Company News Obsidian reportedly about to be acquired by Microsoft

[Prime Junta]

It's like saying Goodfellas featured 26 shoot-ups and 8 different cars, so the spiritual sequel in 2019 damn well better match those numbers. It's stupid and it's counterproductive to gamers getting good games.

THE ENTIRE GAME INDUSTRY IS WRNOG

it is, really

and since I'm on my soapbox

I think that was a big problem with the Kickstarter boom -- the projects that succeeded (money-wise) were mostly simple appeals to nostalgia. They could have served as a springboard to greater things, but they did not. Instead we got retreads of safe old concepts, some more successfully (Pillars) some less so (T:ToN, BT4).

It's not just the mid-budget Kickstarter shit though, the whole game industry is, for the most part, stupidly conservative. We get the same thing over and over again wrapped in a shiny new package, the occasional niche indie aside -- and when there is something that breaks the formula and succeeds, immediately we get a ton of imitators.

I recently played another game marketed with the magic touch of Chris Avellone -- Prey. And it was fine. It was just fine. There was nothing actually wrong with it. It was also utterly predictable and therefore completely forgettable. I already played System Shock, and Bioshock did art deco aesthetics better. So why waste years of your life retreading something that's already been done really well? Especially if you are genuinely creative and have demonstrated you have genuinely crazy new ideas that will actually work?

Seriously Chris, stop whoring yourself out to the next outfit that wants some of your magic gold dust to sprinkle on their predictable nostalgia project and do something new again. I know you have it in you.

 

[Shadenuat]

We get the same thing over and over again wrapped in a shiny new package, the occasional niche indie aside -- and when there is something that breaks the formula and succeeds, immediately we get a ton of imitators.

Idk if you noticed, that is how business works

Also, there's nothing wrong with giving people what they want

Also, conservative industry abandons old shit on the road all the time, when they feel that good parts of it are not worth the effort. Then kickstarters try to play nostalgia card and revive it, yet the things just crumble in their hands into a dust as if people never understood why these things worked

Yeat at the same time, people who do understand why these things worked manage to make them spring to life because they loved them for reals and have real passion.

 

[Fenix]

It's stupid

It's not stupid. Stupid is something that normal person can do.
That was something, lobotomite only can do.

game industry is, for the most part, stupidly conservative

It's just capitalistic.

This kickstarter thing - what it actually did?
Before there was Big Capitalist above - that publisher.
Kickstarter allowed to become one a capitalist himself.
So what happened? That small, exploited creative person became capitalist - and started to do exactly the same things that Big Capitalist forcedhim to do.

For all the magic to happen you need first to etch capitalist from yourself.
Or not to be a capitalist in the first place, but that's really a personal feat.

 

[Roguey]

BT4).

Wouldn't really call this a retread. M&M X, Grimoire, those were retreads. This was some weird card game/blobber hybrid.

 

[Prime Junta]

BT4).

Wouldn't really call this a retread. M&M X, Grimoire, those were retreads. This was some weird card game/blobber hybrid.

Fair. It was pitched as a retread though, even if it fails to actually be one.

 

[Roguey]

Fair. It was pitched as a retread though, even if it fails to actually be one.

Didn't Fargo talk about the Hearthstone stuff pretty early?
https://www.ign.com/articles/2015/01/24/brian-fargo-announces-first-bards-tale-sequel-in-27-years

InXile Entertainment is planning a Kickstarter for The Bard's Tale IV. Details about the game are still light, but Fargo did say the team will be pulling from the original as far as overarching ideas go. From a story perspective, players will be returning to Skara Brae, where it all began. But on the gameplay side of things, Fargo is planning a deviation.

"Traditional turn-based combat," as Fargo calls it, bases turns on varying factors, creating battles in which different characters attacked at different times, often alternating between opposing sides. But in The Bard's Tale IV, teams attack all at once. This increases the pace of the combat, and allows for a different set of tactics than the traditional system might allow.

"There will be plenty of combat diversity and depth," Fargo said. "You look at something like Hearthstone, for example. It's sort of that going back-and-forth process, and you see the complexity and detail and strategy and nuance that can happen. It's really an amazing system. I love those modern influences. I took a lot away from that, and see things we need to do with our combat system."

 

[Prime Junta]

Good catch. Example withdrawn.

 

[selkin]

I just want to play with the Tim-Boyarsky game. The rest of Obsidian is either invisible to me and/or not interesting to me.

As for Feargus, with Microsoft buying Obsidian, he will not be untouchable anymore. He may stay on as a CEO, but hope he will get his chubby ass fired at his first hitch or error.

 

[Prime Junta]

As for Feargus, with Microsoft buying Obsidian, he will not be untouchable anymore. He may stay on as a CEO, but hope he will get his chubby ass fired at his first hitch or error.

