Chris Avellone was a guest at the annual Sweden Game Conference last month, where he he gave a 34 minute talk detailing the hard lessons he's learned over his career, to what appears to be a room full of uncomfortably quiet Swedish game design students. A couple of days ago, a video of the talk was uploaded to the Sweden Game Arena YouTube channel, so now we can learn those lessons ourselves. Watch as Chris talks about how to get a job in the industry, about overcoming "designer's block", about the importance of doing research and broadening one's horizons, about how minigames are necessary (even though he hates them), about how to do time limits, about the importance of reading your forums, about the dangers of "talking shit", and much more!


As usual, Chris seems reluctant to mention his involvement with Pillars of Eternity, although one of the attendees does manage to coax a reference out of him in the post-talk Q&A session, where he also reveals some interesting tidbits about the developments of Planescape: Torment and Icewind Dale.