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People News Chris Avellone talks about life as a freelancer at Reboot Develop 2016

Infinitron

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Tags: Chris Avellone

Chris Avellone (along with Brian Fargo and Swen Vincke) is in Croatia this week for the annual Reboot Develop gaming conference, where he's participating in several panels, including a "Beachside Chat" that he participated in this morning. I don't know when (or if) videos of those panels will be made publicly available, but a representative from Gamasutra did do a writeup of this morning's chat. Seems like it turned out as an excited rant about his carefree post-Obsidian lifestyle. I quote:

Chris Avellone is known for his RPG work, from the Fallout series, to the co-founding of Obsidian studios – and while he's still working largely in that arena, he's now a free agent, split off from the confines of a single company. And he couldn't be happier.

"I love to write for computer games. I love to design for computer games," he said during a chat at Reboot Develop. "So what I do now is I roll out of bed. I don't get dressed. I don't shower. I just start writing immediately. All my Skype calls have no video. And then I go to bed after about 11 hours, and I think 'that was a very productive day.'"

"I guess the important thing is, this is the first time in my life I've actually had a chance to just do writing and design full time," he added, "and that's all I ever wanted to do.

"I never realized how much time was consumed going into work, having meetings, doing owner stuff. I didn't realize how exhausting that stuff was. It was harder knowing how the sausage was made. And knowing the sausage, and knowing the pigs. And crying. I don't cry as much."

When it comes to creating lore and tying it together, Avellone has been writing short fiction, and some key learnings have come from that. "I realized that short stories are fine, but trying to write novels… I don't understand how novelists do it," he said. "There's a lot of moving parts and very long prose work. The first novel I tried to write, I'm still stuck on the last six chapters, thinking 'how do I tie all this stuff together?'"

Avellone referenced wikis for sprawling narratives like George R. R. Martin's Song of Ice and Fire, because Game of Thrones has a wiki where people keep track of everything for him.

"Bethesda mentioned… I shouldn't say this, but they said 'we don't track everything anymore, we just go to the wiki and figure out what the crossed lines are for everything, that's basically our game design document now.'”

Now that he's in a pure creative role, Avellone doesn't see himself going back to running a studio. "I have been tempted," he said, "but the challenges with that are, you have to hire the right individuals, you have to set up your own company, and once you start doing that you enter into more of a management role and less of a creative role.

"So more what I want is to get involved in companies that have all that set up, and I can just get involved in just a creative capacity."

But there are challenges with this as well, for example with Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic II. "I've got to put myself in the mindset of George Lucas, and… write like him, with a lot of vowels and stuff. Like Count Dooku, what is that?"

"You have to figure out what the franchise holder writes and thinks like, and follow that. You can't put forth every thought you have, you have to make sure it's consistent with the franchise.”

But even so, sometimes he's able to put himself and his ideas into a game that's established. "If you think you can't insert yourself into an established franchise, that's bullshit," he says. “For FTL I didn't have a lot of questions about that franchise, so I mostly enjoyed all the races and encounters.

"Writing the slug encounters was actually really amusing because they're so selfish and self absorbed. But when I came to Star Wars, I had a lot of questions about that franchise and a little bit of frustration, and that got channeled into some characters."

A franchise or series of tropes can sometimes throttle creativity, he says. “Why are there halflings in this game, why are there hobbits – well, because it's Tolkien. We're investing in this because it's Tolkien."

"Sometimes I want to grab him by the collar and be like 'Do you know what you did for computer gaming, for all time!?' Like 'oh, I'm a blood elf, and I can do anything, and everything I touch comes to life.' Fuck blood elves.”
I love that Bethesda anecdote. Does that mean Chris' apparent ambition to involve himself in the development of the next Fallout game has been stymied?
 

Crooked Bee

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"So what I do now is I roll out of bed. I don't get dressed. I don't shower. I just start writing immediately. All my Skype calls have no video. And then I go to bed after about 11 hours, and I think 'that was a very productive day.'"

