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

[Blaine]

Dude stop posting that fucking picture.

 

[Mustawd]

Blaine , can you photoshop me coming out of the 2nd guy's head?

 

[Mustawd]

How could they not work this out with Atari? BG3 would yield a good profit for both parties involved under the right agreement that sounds counter productive.

You're asking why a company who was so mismanaged they couldn't pay something basic like royalties didn't try to negotiate like a basic smart person would do?

To get to the point that you're willingly skipping royalties is p. huge. It basically means

1. Ignore the scheduled royalty payment
2. Ignore emails from the company asking "hey what's up with the royalties?"
3. Likely ignore a couple letters. calls and emails from the company's lawyers asking for said royalty.

I'm not saying ur question is unreasonable, but just trying to make the point of how ridiculous the situation was to miss those royalty payments.

 

[Junmarko]

Someone summarize the last 20 pages since yesterday please

 

[Blaine]

Blaine , can you photoshop me coming out of the 2nd guy's head?

 

[Mustawd]

:mrpresident:


EDIT: Probably best post of 2018. Good show. I laffed p. hard.

 

[Latro]

Blaine , can you photoshop me a picture of orcheart in his true form: half feargus, half orc?

 

[AN4RCHID]

That sure was some interview that got posted on the codex the other day, let's check the comme-

 

[Blaine]

Blaine , can you photoshop me a picture of orcheart in his true form: half feargus, half orc?

Put a pin in it, it's 1 a.m. here and I need my beauty rest.

 

[Lady_Error]

Chris Avellone, have you played Vault Dweller's Age of Decadence or Cleveland Mark Blakemore's Grimoire?

 

[Kyl Von Kull]

How could they not work this out with Atari? BG3 would yield a good profit for both parties involved under the right agreement that sounds counter productive.

You're asking why a company who was so mismanaged they couldn't pay something basic like royalties didn't try to negotiate like a basic smart person would do?

To get to the point that you're willingly skipping royalties is p. huge. It basically means

1. Ignore the scheduled royalty payment
2. Ignore emails from the company asking "hey what's up with the royalties?"
3. Likely ignore a couple letters. calls and emails from the company's lawyers asking for said royalty.

I'm not saying ur question is unreasonable, but just trying to make the point of how ridiculous the situation was to miss those royalty payments.

Pretty sure it was a liquidity issue rather than a not having their shit together issue. Interplay had $5 million in total current assets and $23 million in total current liabilities at the end of that quarter. They only had $7,000 of actual cash. The stock had been delisted the previous year and a bond offering probably would have been laughed out of town. Why would Atari let a lucrative license sit with a developer that couldn’t afford to pay them and likely couldn’t afford to develop the game?

You’re the accountant:
http://getfilings.com/o0001170918-03-000601.html

 

[Mustawd]

Pretty sure it was a liquidity issue rather than a not having their shit together issue.

Same thing IMO.

Why would Atari let a lucrative license sit with a developer that couldn’t afford to pay them and likely couldn’t afford to develop the game?

Why would a company not try to negotiate a project with another company that is in such financial duress they can't even make royalty payments?

EDIT: Basically think of it this way. You are interplay. And Atari is say..a creditor. Like let's say you have a late medical bill . Atari is gonna call you. Let's say you answer. Then you setup a payment plan. Then you miss that payment plan. Then they call you and send you letters. You ignore the,. Then they hire a collection agency. You make a payment plan with them. Then you miss that payment plan. At some point they're just gonna write off the bill as a loss and report you to the credit agencies.

Companies have similar processes. At some point they'll just write your company off its accounts receivables because they prolly don't think that you're negotiating in good faith.

 

[Fairfax]

How could they not work this out with Atari? BG3 would yield a good profit for both parties involved under the right agreement that sounds counter productive.

There was little reason for Atari to believe they could make money from BG3, at least not without waiting a long time and/or suing Interplay for it.

At that point, Interplay owed money to Atari, the IRS, banks, Warner Bros., their own employees, and others. At one point they even had their office locked down for a day and almost got evicted for failing to pay rent. Their stocks were worth pennies, most of their licences had been sold, several divisions were closed or sold, they had little cash, and the company's revenue was down. The fact they couldn't (or wouldn't) even pay a $200k advance was also a strong sign that the ship was sinking.

Interplay also lied to their employees about the loss of the licence, they said it was "an accounting error". If Atari learned about it, that's another red flag added to the list.

