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Eternity Josh Sawyer reflects on his failures with Pillars of Eternity

Hobo Elf

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I feel like you can't really predict if a game will sell well or not. Each time a game sells well it feels like a fluke, because there are tons of objectively good games that don't sell well and objectively awful ones that do. It's just chaos mixed with luck.
 

Kyl Von Kull

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Steve gets a Kidney but I don't even get a tag.
Some retarded ass shit I'm reading here. If this is the game he wanted to make, why the fuck didn't he just make it? Why sign on and plaster your name onto something that you don't believe in. I have no sympathy for this clown and the trainwreck he created.

1.) Sawyer was the studio’s design director, not the CEO. He never had the authority to decide what kind of game to make.
2.) Even the CEO couldn’t make that call, they were running out of cash and had to make a game that they thought would raise the most money on Kickstarter. They believed this required something with BG style systems.

The problem is, he’s too inflexible to fully commit to making something he doesn’t like. So:

3.) Sawyer tried to make Pillars as grounded, mundane and history-based as possible given the constraints of the plot. This is why the game feels schizophrenic.
4.) He designed a class based system where the classes feel a lot less distinct than they did in AD&D.
 

Prime Junta

Guest
Some retarded ass shit I'm reading here. If this is the game he wanted to make, why the fuck didn't he just make it? Why sign on and plaster your name onto something that you don't believe in. I have no sympathy for this clown and the trainwreck he created.

ok zoomer
 

Whisper

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One of the mistakes they did was to make PoE 2 a direct sequel, most of the people who played first one didn't finish it, so they probably wouldn't be interested in the sequel, and the potential new players would be put off by direct sequel because they would think that they need to know the first game to get the sequel. Didn't Vault Dweller say that based on his own market studies, direct sequels have almost always sold less copies than the first game?
It's not that they need to know the first game (I don't think anyone cares about that), it's that the popular perception is that a sequel offers more of the same and thus appeals only to the most enthusiastic supporters, those who can't get enough of it. Only 46% of players completed Act 1 (which is the new normal these days, so this stat alone doesn't reflect poorly on Pillars), which means that getting people who didn't even beat the first act to buy a whole new sequel is nearly impossible. Only 25% completed Act 2, so we can take this number as a core audience and work from there. Naturally, the new features (ship combat, island exploration, etc) were bound to attract new players but the features weren't strong enough to attract enough players to replace those who 'moved on'.

Simple as that.

Why people buy and complete Act 1 and then stop? Dont like game?
 

Desiderius

Found your egg, Robinett, you sneaky bastard
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Insert Title Here Pathfinder: Wrath
I feel like you can't really predict if a game will sell well or not. Each time a game sells well it feels like a fluke, because there are tons of objectively good games that don't sell well and objectively awful ones that do. It's just chaos mixed with luck.

RNG
 

Ibn Sina

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Strap Yourselves In
All the companions are shit because at the end, it does not matter if they live or die. They just exist as a walkman or an ipod. To spout words at you but their existence or non existence is pretty irrelevant to you or the setting.
 

Desiderius

Found your egg, Robinett, you sneaky bastard
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Insert Title Here Pathfinder: Wrath

ItsChon

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Steve gets a Kidney but I don't even get a tag.
The problem is, he’s too inflexible to fully commit to making something he doesn’t like
That's literally all that needs to be said. You design games for a living, and many people have had to make do with designing things that might not have been 100% their vision. Plus, mechanics aside, there is still no excuse for making such an absolutely bland and boring fucking game.
 

Tigranes

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Thread got weird, huh?

The whole point is that it's difficult for us to assess whether MCA's still got it, or he's burnt out, etc, because he won't actually write/lead a whole game anymore. He has chosen to not make "MCA games" and therefore we don't get the final proof that the man has still got it or hasn't got it.

If MCA comes out with a game he's poured his heart into and is really his project, I'll be his bitch. If he does a Kickstarter, I'll give to it. Until then, he is irrelevant to the world of RPGs. If that's due to health, family, and other such reasons, then I wish him the best and hope he does well in life.
 

Kyl Von Kull

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Steve gets a Kidney but I don't even get a tag.
Thread got weird, huh?

The whole point is that it's difficult for us to assess whether MCA's still got it, or he's burnt out, etc, because he won't actually write/lead a whole game anymore. He has chosen to not make "MCA games" and therefore we don't get the final proof that the man has still got it or hasn't got it.

If MCA comes out with a game he's poured his heart into and is really his project, I'll be his bitch. If he does a Kickstarter, I'll give to it. Until then, he is irrelevant to the world of RPGs. If that's due to health, family, and other such reasons, then I wish him the best and hope he does well in life.

I wouldn’t minimize what he did on Kingmaker. It’s not an MCA game, but his influence is definitely felt. Maybe he finally figured out how to be a good story consultant, maybe Owlcat was just the first studio that really cared about his input. Either way the game is really good.

