RPG Codex Interview: Chris Avellone on Pillars Cut Content, Game Development Hierarchies and More

[Mustawd]

I think we all know who's to blame for the recriminations and animosity that have arisen between MCA and Obsidian.

(I realized I didn’t answer this.)

No – after raising some questions about company finances and other issues, Feargus de-ownered me (which I didn’t have a choice in) and then told, “but don’t worry, we’ll still allow you to work on Tyranny for us,” and my response was, “that’s okay, you can work on it by yourself.”

Before this seems unusual, de-ownering was actually a common threat tossed around, so it wasn’t specific to me – if any owner raised objections to events going on, the response was often, “you don’t sound like you want to be an owner anymore” and never addressed the actual issues being brought up.

Not surprisingly, this shift in being de-ownered coincided with taking place shortly before the first royalty payments from Eternity came in, which meant that the surviving owners got a much larger share with me de-ownered (I don’t mind that, as I didn’t want royalty payments from Eternity, but I don’t think the other owners deserved royalties, either, except maybe a set amount for Darren for the Backer portal work he put in – the team deserved all of it). It was a good business decision, but not good ethics.

Good point.

 

[Neanderthal]

No, Elves.

Its always the Elves fault.

 

[taxalot]

I like how they say this is just the Codex wanting PoE to fail, whereas the most damning thing said are not the interview but the spontaneous posts from Avelonne.

If anything, it's Avelonne who wants PoE2 to fail But I put him above that.

 

[Blaine]

The game isn't going to fail (at least not because of Avellone), but if you want people to see your message, it's going to get a lot more airtime when people are already congregating to tickle their peepees over the imminent release of Obsidian's new game.

Some random-ass day in the doldrums of summer when everyone's out at the beach or suffering through a family vacation isn't an ideal choice.

To add to this, the Codex was chosen because elsewhere the message would very likely have been censored. Here the message will stay rather than being silenced, whereas the troglodyte numale and dangerhair moderators of lesser gaming forums would have nuked it instantly.

 

[Artyoan]

So ideally what would you like to see happen Chris?

I know you don't wish upper Obsidian management to see another dime but there is an awful lot of collateral damage to the Anthony Davis' of the company. The timing of this article and the dirty laundry in the aftermath seems obvious its meant to be destructive on some level.

 

[AwesomeButton]

Lots of deluded commies and "commies" on this forum. Be careful what you wish for, you might just get it.

 

[Alienman]

Did the thread about this get deleted on the official Obsidian forum? Can't seem to find it.

 

[Mustawd]

Did the thread about this get deleted on the official Obsidian forum? Can't seem to find it.

https://forums.obsidian.net/topic/97103-chris-avellone-the-final-frontier/

 

[Imoens pet]

Well I think the drama is over bois, time to hang it up and crawl back to wherever you trolls came from :^)

 

[AwesomeButton]

Did the thread about this get deleted on the official Obsidian forum? Can't seem to find it.

https://forums.obsidian.net/topic/97103-chris-avellone-the-final-frontier/page-14

Wow the discussion on the Obsidian forums has taken a very radical pro-Obsidian turn.

 

[Mustawd]

Did the thread about this get deleted on the official Obsidian forum? Can't seem to find it.

https://forums.obsidian.net/topic/97103-chris-avellone-the-final-frontier/page-14

Wow the discussion on the Obsidian forums has taken a very radical pro-Obsidian turn.

They also don't have any users who know wtf they're talking about when it comes to business or business law. I'm no lawyer but I had to take business law classes and read legal contracts for a living, so at least I know the basics. And it also seems we have a lot of people here knowledgeable about it. But the guys at Obsidian, and even moreso at RetardEra seem clueless.

Beyond a handful of people here we don't have many posters who do this kind of work, but I think it speaks volumes to the intelligence level when we have at least a dozen or so ppl here versus 1.5 amongst the two other forums.

 

[Imoens pet]

Did the thread about this get deleted on the official Obsidian forum? Can't seem to find it.

https://forums.obsidian.net/topic/97103-chris-avellone-the-final-frontier/page-14

Wow the discussion on the Obsidian forums has taken a very radical pro-Obsidian turn.

They also don't have any users who know wtf they're talking about when it comes to business or business law. I'm no lawyer but I had to take business law classes and read legal contracts for a living, so at least I know the basics. And it also seems we have a lot of people here knowledgeable about it. But the guys at Obsidian, and even moreso at RetardEra seem clueless.

