Interview Obsidian Media Blitz: Josh Sawyer and Feargus Urquhart Interviews

[Infinitron]

Tags: Feargus Urquhart; J.E. Sawyer; Obsidian Entertainment

After taking a break for the weekend, the Obsidian media campaign continued this week in full force. There was a rather pointless interview with Feargus Urquhart at VG247, and an interesting but esoteric feature about the graphics in Obsidian's new isometric games at Rock Paper Shotgun. Once again, it was up to USgamer's Kat Bailey to deliver something more meaty - another massive interview with Josh Sawyer. It's a biographical piece that covers Josh's entire life and career, the companies that he's worked at, the games that he's made and the lessons that he's learned. It's incredibly long, so I'll just quote a couple of select bits from it:

I'm not a designer by any means, but I used to make missions and that kind of thing. I would also play the occasional tabletop game, and it did get me thinking in kind of game design terms. Was that the same for you?

JS: Yeah, very much so. I started thinking like, "I don't really like how these rules encourage this behavior or how these rules discourage this a cool and fun behavior." Or, "I don't really understand what this rule accomplishes, like why is this rule here? What good does it do?" That's when I started just modifying rules, just sort of saying to the players, "Hey, I'm going to change this. Does anyone really care?" Sometimes they cared, most of the time they were like, "No, that's fine." Sometimes it was to their benefit and so they were like, "Oh great, sure, change whatever you want.

Then in college, I played a lot more tabletop games. Played GURPS, played Vampire, played Legend of the Five Rings, played a lot of this stuff and so I was getting exposure to different mechanics that were just fundamentally really different from AD&D's. Then I started thinking, "Oh, okay, so this is another way that you can do things and this is what this accomplishes and this is what this really doesn't accomplish," or, "These are the problems that arise in something like Shadowrun." People joke about rolling 20 six-sided dice to do things.

Also, a friend and a classmate of mine, Jer Strandberg, was designing his own roleplaying game and he wanted playtesters. I signed up to just break the rules. I would be the guy who said, "Hey Jer, you know if you do this then you can basically break the game," and he's like, "I don't think that's true," and I'm like, "Here we go, my friend." I'd start building the characters. "Okay, okay, okay, you proved the point, you proved the point!" It wasn't to do anything malicious, it was literally to help him. I said, "There is a structural problem here."

College was when I started developing my own tabletop roleplaying game and playing with my friends. I ran a campaign for a few years and that was really complicated, but it also showed because in my mind, being a young amateur game designer, I was like, "Oh, I want to simulate things more, I want it to be more realistic." But in doing that I also saw, "Oh, this can really slow the game down, there are drawbacks to doing this."

I think that's when I started to understand that design is less about coming up with a perfect decision. Like, "Oh, this is the perfect answer to the problem." It's more about what compromises you are willing to deal with, because there are really tradeoffs to almost any decision you can make. There are people that you're going to make happy, people who are not going to be happy, things that you're going to accomplish, things that you're not going to accomplish, things that you're going to cause to happen that are negative, but you have to weigh them against, "Well, that's a negative, but I think that overall accomplishes something good, so I'm willing to accept that."

Even as an amateur designer I was starting to get a picture of design as about deciding what you want to do. Like fundamentally at a high level, "What am I trying to accomplish with these rules, these characters, these systems," and then thinking about, "Okay, if this what I'm trying to do, how can I get there?" Constantly reevaluating and saying, "Am I still really getting to where I want to go or have I gone astray?" That helps redirect me into hopefully something better.

What was the number one thing that you learned from working with Chris Avellone?

JS: I would say it's thinking about what the player wants to do. There's pictures of Chris around the office with a speech bubble that says, "Can I make a speech check here? Because I really want to make a speech check."

The idea is like if a NPC says something, imagine if you're sitting at a table. You have to write the possibilities of what the player can say. If an NPC is a jerk, think about, "Okay, well how is a player going to want to respond? How are different players going to want to respond? Is the player going to want to slap this character? Is the player going to want to take the high ground and be above it all? Are they going to be quiet and just accept it? Or are they going to want to do something else?" Also like, "Oh, if there's a quest that presents this thing, does that sort of beg, 'Oh, I'm a character with these skills and that makes me want to do these things?'"

He was always the guy who was pushing for us as designers to find ways to respond. Not only to give players opportunities to slap the guy who makes fun of you, but also saying, "Hey, if you have this skill in the game, if you have electronics in the game, you have to find ways to bring electronics to the surface and let a character who specializes in electronics feel like they are a cool character." He reinforced that a lot.

