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

[Riddler]

IMO you need someone in charge of projects and hierarchy to keep track of who's doing what and how they are progressing. If someone's not pulling their weight, for whatever reason, there needs to be process to sort out any problems, I know it's probably problematic in creative endeavors as creative fluids might not flow on schedule, but how else can you keep the project running on time?

In my experience, clear hierarchy is necessary to keep it clear who is responsible for what and who reports to whom, of course it doesn't always work like it's planned as there might be personality clashes and whatnot.

As I said, some hierarchy is probably inevitable. The question is how high is the structure, and how do people in it conceive of their responsibilities. Of course situations where someone isn't working out -- not pulling their weight, causing social problems, whatever -- need to be sorted out, and it's maybe a little bit utopian to expect a comrades' court to take care of it.

In my opinion a software house should be organised a bit like a carpentry workshop. Making software -- and this applies to a game just as well as any other software -- is a craft after all. You've got your master craftsman who understands the whole process. You've got your journeymen who are at least competent, possibly extremely competent in one or more specific areas as well as having at least a partial understanding of the big picture. And you've got your apprentices who range from people who are just learning the craft to a majority who's capable of working productively under supervision, to a few that are already very good at some limited areas. The journeymen mentor the apprentices and the master participates in the work, teaches the most promising journeymen personally, and breaks any ties that emerge in the work.

And of course the master and journeymen agree about who takes charge of producing whichever order is being worked on, and how the journeymen and apprentices are assigned to each of the orders. But you don't really need an Assistant Sub-Manager Of Fishtail Joins with a team of Junior Fishtail Join Engineers working in his team, just somebody who's able to make a fishtail join, and some mechanism to make him available where fishtail joins are needed.

Of course the height of the organizational hierarchy needs to be closely managed so that people can operate without constantly seeking approval and operations devolve into inter-manager politics and constant need for more communication rather than being productive.

One common issue that I often see here is that many people, in particular within SW dev, have had bad experiences with hierarchies and thus tries to have as flat organisations as possible and often to pretty great success. The problem is that the case studies of when this really works well are based on two facts:

• The need of very competent, driven and self-motivated employees, something that is a pretty limited resource when everyone are screaming for more developers.
• The cases studies that the theories of flat organisations are based on are relatively small teams and companies (many cases start ups).

Really flat organisations with a lot of "cross pollination" do not work well when organizations scale up, both due to the problem of finding competent enough employees and the issue of the model not scaling well.

As a management consultant I see the lack of hierarchies as a much more common failure mode than hierarchies. This is not due to flat organisations being bad but because they are overused and not adapted to the realities of organisations that do need hierarchies.

Saying one or the other is better or worse is naïve, both are needed to varying degrees in different types of organisations.

In the end however it is rarely the organizational map that is the issue, it is the managers. Being a manager is very difficult and stressful and the method for selecting people for the role is often very flawed and even random (also promotion to incompetence) which leads to bad outcomes regardless of systems.

Most of the time when we come in to help an organisation straighten out their practices the organisation we propose is often based on (when we are doing a thoughrough job) eliminating or circumventing destructive managers or practices rather than implementing some "master organizational plan".

In the end, If the rot is at the very top (which it often is in startups that have been moderately successful) it's often difficult to do anything really productive.

Edit: organizational theories are kind of like diets. People have trouble taking a measured approach and end up with something too extreme which they can't maintain.

 

[Otterz]

Wasteland 2 I was contracted out for by Obsidian, and all the money for working on that project went straight to Obsidian (this went to the company account to help with the debt, though, not the employees – for the employees, however, I did take the money I received for the All Roads graphic novel from New Vegas and donated all of it to get everyone FNV shirts even though Feargus had told me “you don't need to, you can keep the money for yourself”). .

You bought the whole team FNV shirts?
That's actually pretty nice.

 

[Chris Avellone]

Chris Avellone

Could you talk about more canned projects? Like the game you were making with Disney? Or other stuff we haven’t heard about? Are most of those cancellations because of Feargus?

Dwarves was Disney’s part. Kevin or Brian Mitsoda could speak to it more – if they were allowed to speak.

