Incline Chris Avellone Appreciation Station

[Excidium II]

The frog eater was producer on AssCreed apparently so there is that.

 

[Lyric Suite]

Romero's a fucking manlet, ahahahhahahaha

Looks normal for a spic.

 

[Excidium II]

The women are shorter so it's k.

 

[Manmower]

The frog eater was producer on AssCreed apparently so there is that.

That's like saying a general manager at Ford had anything to do with designing a classic. No idea why these idiotic conventions invite anyone apart from designers, writers, and the odd artist. Well, I guess con artists are artists as well, right?

 

[Beastro]

He's looking very Kevin Pollaky in those pictures.

 

[Fairfax]

RPG panel with MCA's empty seat:




Don't know where, but I remember seeing people speculating they'd pay MCA to work on BT4 regardless of the failed stretch goal. Not happening, it seems.





So Romero's wife told him to wear the robe for some reason.

 

[Crooked Bee]

"I bet you won't go to your panel dressed like this"

 

[Fairfax]

Interesting. His usual response to messages like that is "oh, I wish!", "that would be cool!", "thank you for playing the games in the first place!", etc.
It's not the first time he's expressed a desire to lead another project, or even his "pet project", but "I can't say too much on it right now" implies there could be something in the works.

 

[ArchAngel]

Hopefully that Meantime RPG with Inxile :D

 

[Bubbles]

Hopefully that PST:EE with Beamdog :D

fixed for realism

 

[ArchAngel]

Hopefully that PST:EE with Beamdog :D

fixed for realism

I hope not. PST does not really need any EE. It has way too much reading for new players, so no shiny color put on it will make it marketable. They would only be able to sell it to old fans who mostly don't need it (and are a much smaller group than BG fans).

 

[Rivmusique]

Could use some new, appropriate for 2016, party members/quest givers though.

 

[Infinitron]

Summary of the the Reboot Develop narrative panel MCA was on: http://wordcowboy.com/reboot-redux-day-3-the-texture-of-magic/

At 10:05 am straight, I was sitting in CRYENGINE HALL, hoping that Chris Avellone would recover from yesterday’s afterparty’s Gamma Gulp beer and join the writing panel. He did, and, a few minutes in, the panel looked like this:

From left to right are panelists Chris Avellone, Jonas Kyratzes, Rhianna Pratchett, Tom Jubert, Steve Ince, and our moderator Noirin Carmody, the COO and one of the co-founders of Revolution Software (Broken Sword, Beneath a Steel Sky). After the introductions, the first question Noirin asked was, “Why write games, instead of, say, novels or comic books?”

My notes here are a little scattered, but the answer I remember with crystal clarity was by Chris, who said, “Because it’s fun! Why not make games?”

To quote Chuck Norris, “Damn straight, cowboy.”

Jonas said something along the lines of wanting to get into games from his early childhood, which, growing up in Greece, seemed to him a dream quite distant. Being a Russian guy who grew up on Cyprus and then Hungary, I could certainly relate. Rhianna talked about how the opportunity naturally grew out of her background in video games journalism, Tom talked about his desire to do away with false dilemmas in video game narratives (or, in other words, that players should be presented with choices that seem plausible to them, as apart from choices ham-fisted into the game by the designers for gameplay), and Steve mentioned his career in a field unrelated to games whatsoever before getting his big break at Revolution Software as a writer / designer where he’d worked for 11 years before going freelance.

The other interesting question Noirin asked was how they see technology in games … at which point the conversation diverted into a talk about the possibility of A.I. NPCs, who wouldn’t converse via predetermined strings, but rather generate dialog through contextual awareness of the player’s actions, the NPCs own personality, etc. Everyone at the panel seemed to agree creating this sort of an NPC which wouldn’t sound like a chat bot was implausible, at which point Jonas said that if such A.I. technology were to exist, it would effectively be “a human being,” and would potentially have better things to do than to play games with us. This theme came up again during Marek Rosa’s talk about ‘Good A.I.,’ and more on that later, but now, it was time for questions from the audience.

My heart began to beat faster — it was a choice between risking sounding like a fool trying to push my own agenda, or being the fool and not risking a thing. I waited until it was almost too late, and then the moderator gave me the mic.

“Thank you for the wonderful talk,” I said, my voice faltering. “Even today, games are usually bashed for their narratives … this doesn’t apply to the games you’ve worked on, as those are usually complimented on their stories instead. So, the three-part-question question I want to ask all the panelists, I suppose, is, can you please recommend a good book about writing for video games, and, in your opinion, would it be useful to create a book of case studies, where the writers would talk about the actual projects that they’d worked on, as opposed to the theory? And, finally, why do you think nobody made such a book before?”

In truth, I’d already spoken to Tom and Jonas about the subject beforehand, and they both expressed their enthusiasm, and I’d sent an (in retrospect, a rather silly) e-mail to Rhianna well in advance, and, as she didn’t reply, I assumed that she wasn’t interested, so I was mostly curious about what Steve and Chris had to say. I guess the month I’d spent writing gambling promotions for a local PR firm wasn’t for nothing: Steve and Chris were the only two people to answer.

“Well,” Steve said. “You could read my book.”

“What is it called?”

“Writing for Video Games.”

Now that’s an informative title if I’d ever seen one myself.

“Though,” he continued, “I suppose a book of case studies could be helpful. If you’re working on something like that, you should definitely write it.”

At which point I’d almost began to say that I can’t truly “write” it because it’s not about my experiences, but that I would like to help compile such a book, but cut myself short because I still had some manners.

Steve passed the mic to Chris Avellone, who said, “Yeah, that would be a great book to read! Not sure why nobody did something like this before, probably because the writing profession in the industry is still in such a flux, but I can easily imagine people being interested. As for which book I would recommend on writing, I found Save the Cat by Blake Snider to be really useful. It’s a book on screenwriting, but most of the principles carry over to video games.”

