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

[Mustawd]

Yah, I have no idea either. That is fucked up.

 

[Kingston]

MCA posting again

 

[Fairfax]

is there a faceless Nihilus portrait or art piece? Don't think I've ever seen one

Yes, including the game's own cover:

 

[Blakemoreland Hybrid Boss]

How about people who support an ideology that brought misery and death to millions of people? Look into a mirror and you'll see someone who supports an ideology just as bad, if not worse, than nazism. You most of all is the one deserving to be punched here.

https://www.stalindidnothingwrong.com

You mean Poland is going to get shanked/backstabbed again by "enlightened" communists and fascists?

Not real communism. LEL

So even if you don't believe in free speech for nazis, might I suggest you consider defending it anyway (or at least not actively undermine it), for your own sake?

But it feels so cool and progressive pretending to be a revolutionary on the internets. What would you ruin my communist lapping talking about sensible issues like an adult? That’s not cool at all.

Transfer pricing is one of the beautiful tricks globalised late capitalism provides corporations so they can get out of paying taxes altogether. Ask me about it and I'll tell you how it works, it's beautiful.

Good for them. Taxation is theft.

In the meantime, roads still need to be maintained, schools staffed

Because public services are prone to corruption and inefficiency.

Apple funnels most of its business through a subsidiary in Ireland, which is an EU tax haven

Like most giants, Apple earned a fortune because it efficiently provides a service that is in high demand. They are entitled to their money. How old are you, twelve?

and the taxes come off the back of the people with no such possibilities, viz. people working on a salary.

Are also theft and should be abolished. People working on a salary would also protect their money in a tax haven if they had means to do it, so don’t give me that pretentious moral posturing. Trying to use the resentment and jealousy of the poor to "prove" that the system doesn't work.

Ain't late capitalism grand?

It looks stellar compared to the communist alternatives, as history already showed.

When the writing staff begins to fill up with pronoun-mongerers, that's either the end or the beginning of the end. Wait and see if I'm not right yet again.

What?

 

[The_Time_Master]

Owner share divisions are here, if curious, TechRaptor asked some more questions over the weekend:

https://techraptor.net/content/interview-chris-avellone-obsidian-entertainment

Chris, how come is it that you have not approached a lawyer yet? Is there more to the story?

He did say a few hundred pages back that this is only 30% of the story. Or dozens. But it's back there... somewhere.

 

[L'Montes]

TechRaptor: Are you willing to talk more openly about your relationship with Josh Sawyer?

Chris Avellone: I’d like to reiterate [...] Josh is [...] good.

Nice to see some press on all of this. Seriously though, it's nice to see his thoughts in a more contiguous fashion.

 

[polo]

Hey guys according to the techraptor guy, we are a 'notorious RPG forum'. I wonder what are we notorious for.

 

[Alfredtrek88]

Owner share divisions are here, if curious, TechRaptor asked some more questions over the weekend:

https://techraptor.net/content/interview-chris-avellone-obsidian-entertainment

Chris, how come is it that you have not approached a lawyer yet? Is there more to the story?

He did say a few hundred pages back that this is only 30% of the story. Or dozens. But it's back there... somewhere.

We have been in the 30% territory for a while now and the summary google doc linked here is already at 80 pages. We have a non fiction book being written live folks. Could you imagine it with cover art by Brian Menze?

 

[Bohrain]

I wonder why are we notorious for.

For not reviewing PoE enough?

 

[Blakemoreland Hybrid Boss]

I wonder why are we notorious for.

For this epic thread, if nothing else.

 

[Brother Rat]

For seamlessly mixing intelligent, thought-provoking political discussion with our erudite understanding of RPGs.

 

[Alienman]

Codex will have to run a fund-raiser after this so that summery thing can be released as a book. "Obsidian: From a rock to a pebble"

 

[fantadomat]

Hey guys according by the techraptor guy, we are a 'notorious RPG forum'. I wonder why are we notorious for.

Hmmm hard question,in the last year i witnessed only two devs spilling their guts about their evil former employers. Oh and Infinitron got promoted.

 

[Neanderthal]

Respectfully I have to disagree with MCA taking issue with financial irregularities, mismanagement, nepotism and shenannigans galore. What's really at issue here (and actionable legally in my opinion) is Obsidians decision to knowingly make their poor employees work on Elf games, blatant and sickening as that is surely any court would decide for the plaintiff and award massive damages for pain and suffering.