Hidden was a pitch that never got optioned (it was urban fantasy). Which was good it didn’t get optioned, because the idea was taken from another developer at Capcom that Feargus stole and then slightly modified the idea from (a developer who I’ve since apologized to and explained what happened). Feargus felt strongly if we took the idea and made some tweaks to it, it was all right and Obsidian could make it work. I didn’t feel good about it, but to my shame, I went along with it. Yes, I suck and I should have fought harder, but at the time, I was overlooking things and trying to be supportive of someone who had seemingly been supportive to me.

Overall, with Hidden, you weren’t missing anything – Fables comics and the Dresden Files books were better than what was put together (and it wasn't even as good as the Capcom pitch), and because of how it got put into being, I’m glad it never went anywhere.

There were a lot of prototypes and small projects that failed for various reasons, some run by Parker, some run by Feargus - all governing a small team.

On top of this, Feargus would often request pitches and proposals from Obsidianites, then never do anything with any of them (the other owners were also culpable for this). After the second time he did this, I told him while I would help him set up a structure for accepting proposals, I would no longer be responsible for asking for them. He got mad at this, and pushed me to send out the request to be the "face" of the asking, and I told him I wouldn’t because he never reviewed or accepted any of them – he was just asking for people’s cool ideas and ignoring all of them. It was cruel, and a waste of people’s time at the studio – why do you give false hope to people? I will say, we got a LOT of kick-ass ideas (Tony Evans and Frank Kowalkowski – both gone – had some great pitches, and so did Dennis Presnell, if I recall correctly). The cruel bit was once they submitted them, even though Obsidian would do nothing with them, that meant they were all owned by the company and would gather dust. It was a garbage practice that I no longer subscribed to (and yes, I feel bad for the first two times I advocated it, but at the time, I thought the owners were making genuine requests that would be actually evaluated).

Something similar happened with a global request to Obsidian artists to make a logo for the studio – which was done, all were rejected, despite the fact Feargus said he would choose a winner and reward them (cash prize, which arguably all the artists would have been happy to have). While you can argue that was upper management’s right to reject them all if they weren't happy with one, they didn’t exactly say they hadn’t chosen one, and because they also had promised a cash prize for the winner, this caused a lot of questions… because it was never delivered on and never paid to anyone. While this is their right, I think they could have altered the rules of the request to account for them being dissatisfied with all the results and making a contingency plan for that that still thanked people for their work, or asked for new options - or something.) I will say that because Feargus, Darren, and Parker didn't choose any of them, they were indirectly insulting the art skills of our artists by doing so, which made a bad situation even worse.

Backspace failed because Stormlands got them fired because they were in the middle of a prototype and thus, were all considered expendable despite their skills and how much they'd done for the company (again, Feargus's sister was retained, however). I do believe Jason Fader would love to get it back, though, but… nope. Even if Obsidian has no plans to do anything with it, they’re keeping it (I had much the same experience of having a pitch taken from me when it was clear we weren’t going to do Defiance b/c Parker hated it and swore he’d “check out”* if we kept discussing it and pushing ahead with it [Note that if I had said the same thing, you can bet I’d have been suspended or fired, but it was Parker saying he'd check out, Feargus listened to him]. After it was clear it couldn't go anywhere, I asked Feargus if I could at least do something with it outside the company, he refused - which is his right, but I had spent a lot of time on it, and it was disheartening to see it shelved with no intention of ever being used for anything. If you don't support it, why are you keeping it?).

Lastly, there were project pitches that were mismanaged in new and exciting ways. One got weighed down by being initially being (correctly) confined to a small team (Mikey Dowling, me, and a few others, but Mikey's passion for the material was the important heart of the project), but then, new people and owners were added to the email chains and they would interrupt the communication with the potential publisher. This happened in increasing amounts (almost doubling the email thread) until the publisher had no idea who they should be talking to anymore. It would have been a huge win for the studio had we got it, but again, it was not meant to be, and it was definitely our process that clouded the pitch.