Beyond a handful of people here we don't have many posters who do this kind of work, but I think it speaks volumes to the intelligence level when we have at least a dozen or so ppl here versus 1.5 amongst the two other forums.

What are the other forums? I know the Obsidian forums but the others? I come from 4chan so I don't know the innergoings of this place.

 

[Chris Avellone]

To give a little more detail on the financial issues raised shortly before (and then after) the departure:

Note the financial issues were only part of the discussion points, and we did continue to debate them after the departure. They amounted to:

- I asked about making the company’s finances more transparent, since those were often a mystery. This lack of clarity also interfered with the review process (in short, you can’t do reviews and give raises until finances are in order, and we always got held up on that as part of the process, sometimes for months, even if reviews had been written – this is apparently still the case).

- Feargus as CFO had total control over this part of the process. Unfortunately, it was hard to see behind the curtain, and that curtain was not only Feargus himself, but HR and also a number of long-time friends who worked offsite. I have never felt Feargus to be good with money and budgeting, and we had much different approaches on how to save, spend, and what amounted to raises and equal pay for employees. Our usual lack of funds ended up causing a lot of problems with publishers because we were very, very dependent on their payments, so we had little or no leverage or breathing room if disagreements arose - if we had funds in the bank, there's a number of things we could have handled differently.

- The problem is when we did have a lot of money in the bank, Feargus tended to spend it freely and rarely checked with other owners before doing so. Worse, when we had little in the bank, you learned to avoid him, as he’d interpret the depletion in funds as somehow a failing on your part (even if you weren’t being paid for months at a time, or worse, if you’d given the company loans to make payroll).

- Strangely, this particular point is likely one of the big triggers for the de-ownering: I asked why family members who didn’t work at the studio were doing on our payroll – notably, Feargus’s wife (other employees have spotted this as well and brought it up to me after I left since they saw her on spreadsheets, so either it didn’t get fixed or is still the norm). To be fair, I don’t know if she’s still on payroll or not as of today, but even for a while after my departure, she was still employed by the studio, and while she was, I had no idea what she was doing for us.

- I asked why the Fair Market Value of the company hadn’t been adjusted in 10 years (it was still sitting around what the company’s initial value was, which was almost nothing). It turned out none of the procedures for voting on this had ever taken place according to the company’s own bylaws. So I asked we resume our own procedure and vote on having it evaluated – which was ignored, then interrupted by being de-ownered before the shares could be re-evaluated (which was also good business, but again, poor ethics). I don’t know if not doing a FMV evaluation is legal or not, but guessing it is.

Any of these could have been a trigger for de-ownering, even the last one, but there were other issues brought up as well (non-financial) that continued to be discussed before or after I was no longer an employee. These weren’t resolved.

For the record, I would have been far more comfortable if the finances were managed by someone else, including any other owner (and despite my other feelings about the owners and their organization/communication, I would trust any of them more than Feargus with finances because at least they understood the basic principles of how to maintain a positive cashflow).

As an added benefit, you’d also remove a good deal of any potential defensiveness by having it managed by a neutral party when inquiring about it - hopefully. That may be naive, but I'd like to think so.

As another benefit, removing this aspect of his job would have been one less thing to distract Feargus, since he was already overseeing and doing too much that arguably he shouldn’t be doing, and he couldn’t keep track (or remember) the tasks he was asking for anyway. This was certainly the case in dealings after the departure, which made the problems more apparent. This may have changed since – any of this may have, but they were issues at the time.

Anyway, this wasn’t all the issues brought up, but it’s a good chunk of the financial issues that were causing problems overall.

 

[Imoens pet]

To give a little more detail on the financial issues raised shortly before (and then after) the departure:

Note the financial issues were only part of the discussion points, and we did continue to debate them after the departure. They amounted to:

- I asked about making the company’s finances more transparent, since those were often a mystery. This lack of clarity also interfered with the review process (in short, you can’t do reviews and give raises until finances are in order, and we always got held up on that as part of the process, sometimes for months, even if reviews had been written – this is apparently still the case).

- Feargus as CFO had total control over this part of the process. Unfortunately, it was hard to see behind the curtain, and that curtain was not only Feargus himself, but HR and also a number of long-time friends who worked offsite. I have never felt Feargus to be good with money and budgeting, and we had much different approaches on how to save, spend, and what amounted to raises and equal pay for employees. Our usual lack of funds ended up causing a lot of problems with publishers because we were very, very dependent on their payments, so we had little or no leverage or breathing room if disagreements arose - if we had funds in the bank, there's a number of things we could have handled differently.

