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Has your opinion of Obsidian changed after Avellone’s revelations and Deadfire?

Bocian

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Many people are poor, or make just enough to pay the rent and food.
I doubt that it's the fault of low salaries or "being poor". More like, being in debt is normalized nowadays, people spend more money than they actually have and buy things they don't need, and then they whine they're "poor" when shit hits the fan. For many people "poor" means "can't afford newest iphone".
 

Cael

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Fortunately, in the real world, few companies actually do that on a regular basis.

They do, especially game companies as people have been saying here, get your eyes checked and get informed about game industry my grandson.

Just admit that you want them to fail cos they kicked MCA's cat and stop with the bullshit that you want them to fail on morality grounds.
And they are few companies. Game companies do not even comprise 0.001% of all the companies in the world. Reading comprehension is something that seems to have passed by the millenial generation. Too much "I want" and not enough "I want to earn".
 

Jacob

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Grab the Codex by the pussy
Irrelevant. It happens. It is not illegal. And morally, as long as it doesn't ACTIVELY hurt someone else, it is neutral.

And THAT is the difference between wishing ill and actually doing ill.
We're not talking about legal here. Laughing at someone's death isn't illegal, yet it's still a disrespectful thing to do.

Also, morally, if something you're doing indirectly hurts someone else, you should stop doing it once you get the knowledge that what you're doing is harmful.
 

Sigourn

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1530665003755.gif
 
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Immortal

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The MCA revelations completely changed my opinion of that company. I have never had such a slimy boss as to put relatives on the payroll or extra billing customers through line item misrepresentation.
It's actually pretty bad and Feargus isn't as smart as he thinks he is. It's no wonder publishers never work with Obsidian twice.

That's how I read the MCA revelation anyways.
 

Mangoose

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Just admit that you want them to fail cos they kicked MCA's cat and stop with the bullshit that you want them to fail on morality grounds.
It's kinda both. As in, if a business is willing to be unethical to one employee, no other employee is safe. No other cat is safe.

Besides the fact that "kicking MCA's cat" meant

I didn’t get anything when I left Obsidian. There were no share payouts, no equity, and this was in addition to the other logistical problems around the departure – the sudden cancellation of my health insurance, problems with my 401K, errors in Obsidian’s accounting, and several existing independent contracts they refused to uphold.

Realizing my family issues [editor note: mother with cancer] and the debts therein, however, they did make an attempt to leverage that into a far more confining separation agreement that would remove my right to work on RPGs, and my silence on all issues that could pertain to Obsidian or any other company they were involved with or the CEO had a % in (Fig, Zero Radius, Dark Rock Industries, etc.). This included an inability to critique games I’d worked on – much of my critiques on my own games tend to be blunt, and not being able to speak to them felt unnatural to me.
Key point: An employer used an employee's family issues as leverage for their own gain and to the employee's loss.

(And usually, for every employee who actually raises their voice, there are 10 employees that are too scared to)

---

Business-wise, while management conflict is inevitable, it shouldn't end in firing. It's a terrible business blunder to not ensure a quiet, amicable separation. Because what happened instead it invites negative publicity. It plants seeds of doubt for both customers and potential hires. Plenty of other businesses have similar fallouts, but we don't know about them because they were professional enough to ensure an amicable separation. In fact, it's beneficial to both the business and the employee.
 

Quillon

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MCA kept it very vague tho, what did they exactly do/say? How did they leverage it exactly? With the info above I can't be sure whether its fact or MCA's interpretation of whatever happened.
 
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My opinion hasn't. Obsidian will always be a "what could've been" studio rather than "what was". Given their Black Isle past, there was a lot of potential with them, but it never materialized into something consistently good. One good game (when modded) in New Vegas, one good expansion (MotB), and a whole lot of mediocrity.

Hopefully the Cain/Boyarski game with Take 2 will start a new chapter, but at this point, it's hard to expect much.
 

Flou

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EDIT: List fixed, thanks to Fairfax.

I think someone else may have posted this list, but sometimes I get the “Obsidian isn’t the same company as it was” or “no, there’s still a bunch of NV folks still there,” so in relation to New Vegas, I did a quick check to see how many devs worked on New Vegas that are still there ~18, and ones that left are ~52 (I didn’t count QA or people who didn’t work on it, like owners, or the people who obviously left b/c they were Bethesda employees).

