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

[IHaveHugeNick]

He keeps writing entire self-congratulatory paragraphs about how he was always standing up for the little guy in the trenches, while his actual actions are doing anything but. I don't know what complex it is, but it's some complex all right

I'm not saying he's perfect or that I agree that everything he's disclosed is for some noble purpose. However, a lot of the things he's talked about can lead to positive change at Obsidian, if only through public pressure inside and outside the company. If had NOT said anything these practices would just continue as business as usual.

The issues about poor treatment of employees and bad management needed to be aired, and it's good that he's done that. Nobody has a problem with that, me included.

Unfortunately, he seems also determined to get Obsidian in trouble with their various clients. And that's another story entirely. That cannot lead to positive change, that's just him trying to stick it to Feargus, while living in some deranged lunacy that sticking it to Feargus by any means necessary is helping the average schmuck at Obsidian. But that's not what this leads to. It leads to Obsidian struggling to get new contracts and it leads to people getting fired, all while our guy is self-sucking and fantasizing about being a working class hero.

What records does he set straight exactly by leaking Indiana info, a game he never even worked on? What records does he set straight by leaking info that some people are planning to quit, presumably before even asking them if it's okay to leak it?

What info are you referring to? When he answered my question about Project Indiana he did not mention any details.

See my last night's exchange with him that ended up with him having a meltdown. He claims to have some information about Project Indiana funds being mismanaged and having some budgetary issues, and he has hallucinated himself into the idea that he is actually supporting the Indiana team by leaking this. Which again, is a complete lunacy.

Plus you know, just 2 days ago he was saying that while at Obsidian it was nigh-impossible for him to get any financial data, figure out where the money is going or who is employed where and is doing what. But 3 years after leaving the company, he apparently has accurate information about fine print details of the budget of the game that hasn't even been officially announced yet.

Seems that our master storyteller has lost the ability to create coherent plots.

 

[Infinitron]

Also, they did get royalties from a couple of projects, but I stand by the rest, especially after everything MCA said in this thread:

Their best period was 2009-2011. In terms of talent the studio was its peak, and they had (though not simultaneously) FNV, Alpha Protocol, Dungeon Siege III, Aliens, South Park, and Stormlands to work on. A very popular RPG series and a less popular one, 2 pop culture licences and 2 original AAA projects. All great opportunities to become as successful as the biggest RPG studios. However, in true Obsidian fashion, they botched most of them, and in 2012 they almost went bankrupt.

Obsidian's financial troubles came down to the fact they lived from contract to contract. They didn't own anything they created and didn't make money from sales. They depended entirely on publishers, and after a while, none of them were interested anymore. RPGs are inherently more expensive than most games, and Obsidian had become too risky of a gamble. If you pay Obsidian to make a game for you, you never know what you'll get. You hope you'll get a FNV, but it could be a NWN2, a DS3, or a Stormlands. PoE restored some of their reputation, which made Paradox gamble on them with Tyranny, but look at how that went. In short, the most reliable thing about Obsidian is the fact they're unreliable.

Even accepting all of that, I think Obsidian's inability to sign another open world RPG (besides Stormlands) after Fallout: New Vegas is first and foremost evidence of blithering publisher idiocy. After Josh Sawyer cranked that game out in 18 months, there should have been publishers knocking down their doors, period.

 

[Fry]

That was just an excuse to ignore the criticisms. The fact that you bought it tells more about your lack of confidence in the Codex than about the facts.

I "bought it"? Dumb ass, I didn't just spin up an account last week. I've been active here for years. I know exactly what the Codex is. Yes, there are some people using the Codex as an excuse to not talk about Avellone's accusations. But all you have to do is read this thread to understand that it's entirely accurate to say that the forum in which his accusations are being documented is a genuine problem in the real world.

I'd dearly love to see an actual journalist (and there are one or two serious game journalists) interview Chris and press Feargus for his side of the story. Sadly, we'll likely never see that because the venue has poisoned the message.

 

[Sentinel]

Without some change, I do think turning to self-publishing will end up being the only long-term solution, though.

Would you consider that to be a failure on their part? It's also what Swen from Larian concluded, and achieved.

Clearly you place a lot of value in publisher relationships, perhaps because of all their intellectual property goodies you'd like to have had access to, but all other things being equal, getting to slam the phone on publishers actually sounds pretty cool.

It doesn't sound all that cool when other people are depending on that relationship to keep their jobs though.