 

[Infinitron]

And the "AAAs to indies" panel where he stood in for Brian Fargo: http://wordcowboy.com/reboot-redux/

The last talk of the day that I made it to was a panel with, from left to right, Chris Avellone (judging by his outfit, ready for … well, anything, really), Tim Schafer, and Patrice Désilets, moderated by Tobias Kopka. The photo looks like it’s all cozy and chilled, but the room was packed, though that did nothing to detract from the gleeful atmosphere of the happy gamers / developers crowd.

The panel was called, “From AAA to indie and back,” and, after the speakers introduced themselves, Tim Schafer shared a little about his experience making adventure games for LucasArts, who had “bags of Star Wars money” to produce development.

“They give you a pile of money, then when the game’s done, they make an even bigger pile of money, it’s exhausting,” Tim said.

He talked about how much better it was when they went into production themselves at DoubleFine, which was when they’d realized that they can actually keep some of that money to continue making the games that they’d wanted to make. He also mentioned that apart from supporting their own games, they now also support third party projects that they think hold some promise.

Chris Avellone talked a bit about how, for him, it’s easier to work with smaller teams. “We’ve had maybe 20 people on the team once, which is still a big team, but at least you get to know everyone personally, that’s great.”

Which is when Patrice said, “Well, there’s a plus of working with big teams, too. You can just get stuff done that you can’t otherwise do. For example, when working on Assassin’s Creed, I said, let’s add another city! Or maybe add this really cool mechanic with ships. And we can! No problem with money at Ubisoft. There’s money.”

But, Patrice said, that at some point after his second daughter was born, he realized that, “I know people in Singapore, or what have you, but I don’t know my own daughter.” And so, when he had the chance, he’d quit to start his own game studio, Panache Digital Games, where they’re now working on their first title, 1666 Amsterdam. Check it out. “And I don’t want to say, ‘add me on Twitter,’ butadd me on Twitter,” he added.

When Tobias asked how they manage to communications, Tim laughed, and said, “By having a gigantic ego.” He clarified that, “It’s important to remember who you are. Not some kind of a famous person, or anything like that. So I put on a different person, a different version of myself who’s making all the interviews, talking to producers, and so on.”

Time flew by, and it was time for questions. Somebody mentioned about how difficult it was to make it in the industry, and if they have any advice of how to succeed.

“If you don’t know what you’re doing, or if nobody knows you” Tim said, “Just act like you know exactly what you’re doing. Fake it ’till you make, that can certainly work.”

Another interesting question was from an audience member who said they’re making research on episodic games. “One thing we’d noticed,” he said, “Is that a lot of games get a lot of sales when the first episode is out, but the sales drop dramatically at the second episode, even though the reviews for both episodes are very, very good. What do you think about that?”

“Well, the thing about episodic games,” Tim said, “Is that they’re very narrative-heavy. Let’s say, I really liked Life is Strange, but I wish there was something else to do after I’d finished an episode. Play basketball on the basketball court, anything.”

Something to consider for anyone working on episodic games, no doubt.

After the panel, people were lining up to speak to the legendary developers in person, and I thought that maybe I could ask them what they think about helping to get the word out for a free book of video game writing case studies by video game writers, but didn’t want to be a nuisance, so I’d existed the room and thought about how unhelpful feeling self-conscious can be … at which point I decided that I’ve nothing to lose, and went back inside to see what was going on.

What was going on is that a developer from a company I didn’t catch the name of was talking to Tim, trying to persuade him to have a beer with them on the seaside to discuss the game project they’re working on. When Tim asked him where is the man’s team, he said that they’re waiting right outside the door, and Tim knew there was no escape. I’d abandoned my idea of promoting the project, because, while it’s a part of why I was there, there are more important things in life than trying to get famous / talented people interested, and so I just shook Tim’s hand and thanked him in person for bringing many happy moments to my childhood when my family moved from Russia to Cyprus with only the Day of the Tentacle characters as my closest friends. He seemed really cool about it. Once again, I headed for the door, and literally almost rubbed shoulders with Chris Avellone, at which point I thought to hell with feeling self-conscious, and said, “Chris, do you remember that book of video game writing case studies I’d mentioned earlier? You said it’s a good idea. Well, if you still think so, I’m trying to crowdfund a book like that — which will available for free to everyone, naturally — so, if you’re still interested, check it out,” and gave him my card.

“Word Cowboy? I like that.”

“It’s a cowboy lifestyle.”

“Sounds good. If you don’t hear anything back from me until the end of the week, ping me on Twitter.”

“And thanks for Fallout,” I said. “One of my favorite games ever, I learnt English from that game, and now it’s my bread and butter. So I owe you a lot.”

“Yeah? Well, thanks for playing our games, man.”

 

[Art Vandelay]

I got an invitation and i still didnt go..why wasnt i fucking notified -.-

 

[Infinitron]

Reboot Develop recap video with a few glimpses of MCA:



Hopefully this means they'll be uploading videos of the panels soon.

 

[Infinitron]

Come on already.

 

[Grauken]

They are pretty good at trolling you

 

[Fairfax]

 

[Jedi Master Radek]

You may want to see this thread http://www.rpgcodex.net/forums/inde...-codex-interview-with-feargus-and-mca.108791/

 

[Infinitron]

MCA at Digital Dragons:

 

[Infinitron]

Problem, Codex?

 

[Crooked Bee]

Sounds like Sawyer rubbed off on him.

Also Stockholm Syndrome from getting his stuff cut all the time.

 

[Infinitron]

Who will be the first to publish a full report?

 

[Crooked Bee]

Jedi Master Radek Do your best.