"Classic RPGs Forever" panel at PAX Prime 2015

[LESS T_T]

A delegate from inXile, Adam Heine is in: http://www.adamheine.com/2015/07/classic-rpgs-panel-at-pax.html

Hey, all! If you're going to PAX Prime next month, I'll be on a panel there.

The panel is "CLASSIC RPGs FOREVER!" (yes, in all caps, apparently), and it'll be on Sunday, August 30th at 11 AM in the Sasquatch Theater.

We'll be talking about resurrecting subgenres of classic RPGs that were once thought dead. I'll be joining veteran game developers Annie Mitsoda, Josh Sawyer, Mitch Gitelman, and Swen Vincke, with Penny Arcade's Jeff Kalles moderating.

I'm super excited and super terrified. This will be the first time I've ever been on a panel (or even seen a panel, or gone to PAX, or gone to any convention of any kind). It'll be awesome to talk games with a bunch of developers I admire, but yeah, combine a thousand unknowns with enormous crowds with nigh-clinical introversion and you get something that's even scarier than what I already do all day.

But hey, I'll manage. I always do.

So if you're going to be at PAX, let me know! It's possible I might be able to do something about that information without crawling under my bed in terror.*

* That's a joke. My bed is a mattress on the floor. I can't crawl under there without straining something.**

** Unless I crawl under the bed at my hotel. Hm, there's an idea....

 

[Infinitron]

The fellowship is complete.

Bit weird that they have to bring a guy all the way from Thailand when they have people stateside though.

 

[Roguey]

If anyone from here is going, I dare them to ask him about that thing I instigated.

By the by it's pretty keen how every dev on this panel except Gitelman has been touched by my presence.

 

[veevoir]

If anyone from here is going, I dare them to ask him about that thing I instigated.

By the by it's pretty keen how every dev on this panel except Gitelman has been touched by my presence.

Hopefully it stays that way. Stay away from Mitch with your presence touch rape!

 

[Infinitron]

Mitch Gitelman is a good Jewish man.

Fun note: People in the Shadowrun community used to hate him the way some people here now hate Josh Sawyer: https://docbelmont.wordpress.com/2013/01/13/mitch-gitelman-youre-okay/

I hated Mitch Gitelman. He was the Uwe Boll of Shadowrun. Was my hatred irrational? Yes, it was, but behaviors on both fan and developers’ sides of the fence didn’t really help matters any.

A few years back I was part of a small group that had made an attempt at the Shadowrun MMO long before Cliffhanger Studios swept in. to be honest, however, Cliffhanger is doing something BETTER than what we had planned…we were on our way to making another re-skinned World of Warcraft. We were a small group, but our heart was in the right place. I was working on a few things; art design, mage/shaman design, and story-writing. We did not have a vital advantage, however; that of having the legal rights to the Shadowrun I.P. That’s a big thing to NOT have. However, the team left worrying about that detail to our project leader. He assured us that we had permission to produce a “proof of concept demo” that we may show to Microsoft in hopes of getting approval. Well, either we were lied to, or our mention on media sites pissed someone off, because the day after the leak, we got slapped with a Cease & Desist order. Upset as we were over the issue, I have a suspicion that the project workers weren’t getting the whole story about the debacle. With that, several weeks of my life and the work I put into it was confiscated as property of Microsoft. Our little group dissolved quickly after.

Needless to say, this did not help my opinion of Mitch, as I saw him and Microsoft as a singular, Borg-like entity.

On Mitch’s end though, I saw rant after puerile rant about how no one is being fair to him and his design team, raging against people for very valid complaints about the game (price point, lack of single-player support, derivation from Shadowrun lore, etc.), insulting online reviewers by saying that they’re not really journalists, but “fans who learned to type.” (as if their opinion is any less valid) Then, he went so far as to outright insult long-time Shadowrun fans on podcasts. I can’t recall the title of the OXM podcast, but one quote of Mitch’s stuck with me for a VERY long time: He tells us that his kid asked him why people hate him, to which he answered, “Because I killed their inner 12-year olds.”

Class act, Mitch.

Eventually, FASA folded 4 months after the game’s release, and Shadowrun now sits at the bottom of the bargain games bin, where I begrudgingly picked it up and forked over the ten dollars to get it purely out of Shadowrun brand loyalty. I played it, and my opinion hasn’t changed. Is it a pretty game? Sure! Is it a GOOD game? Well…no. I have often wondered how friggin’ cool it would have been if Deux Ex: Human Revolution had been a Shadowrun game; just add in magic and metahumans. That’s neither here nor there, however. Shadowrun had alarger destiny ahead.

Fast Forward to 2012. A little company-that-could called Harebrained Schemes utilized the Kickstarter program to fund a humble little project called Shadowrun Returns. I watched the Kickstarter video, and was floored when I saw the face of Jordan Weisman smiling back at me. You might have heard of this guy; he’s only the CREATOR OF THE SHADOWRUN UNIVERSE! I watched on and got a little clip in the video that made me laugh my ass off: Mitch Gitelman getting pegged with random thrown objects while holding up a sign reading “SORRY!” I thought this was a joke at first, and I thought, “he does resemble Mitch Gitelman.” When I checked out the actual Harebrained Schemes website, my heart sank when I saw that Mitch was actually the co-founder of the company itself.

“Oh Lord,” I thought, “this is going to suck.”

 

[veevoir]

He gets/got a lot of hate for being on a team for Shadowrun FPS (which was massive decline of the IP).