The Stormlands layoffs got quite a few of these folks. I think Brennecke is the only programmer from FNV still there (although I think he’s interviewing, based on the developer grapevine).

I may have made some mistakes, if so, I'll come back and edit this list.

James Melili still works at Obsidian according to LinkedIn. Andrew Dearing came back, but started his own company / started freelancing which makes sense for an audio guy.
Looking at that list, Stormlands layoffs and the period after that got most of those employees.

One thing I don't understand is that why do you keep hinting about people leaving Obsidian. Let them leave on their own, if they are actually planning on leaving. It does them no favours, nor you that you keep bringing it up.
 

JarlFrank

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No Obsidian game has ever blown me away or reached a status for me that would be "classic". Their games never surpassed "it's decent", they've always been a company that made mediocre products and that hasn't changed.

Even the good games of theirs (New Vegas, MotB) suffer from some mediocre design decisions or bad engines (granted, in the case of New Vegas it's not their own fault, and at least NWN2's engine was marginally better than NWN1's - not that that's much of an achievement).

Obsidian is just... meh. Never truly been excited for one of their games, even when Pillars was first kickstarted I was merely mildly optimistic.
 

Flou

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Substantial layoffs are common in the vidya industry, we've heard this from several sources. Maybe Chris Avellone can share his experience with us, since he's been somewhat of a developer nomad these last couple of years. Have you seen layoffs at this scale happen in other companies?

Umm, you do follow the gaming media right? TellTale fired 25% of their workforce last year (?) because their games weren't selling as well as they expected.

Look up any developers that have gone under in the 2000s and you will find bunch of big layoffs. You don't need Avellone to confirm that.
 

Flou

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As to has my opinion changed about Obsidian? Nope. They still make games that I enjoy to play. One of the few crpg developers that actually manage to do that. Are the games as good as they could be, or as good they used to be? Probably not, but then again their games have always been bit flawed. Mask of the Betrayer had horrible camera/engine, New Vegas felt like it was missing 25% of content ( at least), Kotor 2 ended up cutting pretty much the whole ending, Alpha Protocol did some things better than any game before it, but blew it with the horrible release date and bit wonky gameplay mechanics.

Parker never seemed like a nice guy. Can't remember seeing Jones's name under credits that often and Feargus has always seemed like he doesn't think about games like I do, nor that he is really competent in making the business grow. Like I've said earlier, he is great at keeping the company intact and making games, but more competent person would have made the company more prestigious than BioWare and Bethesda.

I'm still waiting for those "promised" / hinted interviews by Avellone on the whole situation. Doesn't seem like any gaming media that matters picked up on the story, nor have I heard anything about a courtcase. And now he is hinting that both Brennecke and Sawyer are planning on leaving just to stir the pot some more...
 

Mangoose

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Alpha Protocol did some things better than any game before it, but blew it with the horrible release date and bit wonky gameplay mechanics.
...

Alpha Protocol was going to be a flop. Or rather, might've been cancelled. Because 2 years in, both Obsidian and Sega management were shit, and when it hit that 2 years, Sega decide to forced a redesign, rewrite.*

Guess who headed the redo? Parker as project director and MCA as lead designer (and a lot of hard work from Mitsoda & wifey Carlson). With only half the time allotted to the project. Actually, they were the first leads, because in those beginning 2 years there were no leads.

They still make games that I enjoy to play.
Without one of their co-founders, whose chief role was design lead and sometimes writing lead?

*(Sega had the rights they were given the IP in return for Sega's contract, because it saved them from layoffs due to a cancelled Disney game Obsidian was working on. About Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs.)

Substantial layoffs are common in the vidya industry, we've heard this from several sources. Maybe Chris Avellone can share his experience with us, since he's been somewhat of a developer nomad these last couple of years. Have you seen layoffs at this scale happen in other companies?
Do those substantial layoffs include the founders of the company?

"Thanks for co-founding Obsidian. You're fired."
 

Lyric Suite

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however, they did make an attempt to leverage that into a far more confining separation agreement that would remove my right to work on RPGs

What the fuck am i reading here?
 

prodigydancer

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I've always thought that Obsidian made a big mistake treating MCA's content in PoE1 like it was nothing special. MCA was obviously the best writer they had, and talent doesn't grow on trees. They said there were financial reasons for the cuts. Whether that's true or not doesn't matter. They should've cut something else.