Sometimes when we would play through games, he would make a character with an odd build that would seem kind of unusual and he would say, "Why can't I use these things," which is a good point. Again, if you make a character that's built in a certain way, if the player doesn't have some opportunity to really shine and go, "Ah yes, finally, all those points I put into doctor make me feel like I'm really cool," then that sucks. It feels like a huge letdown.
​

On the same day, Rock Paper Shotgun published an interview of their own with Feargus. It's about Obsidian's relationship with publishers, a topic he's much more qualified to speak about than what he was asked about in the VG247 interview. Since I've run out of room here, I won't post a quote, but I thought the part about how crowdfunding experience has improved Obsidian's interaction with publishers was interesting.

 

[Sensuki]

I see the paid media campaign extends to here as well

 

[Bigg Boss]

I see the paid media campaign extends to here as well

Probably right. Too much news about them damn video games.

 

[Iznaliu]

I see the paid media campaign extends to here as well

Probably right. Too much news about them damn video games.

I would prefer news of what's going on inside the Codex.

 

[Urthor]

If they're really interested in doing some absurd media blitz because it's the end of summer vacation so why not, why don't they do the manly thing and front up Tim Cain and Leon to the media? They're the ones we really want to see.

 

[Iznaliu]

Tim Cain

I'm not sure you want Mr. Triangle in front of things.

 

[Azarkon]

JS: The character that I really liked in college was a holy strategist of the Red Knight, so she was a cleric of the goddess of strategy and tactics. That was the character I made for the Second Edition campaign because it kind of allowed me to metagame in character, like I could have a character who was min-maxing because that was her point.

She was a little non-traditional in a few ways. She was physically not very strong, which as a cleric can be a liability in Second Edition because you kind of expect them to do a little bit of melee fighting, but she had an 18 in intelligence, which is not really an asset for a cleric but that's the character that I wanted to play. As this super intelligent priest of tactics, she was pretty wise and sort of charismatic. But she was also ruthless, always thinking about how she could get the drop on people, how people could get the drop on them and really pragmatic.

...

That was a really fun character to play, just in part because she was kind of against type. She wasn't physically strong, she wasn't actually super wise, but she was very smart. And being able to metagame or min-max in character was pretty fun.

I guess it makes sense that Josh Sawyer's favorite character is a super intelligent and ruthless woman who defies stereotypes.

Black Isle obviously produced some of the best CRPGs ever. Planescape: Torment, Fallout. What was the secret?

JS: do think that the huge focus on really trying to let players define who they were and express that and have the world respond to it instead of just boxing them in. Instead of the designer saying, "This is my story and you're here to go through it," you're saying, "Here is a story, here is part of a story, here's half of a story, and here is a space where you decide how the other half comes into this."

It's saying that when you, I think back to, I'll pick on one of my DMs from high school. I won't name him, but he had this tendency to read big chunks of block text, like soliloquies from villains. It gets kind of boring.
...

I think about that and I think about other DMs who try to bend over backwards to make the player go on their story. That's not why people really play those games.

...

Probably not the best idea to talk about how story isn't central and how walls of text are boring, when the guy is asking about the success of Planescape: Torment. But then again, Josh Sawyer didn't address a single line to Planescape: Torment in his answer, maybe because he hated the game?

If the 2000s taught you anything, I'm guessing it's that AAA is a brutal business. Is that fair?

JS: I don't know. I guess it depends on what you define as AAA. I do think that dealing with publishers is really hard. One of the most difficult things that I think Obsidian had to deal with that Black Isle did not have to deal with, Brian Fargo understands what roleplaying games are about. He gets what roleplaying games are about. Keep in mind that my first CRPG was Bard's Tale, so coming to Interplay and meeting Brian Fargo, although I doubt he remembers initially meeting me, I was like, "Oh my God, this is incredible!"

Brian played games at Interplay. He would get mad. He would play multiplayer games and get upset. The "by gamers for gamers" thing, with Brian, I believed in that. I was like, "This dude, he gets games, and he gets roleplaying games.

Most publishers have a blind spot when it comes to roleplaying games. Roleplaying games are very esoteric and they have very specific needs and the audience is very specific about what they want and don't want. Publishers, when they talk to us, it's like they don't really understand where we're coming from and so a lot of times when we say like, "Hey, this is important," they don't understand why or they don't believe it is." They're like, "No, no, no, this thing is more important because the mainstream audience." We're like, "Okay, but hold on. This game fundamentally is not one that really is mainstream, so when you do this, the mainstream people, they're going to play it. Then the hardcore fans that really love it are going to hate this."

