People News Colin McComb and Gavin Jurgens-Fyhrie have left inXile

[Infinitron]

Tags: Colin McComb; Gavin Jurgens-Fyhrie; InXile Entertainment

Something is happening at inXile Entertainment. Within the space of a month, the studio has quietly lost both Colin McComb and Gavin Jurgens-Fyhrie, the two principal writers on Torment: Tides of Numenera. Both announced their departures on Twitter:

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This is weird because Gavin was supposed to be lead writer for Wasteland 3, and both he and Colin featured prominently in the game's Fig pitch video. Of the three developers "recruited" by Brian Fargo in that video, George Ziets is now the last man standing, with inXile mainstay Nathan Long and recently hired ironic cannibal Cassandra Khaw presumably replacing Gavin and Colin in their roles as writers. Gavin has since announced that he's moving to Ireland to join Swen Vincke's growing Larian empire. Where Colin will go after this is still unknown.

 

[Cross]

This is weird

Yes, it's so weird that a studio would get rid of two terrible writers after the game they were in charge of turned out to be an unmitigated commercial disaster. Not that the rest of InXile's writers are anything to write home about (with the exception of Ziets).

 

[Infinitron]

This is weird

Yes, it's so weird that a studio would get rid of two terrible writers after the game they were in charge of turned out to be an unmitigated commercial disaster. Not that the rest of InXile's writers are anything to write home about (with the exception of Ziets).

But you see, it didn't, they stayed on for over a year afterwards. Not like say, Adam Heine who got the boot immediately.

 

[Darth Roxor]

And nothing of value was lost.

 

[existential_vacuum]

Do we even care at this point?

 

[IHaveHugeNick]

Where Colin will go after this is still unknown.

Hopefully the oven.

 

[Bohr]

Hmmmmm. Definitely won't miss McComb, hopefully he can move on to a stable career writing for inflight magazines or something. Will always be interested in what Ziets is doing though.

Don't care about that bland Gavin character.

PS: Typo "Gavin and Golin in their roles as writers"

 

[Junmarko]

But you see, it didn't, they stayed on for over a year afterwards. Not like say, Adam Heine who got the boot immediately.

He thought it was a game apparently. They showed him, showed us all.

 

[FeelTheRads]

PS: Typo "Gavin and Golin in their roles as writers"

Should've been Colin McGone.

 

[oldmanpaco]

T:ToN had an actual Butt Pirate in it. Everyone who wrote for that game should have been fired.

 

[taxalot]

Interview thread when ?

 

[Junmarko]

Interview thread when ?

I'm gonna guess 4 pages in.

 

[IHaveHugeNick]

Hey, that's a good idea. McComb seems to have his head so far up his own ass, we can probably trick him that we believe he's this creative genius wronged by bad people and get him to spill some beans about the development.

Get on it, Inflamatron.

 

[Lycra Suit]

Rats are always the first to desert a sinking ship.

 

[LeStryfe79]

Roguey We need some Jack Off Jill about now...

 

[Paul_cz]

Haven't played Tworment, is it really that bad? I thought McComb was good, given that he co-wrote the original?

 

[Darth Roxor]

Haven't played Tworment, is it really that bad?

yep

 

[Cross]

Haven't played Tworment, is it really that bad? I thought McComb was good, given that he co-wrote the original?

Colin McComb co-wrote the original Torment in the sense that he was responsible for its weakest parts.

 

[Lahey]

 

[LeStryfe79]

A Colin McComb masterpiece, before the Jack Off Jill days.

If you ever needed evidence of succubi, the story of Colin is exactly that. Looks like that Pants sellout from Matrix too.

 

[PrettyDeadman]

Is this good or bad thing?

 

[Murk]

Clearly making way to let Monty step in and take over.

One can hope.

 

[Taurist]

Yikes. I hope inXile at least last to release their final two games. Torment was weak, but I liked Wastland 2 enough to be interested in their two upcoming plot-limited combat games. My only hope is that they are doing this to tighten up the team, as I understand it they are all spread all over the globe in some dumb manner.

Losing more and more faith in Larian as time goes on. They seem to be hiring a million not very good writers to supply PoE1-syle word vomit.

 

[Junmarko]

Rats are always the first to desert a sinking ship.

Think it's a different case with inXile, there was two ships, one sunk, the other is still afloat. At face value both W2 and TTON were at odds by their very nature. Wasteland is in-house, satirical, self-deprecating and doesn't care for political correctness. Whereas Monte Cook expects Numenera to be treated as a holy text...

Wasteland 3 can't have people like that working on it, they'd implode.


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[MRY]

As the canonical Luke Skywalker says in his crowning appearance, "No one's ever really gone." I'm sure we'll keep seeing many games from Colin and Gavin for years to come. Both were very kind colleagues to me, and my sense is that they were well liked inside inXile as well as by outsiders like me. From what I gather from Darth Roxor, Gavin's humorous characters like Sn'erf the alien sexologist will fit in well with the Divinity franchise, and I'm sure Colin will land well, too.

The Codex's 180 on Colin is unfortunate, and I think mutual at this point, but so it goes. (In high school, two friends of mine, one not good at basketball and the other pretty good, used to play 1-on-1 all the time, with the better player always winning. Finally, after ~100 rounds, the other guy managed to win. Immediately the better player asked for a rematch. "Nope," refused the worse player, who spent the rest of our years in high school gloating that "you're only as good as your last game." I suppose there's a lesson in that for all of us.)

Anyway, Codexian glee seems misplaced from a self-interested perspective (cf., Obi-Wan, strike me down, etc.), but who am I to stand in the way of schadenfreude?