MCA on his role:
Chris Avellone: Alexander Mishulin is the Creative Director, Alexander Komzolov is the lead writer. I’m one of the writers reporting to the Alexanders, but I’m not the lead writer on the game, no, and there are many other writers on the project for sure.

I worked with the Alexanders to do passes of the story to expand it from the pen and paper roots so people who had played the original adventure path would still have some new content. We worked out the underlying theme for the story as well. In addition, some elements of the pen and paper path were taken in new directions to make them more suited for evil playstyles, which was fun. I also worked with the designers on setting up the pen and paper quest arcs with the new companion quests across the game (the companions add a lot), and gave feedback on the companions as well.

As for writing companions, I got the parameters of the “goblin rogue” (the companions weren’t named at the outset, and I did help with naming companions). From that, I was able to flesh out additional elements of his backstory, look, etc. and then I wrote Nok-Nok from start to finish. Nok-Nok’s one-paragraph character arc had already been approved by the license holder before I came on board (and same with some of the other story elements), but Alexander Komzolov and I agreed to change aspects about Nok-Nok afterwards even though his general arc remained the same (and some specific conclusions to his companion quest).

I also did the style guide, the module (on 2nd draft now), helped coordinate some aspects of the editing team (we had two editors who worked on the English versions), helped with UI text, and writing and edits on about 150+ other characters.

That’s not nothing. I’d love to see a real Avellone RPG, too, but IIRC his mom is sick (cancer?) and he’s Sicilian.
 

gurugeorge

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Strap Yourselves In
If Sawyer fucked up anything, it was PoE1 which might have caused plenty of people to skip Deadfire.

Bingo.

I think Deadfire is actually a decent game and it should have sold better than it did. I think the reason it didn't sell is because POE left a bad taste in peoples' mouths. I know myself, I almost never bothered with Deadfire, and only got it recently because it was super-cheap on sale with Steam at one point. I was pleasantly surprised - there are indeed lots of little improvements on POE, and it plays more smoothly and is more enjoyable, all things considered.

I was super-hyped for POE and really enjoyed it, the new world, the music, and the story, for a while. It was just great to be in a new game in that isometric space again. But then I suddenly woke up out of the nostalgia haze, realized I couldn't see what was going on on the screen (and what a dreadful graphics soup it was, if one plays it again today), the build system suddenly seemed bland, and my interest in the story dropped off a cliff about 3/4 of the way through. I couldn't bear to look at it again. I wouldn't say the game left me hostile to Sawyer and his team, but it left me indifferent to any future product from them.
 

Verylittlefishes

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I'd rather have smaller games that are interesting to play through than long games that are a chore to play. I'll take Undertale and Age of Decadence over PoE anytime.

Same, but I'd take a bigger game that's well written, coherent, and not a chore to play above those. They do happen from time to time. Witcher 3 had its problems but writing or lack of coherence in it wasn't among them.

Undertale and Age of Decadence is surely interesting pairing.
 
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Codex Year of the Donut
because he won't actually write/lead a whole game anymore. He has chosen to not make "MCA games" and therefore we don't get the final proof that the man has still got it or hasn't got it.life.
Probably worth remembering that he likely got himself blacklisted from quite a few studios by attacking his (former) boss/coworkers publicly.
Also, despite his constant groveling he still gets shit on regularly by people who find his prior work offensive so he'd likely have to deal with that at some point.
 

Prime Junta

Guest
Until then, he is irrelevant to the world of RPGs. If that's due to health, family, and other such reasons, then I wish him the best and hope he does well in life.

Hell yes. He made Planescape: Torment. He will always be a god to me. As things currently stand, he is a fallen god. That is more cool than any of us poor mortals can ever aspire to.
 
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Verylittlefishes

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because he won't actually write/lead a whole game anymore. He has chosen to not make "MCA games" and therefore we don't get the final proof that the man has still got it or hasn't got it.life.
Probably worth remembering that he likely got himself blacklisted from quite a few studios by attacking his (former) boss/coworkers publicly.
Also, despite his constant groveling he still gets shit on regularly by people who find his prior work offensive so he'd likely have to deal with that at some point.

Also MCA is genius but not THAT genius, if you know what i mean.

Hideo-Kojima-1024x579.jpg
 
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fantadomat

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because he won't actually write/lead a whole game anymore. He has chosen to not make "MCA games" and therefore we don't get the final proof that the man has still got it or hasn't got it.life.
Probably worth remembering that he likely got himself blacklisted from quite a few studios by attacking his (former) boss/coworkers publicly.
Also, despite his constant groveling he still gets shit on regularly by people who find his prior work offensive so he'd likely have to deal with that at some point.

Also MCA is genius but not THAT genius, if you know what i mean.

Hideo-Kojima-1024x579.jpg
Ahhh kjima is pretty shit lol,since when is he a genius?
 

Verylittlefishes

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because he won't actually write/lead a whole game anymore. He has chosen to not make "MCA games" and therefore we don't get the final proof that the man has still got it or hasn't got it.life.
Probably worth remembering that he likely got himself blacklisted from quite a few studios by attacking his (former) boss/coworkers publicly.
Also, despite his constant groveling he still gets shit on regularly by people who find his prior work offensive so he'd likely have to deal with that at some point.

