Elder Scrolls Arena's Disastrous Launch: How a Flop Built a Billion-Dollar Franchise

Did you know that the first Elder Scrolls game was almost a complete flop? We're talking about The Elder Scrolls: Arena, which launched back in 1994. It didn't exactly set the world on fire. In fact, it was what you might call a disaster.

Ted Peterson, a designer on the first two Elder Scrolls games, recently shared some behind-the-scenes stories in a retrospective on the making of Daggerfall. He recalled how game stores ordered copies of Arena, but when Bethesda didn't ship on time, those stores started cancelling. "To give you some context of how badly it did," Peterson said, "the very, very first game I ever worked on was a retail pack for Terminator 2029, so you had to own the original game. That shipped more copies than Arena did early on."

Ouch. But here's the thing: despite the rough start, word of mouth got out. People started playing and enjoying the game. Peterson summed it up perfectly: "It was a disaster in a lot of ways and somehow built a billion-dollar franchise." And he's not wrong. The Elder Scrolls series has become one of the biggest in gaming, with each new entry breaking records.

Back then, though, Bethesda was known for sports games, not RPGs. Christopher Weaver, Bethesda's president at the time, told PC Gamer in November 1995, "We were in unknown territory with Arena, and nobody seemed to believe that a company known for its sports games—no matter how good they were—could possibly break into a genre as insular, even fanatical, as RPGs. The word we were getting from buyers out in the field was: 'Hey, you guys can't do that!'"

Bethesda had released games in other genres, like the FPS Terminator 2029, but in the early '90s, they were the studio behind Wayne Gretzky Hockey 3 and Gridiron! They were even hired by Electronic Arts to help finish John Madden Football. That relationship ended in court when Bethesda sued EA for failing to publish a promised rerelease of Gridiron! So yeah, shifting from "sports guys" to "RPG guys" was a big leap.

But Arena managed it. It got an 87 in our review at the time, and while it didn't sell gangbusters initially, it laid the foundation for a franchise that would go on to define the RPG genre for millions of players. Can you imagine if Todd Howard announced we'd have to wait for The Elder Scrolls 6 because the studio wants to finally get Wayne Gretzky Hockey 4 out the door first? That would be something.

So next time you fire up Skyrim or dive back into Morrowind, remember: it all started with a game that almost nobody bought. What's your favorite Elder Scrolls memory? Let us know in the comments!