But at the time Brian Fargo was running Interplay, CRPGs weren't niche. The sales numbers for Baldur's Gate 1 was right up there with Doom, and both Wizardry and Ultima were mainstream. Isometric CRPGs became niche in the same way all isometric games became niche - due to the 3D decline. Obsidian ended up making niche isometric CRPGs because all their attempts to break into the 3D mainstream failed. There is still a significant market for well made isometric CRPGs, but it is a very different market from back then.

How have the past 18 years changed your perspective on RPGs?

JS: That's an open question. I don't know. I don't think that they've really fundamentally changed tremendously. I think that I still found that the greatest value in RPGs came from finding ways to let players be part of the story. There's lots of different ways that you can do that, but even coming into the industry I still had that feeling that, yeah, this is about us making a space in which players get to define their own story, which on Icewind Dale was a little weird. I felt a little uncomfortable because it was so linear. It was a fun game but it was fundamentally a dungeon crawler and I was like, "I want to build something with more space than this."

I think when I came into the industry I viewed RPGs as a thing that needed to be designed a specific way, like there was a way. I think this is a common thing, like a game designer early on, they have ideas and then as they start to work they think, "Oh no, okay, this is the way that you design a game." I think now I'm in the phase where I feel like the challenges of designing an RPG are the challenges of designing anything, not just in a game, anything. A chair, a car. Anything at all.

The most high level design principles where you're thinking about, "What are the needs of what I'm doing? What are the constraints of what I'm doing? Who is this for?" Starting to abstract those things and think more like, because you can design a game like Fallout: New Vegas that's... it's not hardcore in terms of its mechanics at all, it's actually a pretty simple game in most ways, and still say, "This game, this is a mass market game. This is a game for millions of people to play, and so I'm not going to go crazy on these mechanics." I mean I went as crazy as I could but then I stopped short which is why I made the JSawyer mod. It's like, "Actually, let me get more noodly with this stuff."

It's a pretty easy game. It's not that challenging in a lot of ways, but it's about, "Okay, this audience wants the feeling of exploration. They want the cool story." I feel like the place where the tabletop stuff comes in that the mainstream audience can also benefit from is the freedom of choice. You can ally with whomever you want, you can go your own way, you can ally with Mr. House and then betray him, you can do all these things. That doesn't require a hardcore audience, it doesn't require a mainstream audience. It's just a thing that I think people will think is fun.

Something like Pillars, there's a lot that goes into it where I'm like designing a class. I like classless systems more than class-based systems, but the audience for Pillars of Eternity wants a class based game. Rather than say, "Well, I'm going to turn this upside down, you ain't never seen classes like this," that's ridiculous. No, make a good class-based game where people can have a lot of options, they can make cool characters. Things like make sure there's plate mail, make sure there's flairs, things like that where it's about feeling.

I think in RPGs you can get lost in the technical aspects of the systems and things like that, but really even those systems are about giving the players a feeling at various points. Like, "How do I feel about the game? What is this making me experience emotionally?" That can come from mechanical things, it can come from story things. I think over time, I've stopped really thinking that there is a single way to really design anything. It's about, "Well, what are the trade-offs?" Who are you going to design this for? Who are you not going to design this for? If you want to do this, can you accept this drawback or can you design it more like a little bit over this way and then this problem goes away? Is that acceptable or have you lost the essence of what you were going for?

I've just started to view RPGs as something that's, it's like any other design problem. It has a lot of unique things to it, but fundamentally it's like any other game or any other thing that you have to design.

I don't know whether Josh Sawyer's dream CRPG is a game I, personally, would want to play, but still, the best advice I'd have for him is to make the CRPGs that he wants to play, instead of constantly thinking about what the market, the audience, etc. demands. Give me your preference - not what you think is my preference, because chances are, you won't be able to figure out my preference and even in case you do, you won't be able to empathize with it enough to do an excellent job developing it.

In my opinion, this is the biggest problem with the mainstream game industry today: developers trying to develop for the audience, rather than themselves.

JS: As far as the future goes, I really want the next game I work on to be a historical game. It's probably going to be even smaller than Pillars or Deadfire. As far as Obsidian overall, that's for the owners to decide. I work on the projects that I get the opportunity to work on.

Here's to the hope that Josh Sawyer gets to work on that dream game of his, instead of what the owners decide to give him next.

 

[SausageInYourFace]

I am glad that historical game is not off the table yet but it will probably depend very much on how well PoE2 sells.

 

[Infinitron]

I don't know whether Josh Sawyer's dream CRPG is a game I, personally, would want to play, but still, the best advice I'd have for him is to make the CRPGs that he wants to play, instead of constantly thinking about what the market, the audience, etc. demands. Give me your preference - not what you think is my preference, because chances are, you won't be able to figure out my preference and even in case you do, you won't be able to empathize with it enough to do an excellent job developing it.