 

[Mustawd]

At that point, Interplay owed money to Atari, the IRS, banks, Warner Bros., their own employees, and others. At one point they even had their office locked down for a day and almost got evicted for failing to pay rent. Their stocks were worth pennies, most of their licences had been sold, several divisions were closed or sold, they had little cash, and the company's revenue was down. The fact they couldn't (or wouldn't) even pay a $200k advance was also a strong sign that the ship was sinking.

Aka, failure to continue as a Going Concern.

Going concern is a basic underlying assumption in accounting. The assumption is that a company or other entity will be able to continue operating for a period of time that is sufficient to carry out its commitments, obligations, objectives, and so on. In other words, the company will not have to liquidate or be forced out of business in the foreseeable future.

The going concern provides some logic for the cost principle: If a company is a going concern, it is not planning to liquidate, so why report the current value of its long term assets? However, if an asset's value has been impaired, the asset's carrying amount might be reduced to an amount lower than its carrying value.

 

[Mustawd]

Spoiler

FACTORS AFFECTING FUTURE PERFORMANCE AND GOING CONCERN

The Company's independent public accountants included a "going concern"
explanatory paragraph in their audit report attached to the December 31, 2002
consolidated financial statements which had been prepared assuming that the
Company will continue as a going concern.

The Company has incurred substantial historical operating losses through
September 30, 2003, and at that date, had a stockholders' deficit of $15.9
million and a working capital deficit of $18.3 million. The Company has
historically funded its ongoing operations primarily from existing operations,
through the use of lines of credit, royalty and distribution fee advances, cash
generated by the private sale of securities and the sale of assets.

To reduce its working capital needs, the Company has implemented various
measures including a reduction of personnel, a reduction of fixed overhead
commitments, cancellation or suspension of development on future titles which
management believes do not meet sufficient projected profit margins, and the
scaling back of certain marketing programs. Management will continue to pursue
various alternatives to improve future operating results, and further expense
reductions, some of which may have a long-term adverse impact on the Company's
ability to generate successful future business activities.

In addition, the Company continues to seek and expects to require external
sources of funding, including but not limited to, a sale or merger of the
Company, a private placement of the Company's capital stock, the sale of
selected assets, the licensing of certain product rights in selected
territories, selected distribution agreements, and/or other strategic
transactions sufficient to provide short-term funding, and potentially achieve
the Company's long-term strategic objectives. In this regard, the Company
completed the sale of the Hunter franchise in February 2003, for $15.0 million.
In August 2003, the Company completed an agreement with Avalon Interactive Group
Ltd. ("Avalon"), which changed its name from Virgin Interactive Entertainment
Limited on July 1, 2003 and is a subsidiary of Titus Interactive SA ("Titus"),
the Company's largest stockholder. This agreement modified the terms of the
parties' distribution agreement relating to an upcoming title. Under the terms
of this agreement, the Company was paid a cash advance of approximately
$740,000. Upon delivery of the gold master to this title the Company will
receive approximately an additional $740,000.

If the Company's existing cash and operating revenues from future product
releases are not sufficient to fund the Company's operations, no assurance can
be given that alternative sources of funding could be obtained on acceptable
terms, or at all. These conditions, combined with the Company's historical
operating losses and its deficits in stockholders' equity and working capital,
raise substantial doubt about the Company's ability to continue as a going
concern. The accompanying condensed consolidated financial statements do not
include any adjustments to reflect the possible future effects on the
recoverability and classification of assets and liabilities that may result from
the outcome of this uncertainty.

Having a Going Concern paragraph in your financials is basically a death rattle Kyl Von Kull. And this comes from the link you posted earlier.

 

[Carnarium]

For those of you who are eagerly waiting Avellone to confirm/deny his beef with Sawyer, he won't. You know why?

Spoiler

Because it's their own private joke. There is no beef. They still probably play DnD monthly and laugh about this meme. Why ruin the fun by spilling the beans?

 

[Kyl Von Kull]

Spoiler

FACTORS AFFECTING FUTURE PERFORMANCE AND GOING CONCERN

The Company's independent public accountants included a "going concern"
explanatory paragraph in their audit report attached to the December 31, 2002
consolidated financial statements which had been prepared assuming that the
Company will continue as a going concern.

The Company has incurred substantial historical operating losses through
September 30, 2003, and at that date, had a stockholders' deficit of $15.9
million and a working capital deficit of $18.3 million. The Company has
historically funded its ongoing operations primarily from existing operations,
through the use of lines of credit, royalty and distribution fee advances, cash
generated by the private sale of securities and the sale of assets.