 

[Kev Inkline]

Leadership is completely entrenched in old ideas and micromanagement. Any sense of "open" structure is an utter farce – leadership has no time for you on a personal level (despite the façade of an ‘open door policy)

Look at this fancy dude using a "ç"

Turkish, apparently.

 

[azimuth]

We all love FNV in 2018, but don't forget it had a lot of nasty, ugly bugs at release, including corrupted saves and big crashes. I think it even crashed on consoles, which is bizarre.

 

[Maculo]

This information is documented.

In fact, all of these topics were in emails at Obsidian, so it's on record (the employee resistance to payback was a thread all the owners were a part of, and so was the 'hiring-the-children' thread, and Feargus's wife on the payroll, my revelation about my mother's condition, and more).

Great!

It's documented there, and I doubt Obsidian would delete those (as that makes a bad situation worse). Some of those issues continued after the departure as well (the 401K mess-ups, the mess-up with expenses with HR, the refusal to honor existing contracts, etc.).

Damn it! So only Obsidian has possession of those emails at the moment?

 

[Sentinel]

Leadership is completely entrenched in old ideas and micromanagement. Any sense of "open" structure is an utter farce – leadership has no time for you on a personal level (despite the façade of an ‘open door policy)

Look at this fancy dude using a "ç"

Turkish, apparently.

Can also be portuguese.

 

[Glaucon]

People who work at software companies are not working class and the proletariat doesn't really exist any longer.

 

[Ezeekiel]

We all love FNV in 2018, but don't forget it had a lot of nasty, ugly bugs at release, including corrupted saves and big crashes. I think it even crashed on consoles, which is bizarre.

I had to play a cracked version because my steam version kept crashing on startup or something.
As a result, my steam library tells me I have very little time in NV, much less than in FO3, which shocked me a bit when I looked through my playtimes recently until I remembered the situation fully.
Then there were the microstutters that a lot of people used to get back then iirc.

Still, they did a great job with the content considering the short development time.

 

[ZagorTeNej]

Even accepting all of that, I think Obsidian's inability to sign another open world RPG (besides Stormlands) after Fallout: New Vegas is first and foremost evidence of blithering publisher idiocy. After Josh Sawyer cranked that game out in 18 months, there should have been publishers knocking down their doors, period.

Fallout is the IP Obsidian is uniquely familiar with for obvious reasons (didn't a lot of Van Buren designs made it to FNV?). Don't think it's proof enough for publishers that Obsidian can tackle other opportunities with same degree of success and skill.

 

[Blakemoreland Hybrid Boss]

I "bought it"? Dumb ass, I didn't just spin up an account last week. I've been active here for years. I know exactly what the Codex is. Yes, there are some people using the Codex as an excuse to not talk about Avellone's accusations. But all you have to do is read this thread to understand that it's entirely accurate to say that the forum in which his accusations are being documented is a genuine problem in the real world.

I'd dearly love to see an actual journalist (and there are one or two serious game journalists) interview Chris and press Feargus for his side of the story. Sadly, we'll likely never see that because the venue has poisoned the message.

I’m not naive. I know that people can use the pretence of jokes and freedom of speech to convey prejudice and intolerance. They can also use management as an excuse to coercion, teaching as an excuse to brainwash, history as an excuse to hide the facts and journalism as an excuse to shill. This corruption occurs when people can’t resist the temptation of deviating the function of the task at hand because they have an axe to grind. But that’s human beings for you. The point though is that this image problem of the Codex is also a mirror of the hypocrisy outside the Codex. They can’t accept nazi jokes, but accept the same intolerance against conservatives on a daily basis. You saw in this thread types like Prima Junta using Stalin memes and talking about sending people to the Gulag. Do you think this never occurs outside the Codex? Please. I also had to laugh at your talk about “actual journalists”, as if this term meant something anymore, especially in gaming.

 

[ZagorTeNej]

I "bought it"? Dumb ass, I didn't just spin up an account last week. I've been active here for years. I know exactly what the Codex is. Yes, there are some people using the Codex as an excuse to not talk about Avellone's accusations. But all you have to do is read this thread to understand that it's entirely accurate to say that the forum in which his accusations are being documented is a genuine problem in the real world.

I'd dearly love to see an actual journalist (and there are one or two serious game journalists) interview Chris and press Feargus for his side of the story. Sadly, we'll likely never see that because the venue has poisoned the message.

Gaming journalism has a symbiotic relationship with publishers and developers (notice how Avellone said Obsidian coffers are empty come review time), they won't bite the hand that feeds them over a disgruntled ex-employee (or co-owner in this case) testimony. That it originated on the Codex is largely irrelevant in the grand scheme of things, it just a handy excuse for people to dismiss it but they would have done so anyway.