Also MCA is genius but not THAT genius, if you know what i mean.

Hideo-Kojima-1024x579.jpg
Ahhh kjima is pretty shit lol,since when is he a genius?

https://www.reddit.com/r/DeathStranding/comments/92eb4r/why_do_so_many_russians_comment_on_kojimas/

sorry, I'm just so tired of hearing about Death Stranding.

I wanted to say that Kojima is a self-selling top manager, not only game designer. And, as I understood about MCA from recent interviews, he understand his business shit pretty well. Maybe its not about his mother, but about him realizing that he would fuck up his MCA Productions.
 

Viata

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Water Play Catarinense
because he won't actually write/lead a whole game anymore. He has chosen to not make "MCA games" and therefore we don't get the final proof that the man has still got it or hasn't got it.life.
Probably worth remembering that he likely got himself blacklisted from quite a few studios by attacking his (former) boss/coworkers publicly.
Also, despite his constant groveling he still gets shit on regularly by people who find his prior work offensive so he'd likely have to deal with that at some point.

Also MCA is genius but not THAT genius, if you know what i mean.

Hideo-Kojima-1024x579.jpg
Ahhh kjima is pretty shit lol,since when is he a genius?
Let's be fair. How many people can sell a whole game based on the worst kind of quest, fetch quests, and still have a fuckton of people saying not only the game is incredible, but the people that dislike it just can't understand the game? That take a genius to make something like that(or a cult following of retards, but let's ignore this).
 

Verylittlefishes

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because he won't actually write/lead a whole game anymore. He has chosen to not make "MCA games" and therefore we don't get the final proof that the man has still got it or hasn't got it.life.
Probably worth remembering that he likely got himself blacklisted from quite a few studios by attacking his (former) boss/coworkers publicly.
Also, despite his constant groveling he still gets shit on regularly by people who find his prior work offensive so he'd likely have to deal with that at some point.

Also MCA is genius but not THAT genius, if you know what i mean.

Hideo-Kojima-1024x579.jpg
Ahhh kjima is pretty shit lol,since when is he a genius?
Let's be fair. How many people can sell a whole game based on the worst kind of quest, fetch quests, and still have a fuckton of people saying not only the game is incredible, but the people that dislike it just can't understand the game? That take a genius to make something like that(or a cult following of retards, but let's ignore this).

U-S-A! U-S-A!

YnSvRcf.jpg
 

fantadomat

Arcane
Edgy Vatnik Wumao
Joined
Jun 2, 2017
Messages
37,180
Location
Bulgaria
because he won't actually write/lead a whole game anymore. He has chosen to not make "MCA games" and therefore we don't get the final proof that the man has still got it or hasn't got it.life.
Probably worth remembering that he likely got himself blacklisted from quite a few studios by attacking his (former) boss/coworkers publicly.
Also, despite his constant groveling he still gets shit on regularly by people who find his prior work offensive so he'd likely have to deal with that at some point.

Also MCA is genius but not THAT genius, if you know what i mean.

Hideo-Kojima-1024x579.jpg
Ahhh kjima is pretty shit lol,since when is he a genius?
Let's be fair. How many people can sell a whole game based on the worst kind of quest, fetch quests, and still have a fuckton of people saying not only the game is incredible, but the people that dislike it just can't understand the game? That take a genius to make something like that(or a cult following of retards, but let's ignore this).
Sure,he is a marketing genius,but still shit at making games.
 

Quillon

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Dec 15, 2016
Messages
5,239
At least he is making his western style games without pondering to any bullshit of current years. Guess he's above stupid criticisms with the backing he has. I only played MGSV and first half of that game was a blast...then content repetition started. DS' gameplay look appealing at first glance.
 

Riddler

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Jan 5, 2009
Messages
2,355
Bubbles In Memoria
Thread got weird, huh?

The whole point is that it's difficult for us to assess whether MCA's still got it, or he's burnt out, etc, because he won't actually write/lead a whole game anymore. He has chosen to not make "MCA games" and therefore we don't get the final proof that the man has still got it or hasn't got it.

If MCA comes out with a game he's poured his heart into and is really his project, I'll be his bitch. If he does a Kickstarter, I'll give to it. Until then, he is irrelevant to the world of RPGs. If that's due to health, family, and other such reasons, then I wish him the best and hope he does well in life.

I think it's also fair to say that he at the very least wasn't burned out by the time of the PoE Kickstarter.

This was him in the Kickstarter video, having just made the NV DLCs:
maxresdefault.jpg


This was him a few years later after being isolated at Obsidian for years, being de-ownered, fired, his mother becoming deathly ill and possibly developing a drug/alcohol problem; not having developed anything of real value for half a decade:

CkzdpeyVAAAycNb.jpg


I don't think it's unreasonable to trust the first guy with your money but the second guy kind of has to prove himself again imo.
 
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