Joel Burgess

Joel Burgess is a developer who worked at Bethesda Softworks on Fallout 3 and Fallout 4 as the lead level designer and on Fallout 76 as an additional designer.

Work on the Fallout series
For Fallout 3, Joel created the Liberty Prime sequence in Take it Back!, the Jefferson Memorial drainage chambers in The Waters of Life, and led the design of nearly all points of interest in the Capital Wasteland and downtown Washington, D.C. He also wrote several notes and terminal entries for the game. For the add-on Point Lookout, Joel served as the lead designer.

Joel implemented several easter eggs in Fallout 3 and Fallout 4. In a July 2019 Twitter thread discussing easter eggs and their acceptability in games, Joel talked about his belief that easter eggs should make sense and appear believable even to players who are unfamiliar with the reference. He highlighted the Snatcher references in Minefield in Fallout 3 and the Vitale pumphouse in Fallout 4 (the latter containing several other easter eggs), as well as the Ray Bradbury tribute in the McClellan family townhome in Fallout 3, all of which he implemented.

Other work
Before being hired by Bethesda, he worked at several companies (including Terminal Reality) as a designer and 3D artist. Joel left Bethesda in May 2016 and joined Ubisoft Toronto, where he served as the world director on Watch Dogs: Legion. He currently works at Capybara Games as a studio director.