 

[Mr. Hiver]

Just wanted to quickly jump in and apologize for some disparaging remarks i made in the past about you mr. Chris Avellone
I dont think you saw any of those, but regardless if you did or not i feel i should say this.

For several recent years ive been running across or reading your various interviews in which you spoke only the best about game design and storytelling, narrative gameplay or any other fundamental RPG system or mechanic, yet... Obsidian kept producing uninspired and broken bug ridden failures, drowning somewhere in a miasma of mediocre lousy attempts to reach the fabled mass market and retain some semblance of an RPG genre, none of it not even close to any of those ideals you were so easily pulling out of a hat... just talking about it (or so i thought).
The searing bitterness i feel when thinking about it has been going for some time, since way back when i was dipped for the first time, playing Fallout 2, the first great RPG game i ever played. I still consider that as one of the best experiences i had in my existence, together with PST of course. Something truly worthy. Which got me to join old BiS interplay boards to seek where that seed will grow. Just in time to see the fall and then follow through all the long years of great decline.

So, considering i thought you were one of the owners, i blamed you for failures of Obsidian, as a part of recent spate of decline of RPGs. Which not even kickstarter seemed to change. You were also named or portrayed as leading developer in so many of those Obsidian games so that fooled me too. Reading those articles and interviews made it worse. I thought you were just fantasizing for a quick and easy clickbait hype, or outright hallucinating, while your studio kept producing ... something that seemed to have some disparate high quality parts that could never come together, as if someone was consciously deciding to fuck it all up. In greed for more money and then failing to get either. Now its clear who that actually was. Its not a surprise as i have experienced plenty of those "managers" throughout my life. And seen/figured out many more in this game business.

So i apologize for any harsh words i wrote. I was completely wrong, fooled by my bitterness and lack of actual facts. If you didnt see any of those posts its all for the better.
Considering the actual situation you were in.


I think its great what you are doing now. Its great you have a safe net and that you are financially cowered, as well as current and future (im sure) prospects for employment. At least that is not the same as in the ages of decline anymore. Although not for many. But you being who you are, one of the most accomplished and known RPG developers, will lend weight to your words and experiences not many ordinary developers enjoy.
(ive just noticed the case of poor Monty... man, after all the years he was involved in attempts to resurrect some part of PST, then somehow getting to work on Torment no less, and then all that. But his case is just one of many, many)

In that sense i hope you succeed in all your aims, shoving a boot up those parasites asses but also, improving the general environment for your former colleagues at Obsidian and devs in the whole business.
Every little bit helps. Every ray of Truth scuttles the decline a bit more. And even if it cannot be all great and dandy, it can be much better.

 

[ZagorTeNej]

We all love FNV in 2018, but don't forget it had a lot of nasty, ugly bugs at release, including corrupted saves and big crashes. I think it even crashed on consoles, which is bizarre.

That really describes 99% of CRPGs ever released, let's be honest. Bethesda and Bioware have gotten a free pass for years for their games being just as buggy on release.

 

[azimuth]

Uh, no, I can confidently say that most CRPGs do not crash or corrupt saves even on consoles. That is next-level incompetence.

Bugsidian was a real thing, and it's a legacy that goes back to BIS. I still remember getting halfway through Fallout 2 before I was completely unable to proceed due to the car bug. They patched the game later and all saves were invalidated, requiring everybody who had played up to that point to completely start over from the beginning.

They've gotten better starting with South Park and Pillars, but it's a well-earned reputation going back decades.

 

[Fairfax]

Also, they did get royalties from a couple of projects, but I stand by the rest, especially after everything MCA said in this thread:

Their best period was 2009-2011. In terms of talent the studio was its peak, and they had (though not simultaneously) FNV, Alpha Protocol, Dungeon Siege III, Aliens, South Park, and Stormlands to work on. A very popular RPG series and a less popular one, 2 pop culture licences and 2 original AAA projects. All great opportunities to become as successful as the biggest RPG studios. However, in true Obsidian fashion, they botched most of them, and in 2012 they almost went bankrupt.

Obsidian's financial troubles came down to the fact they lived from contract to contract. They didn't own anything they created and didn't make money from sales. They depended entirely on publishers, and after a while, none of them were interested anymore. RPGs are inherently more expensive than most games, and Obsidian had become too risky of a gamble. If you pay Obsidian to make a game for you, you never know what you'll get. You hope you'll get a FNV, but it could be a NWN2, a DS3, or a Stormlands. PoE restored some of their reputation, which made Paradox gamble on them with Tyranny, but look at how that went. In short, the most reliable thing about Obsidian is the fact they're unreliable.