- The problem is when we did have a lot of money in the bank, Feargus tended to spend it freely and rarely checked with other owners before doing so. Worse, when we had little in the bank, you learned to avoid him, as he’d interpret the depletion in funds as somehow a failing on your part (even if you weren’t being paid for months at a time, or worse, if you’d given the company loans to make payroll).

- Strangely, this particular point is likely one of the big triggers for the de-ownering: I asked why family members who didn’t work at the studio were doing on our payroll – notably, Feargus’s wife (other employees have spotted this as well and brought it up to me after I left since they saw her on spreadsheets, so either it didn’t get fixed or is still the norm). To be fair, I don’t know if she’s still on payroll or not as of today, but even for a while after my departure, she was still employed by the studio, and while she was, I had no idea what she was doing for us.

- I asked why the Fair Market Value of the company hadn’t been adjusted in 10 years (it was still sitting around what the company’s initial value was, which was almost nothing). It turned out none of the procedures for voting on this had ever taken place according to the company’s own bylaws. So I asked we resume our own procedure and vote on having it evaluated – which was ignored, then interrupted by being de-ownered before the shares could be re-evaluated (which was also good business, but again, poor ethics). I don’t know if not doing a FMV evaluation is legal or not, but guessing it is.

Any of these could have been a trigger for de-ownering, even the last one, but there were other issues brought up as well (non-financial) that continued to be discussed before or after I was no longer an employee. These weren’t resolved.

For the record, I would have been far more comfortable if the finances were managed by someone else, including any other owner (and despite my other feelings about the owners and their organization/communication, I would trust any of them more than Feargus with finances because at least they understood the basic principles of how to maintain a positive cashflow).

As an added benefit, you’d also remove a good deal of any potential defensiveness by having it managed by a neutral party when inquiring about it - hopefully. That may be naive, but I'd like to think so.

As another benefit, removing this aspect of his job would have been one less thing to distract Feargus, since he was already overseeing and doing too much that arguably he shouldn’t be doing, and he couldn’t keep track (or remember) the tasks he was asking for anyway. This was certainly the case in dealings after the departure, which made the problems more apparent. This may have changed since – any of this may have, but they were issues at the time.

Anyway, this wasn’t all the issues brought up, but it’s a good chunk of the financial issues that were causing problems overall.

Whoa momma.

 

[Mustawd]

Feargus as CFO

I...I don't even....


Chris Avellone can you talk about HOW you were de-ownered specifically?

Also, didn't you guys get audited? How did this not come up?

I say his because having a non-accounting person as CFO is weird as hell. Even if you didn't suspect any wrongdoing, you'd wanna get audited just to make sure the financials were in order.

 

[Imoens pet]

To give a little more detail on the financial issues raised shortly before (and then after) the departure:

Note the financial issues were only part of the discussion points, and we did continue to debate them after the departure. They amounted to:

- I asked about making the company’s finances more transparent, since those were often a mystery. This lack of clarity also interfered with the review process (in short, you can’t do reviews and give raises until finances are in order, and we always got held up on that as part of the process, sometimes for months, even if reviews had been written – this is apparently still the case).

- Feargus as CFO had total control over this part of the process. Unfortunately, it was hard to see behind the curtain, and that curtain was not only Feargus himself, but HR and also a number of long-time friends who worked offsite. I have never felt Feargus to be good with money and budgeting, and we had much different approaches on how to save, spend, and what amounted to raises and equal pay for employees. Our usual lack of funds ended up causing a lot of problems with publishers because we were very, very dependent on their payments, so we had little or no leverage or breathing room if disagreements arose - if we had funds in the bank, there's a number of things we could have handled differently.

- The problem is when we did have a lot of money in the bank, Feargus tended to spend it freely and rarely checked with other owners before doing so. Worse, when we had little in the bank, you learned to avoid him, as he’d interpret the depletion in funds as somehow a failing on your part (even if you weren’t being paid for months at a time, or worse, if you’d given the company loans to make payroll).

- Strangely, this particular point is likely one of the big triggers for the de-ownering: I asked why family members who didn’t work at the studio were doing on our payroll – notably, Feargus’s wife (other employees have spotted this as well and brought it up to me after I left since they saw her on spreadsheets, so either it didn’t get fixed or is still the norm). To be fair, I don’t know if she’s still on payroll or not as of today, but even for a while after my departure, she was still employed by the studio, and while she was, I had no idea what she was doing for us.