The quoted blog mentions this. And his Sorry was much more satsifactory than CmCs.

 

[mindx2]

They really seemed to nail him!!

 

[Cadmus]

Oh shit, I thought this thread would be about Fallout 3 and Skyrim.

 

[eric__s]

If anyone from here is going, I dare them to ask him about that thing I instigated.

By the by it's pretty keen how every dev on this panel except Gitelman has been touched by my presence.

What did you instigate? I'll ask if it's not insane.

 

[Infinitron]

So, this isn't the only relevant thing that's going to be at PAX Prime.

http://forums.obsidian.net/topic/81198-pillars-of-eternity-retrospective-discussion-at-pax-prime/

Obsidian Entertainment Presents: A Pillars of Eternity Retrospective Discussion!
Join Obsidian Entertainment's Josh Sawyer (Game Director), Adam Brennecke (Executive Producer / Lead Programmer), and Brandon Adler (Lead Producer), as they delve into the development highs and lows of creating the critically-acclaimed Pillars of Eternity.

Get an exclusive, never-before-seen look into Pillars of Eternity's creation - jam-packed with stories about the team's successes and failures as they created the Kickstarter-backed game. You'll even get a sneak peek into the future of Pillars of Eternity games, including a discussion of new game features.

PANELISTS:
Shane DeFreest [Marketing Director, Obsidian Entertainment], Brandon Adler [Producer, Obsidian Entertainment], Josh Sawyer [Project Director / Game Director, Obsidian Entertainment], Adam Brennecke [Lead Programmer, Obsidian Entertainment]

Should be interesting.

 

[Infinitron]

Oh, and since the schedule is up now: http://prime.paxsite.com/schedule/panel/classic-rpgs-forever

CLASSIC RPGs FOREVER!
2014 saw a dramatic rise in releases from a once-thought-dead genre: the strategy RPG. Fans may rejoice - but how do these gargantuan games actually get made? How does one unravel the massive web of intertwined systems, sprawling dialogue trees, and combat mechanics?

Join veteran developers from Obsidian, DoubleBear Productions, inXile Entertainment, Harebrained Schemes, and Larian Studios to gain an inside look into how these massive games are concepted, crafted, and given a larger life.

PANELISTS:
Annie VanderMeer Mitsoda [Writer / Designer, DoubleBear Productions], Josh Sawyer [Game Director, Obsidian Entertainment], Mitch Gitelman [Co-Founder / Studio Manager, Harebrained Schemes], Swen Vincke [Creative Director, Larian Studios], Jeff Kalles [Senior Sales / Marketing Manager, Penny Arcade], Adam Heine [Design Lead, inXile Entertainment]

 

[Roguey]

strategy RPG

Fuck off.

 

[Infinitron]

 

[laclongquan]

Basebuilding centralTown RPG when?

 

[Lhynn]

Yeah, no offense to Double Bear, but they are a bit out of their league there...

Dead state does stand on the same level as the rest of them. For one they managed to nail a lot of what made the zombie genre a thing in the first place, too bad it was like 5 years too late (or 5 years too early), too bad the Mitsodas couldnt keep their mouths shut, too bad the game was an unpolished mess at release, etc.

 

[Roguey]

Is the zombie genre looting things, repetitive combat, and shallow obnoxious dialogue? I'll be genuinely surprised if Pillars displaces it as most-disappointing-crowdfunded-RPG-I-backed.

 

[Lhynn]

Is the zombie genre looting things, repetitive combat, and shallow obnoxious dialogue? I'll be genuinely surprised if Pillars displaces it as most-disappointing-crowdfunded-RPG-I-backed.

If you hadnt said "zombie genre" at first i would have thought you were talking about PoE.

Its kind of enlightening tho:

- You find loot bad.
- You find repetitive combat bad, and i share this sentiment, but i dont see how this is possible, given that the game encourages team rotation and that given level design and zombies being a constant threat it should make for p. varied combat. I thought what killed the game was its length, not its combat.
- Shallow and obnoxious dialogue? i dont even know what you are talking about here. I guess its shallow for a game in the zombie genre? guess the mitsodas should have watched more walking dead. As for obnoxius, wasnt aware dialogue could be obnoxious, maybe some characters, but the dialogue in general? Its not overly verbose.

At some points it just feels like you are throwing disconnected qualifiers on the air. Guess i was just trolled. ah well.

 

[SniperHF]

So is anyone gonna record/stream the RPG panel?

I don't see it on the PAX list:
http://www.twitch.tv/team/pax


The Pillars panel is here:
http://www.twitch.tv/pax2/v/13457385?t=102m38s

 

[Roguey]

It's not big enough to be streamed.

 

[imweasel]

Kind of funny to see Sawyer at the Classic RPGs Forever panel, although in his opinion the fans of this genre are all just "a bunch of grognards who love degenerate gameplay". I guess he'll do anything for marketing.

If you hadnt said "zombie genre" at first i would have thought you were talking about PoE.

Both Dead State and PoE are more or less repetetive, but Dead State is the better game IMO.

 

[Kz3r0]

"Classic RPGs Forever"

"They were all shit."
J.Sawyer

 

[Roguey]

The one person quoting the panel on twitter said nothing of value.

 

[Infinitron]

Adam Heine Recording?

 

[Infinitron]

The latest D:OS 2 Kickstarter update video confirms that footage of this panel exists:

 

[Adam Heine]

Swen brought his own camera crew (although "crew" is probably a strong word ). I don't know if he recorded the whole panel though.