In my opinion, this is the biggest problem with the mainstream game industry today: developers trying to develop for the audience, rather than themselves.

Meh, this is just the grognardy way of repeating the "Games are art" dogma that gives us SJW Tumblr games. Sawyer recognizes that game development is an act of craftsmanship, not of artistic self-expression, and thank god for that

 

[Prime Junta]

People with interesting ideas are capable of making interesting games. It's not very surprising that a middle-of-the-road average dull person's dream game will be middle-of-the-road average dull.

IOW I'm all for artistic self-expression if the person doing the expressing has something worth the trouble, and the craftsmanship to pull it off. That's a tough equation though.

/insert plug for No Truce

 

[toro]

This is how a prostitute advertises that she's available. Good job Obsidian.

 

[Azrael the cat]

Sounds like a commonly interviewed, but nonetheless "employee only, yet manged to squeeze a founder and equity partner out of the fucking company" project lead is on orders to re-recruit Avellone

 

[Lurker King]

Sometimes when we would play through games, he would make a character with an odd build that would seem kind of unusual and he would say, "Why can't I use these things," which is a good point. Again, if you make a character that's built in a certain way, if the player doesn't have some opportunity to really shine and go, "Ah yes, finally, all those points I put into doctor make me feel like I'm really cool," then that sucks. It feels like a huge letdown.

Ever heard of Skyrim? They support every “unusual” build. That’s a good way of ensuring that the game world will become a egocentric theme park mess.

The good DMs, they just roll with it. They create a world that doesn't punish the player for doing what they want, but responds believably.

That sounds like you want to have the cake and eat it too. What if the believable response is to punish the player for doing idiotic shit for the lulz? Oh, wait. You can't do that because [insert sanctimonious nonsense about manchild's ego player's freedom as a justification].

 

[Roguey]

But at the time Brian Fargo was running Interplay, CRPGs weren't niche.

Yeah, they were "dead."

The sales numbers for Baldur's Gate 1 was right up there with Doom, and both Wizardry and Ultima were mainstream.

BG perhaps made crpgs more popular than they ever had been (just as Diablo had done for dungeon clickers), its level of success was completely unexpected. Wizardry and Ultima were both dead in 1998, though Ultima didn't truly die until the following year.

 

[Chainsaw Gutsfuck]

I don't know whether Josh Sawyer's dream CRPG is a game I, personally, would want to play, but still, the best advice I'd have for him is to make the CRPGs that he wants to play, instead of constantly thinking about what the market, the audience, etc. demands. Give me your preference - not what you think is my preference, because chances are, you won't be able to figure out my preference and even in case you do, you won't be able to empathize with it enough to do an excellent job developing it.

In my opinion, this is the biggest problem with the mainstream game industry today: developers trying to develop for the audience, rather than themselves.

Meh, this is just the grognardy way of repeating the "Games are art" dogma that gives us SJW Tumblr games. Sawyer recognizes that game development is an act of craftsmanship, not of artistic self-expression, and thank god for that

Except that in the case of game developers, their goal is to make something enjoyable, therefore being able to enjoy games themselves is a necessity in order to understand the craftsmanship behind them.

If you don't like a certain type of games, it means that you don't understand what makes them good. If you don't understand what makes them good, how can you possibly understand, let alone master their craftsmanship?

 

[Kz3r0]

It's a biographical piece that covers Josh's entire life and career,

 

[Shadenuat]

Also, a friend and a classmate of mine, Jer Strandberg, was designing his own roleplaying game and he wanted playtesters. I signed up to just break the rules. I would be the guy who said, "Hey Jer, you know if you do this then you can basically break the game," and he's like, "I don't think that's true," and I'm like, "Here we go, my friend." I'd start building the characters. "Okay, okay, okay, you proved the point, you proved the point!" It wasn't to do anything malicious, it was literally to help him. I said, "There is a structural problem here."

All the time back then, he already was one of those people

 

[Chainsaw Gutsfuck]

The good DMs, they just roll with it. They create a world that doesn't punish the player for doing what they want, but responds believably.

That sounds like you want to have the cake and eat it too. What if the believable response is to punish the player for doing idiotic shit for the lulz? Oh, wait. You can't do that because [insert sanctimonious nonsense about manchild's ego player's freedom as a justification].

He obviously refers to the choices related to character building. So for example if you roll a sorcerer and the GM throws at you an enemy with strong magic resistances that you cannot possibly beat, wouldn't you call that unfair?

