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

[Glaucon]

To be quite honest, all of those criticisms are correct, but this is entertaining and Feargus is subhuman scum, so oh well.

 

[Kleptocratic debt serf]

That remains to be seen. The criticism may seem valid, but as to whether or not they are correct time will tell.

 

[Chris Avellone]

Chris Avellone you said that you were in financial problems with all medical procedures going on that time (or healthcare, idk) but later you said that you have more money than obsidian in your account. How this transition happened so fast?

And, after this revelations, did you receive any support from the industry? A call, email, whatever supporting you? Like "hey buddy dont worry we are with you", etc.

I sat down and worked. A lot. Which isn’t hard to do if you love what you do.

I also don't spend a lot on anything for myself (I'm a frugal person and don't need much). While family had expenses, I had virtually none.

Also, a lot of companies got a hold of me as soon as I was free (some of which I’d worked with before, some of which who Obsidian worked with before but still wanted to work with me), so that was a nice gesture – and even better, after one project, they wanted to work with me again. And again, etc. so the work is pretty steady.

However, what’s different about freelancing vs. being at Obsidian is:

- It's flexible - it allows you to find your own optimal work times vs. office hours (or waiting at the office until everyone leaves so you can focus).

- While contracting, if someone makes a mistake or makes a change and needs revisions, you are compensated for the time involved for that change. At Obsidian, you just work longer hours for no compensation unless you are hourly, which makes mistakes and unnecessary changes that happen more frustrating.

- If ever you did find yourself in an unpleasant management situation (which has yet to happen), the fact you don't see that person everyday nor do you have to interact with them except via email and maybe a video call is really, really healthy for relationships. Hell, if you ever did get frustrated at someone or trapped on an idea, you can just switch to another project and let it pass. Any stress you might have goes way down because you're not being repeatedly reminded of a situation.

- I used to work long hours before, but now I had more hours and I was doing more of what I wanted to do, so it was actually easier because it was more fun. I also (usually) worked seven days a week every month, and often for more than 10 or 12 hours. Again, mostly labor of love, but that allows you to tackle a lot of projects that interest you (which in turn, feeds your work drive and so on and so forth).

- The hours I work are often free of any interruptions. I switch off messengers, texting, anything that’s a distraction, and it’s easy to focus.

- My wife is very supportive about giving me time to write (she's busy with game development, too, so she understands the hours). The cat is not so supportive.

- Lastly, “free of interruptions” includes the removal of a lot of meetings, commuting, or other elements (marketing events, marketing presentations, meet-and-greets). As a result, the amount of time you get back is considerable. For an introvert, it also means your emotional batteries don't get drained as fast.

- Also, I've mentioned this before, but the Obsidian payscale is low and always has been (they don't often have a lot of money in the bank, especially around review time - or it's all been spent on something else). When you leave, you suddenly realize there's more value in what you do - I didn't quite realize how much until I left, but working for companies that aren't struggling is a much different beast. (As an example, Feargus's contracting offers were often half of what they are in the rest of the game development world, so that was an eye-opener.)

Everyone I spoke to was pretty supportive, even Obsidianites (non-management). There were numerous offers, legal support (for free), and even offers to head up games and pitches in production, but with family issues, I wasn’t able to take on anything full time.

I even got offered to become the new head of Black Isle Studios, which I couldn’t do, and didn’t think I’d be good for the job, so I didn't take it.

Overall, I just worked hard ever since the departure – and arguably, that’s how I should have lived my life much earlier than now. Since I love writing, working hard wasn't really work at all.

 

[RepHope]

Christ this moved fast, I doubt I’ll ever catch up at the rate this is going. Sorry to hear you were fucked over Chris.

 

[Blaine]

What a great thread this has been.

Avelloneposts: dozens
Updanks gained from memelording: hundreds
Fresh ignores clearly the direct result of this thread/related shenanigans: aweigh azimuth Don Peste Fry Grape_You_In_the_Mouth Merlkir (biggest single haul in a short period of all time)
Laughs, guffaws, chuckles, giggles, chortles, and titters had: ∞

 

[Latro]

they don't often have a lot of money in the bank, especially around review time

Darth Roxor

where's your fat check at?

 

[sser]

Interesting. I guess it requires a lot of animation that you wouldn't otherwise need in an RPG? Or it just needs a lot of time to adequately develop the relationship?

