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

[Roguey]

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.

According to Calvin Barkmore, the US military is full of dope-puffing socialists, so accurate in Cleve-land.

 

[Dodo1610]

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.

What? The game was supposed to be a playable old spy movie, it was never meant to be too serious. Characters like Conrad Marbug and Sie are obviously walking clishès that would fit into a Bond movie.

 

[Roguey]

Too bad no one at Obsidian has any idea what "suave" is. Should have been changed to "smug", that would have fixed most of my problem with those lines.

 

[Lurker47]

I've yet to play Alpha Protocol. Is it really so divisive that the Codex can't decide on a single positive aspect of it?

 

[karoliner]

Alpha Protocol had very good writing and c&c, the problem is that the gameplay is beyond awful not just the movement and the shooting but the level design and those terrible minigames some idiot forced in.

 

[Mangoose]

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).

I mean real lead, not someone's name written down next to a title for accounting/tax/formality/contractual/other-bureaucratic-reasons (or scapegoat reasons) while almost all of Obsidian focused on something else. And by something else I mean the other Sega contract, Aliens Crucible. Which was canceled in 2009. After "early 2008."

And indeed, Urquhart admits that Alpha Protocol had some serious issues. The game's four-year development process was long and arduous, and the team sometimes felt like they didn't have a clear direction: was it a shooter? An RPG? A stealth game? All three?
"We meandered—I think that's the best way to say it," Urquhart said. "We meandered for quite a while on that project. It took us a long time to get to the point where we were where we needed to be."

They didn't have any sort of game specification document, Urquhart said, which is now something they require for all of their games: a listed, documented set of guidelines for exactly how a game will be designed and developed. They also didn't determine exactly who they were making the game for—action players? RPG fans? shooter addicts?—which Urquhart said was a serious detriment.

"We started getting into these arguments which were completely not helpful," he said. "Is it 70% RPG or 30% action, or is it 46% action and 50%... These things were not helpful. What we needed to say is: in a mission, Michael can do these things, you know, and this is the toolkit. He can unlock things, he can hack things, he can throw bombs, he can interact this way, he can interact that way."

So either Raymond Holmes was a crap lead designer... Or management (SEGA included) threw him under the bus by attaching his name to a role that in reality didn't exist. Because if there were a lead, then people would work according to the lead instead of arguing and meandering "for quite a while." And even if the lead had left the company, he would have at least provided very rough guidelines. Brainstorming at least.

Benefit of the doubt goes to Holmes because it sounds rather absurd that there was a lead designer for 2 years yet not an inkling of design was produced in concept.

To be honest I don't even need to dig up facts. I was here, watching the production of Alpha Brotocol, watching the mismanagement of SEGA and Obsidian. And pretty amazed that it managed to be salvaged.

 

[Generic-Giant-Spider]

An enemy of Avellone is an enemy of Generic Giant Spider.

 

[Immortal]

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.

 

[ItsChon]

-snip-

Delicious

 

[Felix]

Obsidian is on its way to become fully cucked, what's with those strange hair color sjw hires? Jesus!

 

[fantadomat]

Too bad no one at Obsidian has any idea what "suave" is. Should have been changed to "smug", that would have fixed most of my problem with those lines.

Well they are americans,it is natural that they don't know what "suave" means.

 

[FeelTheRads]

Alpha Protocol had very good writing and c&c,

No, it did not have very good writing. It had better writing than the average video game which means it had better writing than straight-out garbage.

Also, "daily reminder" that TTON has more and better C&C than Alpha Protolol and yet none of the C&C fags are fapping over it. Guess it's hard to tell when the C&C aren't immediately telegraphed so even the most retarded player can tell that "omfg he maed a choice" and when the dialogue isn't made of 1-word options you can mash on your gamepad.

the problem is that the gameplay is beyond awful not just the movement and the shooting but the level design and those terrible minigames some idiot forced in.

With this I absolutely agree. Obsidian and action gameplay = much lulz

 

[Cael]

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.

I wish you are dead. That really hurt you? Really?

You. Fucking. CUCK! Go to your safespace and die there of starvation, you millenial, SJW, professional offense taking shiteater.

 

[Roguey]

So either Raymond Holmes was a crap lead designer... Or management (SEGA included) threw him under the bus by attaching his name to a role that in reality didn't exist. Because if there were a lead, then people would work according to the lead instead of arguing and meandering "for quite a while." And even if the lead had left the company, he would have at least provided very rough guidelines. Brainstorming at least.

Benefit of the doubt goes to Holmes because it sounds rather absurd that there was a lead designer for 2 years yet not an inkling of design was produced in concept.

