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Josh Sawyer is taking a break from directing games

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Sacred82

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Your point was he's not only a name, but a face. My point is: Not really. He isn't totally unknown, he's known to a little group of people, but he's not a "name", not really. The idea of someone being a name is they're known to a lot of people, not just a smallish group. Few people in video games are names.

he's a name to the people he's relevant to as far as his work is concerned. How does that not make him a name?

Gary Gygax may be a name to people who don't even care about roleplaying games. That fact doesn't help you sell roleplaying related materials though.
 

Lycra Suit

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Who would have foreseen Gaider working for Beamdog?

Beamdog is a small indie studio founded by a former colleague of Gaider specifically rehashing games Gaider worked on at some point.

that's just, like, your opinion man

And that of two third of the player base who did not complete Act1. And those 800 000 players who did not buy the sequel.

instead of being e.g. an underpaid designer.

There's a difference between the profiles sought for q&a and designers. Besides Sawyer probably doesn't want to work 70 hours a week anymore.

since when is age a hindrance in a creative endeavour again?

I already explained why age isn't marketable for certain positions.
 
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Sacred82

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Who would have foreseen Gaider working for Beamdog?

Beamdog is a small indie studio founded by a former colleague of Gaider specifically rehashing games Gaider worked on at some point.

You can totally expect someone to start working for people who are simply recycling his past work using community mods :retarded:

And that of two third of the player base who did not complete Act1. And those 800 000 players who did not buy the sequel.

How many percent of people's Steam games remain unfinished (or even unplayed)?

People not buying the sequel is purely and squarely to blame on Josh? :lol: Cut down on the conjecturizing maybe my friend. A creative director may be expected to take blame, that doesn't mean it's warranted.

There's a difference between the profiles sought for q&a and designers. Besides Sawyer probably doesn't want to work 70 hours a week anymore.

Like I said, there's no telling how much work he actually put into PoE, it probably continued far beyond unpaid overtime into his private sphere.

since when is age a hindrance in a creative endeavour again?
I already explained why age isn't marketable for certain positions.

It's really your flawed perception that people beyond the age of 40 are dead meat in a managerial position.

he's a name to the people he's relevant to as far as his work is concerned.

A bunch of grognards on the Codex who hate him? He doesn't have much of a fanbase and isn't considered a creative genius by anyone.

A bunch of people who enjoy party-based CRPG's. Maybe we can agree that Josh's portfolio is limited, and therefore his experience in game design is limited. What he does, he does well, Kodex perceptions notwithstanding. And to the people who enjoy that stuff, he's a pretty public figure.

"Creative genius" :lol: Not that anyone needs to be considered a genius to be put in a leading position during video game development. Apart from the fact that people throwing an impossible to objectively define term like genius around, or people who like being labeled that, are retards, but that's beside the point.
 

MLMarkland

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Josh is one of the most effective and talented game designers I've met in the industry over the course of 12 years.

You are digging in the wrong place.

Ditto with thinking Obsidian is the bad guy.

I'll stick up for Chris as well; but as far as OEI and Josh, they are saints compared to the real villains.

This prestigious magazine is correct on many many things; but most of you lack a fundamental understanding of the California game and entertainment business.

I believe it is in the process of changing for the better though.
 

2house2fly

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Sawyer

is

not

a

name.


Literally and figuratively wrong. In fact, by now Sawyer is not just a name, but a face.

There are very few people in the gaming industry who are a name, let alone a face that's known to most everyone even in gaming circles. There's probably but a few in western game development that were names, like Will Wright and John Carmack, and most of them aren't doing much of anything in video games anymore. Sawyer isn't a name outside of niche circles, (and I'd bet some people get what he's done mixed up with Avellone) David Brevik is barely a name and he did the first two Diablo games.

my friends

since when do you have to be known to literally every single gamer to become a creative director in any place, or for a company to profit from your name? Josh's name is known to CRPG players, how many exactly no one knows, but probably a lot. You try to market a CRPG, you can drop his name. On any other product, probably not.
He's known to CRPG players as Joshferatu, the soulless vegan lich who sucks the fun out of video games with his obsession with balance and history
 

MLMarkland

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Lycra Suit

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Fallout's combat was far from a masterpiece but thankfully not the highlight of the game. PoE's was supposed to be Baldur's Gate 2 spiritual successor so that's an aspect they weren't allowed to miss.

You do have a point that a talented designer could technically pull this off but Josh didn't so... could this mean...?
 

Kyl Von Kull

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Steve gets a Kidney but I don't even get a tag.
You called him one of the greatest designer you ever met. What kind of designer thinks it's a good idea to reinvent D&D for a single low budget RPG?

Every director, designer and producer on Fallout (1997).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fallout_(video_game)

"It was initially intended to use Steve Jackson Games' system GURPS, but Interplay eventually used an internally developed system SPECIAL." [Due to licensing issues]

They only did this because Steve Jackson pulled out--it was never part of their plan--and SPECIAL is still heavily inspired by GURPS. If you'd come to Tim Cain early in development and said, "let's toss GURPS and create a whole new ruleset," I doubt he would've been too thrilled with the idea.

It was probably a mistake to create a whole new ruleset in POE when they could've just used a modified version of the D&D 3.5 ruleset for free. But we don't know if that was Josh's mistake or something that was mandated by the owners.
 

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