I hadn't considered the animation aspect (although if you were doing a ME game, you would have to invest in that, too - I've rarely worked on a game with relationships that needed cinematics except for Alpha Protocol, and you're right, those were still an additional time sink to be sure), but adding a relationship arc can be as tough as adding another companion quest. You can sometimes unite the two, or share design and dialogue elements to make it easier, but it can be a lot more work to do properly.

Also, even when the romance is consummated, you'd still need appropriate reactivity to that (maybe not just in the core game, but in future games that save scripting states). It's likely why companion relationships were a stretch goal in PoE2: They're expensive to do.

At the same time is it ever worth it? Only Witcher 3 springs to mind as a game that handled relationships in a mature manner. Most other games have romance on a superficial level, and if they try to get serious with it the writing is not far above a mediocre Mexican novella. I also think the "everybody will sleep with everybody" approach dehumanizes the characters into abstract gameplay tokens and is extremely counterproductive to immersion. For me anyway...

 

[Chris Avellone]

Chris did you play grimoire?
What are your thoughts on ridable turtles?

I have not played Grimoire (I don't get a chance to play a lot of games because I always want to go write instead, so that's nothing personal).

I love ridable turtles ever since

Getting that turtle was awesome because it was so damn fast. And because, hell, it was a giant turtle. That would take me places.

 

[RepHope]

Okay, caught up with the state of Chris-tendom again. Woo-whee, what a ride. Reactions:

(1) The spat between EFen and MCA is unfortunate. EFen is among the best game writers currently working, and over the last several years has clearly been a more reliable writer than Chris. Which does not preclude him from having a fragile ego and not working well with other talented writers. Whatever the case may be about that, his writing is still really good.

(2) Unreasonably relieved that Josh is not on Chris's shitlist. He seems like an all-around Mensch, a deeply ethical person, and it would have broken me a little to discover he was a part of the evil stuff that's been going on here. (Also a comrade, since his unionisation speech anyway.)

(3) If even a quarter of what Chris is saying about Feargus is true, and the bombs just keep dropping... oh man.

Carry on men. Thing keeps on going this way, it'll start the Revolution, and the USA is the only place it can succeed since it won't get immediately invaded by the USA.

Edit: Never mind found it

 

[Chris Avellone]

Christ this moved fast, I doubt I’ll ever catch up at the rate this is going. Sorry to hear you were fucked over Chris.

I appreciate that. Aside from some initial rocky times, it all turned out for the best.

 

[AN4RCHID]

I repeated the concern, but when I brought it up again, Feargus simply said, "we never promised we'd pay the employees back," as if that excused things - but paying the employees back didn’t seem like a technicality to me, this was the right thing to do.

He then said he wanted the matter dropped.

And this was while Feargus' family were on the payroll???????

 

[HanoverF]

- My wife is very supportive about giving me time to write (she's busy with game development, too, so she understands the hours). The cat is not so supportive.

Spoiler

"The cat" is code for Sawyer

 

[Fairfax]

I even got offered to become the new head of Black Isle Studios, which I couldn’t do, and didn’t think I’d be good for the job, so I didn't take it.

Wasn't it shut down again in 2014? Herve wanted to revive it after that?

 

[slowtard]

Mr. Avellone, please show the jury by pointing to the place on the empanada that the Bad Scotsman touched you.

 

[Kyl Von Kull]

Who even owns the BIS label these days?

edit: I thought Herve Caen sold everything off

 

[Chris Avellone]

Okay, caught up with the state of Chris-tendom again. Woo-whee, what a ride. Reactions:

(1) The spat between EFen and MCA is unfortunate. EFen is among the best game writers currently working, and over the last several years has clearly been a more reliable writer than Chris. Which does not preclude him from having a fragile ego and not working well with other talented writers. Whatever the case may be about that, his writing is still really good.

(2) Unreasonably relieved that Josh is not on Chris's shitlist. He seems like an all-around Mensch, a deeply ethical person, and it would have broken me a little to discover he was a part of the evil stuff that's been going on here. (Also a comrade, since his unionisation speech anyway.)

(3) If even a quarter of what Chris is saying about Feargus is true, and the bombs just keep dropping... oh man.

Carry on men. Thing keeps on going this way, it'll start the Revolution, and the USA is the only place it can succeed since it won't get immediately invaded by the USA.

I will say one unfortunate aspect, is even after MotB and Vault 11, Chris Parker still took time to shit on Eric's area designs, which got tiresome (this was on South Park).

