• Interview
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Bethesda Community Manager Joshua Boyle on the past, present & future of QuakeCon

We sat down with Bethesda Senior Community Manager Joshua Boyle at QuakeCon 2024 to talk about how the event has evolved while maintaining its core identity.

TJ Denzer

August 21, 2024 12:25 PM

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Joshua Boyle has been a considerable part of Bethesda’s open communications with the community for a long time, considering his role as Senior Community Manager at the developer and publisher. So, it should come as no surprise that he was a regular face on the stage of QuakeCon 2024 during much of its ongoing events. He’s been there long enough to see its evolution along with us over the course of years, so we were delighted to be able to sit down with him at the event and talk all about how far QuakeCon has come in 2024 and what opportunities lie in QuakeCon’s future.

Boyle and QuakeCon go way back, as he mused over olden days when Carmack was giving diatribes in parking lots outside the convention about various technology and programming. We both agreed, BYOC (Bring Your Own Computer) remains the heart and soul of the event and that should hopefully never change. Bethesda’s announcements (such as the behind-doors Doom: The Dark Ages reveal) are an important part of it, but it’s people coming together that only ever see each other at this time, at this place, that make the whole thing special.

Of course, QuakeCon has certainly not grown without the presence of corporate events and involvement. With Bethesda picking up id Software and then Xbox picking up Bethesda, the hands that make QuakeCon happen have changed quite a bit over the years. Boyle sees it as an opportunity to continue to take QuakeCon to even greater heights. For instance, Halo has a place at QuakeCon. Attendees in the BYOC play it regularly as they do Quake or Doom. Boyle would love to see Halo have a place on stage one of these years if Xbox is game for it.

Ultimately, it’s a feel-good experience you have to see in person, but you can via our YouTube channels! Be sure to head over to the Shacknews channel and especially our Shorts section to see all sorts of walkthroughs of the event from LineCon to the Dallas Pets Alive Cat Café and adoption booth! You can also see the fruits of a lot of Boyle’s labors via the Bethesda Slayers Club.

TJ Denzer

Senior News Editor

TJ Denzer is a player and writer with a passion for games that has dominated a lifetime. He found his way to the Shacknews roster in late 2019 and has worked his way to Senior News Editor since. Between news coverage, he also aides notably in livestream projects like the indie game-focused Indie-licious, the Shacknews Stimulus Games, and the Shacknews Dump. You can reach him at tj.denzer@shacknews.com and also find him on Twitter @JohnnyChugs.