'I decided to have a go at my own mod when the next big moddable game came along.' 'In 2011, I played a mod called New Vegas Bounties from a modder called someguy2000 and it was a revelation to me that a mod could be as good as an official DLC, or maybe even better – and a vehicle for world-class storytelling,' Pearce recalled. By 2011, he found himself working as a lawyer lobbying the government for regulatory reform. He played games on and off all his life, and as a kid had even taught himself enough programming to make his own 'virtually unplayable' games on a venerable IBM 8086 PC. Ten years ago, Nick Pearce worked a full-time job in Melbourne, Australia as a Regulatory Strategy Advisor at what he describes as a big tech company. In Pearce's case, he’s not trying to celebrate all those late nights working but rather they seem borne of his attempt to make up for lost time. Honestly, I was surprised to discover it's even physically possible, but it is.'Ĭrunch is an omnipresent labour issue in the games industry, and the developers that produce good games while crunching do so despite the time spent crunching, not because of it. And I certainly would never allow my staff to work hours like that. 'To be clear, that's something I wouldn't encourage anyone to do, because it's not healthy or sustainable. 'I've spent the last four-and-a-half years working 80 hour weeks with no real holiday, which I guess is about nine years worth of work,' he said, notably without giving the impression that he is boasting about it.

As the project wraps, Pearce is quick to acknowledge it's remarkable he hasn't taken a tumble and lost that last life given the level of crunch he's willingly put himself through. Transitioning to full-time development has enabled Pearce and the Modern Storyteller team to rebuild The Forgotten City from the ground up, using the Unreal Engine and overhauling every aspect of the original creation.

He estimates he devoted about ten hours a week, every week for three years, to the mod. Reaching this point has been quite the journey, one that began around a decade ago when Pearce first started working on the mod in his spare time. Their first game, The Forgotten City is a time loop mystery set in ancient Rome based on Pearce's incredibly successful Skyrim mod of the same name, and it’s all but finished for a launch later this month on PlayStation, Xbox, and PC.

And neither have his collaborators in the tiny three-person studio known as Modern Storyteller.

Skyrim forgotten city