He doesn't say that the players should never suffer consequences (or even die) if they fail a (fair) challenge.

 

[Lurker King]

I don't know whether Josh Sawyer's dream CRPG is a game I, personally, would want to play, but still, the best advice I'd have for him is to make the CRPGs that he wants to play, instead of constantly thinking about what the market, the audience, etc. demands. Give me your preference - not what you think is my preference, because chances are, you won't be able to figure out my preference and even in case you do, you won't be able to empathize with it enough to do an excellent job developing it.

We already had long discussions about this topic. Twice. So let me give you an advice: you are giving advice to the wrong people. Obsidian is a big studio with a huge payroll, and the only way the have to paid these bills given their know-how and target audience is by making accessible isometric games. They were hugely successful by making a generic carbon-copy of BG, which they viewed as a safe product with guaranteed return. And they will do this again, and again, and again, until the “wider audience” becomes bored with superficial isometric games. Then they will move to other things. The sales of engrossing cRPGs are not enough to maintain medium and big studios. That’s why Troika failed, and that’s why an older Tim Cain is talking about replacing stats for figures and the necessity of making cRPGs more friendly for people who hate cRPGs. If you expect these people to design games motivated by passion you are delusional.

In my opinion, this is the biggest problem with the mainstream game industry today: developers trying to develop for the audience, rather than themselves.

The biggest problem is that the world changed and people’s tastes changed. It takes a type of person to appreciate a good cRPG and they moved on to other interests, types of games, etc. People enjoy MMOs, FPS, etc., but they don't want to make a good build. I don't know what are the causes of this change. The fact that the core audience lost interest when it got older and did not ‘pass the torch’ to a new generation did not help, but even if that did not happen the sales would still be smaller than in other genres. The sustainable path of solid cRPG development involves smaller niche studios focused on a smaller audience, alongside the recreation of a niche cRPG culture in which new cRPG players can develop their tastes and communicate about their interests.

 

[Lurker King]

He obviously refers to the choices related to character building.

No, he isn't. This is the expanded quote with the proper context:

The good DMs, they just roll with it. They create a world that doesn't punish the player for doing what they want, but responds believably. Yeah, if you smack the mayor with a bunch of guards standing around with spears, they're probably going to come after you, but if you murder someone in the middle of nowhere where no one can see it, maybe you get away with that.

The problem is that most cRPG players are so spoiled after decades of ego pandering that they will acuse developers of removing player's freedom for doing things in a believable manner, e.g., sending guards after the player.

 

[Chainsaw Gutsfuck]

He obviously refers to the choices related to character building.

No, he isn't. This is the expanded quote with the proper context:

The good DMs, they just roll with it. They create a world that doesn't punish the player for doing what they want, but responds believably. Yeah, if you smack the mayor with a bunch of guards standing around with spears, they're probably going to come after you, but if you murder someone in the middle of nowhere where no one can see it, maybe you get away with that.

The problem is that most cRPG players are so spoiled after decades of ego pandering that they will acuse developers of removing player's freedom for doing things in a believable manner, e.g., sending guards after the player.

?

He literally gives an example of the player being punished for making a bad decision:

Yeah, if you smack the mayor with a bunch of guards standing around with spears, they're probably going to come after you

Is it the "probably" that puzzles you here?

 

[Prime Junta]

Nah, he's just beating his usual drum, i.e. his odd claim that games nowadays are made to never challenge the player.

 

[Kev Inkline]

I think there was a typo, so I fiixed it:

JS: I started thinking like, "I don't really like how [...] these rules encourage this a cool and fun behavior."

 

[Lurker King]

He literally gives an example of the player being punished for making a bad decision

I’m aware. The point I was trying to make is that most people who criticize developers coercion at the expense of player's freedom will hypocritically use this mantra as an euphemism to cater to every player's whims, or demand “freedom” when this is not believable. The result is idiotic game worlds, ego pandering, broken games, etc. Notice that in the same interview Sawyer mentioned that the developer should support any unusual build that the player can come out with. This is pure nonsense and the logical consequence of this principle is popamole games.

 

[Lurker King]

I’m trying to uncover what is the hidden mindset in these cases. It's curious because they will portrait this discussion as a dualistic conflict between immersion/narrative/story/developer/coercion and gameplay/player’s preferences/freedom. That this is a superficial or caricatural way of seeing things is attested by the facts that many of your abilities and gameplay options are conditioned by narrative expectations, e.g., stats and skills are supposed to mimic people’s actual abilities in the real life; resource management is supposed to mimic our limitation of resources, etc. It is true that cRPGs are games, not visual novels; but on the other hand they are a specific type of game that has an intrinsic narrative vocation.