 

[Bohr]

Hey guys according by the techraptor guy, we are a 'notorious RPG forum'. I wonder why are we notorious for.

People with certain... unpopular tastes and opinions are known to post here, like Grimoire fans.

 

[Sensuki]

This is the first morning since the thread began that I've checked it on the way to work and been utterly disappointed. Then again the constant derailment could be Feargus/Obsidian playing 4D Chess at trying to kill the thread before the PoE2 release ... looks like they are succeeding!

Chris Avellone what do you think about Eric Fenstermaker copying some bad elements of the NWN2 chapter 2 such as the trial that is utterly pointless because you have to fight Lorne regardless of the outcome and the same thing occuring at the end of PoE2 Act 2. Everything you did up until then pretty much doesn't matter at all because Thaos comes in and kills the Duc and exactly same thing happens regardless of which faction you side with or any of the choices you make.

Was this picked up as a problem internally?

 

[azimuth]

I dunno, it started feeling like a 10,000-word Dilbert strip.

 

[Alienman]

What derailment? Everyone is just sitting and waiting for Chris to make more posts. There isn't much discussion to be had. Maybe we should just make a prosper like subforum for Chris where he can vent without the peasants clogging up the thread

 

[Roguey]

You gotta be the change you want to see.

An upset comic retailer and game journalist:

Correct, that is my entire schtick, so congratulations on discovering my super sikret agenda that I never bothered to hide in a first place. As always your astute observations and penetrating insights are second to none. Go check if some skeletons don't need kiting.

Tim Cain doesn't need you white knighting him. If for some reason he can't contact Avellone by phone, facebook, or email, he could just send him a PM here if he felt he was doing anything that was jeopardizing Indiana.

Incidentally, the great tragedy of Obsidian is that they aren't Troika. Troika may have been exceptionally bad at managing scope, but I'm completely confident there was never any of this "That's not how I feel today" wishy-washy micromanaging nonsense.

 

[2house2fly]

This is the first morning since the thread began that I've checked it on the way to work and been utterly disappointed. Then again the constant derailment could be Feargus/Obsidian playing 4D Chess at trying to kill the thread before the PoE2 release ... looks like they are succeeding!

Chris Avellone what do you think about Eric Fenstermaker copying some bad elements of the NWN2 chapter 2 such as the trial that is utterly pointless because you have to fight Lorne regardless of the outcome and the same thing occuring at the end of PoE2 Act 2. Everything you did up until then pretty much doesn't matter at all because Thaos comes in and kills the Duc and exactly same thing happens regardless of which faction you side with or any of the choices you make.

Was this picked up as a problem internally?

Fenstermaker literally said in his interview that they wanted to branch from that bit but budget considerations made them go with what meagre reactivity there is

 

[Morgan Ramsay]

It's consistent with what he did at BIS as well:

Ramsay: Tell me about the day you left Interplay. Why did you leave? What were you thinking?

Cain: While Fallout was in production, I was unhappy at how development worked at Interplay. People who didn’t play games, or didn’t even seem to like games, were making decisions about how to market the game, what features it should have, and when it should ship.

Worse, decisions were being made that changed the game and required us to do substantial changes, and these decisions could and should have been made months earlier. For example, the UK office said no children could be harmed in the game, but children had been in the design for years. Another example: Interplay spent a lot of money for an external marketing agency to develop treatments for the box and ad, and they were terrible.

<snip>

Just wanted to point out this excerpt is from my book, Gamers at Work, which RPG Codex reviewed HERE. I was wondering when someone was going to pull this quote, and saw it reshared at NMA without attribution.

I've never worked with Feargus except on his chapter, which was one of the first three chapters (hence its brevity) that helped sell the book proposal. Feargus had nothing but positive things to say about Chris in 2010, so I'm flummoxed by the decline in their relationship since then.

At the time, Feargus was thinking deeply about some of the same management issues that Chris has talked about:

Ramsay: How important to you is being a hands-on leader? Do you think other entrepreneurs should be directly involved with development?

Urquhart: The quick answer is that being a hands-on leader is very important to me. We are in the business of making games. If I completely lose touch with that, I don’t think it would be possible for me to be an effective leader. I am also supposed to the most objective person at Obsidian, so if I’m not familiar with the how and why of developing our games, then I can’t be effective in that role.

