Bethesda refuses to announce that Oblivion remaster to spite me specifically, so I’m consoling myself with this gamejam based on its terri-brilliant persuasion wheel

I am more and more convinced that an insidious cabal of games industry executives—headed by ‘Todd Howard’ and ‘Phil Spencer’—is conspiring to prevent the rumoured Oblivion remaster/remake from releasing to drive me, specifically, to madness. No matter how much I will it, the game has been a no-show at every splashy, trailer-filled videogame event for ages now. Maybe it never existed at all.

Well, no matter. If the mountain won’t come to Muhammad, Muhammad must go up the mountain at a weird angle so as to cheese the game into allowing it. A gaggle of hero-devs has announced the Wheeljam (via RPS), “a week-long game jam focused around the persuasion minigame mechanic from The Elder Scrolls 4: Oblivion.”

And, you know, it’s about time we paid proper tribute to Oblivion’s terrible, terrible persuasion system. If you don’t know it, well, it’s a little hard to explain. In essence, getting NPCs to like you entailed playing a minigame where you had to alternately Admire, Joke, Coerce, and Boast at them, and how ‘strong’ each option was depended on the rotation of a wheel. Every NPC had two things they liked and two things they disliked, but you had to use every single one before the minigame ended. Does that make no sense at all? Well, here’s a video.

Wheeljam runs from March 13 to March 20 (Oblivion’s 19th birthday), and mandates that devs “make a game that in some way incorporates the Oblivion persuasion mechanic.” All the work devs do on their games must take place in that week-long time period, and they can work with as many or as few people as they like. The most important thing is “YOUR GAME MUST HAVE WHEEL.” Plus, you know, no bigotry and no AI-generated garbage.

All entries will be judged by the jam hosts, and the winners will receive perhaps the only videogame-related tchotchke I’ve ever truly wanted: a 3D-printed Oblivion wheel that actually spins (and has magnets, apparently). I’m half tempted to cultivate some actually useful talents and get in on the jam myself, but my consolation is that the relevant 3D-printing files will be released for free once the gamejam ends, so I can always just make one for myself. Once I buy a 3D printer. Probably not expensive.