Holmes himself claims he was a lead https://www.linkedin.com/in/raygor

Lead Designer
Obsidian Entertainment
August 2006 – January 2008 (1 year 6 months)Orange County, California Area
Lead Designer on Alpha Protocol 3rd person Spy/Action/RPG
Managed team of thirteen designers, including full task scheduling; hired designers and joined interviews for company-wide open positions; worked closely with Owners and Publisher to craft, maintain and communicate game vision.

There you go.

 

[JarlFrank]

at least NWN2's engine was marginally better than NWN1's - not that that's much of an achievement.

Where do you see the improvement? In terms of graphics, I actually notice a regression.

Actually being able to control your party members, which makes the gameplay at least bearable where in NWN1 it was utter shit.

 

[Mangoose]

So either Raymond Holmes was a crap lead designer... Or management (SEGA included) threw him under the bus by attaching his name to a role that in reality didn't exist. Because if there were a lead, then people would work according to the lead instead of arguing and meandering "for quite a while." And even if the lead had left the company, he would have at least provided very rough guidelines. Brainstorming at least.

Benefit of the doubt goes to Holmes because it sounds rather absurd that there was a lead designer for 2 years yet not an inkling of design was produced in concept.

Holmes himself claims he was a lead https://www.linkedin.com/in/raygor

Lead Designer
Obsidian Entertainment
August 2006 – January 2008 (1 year 6 months)Orange County, California Area
Lead Designer on Alpha Protocol 3rd person Spy/Action/RPG
Managed team of thirteen designers, including full task scheduling; hired designers and joined interviews for company-wide open positions; worked closely with Owners and Publisher to craft, maintain and communicate game vision.

There you go.

Oh c'mon, it's your resume. You pad your shit up as best as possible. And by "you" and mean "I" because I sure as hell will throw (er, threw) any crap that looks good in it. Er, within legal limits, I'm not that crazy.

Edit: And especially you don't want a gap in your resume. HR will defenestrate your resume if there is. HR is the first hurdle, you know that. HR is also dumb, and I hope you know that :p

Look, I don't even care about Holmes. Well, probably feel sorry for him. Because I think management didn't give shit, threw his name in there for bureacratic reasons, and then probably didn't give him any resources. I mean the whole team was on the Aliens project, to the point where the Alpha Protocol "team" started with two people. I doubt he left on the best of terms, anyway.

But no matter how he left, the right thing to do is to take advantage of what little you got. Which is stuff to pad your resume with.

 

[Nano]

Benefit of the doubt goes to Holmes because it sounds rather absurd that there was a lead designer for 2 years yet not an inkling of design was produced in concept.

You seriously think they just fucked around for two years straight?

In any case, the first iteration of AP apparently had enough meat to it for Mike Thorton's voice actor to say that that was the iteration he preferred: https://www.rpgsite.net/interview/2956-josh-gilman-interview

RPGSite: The game was delayed several times, eventually arriving the better part of a year late. Do you have any insight as to why it was delayed for such a long time?

Josh: I have an idea of what happened. We worked for months, maybe even half-a-year, before a major script rewrite occurred. When we first started out, Michael Thornton was a completely different character. Suddenly, the entire project did a 180, and about 90% of what we had already recorded was thrown out the window.

It's a real shame, too, because the first plot-line had more to do with character interactions and emotions, which were more fun to play out as an actor. Also, my performance was altered in the second go-around, which I felt gave me less to do as the character. I was at odds with the session director for most of this because she kept telling me to flatten out the performance while I was trying to inject some sort of personality into the character in a failed attempt to reclaim what we had been doing the first months of recording.

RPGSite: Despite the extra time they had to develop the new version of the game, it still was not considered successful enough for a sequel. When did you find out and were you disappointed?

Josh: Well, I just found that out now. Thanks. And, no, I'm not really disappointed. Given the delay, and hearing from a lot of people about the quality of the visuals, it doesn't surprise me. I had fun working with most everybody on Alpha, but I've moved on. I guess I'm actually glad I don't have to reprise the Michael Thornton role. It would've been nice to recreate the character we originally started with, but it's too late now.

 

[Bester]

the first plot-line had more to do with character interactions and emotions

she kept telling me to flatten out the performance while I was trying to inject some sort of personality into the character

Something is wrong here. Most lines delivered in the Isle of Dogs are flat, yet show huge character. How come? Looks like a case of a retard who thinks if he doesn't sound like a drama queen, his character has no personality.

 

[DragoFireheart]

Substantial layoffs are common in the vidya industry, we've heard this from several sources.

Perhaps this is why the video game industry is complete shit?

Why invest in yourself if you're gonna get laid off after a year? Do enough to earn the paycheck and resume experience.

Boggles the mind.

" but then you'd also have to agree the entire video game industry treats their employees badly, so Obsidian is nothing special in that particular area.

Why shouldn't we agree about that point? And why should we give Obsidian a pass?