Even accepting all of that, I think Obsidian's inability to sign another open world RPG (besides Stormlands) after Fallout: New Vegas is first and foremost evidence of blithering publisher idiocy. After Josh Sawyer cranked that game out in 18 months, there should have been publishers knocking down their doors, period.

In addition to what people said about FNV and Bugsidian, the FNV team also had a finished game with a toolset and engine to build upon. A $50-100 million project from the ground up is a different beast. AP was the first original AAA project by Obsidian, and it was an expensive failure. And AP, FNV, and DS3 came out in the span of a year or so, which reinforced Obsidian's inconsistency at the time.

Also, open world games are the most expensive. If you exclude the publishers they'd burned, the ones that weren't interested in RPGs, and the ones that couldn't afford it, which publisher could have taken that risk with Obsidian? Microsoft was one of the few, and they did take the risk, but Obsidian fucked up.

 

[<3sRichardSimmons]

Also, open world games are the most expensive. If you exclude the publishers they'd burned, the ones that weren't interested in RPGs, and the ones that couldn't afford it, which publisher could have taken that risk with Obsidian? Microsoft was one of the few, and they did take the risk, but Obsidian fucked up.

Don't forget Putin!

 

[IHaveHugeNick]

Yeah, vanilla FNV was in class of its own in terms of bugs.

 

[Coboney]

I "bought it"? Dumb ass, I didn't just spin up an account last week. I've been active here for years. I know exactly what the Codex is. Yes, there are some people using the Codex as an excuse to not talk about Avellone's accusations. But all you have to do is read this thread to understand that it's entirely accurate to say that the forum in which his accusations are being documented is a genuine problem in the real world.

I'd dearly love to see an actual journalist (and there are one or two serious game journalists) interview Chris and press Feargus for his side of the story. Sadly, we'll likely never see that because the venue has poisoned the message.

Gaming journalism has a symbiotic relationship with publishers and developers (notice how Avellone said Obsidian coffers are empty come review time), they won't bite the hand that feeds them over a disgruntled ex-employee (or co-owner in this case) testimony. That it originated on the Codex is largely irrelevant in the grand scheme of things, it just a handy excuse for people to dismiss it but they would have done so anyway.

Hey guys, so we've been following this on TechRaptor and talked with Chris as the above link showed. We've tried to get to Obsidian - in fact before we posted the first story but they have not responded to us. We have been working at getting what we can but there's nothing from Obsidian that we can share at this time, though some of that may be because we're smaller there.

Regarding the empty coffers come review time comment I think you're reading a bit too much there. Review time is also just before a game is releasing meaning that you've been pressing, you're possibly bringing in people to do QA fix especially given Obsidian has tried to focus on that more or have to send it to external, depending on contract may need to deal with consoles and the fees there as well as advertising depending on how that is split in spend - and no that generally isn't sending to publishers. You may see some direct buys but even there a lot is through networks and detecting interest of people or through parent companies that do business and own several sites. Essentially you're coming up on the end, or a major transformation point on a contract and during this period your expenses are higher (you also may be having to travel more, for example, to do pitches or line up your next job).

 

[DarkUnderlord]

I "bought it"? Dumb ass, I didn't just spin up an account last week. I've been active here for years. I know exactly what the Codex is. Yes, there are some people using the Codex as an excuse to not talk about Avellone's accusations. But all you have to do is read this thread to understand that it's entirely accurate to say that the forum in which his accusations are being documented is a genuine problem in the real world.

I'd dearly love to see an actual journalist (and there are one or two serious game journalists) interview Chris and press Feargus for his side of the story. Sadly, we'll likely never see that because the venue has poisoned the message.

That's an unavoidable function of what the Codex is. We're talking about a gaming world that salivates games prior to release (thanks to kick backs, secret agreements, and general cock-sucking) and only once the sequel is in production is it suddenly accepted that the prior game had any issues at all. The Codex was the game that shat on things prior to their release, that naturally puts us off-side with everyone else whose main aim is to suck cock so they can get that next "exclusive" of highly selected and polished game information for their readers so they can sell subscriptions.

We've never been a paid site - reliant on funding from reader numbers and ad revenue - so we've never cared.