The rest of the story makes even less sense. HR 101: even if you're going to fire somebody, you shouldn't burn bridges. Unless your ex-employee went postal or something like that, there's always a chance you'll want them back later. And Obsidian managed to completely alienate MCA forever - you can hardly get more unprofessional than that. I mean I like their games but nothing gives them the right to treat people like tissue paper.

I guess it was somebody's hasty and deeply emotional decision. What exactly caused it we might never know, but Obsidian is going to suffer - that's for sure. Most people agree that there's no companion in Deadfire who could live up to Durance.

TL;DR: Obsidian made a mistake, and they'll suffer the consequences.
 

Gnidrologist

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I've been out of the loop for years about vidya (at least the new happenings). What did happen to MCA and what does he do now?
Obsidian is obv. quite shitty and always have been. Some good contributions from freelancers like Avellone was probably their saving grace. Certainly not this guy
rating_sawyer.gif
or Feargus ugh.. hurt.
 

Mangoose

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HR 101: even if you're going to fire somebody, you shouldn't burn bridges. Unless your ex-employee went postal or something like that, there's always a chance you'll want them back later.
Hah. Nah, first they have to deal with the negative publicity one gets for firing someone in a seemingly ethical manner. Because that person is going to speak up. Whether he's "right" or not (I'll let the court can decide).

All businesses do have feuds in management or whatever. But the majority of business management knows how to avoid any antagonistic temptations, settle reasonably, with the end result being not a peep about what happened.

Also, this is not really about MCA. This is about what a company did and the fact that they were willing to do so to another human being. That's a personality trait, and as such, behavior like that is universal. Not just to one person. Anyone who thinks MCA is the only one being hurt is short-sighted. He's the only one because he's the first. And/or he wasn't the only one treated this way, but the others are not the "speaking out" type.

This action in fact has put every Obsidian employee's job security at risk. Which means said employees work in fear they'll get treated the same. It would not be surprising at all if any employees left voluntarily. Especially the developers, who either good friends with MCA and/or respect him given that they know their industry's history well. It's true that lightning never strikes the same place twice. Because every employee has their own desk or office.

Yet again, this is both not ethical and not business-smart. It's almost like being seen as ethical improves your image, attracting talent, advertisement opportunities, getting not just customers but loyal customers (<- Important. Marketing 101)...

It's almost like ensuring an ethical public image is a business necessity (big corp/Wall Street excluded). Note I said to ensure an ethical public image, not to actually be ethical ;) But in a small company, you probably actually need to be ethical to maintaining your public image. Because the smaller the company, the louder is each individual employee. And I believe it is smarter for your employees to praise you loudly rather than denigrate you loudly.

----------

Heh, maybe it's pointless for us normies to get upset about it, because in the big picture Obsidian is digging its own grave.

Obsidian: 15 games made, 4 games canceled. (Futurebright, Dwarves - as in Disney's Snow White, Aliens: Crucible - where Sega management does get 1/2 the blame, and Stormlands - which eventually turned into Tyranny... "eventually" being the key word because Stormlands is rumored to have been started as a Xbone game and is known to be intended as an open world over-the-shoulder game.

Sega saved Obsidian from the layoff ramifications of the cancellation of Dwarves, while MCA and Parker still had to end up salvaging Alpha Protocol from cancellation. In fact, Obsidian gave the Alpha Protocol IP to Sega as part of the contract that saved Obsidian's ass.

Stormlands may have been the starting idea for Tyranny, but the cancellation of Stormlands itself laid off 20-30 employees.

They went Kickstarter for PoE because of a financial crisis, not because they actually cared about crowdfunding.

Edit: Oh, and they gave up on Armored Warfare halfway, forcing their publisher's hand (Paradox) to finish the rest. I believe it was hinted that Paradox isn't quite happy with Obsidian about that.
 
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Mangoose

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Oh and note MCA was de-ownered, not fired. Because all 5 co-founders all held certain degrees of ownership of Obsidian.

