People News Leonard Boyarsky at SINFO 24 - A Life in Video Games

[Infinitron]

Tags: Arcanum: of Steamworks and Magick Obscura; Black Isle Studios; Blizzard Entertainment; Diablo III; Diablo III: Reaper of Souls; Fallout; Fallout 2; Interplay; InXile Entertainment; Leonard Boyarsky; Obsidian Entertainment; Stonekeep; Temple of Elemental Evil; Troika Games; Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines; Wasteland 2

The esteemed Leonard Boyarsky, who joined Obsidian last April and is now apparently their Creative Director, gave a talk today at the Portuguese tech conference SINFO. With a title like "A Life in Video Games", it's tempting to view the talk as Leonard's formal reintroduction to the gaming world following his decade-long exile at Blizzard. For over an hour, he recapped his entire career - his humble origins as a background illustrator and his start at Interplay with Stonekeep, the creation of Fallout and his early contribution to Fallout 2 before leaving the company, the developments of Arcanum and Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines at Troika, his short involvement with one of inXile's pre-Kickstarter attempts at making a Wasteland 2, and finally his work on Diablo III and its Reaper of Souls expansion.

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The talk is a treasure trove of anecdotes, with a particular focus on art and design, and it should be a real treat for oldschool Codexers. Watch for the reference to a certain Codex newspost! What the talk doesn't contain, however, is any details about the game that Leonard and Tim Cain are currently working on at Obsidian, which we now know is codenamed Project Indiana. But maybe it means that an announcement isn't far off.

 

[LibertyRansom]

Leonard seems like a really talented, hard working guy. It also sounds like he was a good boss at Troika. Class act.

 

[Severian Silk]

Indiana sucks, so this project will probably suck too.

 

[MRY]

Project Indiana. But maybe it means that an announcement isn't far off.

Way to miss the "sooner" joke, ferner.

 

[SCO]

Man, this is awkward.


Lol. 'If we're running on NT microsoft wants us to fail'.

 

[Goral]

He forgot to mention he's of prestigious Polish descent though.

Edit:
Saying that not including DRM is stupid...

 

[KILLER BEAR]

So it's confirmed that he works as Creative Director for the new Obsidian game. See 41:47.

 

[Goral]

Leonard Boyarsky saying that Codex article is the highpoint of his career (around 1 h 25 min. 30 s):

In general a really, really great presentation with lots of interesting stuff I didn't know about. And anyone who's saying that Arcanum is shitty should watch this video, things they've done then were ahead of their time and I don't know any other game which even came close in replicating some great ideas they had. Also, TimCain and Jason Anderson are genius (Leonard too but he's a modest guy).

 

[Jazz_]

Thanks for the link Infinitron. Disgonabegud.

 

[HoboForEternity]

Watched till he talked about diablo. It just makes me respect him and the team more.

Also makes me appreciate arcanum alot more. I realized that the singke play trough i have played is just scratched the surface of what i can experience in the game

 

[Kingston]

More like Broyarsky amirite

 

[Infinitron]

Watch the Diablo part too, it's interesting and pretty short.

 

[Flou]

He forgot to mention he's of prestigious Polish descent though.

Edit:
Saying that not including DRM is stupid...

Interplay did end up losing shitloads of money due to that decision. So many kids in my high school played Fallout, yet hardly anyone actually bought it. Though I don't know if any DRM would have made a real difference.

 

[Jazz_]

I think that Bloodlines was finished before HL2 but Activision could not release it because of some stipulation with Valve that didn't allow them to release it before HL2. It was incredibly moronic of Activision to release it the same fucking day of HL2 tho.

 

[Goral]

One of the reasons Troika games are so great was the good atmosphere within the firm and the way they treated their employees. Leonard has mentioned about it in the presentation (1:29:53) but we also have it confirmed by the other side in an article which made me lurk the Codex (in 2006): http://www.rpgcodex.net/content.php?id=130

Tim, Leonard, and Jason really saw a lot of problems occur at Interplay regarding salary, royalties, and general team understanding of how and why decisions were made. They wanted to make sure nothing was in the dark at Troika Games. I don't think many people know this, but on Arcanum, everyone at the company made the same salary and had the same percentage of royalties. Anyone at the company could look through the books at any time and see exactly how much we cost to run. Even on the production side, anyone could question any decision made. There were pro's and con's to this, but in general I still hold a lot of that original Troika sentiment. If you hire a small group of intelligent, experienced people, you can keep everything in the open. It builds a level of trust and feeling of truly belonging to a family. You really feel like you are working together to create something.

Wesp5
You were mentioned (although not by name).

Watched till he talked about diablo.

Watch the Diablo part too, it's interesting and pretty short.

Later there are questions from the audience which are also interesting.

Interplay did end up losing shitloads of money due to that decision. So many kids in my high school played Fallout, yet hardly anyone actually bought it. Though I don't know if any DRM would have made a real difference.

I doubt that but then again I'm from Poland and in here piracy was probably much more common than in USA and there weren't many who could afford paying 50$ or more for a game when the average wage was something around 250 USD in 1997 (and median much lower).

 

[Infinitron]

I think that Bloodlines was finished before HL2 but Activision could not release it because of some stipulation with Valve that didn't allow them to release it before HL2. It was incredibly moronic of Activision to release it the same fucking day of HL2 tho.

lol, did Bloodlines feel like a finished game to you?

 

[Jazz_]

lol, did Bloodlines feel like a finished game to you?

then I have it backwards, they forced them to rush it so that they could launch it as soon as legally possible (meaning: the same day of HL2), I remember reading about that stipulation with Valve somewhere tho.

 

[Moink]

Odd that no one in the audience had played Fallout 1 tbh

 

[Goral]

There's one thing I don't get, why can't they talk about their new, author project? Wouldn't it be more beneficial to start the hype already? Unless there's almost nothing done yet.

Odd that no one in the audience had played Fallout 1 tbh

They've played, at least one of the people who asked a question said that it's his favourite game and I doubt they would be in that room only because of Diablo.

 

[Jazz_]

Yeah I did remember well, the game was ''finished'' (read: frozen by idiotic Activision) months before HL2 shipped, unbelievably moronic how the project was mishandled by Activision.

 

[Goral]

Jazz_
Can you post/PM the whole thing? Can't find this interview anywhere.

 

[Russia is over. The end.]

Really great video. Followed by cringe worthy questions from the audience as always.

 

[KILLER BEAR]

There's one thing I don't get, why can't they talk about their new, author project? Wouldn't it be more beneficial to start the hype already? Unless there's almost nothing done yet.

They don't want to split the attention from Deadfire.

 

[Goral]

Yeah, plus they might want to go with KS themselves and want to save all the information for the campaign. It's their author original idea and I doubt they would allow some publisher to have the rights again and end up with Arcanum/Fallout situation.

 

[Goral]

Maxie
Noticed that later too but "Boyarsky" (or "Bojarski") is a Polish surname not Ukrainian (and a lot of today Ukraine territory belonged to Poland, including Lviv for example).