To reduce its working capital needs, the Company has implemented various
measures including a reduction of personnel, a reduction of fixed overhead
commitments, cancellation or suspension of development on future titles which
management believes do not meet sufficient projected profit margins, and the
scaling back of certain marketing programs. Management will continue to pursue
various alternatives to improve future operating results, and further expense
reductions, some of which may have a long-term adverse impact on the Company's
ability to generate successful future business activities.

In addition, the Company continues to seek and expects to require external
sources of funding, including but not limited to, a sale or merger of the
Company, a private placement of the Company's capital stock, the sale of
selected assets, the licensing of certain product rights in selected
territories, selected distribution agreements, and/or other strategic
transactions sufficient to provide short-term funding, and potentially achieve
the Company's long-term strategic objectives. In this regard, the Company
completed the sale of the Hunter franchise in February 2003, for $15.0 million.
In August 2003, the Company completed an agreement with Avalon Interactive Group
Ltd. ("Avalon"), which changed its name from Virgin Interactive Entertainment
Limited on July 1, 2003 and is a subsidiary of Titus Interactive SA ("Titus"),
the Company's largest stockholder. This agreement modified the terms of the
parties' distribution agreement relating to an upcoming title. Under the terms
of this agreement, the Company was paid a cash advance of approximately
$740,000. Upon delivery of the gold master to this title the Company will
receive approximately an additional $740,000.

If the Company's existing cash and operating revenues from future product
releases are not sufficient to fund the Company's operations, no assurance can
be given that alternative sources of funding could be obtained on acceptable
terms, or at all. These conditions, combined with the Company's historical
operating losses and its deficits in stockholders' equity and working capital,
raise substantial doubt about the Company's ability to continue as a going
concern. The accompanying condensed consolidated financial statements do not
include any adjustments to reflect the possible future effects on the
recoverability and classification of assets and liabilities that may result from
the outcome of this uncertainty.

Having a Going Concern paragraph in your financials is basically a death rattle Kyl Von Kull. And this comes from the link you posted earlier.

Yeah, bankruptcy is the ultimate liquidity issue.

 

[Mustawd]

Yeah, bankruptcy is the ultimate liquidity issue.

Ugh...since Im in accounting mode I will disagree with you there. Technically liquidation is, as according to ASC 852.

Sorry, I just wrote a Going Concern analysis memo today. It's fresh in my mind.

 

[AwesomeButton]

Avellone has already said his piece, try to damage control all you wish.

I'm not anyone's damage control, and I have no personal attachment to either side in the argument. Can you even read? Because obviously you can/don't want to make the distinction between allegation and fact. Posting on the assumption that someone's allegation is fact fits "Fake news" perfectly.

Interplay: First few years were stressful b/c Black Isle was finding its way

I was thinking to ask you the same yesterday, and I imagined you would reply just that - when the projects and teams were smaller, everyone knew each other better, and the stakes were lower. And everyone younger, I suppose.

when you’re at a company with the same people for so long, it’s hard to tell what else might be out there or what else you could do

I know how this feels, though my experience is of a much shorter period spent at the same place.

 

[Riddler]

So where did Fenstermaker say anything about mental disorders? The codex interview?

 

[Goral]

Chris Avellone, have you played Vault Dweller's Age of Decadence or Cleveland Mark Blakemore's Grimoire?

He played AoD, that's for sure. Don't know about Grimoire.



http://www.rpgcodex.net/forums/index.php?threads/mca-was-checking-out-age-of-decadence.72519/

But it was long time ago when the game had only Teron location.

I gave it another go now that I'm back from inXile work for the week, and gave the Praetor a try. Feedback:

- Still loved the writing. Chatting with the Preacher and outwitting the foreign traveler (name escapes me - S___?) to learn the secret of the smelter and the blue steel was cool, made me feel clever and rewarded for choosing speech skills.
- I felt like all the skills were getting good mileage as well in conversations.
- Liked the fact the intros were different for each class (didn't realize that previously).
- Did better in combat this time because I dumped everything into sword and made sure to equip myself properly - still, died in the first merchant ambush ("hey, come see my wares") with the two thug servants.
- Praetor: When I used etiquette with Antidas to get the armor, it wasn't clear to me where I was going next to get to Dellar (?), and when I got to Dellar, he didn't give me any armor, even though it seems to have been given to me, I wasn't sure where I was notified when that happened.
- I was confused what I was doing with Linos when I jumped there from Antidas.
- The jumping back and forth to NPC to NPC is alternately helpful and alternately confusing - helpful in that it would be hard to find them again, and confusing in that the "jumps" tend to break the flow rather than help it.
- I like the non-spoken intros to the NPCs that introduce them and their roles in the city, nicely done.
- Loved the starting outfits for each class.
- Was confused why I couldn't modify my combat skills at the outset.