And while I kept wishing Obsidian would let Rich Taylor make a game, that’s a rug that’s been ripped out twice already for two projects (Rich was the PD who kept Armored Warfare running and supported most of the studio – he’s also an avid gamer, and one of the developers I have a lot of respect for). I don’t know what he’s doing now, but I’m hoping his talents aren’t being wasted because he should be making games, and making good ones.

EDIT: *I was reminded that the phrase Chris Parker used for Defiance was "tapping out." As in, "if we proceed with this pitch, I'm tapping out."

 

[Ainamacar]

After 14 years of lurking on the Codex, finally reaching posts on this thread with timestamps of "xx minutes ago" is my greatest moment here.

Now that I'm freelancing, I work on many more brand-new IPs (not solely of my own creation), and the advantage is you can mold the property's lore to the game mechanics, design, etc.

Making sure lore and other writing is harmonious with mechanics seems challenging when the latter may be subject to significant changes during development, quite possibly for reasons not involving the writing team directly. For something like Into the Breach, where writing/mechanic harmony seems to be a clear goal, I could see issues arise as, for example, pilot special abilities were iterated upon. (Although the fairly limited scope of those characters and small dev team might greatly mitigate things.) In a traditional RPG with a more sprawling corpus, I imagine the risk of creating pain for yourself down the road is more extensive, especially as text changes for many other reasons.

So, when you're writing mindful of the game mechanics, are you also trying to be mindful how that lore or text works should the mechanics change? Do you limit yourself to those mechanics which are almost certainly stable? Some other method? And do you have any stories where mechanics/design changes caused prominent writing headaches later on?

Thanks for the epic thread, Chris.

 

[Chris Avellone]

so Chris Avellone, what is love?

'Love' is making a shot to the knees of a target 120 kilometers away using an Aratech sniper rifle with a tri-light scope... Love is knowing your target, putting them in your targeting reticule, and together, achieving a singular purpose against statistically long odds.

 

[Chris Avellone]

So far from what Chris wrote; I got that bad persons/managers/leads have damaged/ruined games, may or may not be related to hierarchies

One of my key points with lack of hierarchies is that I feel lack of hierarchy and not giving people the right titles, wastes the team's time. And as I've said, Obsidian was a constant case of "never enough time, never enough money." I have worked on projects where that is not the case, but I'm not sure I would advise doing anything different.

 

[dragonul09]

Is this Feargus the kind of nerd that goes on a power trip whenever he doesnt like something? If he is, then there's nothing worse than a dork on a power trip, insecure little asshats that try to make everyone as miserable as them. At least people are bailing on that trainwreck of a company.

 

[Chris Avellone]

Making sure lore and other writing is harmonious with mechanics seems challenging when the latter may be subject to significant changes during development, quite possibly for reasons not involving the writing team directly. For something like Into the Breach, where writing/mechanic harmony seems to be a clear goal, I could see issues arise as, for example, pilot special abilities were iterated upon. (Although the fairly limited scope of those characters and small dev team might greatly mitigate things.) In a traditional RPG with a more sprawling corpus, I imagine the risk of creating pain for yourself down the road is more extensive, especially as text changes for many other reasons.

I completely agree, and with Into the Breach, I left the pilots whose abilities were being iterated on for last as long as possible, because I knew their abilities should affect their text. Prospero was the only one who didn't get changed in time (he was intended as a "recycling robot" then gained flight, but few of his text comments reflected that). I'm still happy with his text, though, I just wish I could have done more.

Also, welcome to posting if you've been lurking so long! Glad this motivated you to join the discussions.

 

[Blaine]

Something similar happened with a global request to Obsidian artists to make a logo for the studio – which was done, all were rejected, despite the fact Feargus said he would choose a winner and reward them (cash prize, which arguably all the artists would have been happy to have). While you can argue that was upper management’s right to reject them all if they weren't happy with one, they didn’t exactly say they hadn’t chosen one, and because they also had promised a cash prize for the winner, this caused a lot of questions… because it was never delivered on and never paid to anyone. While this is their right, I think they could have altered the rules of the request to account for them being dissatisfied with all the results and making a contingency plan for that that still thanked people for their work, or asked for new options - or something.) I will say that because Feargus, Darren, and Parker didn't choose any of them, they were indirectly insulting the art skills of our artists by doing so, which made a bad situation even worse.

