Development Info Feargus Urquhart's Talk at Digital Dragons 2016

[Infinitron]

Tags: Feargus Urquhart; Neverwinter Nights 2; Obsidian Entertainment; Pillars of Eternity; Pillars of Eternity II: Deadfire; Pillars of Eternity: The White March; South Park: The Stick of Truth

The Digital Dragons organizers have finally gotten around to uploading a video of the talk Feargus Urquhart gave there last month. It's a pretty typical Feargus talk, full of management tips and lessons learned. The talk itself is about 35 minutes long, with an additional 13 minutes of Q&A. As usual, there are various interesting tidbits strewn throughout, which I'll list after the video:

• Feargus reveals that Atari were unable to fund the entire development of Neverwinter Nights 2, forcing Obsidian to invest an additional one million dollars of their own into the game. This nearly bankrupted the company.
• Feargus regrets using the UI-centric Scaleform graphics middleware to develop South Park: The Stick of Truth and wishes they'd switched to something else early on. It caused lots of complications, as opposed to Fallout: New Vegas which benefited from excellent development tools.
• Accordingly, for Pillars of Eternity 2, Obsidian are focusing heavily on developing efficient tools before going into full production.
• Feargus also regrets splitting the Pillars of Eternity: The White March expansion pack into two halves. He says the full expansion took about three months longer to finish than originally planned, an additional 500,000 dollars in development costs. The delay was both due to complications caused by the split and due to a failure to account for the manpower required to support the base game.
• Feargus says that the White March expansion wasn't priced competitively - people would rather buy an AAA game on sale for $10 than an expansion pack for $15 or $25. Future Eternity games will use a Fallout: New Vegas-like DLC model, with more, smaller and cheaper releases.
• Feargus reveals that he's been on the brink of resigning from Obsidian 2-4 times in the past, but he's always stepped back at the last minute due to a rekindled passion for gaming.
• In the Q&A session, Feargus reveals that there's a game currently in development at Obsidian that was "immensely hurt" by the lack of design documentation reviews. That sounds kind of dramatic - I wonder which game he's talking about?

I understand why the Gamepressure guys asked that last question in their interview now. We know a lot less about what Chris Avellone said in his talk - hopefully that'll be uploaded soon.

 

[Excidium II]

Feargus also regrets splitting the Pillars of Eternity: The White March expansion pack into two halves. He says the full expansion took about three months longer to finish than originally planned - an additional 500,000 dollars in development costs. The delay was both due to complications caused by the split and due to a failure to account for the manpower required to support the base game.

Nice.

Feargus says that the White March expansion wasn't priced competitively - people would rather buy an AAA game on sale for $10 than an expansion pack for $15 or $25. Future Eternity games will use a Fallout: New Vegas-like DLC model, with more, smaller and cheaper releases.

Not nice.

 

[Roguey]

NWN2 wasn't worth it.

 

[SniperHF]

Not nice.

I wonder if they'd be better off skipping AAA style DLCs and Expansion packs both. Maybe do the CDProjekt style "free dlc" content stuff post-release for the extra publicity and just start working on the next game.

 

[oldmanpaco]

In the Q&A session, Feargus reveals that there's a game currently in development at Obsidian that was "immensely hurt" by the lack of design documentation reviews. That sounds kind of dramatic - I wonder which game he's talking about?

Probably Tyranny. That game looks like shit.

 

[Jedi Master Radek]

We know a lot less about what Chris Avellone said in his talk - hopefully that'll be uploaded soon.

You will have a lot of fun with speculations about MCA after hearing the talk. He said for example that bad produces were like vampires.

I am in the video From 35:00 to 40:00 I am the guy on the far right of the screen

 

[Excidium II]

I am the guy on the far right

true codexer.

 

[Fenix]

I am the guy on the far right

true codexer.

Now I got the joke.

 

[throwaway]

Why the hell would someone want the general Codex population know what he looks like?

NWN2 wasn't worth it.

So much this. Have they ever addressed just how much of a POS that engine was?

 

[Roguey]

Have they ever addressed just how much of a POS that engine was?

Lovely reminder that if Joshhhhhhhhhh Sawyer were in charge they would have kept Bioware's engine and taken a hit on graphics quality, but Atari really wanted that xbox port that never happened because neither they nor Obsidian had the money to do it.