 

[Fairfax]

So where did Fenstermaker say anything about mental disorders? The codex interview?

Here:

Heads up - I just received this from Eric Fenstermaker:

• I don’t like discussing anything remotely negative about coworkers in the press. No one comes out looking worse than you when you do that. But here, I think I need to get more detailed than I would want to in order to clear something up.
  
  To the suggestion that Josh “interfered” in the process involving cutting down Durance and the Grieving Mother, everything he did was professional and warranted by the circumstances. The budget on those companions was blown, not just a little but a lot. Very late in development. They were unimplementable in the time we had, and the company had promised them to the Kickstarter backers. So while I’d have preferred to have just worked it out between myself and Chris, at that point in production it was unfortunately not what the situation called for. A high-level decision needed to be made, so more people had to be looped in.
  
  The interview characterizes ownership as having gotten worked up over something they didn’t know the specifics of, and I won’t speak for them, but if I were in their shoes, faced with this development, I would have been concerned. None of the potential outcomes looked rosy.
  
  It’s been thrown around that objectionable subject matter was the reason behind the cuts. Sexual violence is dealt with elsewhere in the game, and there is swearing all over the place. So there was no looming censor. I don’t want to get into criticism here, but there were some choices that Chris made later in the writing that I thought bore more consideration, and in better circumstances if we’d been able to keep the thread, I’d have liked to discuss a different approach in some specific places. I believe it would have been possible without altering their story or defanging the material. It ended up being beside the point – the easiest cuts to make by far involved that story thread, and so it was left on the cutting room floor.
  
  I did have a role in things turning out this way and I did apologize to Chris for it. I gave far too little oversight, thinking that a set of constraints and approval of an initial design, with periodic email check-ins would be sufficient. Chris was often offsite, I was swamped, and it was all too easy to backburner communication. I thought more regular feedback would only have been a hindrance to someone who’d made a lot of his reputation off of so many well-liked companions. If I had caught the issue sooner, we could have made the cuts sooner, in a much better context, and in that regard I should have done better. He did put genuine effort into the creative aspect, and that made the outcome that much more regrettable. I don’t know what Chris thinks about his own responsibilities and missteps in the matter, but I hope he recognizes them.
  
  
• The PoE story was approved by management not because of poor judgment but because it was time to say “good enough” and hope for the best. We had something that was a completed draft that incorporated many of the best elements from previous pitches. As a place to start, it was workable. An independent developer can only pay its employees to spin their wheels with nothing to work on for so long. I suspect that the story wasn’t far off from something that was more deeply satisfying, so I don’t think it was a bad bet to make, even if the end result was flawed. Sometimes in development, we get the story figured out well in advance, sometimes it doesn’t work out that way. Here, it didn’t.
  
  
• There’s kind of a strange insinuation in the interview that maybe I got a bad employee review because of the PoE story (?), and the phrasing almost seems to imply that this might have been related to my departure. I didn’t and it wasn’t. I always found Obsidian to be forgiving of mistakes as long as you were earnest in your efforts to learn from them, and I tried to be that. I appreciate the owners and my managers bearing with me.
  
  Chris’s experience with Obsidian is his own. But it’s just that, one experience, filtered through a particular point of view, selective in its memory, and biased by its nature. So is mine. No one perspective should be taken for gospel. Me, I liked it there, enough to stay for more than a decade, and I wasn’t without more lucrative options. Good people ran the place. Good people (besides a few genuine personality disorder sufferers) worked there when I was there. Josh was a good director, the owners were good owners. I strongly disagreed with them many times, but it was never because they were coming from a place of bad intentions. Everyone’s just trying to navigate an insanely difficult and stressful business, and for that alone I think you have to approach the profession with a lot of forgiveness in your heart.

• There were a lot of other corrections I wanted to make or explanations I wanted to give about this or that, but looking at it now, I don’t think they’re important in the scheme of things.

 

[Rivmusique]

but short men are responsible for not being tall, mocking them is hilarious, and women are entitled to their preferences. Only short, involuntarily celibate fucking white males find this even remotely hypocritical.

Complex detected

 

[J_C]

who cares what reddit or an online hungarian basket weaving club thinks?

How dare you call us basket weavers? No, seriously, what thread are you talking about? Was there really a hungarian forum with this topic?

 

[Imoens pet]

Someone should compile all of Chris Avellone's answers and the questions for future reference. Though do not include the causal remarks Chris makes, only the important ones. But that is just my suggestion.