My favorite Daggerfall moment happened shortly after the game was released. I was the ripe old age of 16, and had taken to playing the game long into the night whenever I could. One night around three in the morning, I was returning to town to pick up some supplies after a long run of witch coven scouring. It was a particularly stormy night in the game, and I was totally immersed in the ambience. At the time, I was using a monster pair of speakers for my computer. They could really pump out the volume, but were also very unreliable, occasionally cutting out for no apparent reason. This time, they cut out right as I was entering Daggerfall city. I sighed and took to fiddling with the volume knob. First I only got static. Then the speakers made a popping noise and I could hear the game music once again, though very faintly. I turned the volume all the way up, but the sound was still very faint and hissing. Frustrated, I was forced to stand up in my chair and lean against the desk while reaching around to check the connection. As I put my ear directly against the speaker, I felt the connector pop back into place, and the sound came back - at full volume. What's the first thing I hear? "VEEEEENNNNNNNGEAAAANCE!!!!!!!!" The shock of King Lysandus' exclamation sent me falling backwards out of the chair, and awoke my less-than-pleased parents, who forced me to invest in a pair of headphones the next day.

In the design of Morrowind and its expansions, a lot of design meetings turned into heated discussions, often about topics that might seem out of place in a normal work environment. My favorite moment occurred the evening after one particularly heated day-long discussion over werewolves, specifically about how high they should jump. Todd and I argued the point for hours -- during the meeting, passing in the hall, while ordering lunch, etc. As any real RPG fan knows, werewolves can jump high -- really high -- but it was taking a lot to convince Todd to see the obvious error in his thinking. He has all these issues about things that "break the game" or "make the game unplayable." Whatever.

The argument went all day without resolution, and by the time I got home, I was beat. My wife and I went out to dinner, and she naturally asked me how my day went. Bad idea. I tried to explain to her about the day as I got more and more fired up, finally saying, "So this stupid werewolf meeting ended up lasting all day, and I don't understand why Todd doesn't get that werewolves should jump really high!" Of course, at first I didn't see the waitress standing behind me, or the completely puzzled look on her face. Priceless. I suppose not everyone has meetings about werewolves, but we do. Thinking about that, it makes me remember what an odd, and often amusing, job I have.

For me, nothing beats the moment in Morrowind when you first step up onto the deck of the ship and get a chance to fully appreciate the world you're about to experience. It is, as Todd and I like to call it, a "money shot." Big silt strider off to your right, really realistic water all around you sparkling in the sun, vast wilderness this way, the first town you'll visit over here, some kind of tower over there...I love that moment.

Given how long it was between the release of Daggerfall and the release of Morrowind, we felt we had a lot to prove. Stepping out into that scene is just a great, "we're back" moment. Before the game shipped it was great to show the game to the press and have them see that shot and experience that moment for the first time and say, "Whoa!" or something more profane but equally complimentary.

Which brings me to my favorite non-gaming moment. When we showed Morrowind at E3 for the first time several years ago we got a really good response from the press that got to see the game, including my all-time favorite from the guys at Penny Arcade. I was reading their daily blurb and it mentioned going by our booth and seeing Morrowind and their summary started with the following phrase, "Bethesda Softworks is definitely not [censored] around." If I wish I could have put the uncensored version of that quote on in our ads and on the box.