Eric has good companion writing skills.

 

[Daedalos]

Chris Avellone Did you play Underrail? If so, thoughts?

And have you been following Vince Dweller's The New World sci-fi cRPG? Would love to hear your thoughts about it.

 

[RepHope]

That is where I get conflicted. Avellone's contempt appears directed at the upper management and not so much the developers (with exception). I still am curious if Sawyer falls within the alleged clique of those getting special treatment. Still, there is Tim Cain and Leonard Boyarsky (for now...).

I want to apologize if I missed any questions, it’s hard to track them all in the thread – if I missed someone, I apologize, it wasn’t personal, there’s just a lot to read (and apparently on Reddit, too, which I didn’t realize).

I don’t have any issues with Josh, he’s not part of the upper management I mention here (he wasn’t even Design Director until a while after I left, I believe), and I think he’s a good Project Director. I also don’t have any issue with Tim, Leonard, Charlie, Tyson, Rich (Taylor) etc. and they are not part of this either - I like them all and respect their work very much. I am looking forward to Project Indiana.

Josh did turn in his resignation more than once, and apparently (!) Feargus did threaten to fire him and Adam if PoE1 didn’t come out in March, which I never knew. (Yes, owners didn’t talk amongst themselves when they threatened to fire senior employees, apparently, because why would they – it was symptomatic of the poor communication at the studio. I also was never told when Feargus decided to move PoE1's ship date from Sept to March, he didn't mention that fact, either) I only heard about the firing threat when I read about it in Blood, Sweat, and Pixels (at least in the draft I read). I think threatening to fire Josh and Adam under any circumstances isn't a smart move, especially since Obsidian always struggled with trying to find good leads and good programmers. I don't ever think you should threaten employees like that, either.

I also support the idea of making financial and resource sacrifices if it will make the end result better (I supported PoE2’s delayed launch), which was also apparently the crux of the threat.

Special treatment is a much larger issue because all that I observed wasn't consistent, it often made things confusing for other employees (hey, why does so-and-so always get to come at 11?) and bred resentment if not explained, and it can be disruptive to a lead if an owner tells an employee to take the day off or tell them they don't have to make up work afterhours... because they may actually have to and their lead needs them to. My opinion is you don't give special treatment, you showcase it in raises and reviews, and you make the reasons explicit, but be very careful of outward facing special treatment in case it could be mistaken for something else. Inward special treatment can also be bad if discovered (hey, why are Josh and Adam getting royalties on PoE and we aren't? Even if "understood," finding this out can be bad for morale - my opinion is you spread the wealth).

Well there we have it. Christ it seems like Feargus is the type to cut off his nose to spite his face. How the hell has Obsidian lasted so long with him in charge?

 

[Hines]

In the spirit of being open and honest, are you reuniting with Arkane to work on Prey's standalone DLC?

 

[Kyl Von Kull]

I will say one unfortunate aspect, is even after MotB and Vault 11, Chris Parker still took time to shit on Eric's area designs, which got tiresome (this was on South Park).

You did a great job of explaining why FU is so poorly suited for his present role. Would you mind doing the same for Parker? As in, why is Chris Parker such a prick?

edit: never trust a man who shares a name with a Donald Westlake/Richard Stark protagonist.

 

[Chris Avellone]

Chris Avellone Did you play Underrail? If so, thoughts?

And have you been followed Vince Dweller's The New World sci-fi cRPG? Would love to hear your thoughts about it.

I love Vince's game, setting, characters, etc. and have been talking with him about it (I reviewed everything to date except the monks and talked to him about it). I haven't been able to get back to him as quickly as I'd like because it's a writing deadline week.

Unrelated to the design elements, I also think the cover for the game he proposed is awesome, it looks super cool and moody.

I haven't played Underrail, but it's on the list. That's going to be a common answer about games, unfortunately. I do try to make it up by playing the builds of games that haven't come out yet, and doing it across multiple publishers.

 

[Chris Avellone]

In the spirit of being open and honest, are you reuniting with Arkane to work on Prey's standalone DLC?

My apologies on this, but there's some games I can't talk about until given permission. It sucks, but it's the industry - that said, I'd love to work with Ricardo Bare again and I'd also love to work with Raphael whatever he ends up doing next because working with him was really chill. We agreed on a lot of things, so that saved a ton of time.