There's no way to change that without fundamentally meaning threads like this wouldn't occur. Which part of this topic would you like excised, for example, to tidy it up? The first bit about communism, the second bit, the bit in-between about whatever that was? Ultimately cutting bits out doesn't matter and changes nothing. People who care will find the important bits, others will make the summaries, and the world will keep turning.

If we take the approach that certain viewpoints are toxic (basically anything to the right of the political spectrum) then we're just the same as all those other idiots who missed Trump becoming President.

Unfortunately, he seems also determined to get Obsidian in trouble with their various clients. And that's another story entirely. That cannot lead to positive change, that's just him trying to stick it to Feargus, while living in some deranged lunacy that sticking it to Feargus by any means necessary is helping the average schmuck at Obsidian. But that's not what this leads to. It leads to Obsidian struggling to get new contrast, it leads to people getting fired, while our guy is self-sucking and fantasizing about being a working class hero.

I don't know exactly what MCA's intent is, whether he's just off his meds, has finally decided to go nuclear, or is genuinely trying to effect (affect? who knows) change within Obsidian. All I do know is the way he describes Feargus reminds me very much of a CEO I used worked for. Very similar attitude towards money - when things were down we were all broke and it was cut cut cut and panic, then when money came in we were hiring 15 extra guys we didn't need and spreading the goodwill around like it was Christmas - rather than actually planning or structuring a lot of the expenditure for the long-term.

Rinse and repeat year after year and you've got a company that's always on the brink (for no good reason) and always responding to crises rather than anticipating them and heading them off. We'd save money by cheap-skating up front only to spend three times as much fixing problems caused by that later. We'd decide on one thing, then suddenly change our minds mid-stream and do it another way, wasting countless hours. And yet somehow or another, the company still managed to get things done. I think we managed to piss off every other person in our industry and yet people still wanted to work with us. Go figure. Must be some trick to being a CEO.

MCA hasn't revealed any huge secrets - we've long known Obsidian and Feargus had issues. He used to run Interplay after all and remember where that company went? Some French man bought it, sold most of their shit off at auction, and now their website looks like something from geocities circa 1999.

 

[Infinitron]

It might be another example of unlucky timing. Feels like it wasn't until relatively recently with Witcher 3, Horizon Zero Dawn, etc, that folks realized "Hey, wait a minute, Bethesda doesn't have to be the only publisher that makes open world RPGs". Back in 2010-2011 even Tim Cain was going "Mass Effect is the top RPG today, we must make RPGs like Mass Effect". No foresight - any Codexer could tell them they were wrong.

 

[Trashos]

We've never been a paid site - reliant on funding from reader numbers and ad revenue - so we've never cared.

There's no way to change that without fundamentally meaning threads like this wouldn't occur. Which part of this topic would you like excised, for example, to tidy it up? The first bit about communism, the second bit, the bit in-between about whatever that was? Ultimately cutting bits out doesn't matter and changes nothing. People who care will find the important bits, others will make the summaries, and the world will keep turning.

If we take the approach that certain viewpoints are toxic (basically anything to the right of the political spectrum) then we're just the same as all those other idiots who missed Trump becoming President.

Fundamentally, in "normal" forums (with stricter moderation and very limited free speech) people have conversations and arguments while being forced to hide 95% of their thoughts. Personally, I 'd find that hilarious, if it weren't so tragic. Frankly, I pity them.

Never change, Codex.

 

[Puteo]

Chris Avellone, In a previous interview (or maybe the appreciation thread) you mentioned that since you started working from home you haven't been able to workout as much as you like. Have you since managed to correct this alarming deficiency?

I mean, you can endure all you want but without hefty supplements of iron and whey you won't grow any stronger.

Remember, games come and go, but gains are forever.

#SQUATSBEFOREPLOTS

 

[felipepepe]

There's no way to change that without fundamentally meaning threads like this wouldn't occur. Which part of this topic would you like excised, for example, to tidy it up? The first bit about communism, the second bit, the bit in-between about whatever that was? Ultimately cutting bits out doesn't matter and changes nothing. People who care will find the important bits, others will make the summaries, and the world will keep turning.

You realize how hypocritical that sounds when just a few hours ago you forbid Kit Walker from using the same avatar as MCA since it was confusing readers, right?

And you're conflating two issues. This has nothing to do with politics, no one is asking you to ban the attention-whores spamming low-effort shitposts - you just don't have to keep them in this thread. Otherwise what's the point of having GD and its sub-forums?

It really comes out as try-hard, like you actually want this garbage here and like looking like you're edgy and don't care.