As in:

https://techraptor.net/content/interview-chris-avellone-obsidian-entertainment said:
Chris Avellone: There were 5 owners. Feargus had the biggest share, Chris Parker and Darren Monahan had the 2nd largest, and Chris Jones and I had a small %. The ownership was not equal. Between the owners, as long as Feargus, Parker, and Monahan agreed, that was usually the end of things (we didn’t often vote on things – sometimes we’d just hear about things that had been decided). We considered them the “production triad.”

Waaaaaaaaait a minute. "Sudden" cancellation? Why it would be sudden if you'd planned on resigning?

Chris, were you fired from Obsidian?

(I realized I didn’t answer this.)

No – after raising some questions about company finances and other issues, Feargus de-ownered me (which I didn’t have a choice in) and then told, “but don’t worry, we’ll still allow you to work on Tyranny for us,” and my response was, “that’s okay, you can work on it by yourself.”

Before this seems unusual, de-ownering was actually a common threat tossed around, so it wasn’t specific to me – if any owner raised objections to events going on, the response was often, “you don’t sound like you want to be an owner anymore” and never addressed the actual issues being brought up.

Not surprisingly, this shift in being de-ownered coincided with taking place shortly before the first royalty payments from Eternity came in, which meant that the surviving owners got a much larger share with me de-ownered (I don’t mind that, as I didn’t want royalty payments from Eternity, but I don’t think the other owners deserved royalties, either, except maybe a set amount for Darren for the Backer portal work he put in – the team deserved all of it). It was a good business decision, but not good ethics.
Even ignoring the part about the share %, this shows that this is how Obsidian treats its owners and creators:

"Thanks, bye. Also don't make any more RPGs, don't say a word about Obsidian's internal organs including the ones you worked on, don't speak on the Obsidian website - actually let's just block your account. Also, give us back your health insurance immediately because fuck COBRA, screw your 401k, and we ain't gonna do shit about your mother's cancer."

Edit: Thankfully, MCA's managed to do well freelancing. And thanks to Larian, inXile, Arkane, Deep Silver all courting him ethically, because let him stay a freelancer (contract worker?), let him work for their "competitors." So that he has been busy with Torment, Prey, DOS2, and now working Deep Silver's Pathfinder crpg. And apparently a System Shock remake.
 
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Nano

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Grab the Codex by the pussy Strap Yourselves In
Guess who headed the redo? Parker as project director and MCA as lead designer(and a lot of hard work from Mitsoda & wifey Carlson)

Mitsoda and Carlson only worked on Alpha Protocol in the first half of development.

Actually, they were the first leads, because in those beginning 2 years there were no leads.
This isn't true, though. Raymond Holmes was the lead designer, from mid-2006 until he left Obsidian in early 2008 (this was at a time when Obsidian had yet to have a "Project Director" role).

Edit: Oh, and they gave up on Armored Warfare halfway, forcing their publisher's hand (Paradox) to finish the rest. I believe it was hinted that Paradox isn't quite happy with Obsidian about that.
Wtf. Paradox wasn't Armored Warfare's publisher, that was My.com. And all the rumors when Obsidian got off the project were that My.com was the side responsible for the mess.
 

Bester

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Daily reminder that Alpha Protocol had horrible writing: you're supposed to be military, but you and everyone around you speak like highly emotional 16 year old girls.

Snatched the suspension of disbelief right from under my feet.
 

Lurker47

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Didn't play New Vegas, i mean i tried it, stopped after the very first small building and killing a couple of zombies or whatever that was, was years ago, this game doesn't exist, that piece of garbage killed the possibility of having a real turn-based fallout 3.

Didn't play South Park, i don't like the settings.

POE isn't bad, better than BG, less drama and i like the cyphers.
I can't play POE 2 because of the arena loading bug, not sure if they fixed it, wasn't very interesting anyway and i've heard naval battles are a nuisance.

As fot KotOR 2, well, where's the originality, it's the second of the series, what did they add exactly ?

Tyranny is good, though, except for the late game battles (too many of them) and the loading time.

Well, along the years, i learned that a company's name means nothing, the people running it and the ones working their asses off do so if obsidian died, the best of the bunch would land on their feet and move on so who cares ?

A shame, it's probably too late to play KotOR 2, i'm not sure it aged well.
What the fuck are you talking about, lol.
 

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