That said, I'm sometimes able to list what companies I work before the actual game is revealed (Ghost Story), but that's hit or miss - Ken and the Narrative Lead did say it was okay when I was asked.

 

[Blaine]

Other random answers (some may have been here, some on Reddit – if I’m wrong, I’ll post the right answers on Reddit).

Ubisoft: So Ubisoft didn’t really cut ties to Obsidian that I know of, nor did Obsidian turn them away because Obsidian had too much work – the conversation, to all accounts, never happened at all, because Ubisoft never spoke to Obsidian about doing the second game. One day the sequel was announced, and it was my understanding it was a surprise to Obsidian that anyone was working on a sequel – Obsidian didn’t proudly defy Ubisoft and tell them to fuck off because they were too busy: Ubisoft didn’t even call.

Transition from Publisher to Developer, Reversal of Roles: Feargus went through what I feel may have been poor training as a studio lead at Black Isle. In that position, he had more control over the projects, the funding, and more importantly, outside developers – in his role at Interplay, he was very much the publisher, and he was the one who made calls on BG1, BG2, etc. He controlled the funding, could make demands, could withhold payments, and also force capitulations in features and schedules.

Unfortunately, I believe this set a bad precedent for Feargus dealing with publishers in the future because we became one of the same outside developers he had formerly overseen when he was a publisher - the roles were reversed, and so was the power.

Suddenly he had to experience it from the other side, and he didn’t take to it well – the control was gone, and suddenly his demands could be ignored and fought, rather than accepted. The leverage was gone.

Even more importantly, Feargus’s behavior no longer had to be ignored by the person on the other end of the phone or in discussions in the conference room: Where once if Feargus asked a developer or contractor to do something, they would largely have to swallow it or fight to be polite in order to get paid or keep their project going, the reverse was very hard for Feargus to deal with, and led to a lot of shouting matches (which you could hear down the hall), and even hanging up on publishers. We knew about this because he’d come brag to us about when he hung up on a studio head or producer, which made me even more depressed, since it meant we’d likely lose another contract with no back-up plans (he actually did the bragging rounds from owner office to owner office when he shouted at someone in the studio as well, as if he was showcasing the strength of his management style).

Worse, Feargus didn't learn from this - instead, he passed the behavior along. When Feargus was in charge of outsourcing and other remote contracts, he behaved much like the publishers he railed against, which was depressing as well.

Overall, the position of having to answer to someone else didn’t often go well, and it’s much the reason I think Obsidian would be better off finding a way to completely self-publish their games because I don’t think any other option is going to work in the long-term.

Financial Matters and Ethics: I also don’t know where the training for handling and responsibility for finances came from, but we didn’t see eye to eye on that, either, as I've said.

It went beyond the transparency in finances - the biggest shock came when the matter arose about paying back employees (not the owners, but our employees) who had given up their paychecks to keep Obsidian from going bankrupt. When we did start getting money in the bank again after this bleak period, however, the company's spending began accelerating again.

This made me uncomfortable, so at that time where our finances became healthy again, I brought up that since we had the means to do so, we should pay back the employees who gave up their paychecks to keep us going.

My comment was met with silence by all the owners.

I repeated the concern, but when I brought it up again, Feargus simply said, "we never promised we'd pay the employees back," as if that excused things - but paying the employees back didn’t seem like a technicality to me, this was the right thing to do.

He then said he wanted the matter dropped.

Fortunately, another owner did finally admit he agreed with me some time later (mostly because one of the unpaid employees confronted the owner on what was going on with it), he was someone Feargus would listen to, and when he brought it up (this time he asked for my support, even though he had been silent before), we were able to push Feargus into establishing a payback plan and get restitution for the employees who sacrificed for us - and this was well before any owner paychecks resumed (by this point, the owners were resolved to not getting paid back, so it wasn't a huge shift).

Overall, it seemed a shameful way to treat our employees who had sacrificed for us, and I wasn’t happy we even had to discuss compensating them – it didn’t seem to be something we should discuss, we should simply do it because it was the right thing to do.

For me, what makes Avellone's Wild Ride so plausible is that this chapter and the preceding chapters all seem genuine to me, like iterations of the way in which every other group of people I've ever met actually behaves. The details are different depending on the group of people, but I pretty much feel like I work at Obsidian now due to how believable it all is.