 

[Fairfax]

• Feargus also regrets splitting the Pillars of Eternity: The White March expansion pack into two halves. He says the full expansion took about three months longer to finish than originally planned, an additional 500,000 dollars in development costs. The delay was both due to complications caused by the split and due to a failure to account for the manpower required to support the base game.

• Feargus says that the White March expansion wasn't priced competitively - people would rather buy an AAA game on sale for $10 than an expansion pack for $15 or $25.

Vindicated.

Future Eternity games will use a Fallout: New Vegas-like DLC model, with more, smaller and cheaper releases.

PR spin. This means Paradox-like DLC.

 

[Kev Inkline]

Feargus reveals that there's a game currently in development at Obsidian that was "immensely hurt" by the lack of design documentation reviews.

 

[Infinitron]

PR spin. This means Paradox-like DLC.

He says they'll still have a decent amount of content.

 

[GhoulishVisage]

Honestly the White March being split in two also dampened my, and other people's interest in playing through it.
I didn't feel like reinstalling Pillars, which I'd found moderately enjoyable but not mindblowing in order to play the first half of an expansion pack that I'd only get the second half of a few months down the line.
By the time Pt 2 came out I'd pretty much just lost interest in PoE altogether.

If they'd bought out one truly great self-contained expansion first like a Mask of the Betrayer it would have kept people's interest in the game relatively high and given them more leeway to play around with other expansions.
Witcher 3 seems to be doing very well off the expansion model. They should look at what they're doing different.

 

[Infinitron]

Honestly the White March being split in two also dampened my, and other people's interest in playing through it.
I didn't feel like reinstalling Pillars, which I'd found moderately enjoyable but not mindblowing in order to play the first half of an expansion pack that I'd only get the second half of a few months down the line.
By the time Pt 2 came out I'd pretty much just lost interest in PoE altogether.

If they'd bought out one truly great self-contained expansion first like a Mask of the Betrayer it would have kept people's interest in the game relatively high and given them more leeway to play around with other expansions.
Witcher 3 seems to be doing very well off the expansion model. They should look at what they're doing different.

Witcher 3 did the same thing though. Well, except it has two separate expansions instead of two parts of one big one, which is even farther from what you want.

 

[GhoulishVisage]

Separate meaty expansions is what I'm advocating for. Especially the longer expansion packs ala Blood and Wine and MotB.

What I'm saying is that Feargus is writing off the longer expansion packs simply because White March underperformed, when I think its underperformance was partially due to it being split into two parts.

 

[Infinitron]

Separate meaty expansions is what I'm advocating for. Especially the longer expansion packs ala Blood and Wine and MotB.

What I'm saying is that Feargus is writing off the longer expansion packs simply because White March underperformed, when I think its underperformance was partially due to it being split into two parts.

He didn't say he was writing them off per se, but I think to make a "sequel-pansion" sell well you'd need to market it almost like a new game, in which case, why not just make a new game?

 

[Abu Antar]

I don't like the idea of smaller DLC. While I didn't mind playing every F:NV DLC, they weren't anything special. I would have hoped for bigger scale expansions in the future.

 

[i.Razor]

Nice video. Wish i was in Poland those days. Would check this event.

 

[Crescent Hawk]

NWN2 was definitely not fucking worth it. I still have those horrible animations in my mind.

His fire has faded.

 

[Pirata Alma Negra]

Feargus also regrets splitting the Pillars of Eternity: The White March expansion pack into two halves. He says the full expansion took about three months longer to finish than originally planned - an additional 500,000 dollars in development costs. The delay was both due to complications caused by the split and due to a failure to account for the manpower required to support the base game.

Feargus says that the White March expansion wasn't priced competitively - people would rather buy an AAA game on sale for $10 than an expansion pack for $15 or $25. Future Eternity games will use a Fallout: New Vegas-like DLC model, with more, smaller and cheaper releases.

One sentence contradict the other. I'm confused.

 

[Sannom]

Explain, because I don't see it.

 

[CyberWhale]

Separate meaty expansions is what I'm advocating for. Especially the longer expansion packs ala Blood and Wine and MotB.

What I'm saying is that Feargus is writing off the longer expansion packs simply because White March underperformed, when I think its underperformance was partially due to it being split into two parts.

Meatier (ala Mask of the Betrayer) but also completely stand-alone (ala Alan Wake's American Nightmare, Dead Rising 2: Case Zero and Red Dead Redemption: Undead Nightmare).