be found throughout the internet. On October 2011, a Todd Howard parody account was launch on Twitter which aims to poke fun at the developer. As of April, 2015, the account has become inactive with over 1,500 followers^[13]. Todd Howard also has a topic page on Facebook^[14], which as of April 2015 has 4,390 likes.

Toddposting

Toddposting is the act of trying to advertise future Bethesda games in a mockingly blunt and non-sneaky way through photoshopped images of Todd Howard, wearing various disguises and such.

Todd the Liar

Todd the Liar is a nickname given to Todd Howard, due to him sometimes exaggerating the features of the upcoming games during the presentations, or features being cut from the release day. This has brought him the reputation among the fans of him being a bit of a liar has inspired them to make various pieces of media. Several notable videos feature a close-up picture of Todd Howard, constantly zooming in, with the song Little Lies by Fleetwood Mac being played in the background^[15].

See That Mountain? You Can Climb It.

"See That Mountain? You Can Climb It." is a quote associated with Todd Howard and the video game The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim. The quote originated from early Skyrim presentations during E3 2011, where the gameplay of Skyrim was shown. In several instances, Todd mentioned being able to climb or otherwise scale mountains you see, due to them not being simple background decorations. The quote became a popular subject of jokes, being mentioned or repeated on various forums and imageboards^[16], and spawning several pieces of media.

Wikipedia Raid

In mid-2017, Wikipedia locked Todd Howard's page to future edits until April 25th, 2018 due to frequent "vandalism" edits.^[17] After the lock, a Tumblr post by animated-axolotl^[18] with the date circulated on the site, gaining over 156,000 notes (shown below).

After the lock was released, Howard's page was spammed with mass joke edits (examples shown below), with many involving changing his picture and his career description.

Tumblr user kasabake^[19] posted a list of all the entries edited as part of the raid, showing dozens of entries. Additionally, Tumblr users identified several additional pages that had been edited to make references to the locked Todd Howard page (examples shown below). Select All^[20] covered the raid the following day.