We all know a Feargus: People who need to find an audience to vent about some stressful interaction they've just been through, with their own spin on it of course. As for not wanting to repay debts after the fact, especially from a position of authority, well... reneging is at least as old as prostitution. We have reneging staff members right here on the Codex, after all.

 

[RepHope]

Other random answers (some may have been here, some on Reddit – if I’m wrong, I’ll post the right answers on Reddit).

Ubisoft: So Ubisoft didn’t really cut ties to Obsidian that I know of, nor did Obsidian turn them away because Obsidian had too much work – the conversation, to all accounts, never happened at all, because Ubisoft never spoke to Obsidian about doing the second game. One day the sequel was announced, and it was my understanding it was a surprise to Obsidian that anyone was working on a sequel – Obsidian didn’t proudly defy Ubisoft and tell them to fuck off because they were too busy: Ubisoft didn’t even call.

Transition from Publisher to Developer, Reversal of Roles: Feargus went through what I feel may have been poor training as a studio lead at Black Isle. In that position, he had more control over the projects, the funding, and more importantly, outside developers – in his role at Interplay, he was very much the publisher, and he was the one who made calls on BG1, BG2, etc. He controlled the funding, could make demands, could withhold payments, and also force capitulations in features and schedules.

Unfortunately, I believe this set a bad precedent for Feargus dealing with publishers in the future because we became one of the same outside developers he had formerly overseen when he was a publisher - the roles were reversed, and so was the power.

Suddenly he had to experience it from the other side, and he didn’t take to it well – the control was gone, and suddenly his demands could be ignored and fought, rather than accepted. The leverage was gone.

Even more importantly, Feargus’s behavior no longer had to be ignored by the person on the other end of the phone or in discussions in the conference room: Where once if Feargus asked a developer or contractor to do something, they would largely have to swallow it or fight to be polite in order to get paid or keep their project going, the reverse was very hard for Feargus to deal with, and led to a lot of shouting matches (which you could hear down the hall), and even hanging up on publishers. We knew about this because he’d come brag to us about when he hung up on a studio head or producer, which made me even more depressed, since it meant we’d likely lose another contract with no back-up plans (he actually did the bragging rounds from owner office to owner office when he shouted at someone in the studio as well, as if he was showcasing the strength of his management style).

Worse, Feargus didn't learn from this - instead, he passed the behavior along. When Feargus was in charge of outsourcing and other remote contracts, he behaved much like the publishers he railed against, which was depressing as well.

Overall, the position of having to answer to someone else didn’t often go well, and it’s much the reason I think Obsidian would be better off finding a way to completely self-publish their games because I don’t think any other option is going to work in the long-term.

Financial Matters and Ethics: I also don’t know where the training for handling and responsibility for finances came from, but we didn’t see eye to eye on that, either, as I've said.

It went beyond the transparency in finances - the biggest shock came when the matter arose about paying back employees (not the owners, but our employees) who had given up their paychecks to keep Obsidian from going bankrupt. When we did start getting money in the bank again after this bleak period, however, the company's spending began accelerating again.

This made me uncomfortable, so at that time where our finances became healthy again, I brought up that since we had the means to do so, we should pay back the employees who gave up their paychecks to keep us going.

My comment was met with silence by all the owners.

I repeated the concern, but when I brought it up again, Feargus simply said, "we never promised we'd pay the employees back," as if that excused things - but paying the employees back didn’t seem like a technicality to me, this was the right thing to do.

He then said he wanted the matter dropped.

Fortunately, another owner did finally admit he agreed with me some time later (mostly because one of the unpaid employees confronted the owner on what was going on with it), he was someone Feargus would listen to, and when he brought it up (this time he asked for my support, even though he had been silent before), we were able to push Feargus into establishing a payback plan and get restitution for the employees who sacrificed for us - and this was well before any owner paychecks resumed (by this point, the owners were resolved to not getting paid back, so it wasn't a huge shift).

Overall, it seemed a shameful way to treat our employees who had sacrificed for us, and I wasn’t happy we even had to discuss compensating them – it didn’t seem to be something we should discuss, we should simply do it because it was the right thing to do.

This entire fucking post holy shit. And if Chris is right about Paradox being pissed there goes yet another publisher. Also fuck Feargus for being such a scumbag he’d willingly fuck over his employees when they fucking worked to keep the lights on out of loyalty.

 

[Latro]

We have reneging staff members right here on the Codex, after all.

whatever do you mean, blaine-chan ?