Howard: Not much of an "MMO guy," Skyrim bugs with "entertainment value" will stay

Todd Howard has said he is not much of an "MMO guy," and Elder Scrolls games are big enough in and of themselves without venturing into online territory.

Speaking in an interview with Joystiq, Howard said while he respects MMO games, he doesn't play them.

"I like this kind of game better," he said. "You know, it's what most of us are into. I'm not really an MMO guy. I respect them, I look at them, but I don't play them. It feels more real to me when I'm the hero and it's crafted for that. A community aspect to it, I recognize a lot of people would want that in a game like this, but it changes the flavor for me.

"The audience we have for our kind of thing is big enough that we don't have to tone it down. We can just do our thing, and it's kind of grown with each game. So there was no pressure from anybody above me to say 'Hey, you need to change this.'"

Howard also said in the interview the firm plans on leaving technical boo-boos in the game, something widely laughed or bitched about in Elder Scrolls games since time began, but only if the flaws don't cause the game to break.

"We try to solve most of it, we're sensitive to a lot of it," he said. "There is a subset of that where we say 'Well, that's what can happen.' If there's entertainment value in that, whatever it is, we'll leave a lot of it. If it's gonna break the game, or unbalance the game in some way, we do try to solve it.

"If the solution is gonna make the game less fun ... well, hey, leave it in. It's their game."

Skyrim is out November 11.