Interview Chris Avellone's Beachside Chat at Reboot Develop 2016

[Infinitron]

Tags: Chris Avellone

Nearly four months after it took place, the video of Chris Avellone's "Beachside Chat" panel at the Reboot Develop 2016 conference in Croatia has finally been uploaded by the organizers. It's a half-comedic, half-serious dialogue between Chris and Dan Pearson, European Editor of GamesIndustry.biz. Gamasutra's writeup made the panel seem like it was an extended rhapsody about the comforts of his post-Obsidian lifestyle, but it's actually a bit more in-depth than that.

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The chat starts out as an entertaining exchange of banter about Chris' pen-and-paper roleplaying roots, but later on it becomes more focused on CRPG design, including some discussion of his contributions to Pillars of Eternity. Interestingly, the idea of roleplaying evil characters comes up several times, and Chris cites (then only recently announced) Tyranny as the sort of RPG he'd make if he wanted to support that concept. It's an amusing watch all around - check it out if you have time to burn.

 

[Shin]

holy shit chris looks baked as fuck in this interview

his routine is probably something like
1. get up in the morning
2. hit the gym for those guns
3. smoke some marijuana
4. write stuff

 

[oldmanpaco]

Does he even make crpgs anymore?

 

[Feyd Rautha]

Does he even make crpgs anymore?

D:OS2?

 

[Azrael the cat]

It's hard to think of a reason why MCA would be driven to create a great crpg at this stage, to be honest. He's done the magnum opus of the things that he's good att - subverting genres, hate-mances, and character reactivity, and his generally great writing isn't something that one would need to tie to crpgs, or even to games. If you're looking for another Torment or KoTOR2 (and fuck I'd love one), what's he going to do that's better than what he did in his youth? Ok, give KoTOR2 the awesome ending that's painfully visible through the scraps available through the restoration project

Spoiler

my first experience of playing KoTOR2 as akin to watching the premiere one of the greatest genre movies ever created, then getting to this amazing climax where things go from awesome to gut-wrenching as the main character is about to make the movie-defining choice, like watching Bladerunner up to the moment where Rutger Hauer grabs Harrison Ford's wrist as he dangles from the roof, and you're about to find out whether it's to finish him or save him, and suddenly tear marks become visible, you can smell smoke wafting from the projector room, the fucking props collapse and a boom-mike falls onto Rutger Hauer's head, causing him to let go of Ford who doesn't fall because he's obviously just standing on a platform marginally out of shot, and you're just sitting there watching a mangled image as the film gets chewed up like a casette in a cheap tape player, and then finally the director (who's sitting behind you, having paid for his own ticket because the studio was too cheap to give him a comp) walks down to the front of the cinema, and uses a pair of sock puppets to do some shit that you can't even see properly but you assume is some kind of re-enactment of the final scene, before bowing and just standing there staring at the audience as though he's waiting for thunderous applause that never arrives)

but other than that, where's his motivation to do better than that in crpgs?

Nobody with any self-respect wants to spend their 40s trying to 'match' something they did in their 20s. You take different priorities and move on. If you've got kids, then suddenly all that stuff about art and philosophy and fame seems smaller than you could ever have imagined back then - everything you thought was important is utterly meaningless, either because your kids give you an unshakeable certainty of purpose where anything other than giving them the best you can has turned your perception of the world on its head (suddenly 'selling out' to make Bethesda games, through which you'll afford to give your kids the life you want for them, has infinitely more integrity than making a marginally less profitable greatest game ever), or because the fucking little shits have made you sleep-deprived and you're channelling every choice through the prism of whether it will help you get away with selling them to Afghani slavers.

C/f Harvey Smith. I've stated before what I see as some serious failings in Dishonoured, but it still feels like the work of a team that still 'feels it'. And it's obvious why he would - he had massive ambitions for Invisible War, failed terribly, and he still hasn't made the game he wants. Spector, on the other hand, has always been so proud of what he did with Deus Ex's emergent gameplay, that why the hell would he give a shit about anything he makes after that?

 

[Fairfax]

He also finally mentioned some of the events he wrote for FTL:AE. He only said "Slug events", though, and the wiki has no Slug events listed under AE events. However, some of the new events are added to the game even with AE mode turned off, which only makes it harder to figure out what he wrote.

At ~20min or so he starts to talk about PoE and how he pushed for less traditional classes, mentioning the Cipher in particular. He's talked about this before; he said he had to keep pushing for it to be in the game.

At ~27:30 the other guy makes fun of Mass Effect's "evil" options while MCA is talking about designing good/evil in RPGs. MCA then says a character demanding more money or threatening to kill is just "lazy evil". He says most designers keep thinking of the lawful good characters and take shortcuts with the evil stuff.

 

[Infinitron]

He says most designers keep thinking of the lawful good characters and take shortcuts with the evil stuff.

Actually, I think what was said there is that the evil options literally are shortcuts. Either do a quest for somebody to get an item (good) or just kill them and take it (evil). They are not full-fledged content.

 

[Fairfax]

He says most designers keep thinking of the lawful good characters and take shortcuts with the evil stuff.

Actually, I think what was said there is that the evil options literally are shortcuts. Either do a quest for somebody to get an item (good) or just kill them and take it (evil). They are not full-fledged content.

I thought of that, but asking for more money is not a shortcut. It does make sense if that's what he meant, though.

