Todd Howard earns Game Developers Choice Lifetime Achievement Award

Todd Howard of Bethesda Softworks will be honored with a Lifetime Achievement Award at the 16th annual Game Developers Conference in March.

Howard's first credited game at Bethesda is the 1995 FPS Terminator: Future Shock. But 2002 is when things really took off, as he served as a designer, writer, and project lead on the revolutionary Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind. After that came Oblivion, Fallout 3, Skyrim, and, most recently, Fallout 4—all of them tremendously successful blockbusters. He even has a hit mobile game to his credit: Fallout Shelter, which climbed to the top spot on both the App Store and Google Play just days after release.

“The Elder Scrolls and Fallout series present gamers with fully realized worlds filled with vast landscapes, and mystery at every corner. We’re proud to honor the visionary developer for his leadership in creating these universes,” Meggan Scavio, General Manager of GDC events, said in a statement. “When you’re completely captivated by these detailed worlds, it’s easy to forget the level of dedicated work and creativity that went into every square inch. This award reflects on the amazing craft of Todd Howard and his team in making worlds as real as anything on Earth.”

Previous Lifetime Achievement Award winners include Will Wright, Yuji Naka, Gunpei Yokoi, Mark Cerny, Eugene Jarvis, Richard Garriott, Shigeru Miyamoto, Sid Meier, Hideo Kojima, John Carmack, Peter Molyneux, Warren Spector, Ray Muzyka, Greg Zeschuk, and Ken Kutaragi—esteemed company all around. Howard will be presented with the award at the Game Developers Choice Awards ceremony, taking place on March 16 at the Moscone Convention Center in San Francisco.

PRODUCTS

Andy has been gaming on PCs from the very beginning, starting as a youngster with text adventures and primitive action games on a cassette-based TRS80. From there he graduated to the glory days of Sierra Online adventures and Microprose sims, ran a local BBS, learned how to build PCs, and developed a longstanding love of RPGs, immersive sims, and shooters. He began writing videogame news in 2007 for The Escapist and somehow managed to avoid getting fired until 2014, when he joined the storied ranks of PC Gamer. He covers all aspects of the industry, from new game announcements and patch notes to legal disputes, Twitch beefs, esports, and Henry Cavill. Lots of Henry Cavill.