 

[Strange Fellow]

Substantial layoffs are common in the vidya industry, we've heard this from several sources.

Perhaps this is why the video game industry is complete shit?

Why invest in yourself if you're gonna get laid off after a year? Do enough to earn the paycheck and resume experience.

Boggles the mind.

Well, vidya is a creative industry, and not one that's hurting for prospective employees. There's no good reason to get into this industry if you don't love the work, precisely because of the shitty working conditions and lower salaries than you could've earned elsewhere. For programmers, that is -- the writers wouldn't make it anywhere else.

 

[DragoFireheart]

-- the writers wouldn't make it anywhere else.

You say this, but things like Kotaku exist. Clearly you are wrong.

The US game market is complete shit.

 

[Mangoose]

Benefit of the doubt goes to Holmes because it sounds rather absurd that there was a lead designer for 2 years yet not an inkling of design was produced in concept.

You seriously think they just fucked around for two years straight?

I don't "seriously think", I'm just giving into my trust issues and questioning everything. Which admittedly is pointless, because from a reasonable standpoint, all of this is hearsay and I shouldn't be making conclusions unless hard evidence is shown and evaluated, which will only happen in court.

ANYWAYS, while your evidence is valid, there are also other "facts" that make me question things:

1) There was no design document produced in two years.
2) Aliens Crucible had a working prototype in 2009.
3) Alpha Protocol had already been worked on since 2006, and Holmes "left" in 2008, before Aliens had a working prototype.
4) Alpha Protocol was assigned 2 team members at the beginning. Yes, that grew to 60, but while I'm willing to praise that, I'm am equally willing to dislike the chaos of the beginning.
5) Obsidian did not simply work on Aliens at the same time as Alpha Brotocol. They were also working on New Vegas during that time. New Vegas was released in 2010. So did AP.
6) In 2010, Obsidian was planning to also start working on a Wheel of Time game. In February 2010, that is. Alpha Protocol was released in June 2010. New Vegas was released in October 2010.

6a) That actually makes me question if buggy Obsidian games was due to the QA team or do to too many projects and too little time.​

7) Feargus admitted the team was meandering and arguing for some while. No design document months/years/I dunno after AP started production. At the very least, a very rough design document should have been produced ASAP because without guidelines no employee knows what the fuck to do.

7a) Feargus and "Slam Dunk" are synonyms.​

8) Ignoring the name of MCA, this person was co-founder, had ownership shares ($$$), and had been dealing with a mother with cancer.
9) SEGA is an asshole, cancelling Aliens without even looking at the demo. Okay, this is not relevant but it is fucked up. Heck, for the longest time I thought SEGA was the only source of the problem. I do still think they were significant to the debacle of AP's production, but now I see two companies at fault instead of just one.

Going back to the "firing" my inferences (not facts) are:
1) If a person A can and is willing to treat a single other person B like this, then person A has the willingness to do the same to persons C-to-Z.
2) For every 1 person that speaks out, there are 9 other people who decide to stay quiet.
3) I could very well be wrong.

See, I'm not focused on MCA, per se. Or even any single individual. I worry about other employees.

Next, legally speaking, this current voice is already taking a huge risk. Because in the U.S., usually stating a the wrong fact (as in specific numbers. Right now all there is is hearsay, from all parties) means the court coming down on you on libel and slander. In current practice, libel and slander are exempt from the 1st Amendment. It's also a criminal charge, not a civil one. That means that this employee is risking the possibility of jail time.

Probably that's also why Obsidian has said little. Because if it goes to court, your attorney is the only one who should talk. You know how it is in law. "Anything you say can and will be used against you" and that actually means that the opposing party's attorney is that one who will do that, and spin it so it sounds even worse.

 

[Mangoose]

-- the writers wouldn't make it anywhere else.

You say this, but things like Kotaku exist. Clearly you are wrong.

The US game market is complete shit.

That is a good point. I know all about the ridiculous "crunch-time" a development team goes through near the end.

Crowd-funding has helped though. Getting away from publishers means that the decisions are made by the people who know how to make games, rather than being managed as a financial investment.

I'm not even going to get into reviews and shit. All I'm saying that if anyone really cared, there are enough hints of collusion for a suit.

 

[DragoFireheart]

Crowd-funding has helped though. Getting away from publishers means that the decisions are made by the people who know how to make games, rather than being managed as a financial investment.

Sometimes crowd-funding isn't enough.

Example: Obsidian.

The culture of how video game employee are treated is the core issue. And because there's no lack of employees willing to be abused, it will continue to happen.

 

[Nano]

Obsidian showed a fully featured demo of Alpha Protocol in early 2008 which looked a lot like the final game.

They started working on New Vegas only after Aliens was cancelled.

Stop posting.