:salute:

No wonder Chris Avellone is so excited. That really does sound great - and I don't just mean the not getting dressed part.
 

Tigranes

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Good on him. Hopefully there will be a way where that can channel into an 'Avellone Game' again - probably requires someone to team up with him and handle all the managerial stuff, though.
 

Blackstaff

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I've got my doubts. That must be liberating for a time to focus only on creating something, but any creative people will tell you that true freedom is working on something that belongs to you.
 

Roguey

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Must be rough to have such a slob of a boyfriend.

I wonder if Ausir feels any guilt over putting Avellone out of a potential job.
 

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Wait a minute...I'm an idiot. This isn't an interview at all, it's a report on the "Beachside Chat" talk that he gave.
 

Fry

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And then I go to bed after about 11 hours, and I think 'that was a very productive day.

So, he sleeps 13 hours a day? I guess that explains why he wasn't much good at running a business.
 

evdk

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"So what I do now is I roll out of bed. I don't get dressed. I don't shower. I just start writing immediately. All my Skype calls have no video. And then I go to bed after about 11 hours, and I think 'that was a very productive day.'"

:salute:

No wonder Chris Avellone is so excited. That really does sound great - and I don't just mean the not getting dressed part.
So, you don't shower?
 

Metal Hurlant

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As long as he's working and happy and doing what he loves. I imagine writing and being a slob would be quite appealing.
 

Hoodoo

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When is he gonna admit he was fired because he got into a physical fight with another Obsidian employee?
 

Lady_Error

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So, what did he do for FTL? And what are the other projects he's been working on as a freelancer?
 

Fairfax

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So, what did he do for FTL? And what are the other projects he's been working on as a freelancer?
He wrote some random events for the AE. Never specified which, though.
As for the rest:
[Finished but not released]
  • PoE novella. Supposedly coming out soon.
  • VR dialogue stuff with Digital Funk Studios.
  • Feedback on Siege of Dragonspear.
[Ongoing]
  • TTON companion.
  • TTON graphic novel #1.
  • TTON graphic novel #2.
  • Wasteland 2 novella #1.
  • Wasteland 2 novella #2. (Could be more than two, he said he split the original novel in "separate issues")
  • D:OS2 origin story.
  • Unannounced project.
[Recent finished work]
  • "<endgame>", short story for the Press Start to Play anthology.
  • "Acts of Creation", short story for the The End Has Come anthology.
  • Prologue for Más allá del Tiempo, a book about the Chrono series. (Spanish only)
  • "The Winter King", an Icewind Dale short story. Technically not recent, he wrote back in the Black Isle days, but it was only released last year.
  • Overfall style guide.
[Other stuff coming up]
 

Roguey

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It's been nearly three years since the last Arcanum update. :lol:

On the upside, he barely grasped what was going on, so getting back in should be pretty easy.
 

KevinV12000

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One of the things I found out during my time as an attorney was how rare a love for business is, even in people who own/co-own a company and are engaged day-in, day-out in running it. It's not for everyone. I'm not surprised to hear him admit he cried quite a bit. I've seen it myself, especially when the banks get jittery and payroll has to be met and two deals fell through at the last minute that you were really counting on, etc.

I'm happy for him, he's clearly an artist and no businessman.
 

HoboForEternity

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Steve gets a Kidney but I don't even get a tag.
"Bethesda mentioned… I shouldn't say this, but they said 'we don't track everything anymore, we just go to the wiki and figure out what the crossed lines are for everything, that's basically our game design document now.'”

so bethesda is worse than i thought. TES is really dead :0-13:
 

HoboForEternity

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Steve gets a Kidney but I don't even get a tag.
Is that of ANY surpsise to anyone who play's their games? lol
well not really, but i thought, i just thought they still have little dignity and little love for the lore of TES and fallout. it turns out the wiki is their source material. that's like just so sad
 

hpstg

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I don't believe he will be ever given his own game to make again. Unless Fargo does something crazy.
 

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