 

[Bester]

D:OS2?

I had high expectations for it, before I found out Avellone only wrote some lore for some undead faction.

 

[Metro]

He has a pretty great thing going working as the top free agent/hired gun for high end Kickstarters and the occasional AAA game. I'm sure they pay him very well, he makes his own hours, and he doesn't have to put up with corporate bullshit/politics.

 

[Chris Avellone]

He says most designers keep thinking of the lawful good characters and take shortcuts with the evil stuff.

Actually, I think what was said there is that the evil options literally are shortcuts. Either do a quest for somebody to get an item (good) or just kill them and take it (evil). They are not full-fledged content.

I thought of that, but asking for more money is not a shortcut. It does make sense if that's what he meant, though.

It is what I meant. Some designers either (1) don't care about alternate paths enough to invest any energy in them (this can apply to faction balance as well, so the factions can seem unbalanced - if you have an evil faction with no mouthpiece and few quests, then it might be better to step back and re-evaluate their role in the game), and (2) resorting to demanding more money or threatening/actually killing an NPC is easier to do than a thought-out evil (ahem - pragmatic?) quest line. Another reason I categorize it these options as shortcuts is because demanding more money or turning an NPC hostile is easy, scripting-wise - but it often doesn't lead anywhere interesting, quest-wise. : / Still, at the most superficial level, it does cover the "evil approach."

Note that I've been guilty of this as well, so please don't think I'm hopping up on my high horse and riding off into the self-righteous sunset.

Also (because I can't stop thinking about it) there's also another problem with the "demand more money" option and that when a designer believes that "demanding more money" is a worthwhile option, the merchant and money-consumption mechanics on the System Designer end had better damn well justify that money has value. (Ex: If your merchants never offer anything better than what someone could plunder in a dungeon, then money starts becoming worthless anyway b/c you're training your players to ignore merchant stock as "forget it, I'll find something better anyway.")

 

[Chris Avellone]

holy shit chris looks baked as fuck in this interview

his routine is probably something like
1. get up in the morning
2. hit the gym for those guns
3. smoke some marijuana
4. write stuff

My brain forbids me from smoking marijuana. Hypothetically, it makes me super paranoid and being super paranoid is not fun.

 

[Infinitron]

(this can apply to faction balance as well, so the factions can seem unbalanced - if you have an evil faction with no mouthpiece and few quests, then it might be better to step back and re-evaluate their role in the game)

 

[Turisas]

So... Codex needs a proper mouthpiece and more quests? Sounds about right.

 

[Shin]

My brain forbids me from smoking marijuana. Hypothetically, it makes me super paranoid and being super paranoid is not fun.

Ugh, I have buddies like that. They'll drink more alcohol in a week than I can consume in a year but refuse to hit the reefer because it 'makes them paranoid'. Fun fact tho (if you happen to find yourself in Morocco, or Amsterdam or some other exotic location); hash gives a totally different buzz.

I know I shouldn't be promoting drug use, especially not to people I hope to see alive (and productive) for a very long time but ehh, I mean, you're an artsy type and those are supposed to be on some substances...

 

[Tito Anic]

My brain forbids me from smoking marijuana. Hypothetically, it makes me super paranoid and being super paranoid is not fun.

And what about cocaina?

 

[Neanderthal]

And what about cocaina?

I've always found Charlie got me paranoid an angry or really fuckin silly, don't like look o me eyes when i'm on it though, fuckin weird. E's are fairly good for happy energy but you never know how much of what shit they've put in em, could be a bit too much rat poison or whatever. I prefer a few gallons o bitter an a kebab nowadays, feel stolid, fat an happy.

 

[Burning Bridges]

This guy doesnt deserve 1% of the attention he gets, he just lends his name to his cronies from the kickstarter sphere, writes some pages of dialog and niffs off.

 

[Metro]

Lies. MCA and I will collaborate on writing Fallout: New Orleans.

 

[Q]

I just want more MCA in my gaems

 

[Bester]

I just want more MCA in my gaems

I want a game by MCA. A game where some small part was written by MCA is wasted writing, because most games are shit. So there's a hidden jewel there, I'm not going to dig through the shit to find it. It's either a complete game by MCA, or I don't care.

 

[J_C]

Haha, at 10:35 you can Swen from Larian sitting there in the crowd. :D And 21:40 for Tim Schafer.

It was nice when MCA said that this is the first time when all he does is write and do design, and he enjoys it. The man deserves it. I believe all that corporate owner duty was taking a toll on him.

 

[Bohrain]

This guy doesnt deserve 1% of the attention he gets, he just lends his name to his cronies from the kickstarter sphere, writes some pages of dialog and niffs off.

Big talk from someone who isn't even a kickstarter reward.

 

[Deleted member 7219]

Haha, at 10:35 you can Swen from Larian sitting there in the crowd. :D And 21:40 for Tim Schafer.

It was nice when MCA said that this is the first time when all he does is write and do design, and he enjoys it. The man deserves it. I believe all that corporate owner duty was taking a toll on him.

Tim Schafer was there? Oh.

 

[Deleted member 7219]

I just want more MCA in my gaems

I want a game by MCA. A game where some small part was written by MCA is wasted writing, because most games are shit. So there's a hidden jewel there, I'm not going to dig through the shit to find it. It's either a complete game by MCA, or I don't care.

Same. I want another game with the writing and reactivity of KOTOR 2.