Let me see if I've got this straight: A call went out to all Obsidian artists to submit entries for a new logo, cash prize to the winner, and apparently none made the cut.

If the company's artists are so bad that none of them, not a single one, are skilled or creative enough to create a logo that passes muster, that is a problem.

If the owners are such self-involved, selfish twats that they announce a contest just because the idea popped into their heads and then refuse to choose an entry and pay out, wasting people's time and energy, that's a problem.

We must therefore choose to believe either that all of the artists are terrible, or that Obsidian has a bunch of stupid, selfish cunts for leadership. It's either one or the other, can't be both or neither.

 

[some funny shit]

Chris Avellone what do you think about making controversial games such as Hatred as a way of standing out in oversaturated marked?

 

[Wunderbar]

Chris Avellone, have you played any of Piranha Bytes games (Gothic series, Risen series, recent Elex)?
If yes, what do you think about them?

 

[mildTea]

Could you Chris Avellone share with us your thoughts on what are the odds that Project Indiana gets finished if Deadfire flops or if IRS/prosecutors start investiagting Obsidian? From your posts it seems like fund transfers between projects in Obsidian are a bit too common. Could Take2 take the Indiana team over in case of troubles? Could it all fall apart based on the IP being owned by Dark Rock Industries (or whatever the name is)?

 

[Chris Avellone]

Is this Feargus the kind of nerd that goes on a power trip whenever he doesnt like something? If he is, then there's nothing worse than a dork on a power trip, insecure little asshats that try to make everyone as miserable as them. At least people are bailing on that trainwreck of a company.

I wouldn't classify Feargus as a nerd, he's more "business development."

And yes, when he made the owner rounds after yelling at a publisher or an employee, I did feel like he doing a power trip... that unfortunately, made all the owners look bad. To his (minor) credit, at least he was indirectly letting us know he had savaged someone vs. Parker, who you had to find out much later - and worse, the person getting savaged usually assumed all the owners knew about what had happened, because the idea of owners not communicating as a hive mind (that's an exaggeration, but yet, the perception - all owners knew the same thing) wasn't something that was in the developer's minds.

I will say when developers told me about the yelling (usually because they felt shitty that they had done something wrong), I did apologize for how it happened. However, my apology is worth far less than Feargus's, who had complete control over raises and titles at the studio, so if he got mad and started yelling, the first reaction from the person being yelled at was that they were fucked (not surprisingly - and Feargus should have realized that).

 

[Chris Avellone]

Could you Chris Avellone share with us your thoughts on what are the odds that Project Indiana gets finished if Deadfire flops or if IRS/prosecutors start investiagting Obsidian? From your posts it seems like fund transfers between projects in Obsidian are a bit too common. Could Take2 take the Indiana team over in case of troubles? Could it all fall apart based on the IP being owned by Dark Rock Industries (or whatever the name is)?

I don't know, but my pragmatic guess is that maybe Take2 wouldn't mind Feargus and his cost padding out of the picture (Feargus, at the height of stupidity, forgot to remove it in his budget he sent to them - when asked, I told them I wasn't surprised, and they should expect him to inflate costs like that, but that's why you have to watch him very, very carefully when he submits a budget - he tried to fuck over Paradox, too, because he felt entitled to).

My vote to Take2? Support Tim and Leonard and the team and maybe not so much the owner parasites around them. Do you really need class acts like Feargus who will make up numbers and drain needed resources with deception? It's disgusting, and casts shade over the entire studio through the actions of one jackass.

I also don't know if the Project Indiana IP is under Dark Rock Industries or not, but you can ask Feargus (he likely won't answer).

 

[Chris Avellone]

Chris Avellone, have you played any of Piranha Bytes games (Gothic series, Risen series, recent Elex)?
If yes, what do you think about them?

I played a little of Gothic 3 and liked it. I want to play Elex based on discussions I've seen on this site.

 

[Infinitron]

If the owners are such self-involved, selfish twats that they announce a contest just because the idea popped into their heads and then refuse to choose an entry and pay out, wasting people's time and energy, that's a problem.