The other thing we talk a lot about at Obsidian is that as the “old guys,” we shouldn’t abdicate our experience. What I mean by that is that we actually do know things from our 15 to 20 years of experience, and we shouldn’t stay silent when there are pieces of advice or methods that we know will work, or for that matter, won’t work.

There is a very big caveat about being a hands-on leader, and that is being hands-on does not mean being in the way. I’ve had to learn that I can be involved in the design of the products or even implementation, but I need to make sure that I’m not stopping anyone else from doing their job because of my “actual” job of being CEO. In my position, I may have to suddenly leave for a couple of days to show off another product or visit one of the console companies. While I’m doing that, it is really frustrating for the team to be waiting for me to finish my development work.

I absolutely think that entrepreneurs should be involved in the actual creation of the games they make. I try not to be a weight on others with the development work that I do. I also try to keep myself focused on my role as the main business development guy at Obsidian. I have to make sure that I’m doing that job as well. If I become too involved with our games, then that job suffers. In the end, it’s a big balancing act that I constantly reevaluate.

Urquhart: Thinking about our early days, the studio leadership needs to think about how they can reduce the risk that a publisher might perceive when determining whether to sign the studio.

Urquhart: Be upfront and honest with your employees and treat them like adults. Tell them the good and the bad about what is going on with the company. Doing that will build trust between you and them, and it will make sure they believe in you, not just in the good times, but also in the bad.

We do this at Obsidian by having meetings every two weeks where we talk in-depth about the projects and the company. And I make it a point to personally take at least one person in the company out to lunch every week. By updating everyone as a group and then letting them ask questions one-on-one, we head off paranoia and build trust.

Since I've been following this story, I've seen some people claim that Feargus is myopic with regard to fault for quality issues. In my interview with him, he was more inclined to look closely at what the company as a whole was doing wrong rather than point the finger at publishers:

Urquhart: We developed Alpha Protocol, and the game has not received great reviews. For a game that we worked on for more than three years, the reviews were tough to see. It’s easy to blame outside forces, such as the technology you’ve licensed or how your publisher made it hard for you to make the game, but it’s essential for us to be introspective and ask, “What could we have done to facilitate production? How could we have improved our relationship with the publisher?”

We need to absolutely understand the expectations of our publishers and ensure that there are no gray areas at all. I can point to many rocky areas in our publisher relationships where we did not understand what our publishers were expecting from the game or from our next milestone, what shows they wanted us to attend, marketing materials they planned to use, and a myriad of other things. Understanding and then agreeing on those expectations have been difficult sometimes with our more recent publishers, but doing so has led to things going more smoothly.

We also need to recognize that we are a contractor working for our customer—the publisher. It’s our job to represent our opinion and let them know what we think, but it’s their money, and it’s their decision regarding what should ultimately be done. Acting like children, putting our foot down and telling them they are dumb, isn’t helpful, even if we do it behind their back. That doesn’t mean we have to do everything they say though.

To me, this doesn't sound like someone who would not be receptive to the criticism that Chris has expressed publicly, but unfortunately, I haven't had the opportunity to speak with Feargus in 6-8 years.

 

[Your Kindness]

To me, this doesn't sound like someone who would not be receptive to the criticism that Chris has expressed publicly, but unfortunately, I haven't had the opportunity to speak with Feargus in 6-8 years.

You can't just say "I'm a den of stinking evil" during the interview, y'know, you have to come up with something.

 

[IHaveHugeNick]

Tim Cain doesn't need you white knighting him.

He also doesn't need Avellone ruffling the Take 2 feathers.

If for some reason he can't contact Avellone by phone, facebook, or email, he could just send him a PM here if he felt he was doing anything that was jeopardizing Indiana.

And I'm sure Tim will do that, once couple of hours passes from the whole incident. Meanwhile, I'm more than happy to hold the fort while Avellone fantasizes that he is helping teams by getting them in trouble with publishers. Captain Stretch Goal to the rescue, once he's done saving you, you'll be living in a tent.

 

[fantadomat]

Respectfully I have to disagree with MCA taking issue with financial irregularities, mismanagement, nepotism and shenannigans galore. What's really at issue here (and actionable legally in my opinion) is Obsidians decision to knowingly make their poor employees work on Elf games, blatant and sickening as that is surely any court would decide for the plaintiff and award massive damages for pain and suffering.

Not this one:

 

[Tom Selleck]

Why did Chris end up reporting directly to Feargus? Was there a promotion or a restructuring? Chris, do you think you would still be at Obsidian if you hadn't been assigned directly subordinate to him?