I think he'll work out just fine as a Microsoft executive.

 

[IHaveHugeNick]

As for Feargus, with Microsoft buying Obsidian, he will not be untouchable anymore. He may stay on as a CEO, but hope he will get his chubby ass fired at his first hitch or error.

I think he'll work out just fine as a Microsoft executive.

Please, Feargus would never had the balls to do this.

 

[selkin]

by the way I don't follow MS' news but the new ceo isn't that bad I guess?
not that this has anything to do with MS buying a small indie firm..

 

[Sacred82]

That leaves us with one final question, though - what's going to happen to Josh Sawyer?

don't all Obsidian related questions boil down to this

 

[lukaszek]

deterministic system > RNG

 

[Nano]

by the way I don't follow MS' news but the new ceo isn't that bad I guess?

No. The new CEO is the one that turned Microsoft into a spyware company. He's the worst one yet.

 

[selkin]

by the way I don't follow MS' news but the new ceo isn't that bad I guess?

No. The new CEO is the one that turned Microsoft into a spyware company. He's the worst one yet.

That's not... good :D
But hey, Amazon's chief Jeff Bezos made the place a nightmare to work at but they might produce some quality sci-fi series in the future... ? :D

 

[baud]

So if Microsoft kick the management out of Obsidian, Chris would be ready to go back to work there.

 

[Sacred82]

So if Microsoft kick the management out of Obsidian, Chris would be ready to go back to work there.

as the sole employee.



Do Not Underestimate The Evil™ That Is Microsoft

 

[Bohrain]

In the best case scenario Steve Balmer publicly beheads Feargus, Avellone joins as a writer for Project Indiana and the game will be the greatest incline known to man.
Realistically speaking Feargus and friends will get a few years to do fuckall and a golden parachute. Indiana will be Win10 exclusive piece of garbage and we'll never get anything worthwhile from Obsidian in the future.

 

[IHaveHugeNick]

Everything's gonna be all right.

 

[Vaarna_Aarne]

To quote an old Codex proverb:


ULTIMATE DOOM

 

[Theldaran]

Feargus wants his money, oh yes.

 

[J_C]

Instead we got retreads of safe old concepts, some more successfully (Pillars) some less so (T:ToN, BT4).

But isn't this what most KS backers wanted? We have seen what the "brave, new" concepts are in the modern gaming industry (Dragon Age 2 and the like), and we wanted something oldschool, something which we liked in the past?

 

[Prime Junta]

But isn't this what most KS backers wanted? We have seen what the "brave, new" concepts are in the modern gaming industry (Dragon Age 2 and the like), and we wanted something oldschool, something which we liked in the past?

Yes, it was. I wanted it too.

As I never tire of repeating, only Disco Elysium can save us now. It's at the same time old-school and it pushes the limits of the medium.

 

[Prime Junta]

I have issues with these. Several ones. The first one is that KS is working *exactly* as intended. We fund money, to draw an analogy to the stock market, based on trust. We knew some names and these names were oft repeated to ensure that this trust was evoked. We paid money based on our previous estimate of the abilities of these people. And, as is often repeated, past performance is not an estimate of the future, we found that simply waving flags around actually addresses no real problems. Kickstarter is a platform to connect these people to the user base, and, it did that job fine. If anyone farked up, it was us.

Oh yes, it was us. We're terrible people.

However, my naive hope was that the KS thing would have been a spark that starts a fire. That is, the nostalgia projects that got funded show that there is room in the market for mid-budget niche games that don't cater to the lowest-common, which would give publishers and studios courage to be more experimental with them.

That didn't happen and it makes me sad.

Secondly, blaming Chris for lukewarm games is futile. he did not lead the games nor did he write significant content in them. His role was rather limited and thus not sufficient to influence the quality of the games.

But that's not my accusation. I'm blaming him precisely for monetising his face as a Kickstarter stretch goal/limited-role consultant rather than putting that energy into taking a lead role in something that would be truly Avellonian again. I refuse to believe he doesn't have another Torment or KOTOR2 in him (and I'd even settle for an Alpha Protocol or Old World Blues in a pinch.)

 

[Mustawd]

What the KS era has taught me is that many people who made games we liked in the past have either forgotten how to make those games, or have decided to use crowdfunding as a tool to get enough preorders to make their mainstream appeal games anyhow (e.g. BT4 and Phoenix Point).

But that's not my accusation. I'm blaming him precisely for monetising his face as a Kickstarter stretch goal/limited-role consultant rather than putting that energy into taking a lead role in something that would be truly Avellonian again. I refuse to believe he doesn't have another Torment or KOTOR2 in him (and I'd even settle for an Alpha Protocol or Old World Blues in a pinch.)

I don’t even understand this. He’s obviously happier and more content in his new role. Leave the man alone. He’s not your personal rpg genie.