- I asked why the Fair Market Value of the company hadn’t been adjusted in 10 years (it was still sitting around what the company’s initial value was, which was almost nothing). It turned out none of the procedures for voting on this had ever taken place according to the company’s own bylaws. So I asked we resume our own procedure and vote on having it evaluated – which was ignored, then interrupted by being de-ownered before the shares could be re-evaluated (which was also good business, but again, poor ethics). I don’t know if not doing a FMV evaluation is legal or not, but guessing it is.

Any of these could have been a trigger for de-ownering, even the last one, but there were other issues brought up as well (non-financial) that continued to be discussed before or after I was no longer an employee. These weren’t resolved.

For the record, I would have been far more comfortable if the finances were managed by someone else, including any other owner (and despite my other feelings about the owners and their organization/communication, I would trust any of them more than Feargus with finances because at least they understood the basic principles of how to maintain a positive cashflow).

As an added benefit, you’d also remove a good deal of any potential defensiveness by having it managed by a neutral party when inquiring about it - hopefully. That may be naive, but I'd like to think so.

As another benefit, removing this aspect of his job would have been one less thing to distract Feargus, since he was already overseeing and doing too much that arguably he shouldn’t be doing, and he couldn’t keep track (or remember) the tasks he was asking for anyway. This was certainly the case in dealings after the departure, which made the problems more apparent. This may have changed since – any of this may have, but they were issues at the time.

Anyway, this wasn’t all the issues brought up, but it’s a good chunk of the financial issues that were causing problems overall.

Chris my boy, I think you might be faced with legal repercussions after this.

 

[Phanax]

Feargus as CFO

 

[AN4RCHID]

Extraordinary.

 

[taxalot]

- The problem is when we did have a lot of money in the bank, Feargus tended to spend it freely and rarely checked with other owners before doing so. Worse, when we had little in the bank, you learned to avoid him, as he’d interpret the depletion in funds as somehow a failing on your part (even if you weren’t being paid for months at a time, or worse, if you’d given the company loans to make payroll).

- Strangely, this particular point is likely one of the big triggers for the de-ownering: I asked why family members who didn’t work at the studio were doing on our payroll – notably, Feargus’s wife (other employees have spotted this as well and brought it up to me after I left since they saw her on spreadsheets, so either it didn’t get fixed or is still the norm). To be fair, I don’t know if she’s still on payroll or not as of today, but even for a while after my departure, she was still employed by the studio, and while she was, I had no idea what she was doing for us.

- I asked why the Fair Market Value of the company hadn’t been adjusted in 10 years (it was still sitting around what the company’s initial value was, which was almost nothing). It turned out none of the procedures for voting on this had ever taken place according to the company’s own bylaws. So I asked we resume our own procedure and vote on having it evaluated – which was ignored, then interrupted by being de-ownered before the shares could be re-evaluated (which was also good business, but again, poor ethics). I don’t know if not doing a FMV evaluation is legal or not, but guessing it is.

Too bad Obsidian is not in France. I have a bit of free time next week at work. If you were in France, I'd be already on the phone with my boss.

This kind of accusation could instantly trigger a tax audit here.

 

[Mustawd]

As an added benefit, you’d also remove a good deal of any potential defensiveness by having it managed by a neutral party when inquiring about it - hopefully. That may be naive, but I'd like to think so.

No. This is not naive.

 

[Imoens pet]

Wait how exactly were you deownered?

 

[Mustawd]

This kind of accusation could instantly trigger a tax audit here.

Dude, this would prolly trigger a tax audit here. Not by some random IRS drone. But an actual IRS special agent (they carry guns, but tbh it's just for show imo.) I mean I was at a panel discussion in college where one was one of the panelists, and he mentioned he gets all his info from the news or just anonymous tips. And he uses that as a basis to investigate, depending on the quality of the info.

Regardless, this is bananas.

B-A-N-A-N-A-S.

 

[Gangrelrumbler]

Wow Feargus might just be the long lost third Sirotek brother.

 

[Rivmusique]

Fucking hell

 

[Kyl Von Kull]

- The problem is when we did have a lot of money in the bank, Feargus tended to spend it freely and rarely checked with other owners before doing so. Worse, when we had little in the bank, you learned to avoid him, as he’d interpret the depletion in funds as somehow a failing on your part (even if you weren’t being paid for months at a time, or worse, if you’d given the company loans to make payroll).

Was Feargus always such a defensive prick, or did he start to snap after rising to the level of his own incompetence?