Why has Obsidian been putting up with and sometimes catering to a place like the Codex all these years? Maybe, just maybe, it's because internally their culture isn't all that different from here.

 

[ERYFKRAD]

On top of this, Feargus would often request pitches and proposals from Obsidianites, then never do anything with any of them (the other owners were also culpable for this). After the second time he did this, I told him while I would help him set up a structure for accepting proposals, I would no longer be responsible for asking for them. He got mad at this, and pushed me to send out the request to be the "face" of the asking, and I told him I wouldn’t because he never reviewed or accepted any of them – he was just asking for people’s cool ideas and ignoring all of them. It was cruel, and a waste of people’s time at the studio – why do you give false hope to people? I will say, we got a LOT of kick-ass ideas (Tony Evans and Frank Kowalkowski – both gone – had some great pitches, and so did Dennis Presnell, if I recall correctly). The cruel bit was once they submitted them, even though Obsidian would do nothing

I wonder if this is some shady ass scheme of idea hoarding, like if the employee who makes a pitch leaves and then implements the pitch into a game elsewhere, you could potentially say it's an idea you pitched at Obsidian and hence the idea is property of Obsidian. But then again he'd have to read those ideas so what do I know.

 

[Blaine]

If the owners are such self-involved, selfish twats that they announce a contest just because the idea popped into their heads and then refuse to choose an entry and pay out, wasting people's time and energy, that's a problem.

Why has Obsidian been putting up with and sometimes catering to a place like the Codex all these years? Maybe, just maybe, it's because internally their culture isn't all that different from here.

This is our hobby, and as such, fucking people over creates entertainment. Obsidian leadership fucking over its employees worsens our entertainment by making our "revival" RPGs shittier.

Keep this thread alive until launch, Chris. The streams must be crossed.

 

[Latro]

I wouldn't classify Feargus as a nerd, he's more "business development."

ah yes...we call these people "suits".

 

[Grauken]

Keep this thread alive until launch, Chris. The streams must be crossed.

The Fearg is more Slimer than Goozer

 

[Infinitron]

Re: Project Indiana and Dark Rock Industries

I don't know about the copyright, but The Outer Worlds trademark that was discovered is registered to Obsidian, not to Dark Rock. It could be that Dark Rock is only for Eternity and perhaps similar future projects.

 

[Prime Junta]

One of my key points with lack of hierarchies is that I feel lack of hierarchy and not giving people the right titles, wastes the team's time. And as I've said, Obsidian was a constant case of "never enough time, never enough money." I have worked on projects where that is not the case, but I'm not sure I would advise doing anything different.

That’s not lack of hierarchy. It’s lack of organisation. Not the same thing.

Throw in a capricious top manager who rules through fear, and any kind of order becomes preferable.

 

[Chris Avellone]

I wonder if this is some shady ass scheme of idea hoarding, like if the employee who makes a pitch leaves and then implements the pitch into a game elsewhere, you could potentially say it's an idea you pitched at Obsidian and hence the idea is property of Obsidian. But then again he'd have to read those ideas so what do I know.

Strangely, this would even be better than what was done - they were all ignored and shelved. If an owner tried to exploit the idea at the studio, at least SOMETHING was being done with it, as much as the whole situation sucked.

 

[Chris Avellone]

Re: Project Indiana and Dark Rock Industries

I don't know about the copyright, but The Outer Worlds trademark that was discovered is registered to Obsidian, not to Dark Rock. It could be that Dark Rock is only for Eternity and perhaps similar future projects.

Thanks for the facts! (Sincerely.) Now we know.

 

[dragonul09]

If the owners are such self-involved, selfish twats that they announce a contest just because the idea popped into their heads and then refuse to choose an entry and pay out, wasting people's time and energy, that's a problem.

Why has Obsidian been putting up with and sometimes catering to a place like the Codex all these years? Maybe, just maybe, it's because internally their culture isn't all that different from here.

At least on codex the owner is not a pimple ridden plumpy little freak that goes on a power trip whenever he sees something he doesn't like, otherwise the only one left here would be your shill ass, kissing Obsidians butt on a daily basis.