Interview Brian Fargo and Josh Sawyer Mega-Interview at PC Gamer

[Infinitron]

Seems like a dumb argument when we don't even know what specific complaints and solutions he was talking about.

I'm not sure I can even think of an example off the top of my head when people complained about something and received an "unexpected not-what-I-wanted" solution in a patch or something. He's actually delivered some pretty "expected" solutions like those immunities.

Blaine, meanwhile, is probably thinking about one of his pet peeves like lack of item bonus stacking, that barely anybody has complained about in the first place.

 

[Roguey]

3 patches later and the game still doesn't feel right (an assumption on my part, haven't played the game since last year).

Pulling a Roguey I see.

 

[Hegel]

Seems like a dumb argument when we don't even know what specific complaints and solutions he was talking about.

I'm not sure I can even think of an example off the top of my head when people complained about something and received an "unexpected not-what-I-wanted" solution in a patch or something. He's actually delivered some pretty "expected" solutions like those immunities.

Blaine, meanwhile, is probably thinking about one of his pet peeves like lack of item bonus stacking, that barely anybody has complained about in the first place.

The guy is haunted by confirmation bias, he took plenty of feedback from the wrong sources as long as it didn't collide with his beliefs. As a result, they're still trying to fix the design.
He should speak less and listen more.

 

[Ninjerk]

THIS is the essence of Josh Sawyer, ladies and gentlemen.

"I hear what you're saying, and that's totally valid, but that's not the right solution. Let me tell you the solution. I, Josh Sawyer, know what you want better than you do."

I read that part too, and yet his gestalt solutions were often no better than implementations during the IE years; sometimes, they were worse.

My point is that he's an egostist who believes he knows best. He may hear and understand the description of a problem, but his solutions to the problems he is presented with are utterly self-involved.

I haven't taken the Codex's temperature regarding Pillars of Eternity lately, but in general, I'm fairly sure it's not considered a shining paragon of cRPGs even within the party-based RTwP category.

The devil knows his own, eh?

 

[Kem0sabe]

Sawyer has a selective memory, he should have said that he doesn't take feedback unless it's from goons.

Fargo on the other hand, is a massive cunt. I respect Sawyer more than I will ever respect Fargo.

 

[Hegel]

Nobody cares about the aesthetic of game design. Games are supposed to be fun, PoE isn't. We're the customers, we're paying for his bills, hence we decide. Sawyer should have kept his artistic judgement to himself, he was after all developing a commercial product on a narrow set of pitched promises; don't like it? Go on and pitch your own Kickstarter. Even the numbers say he was wrong, BGI sold two million within a year, PoE couldn't even break 1 million despite a market several times larger and the overwhelmingly positive press.
Fuck those cunts.

 

[Immortal]

JS: Yes. And it’s because they adopted the Latin alphabet in the 8th century when it didn’t represent a bunch of sounds that needed to be in Irish. So people were constantly trying to pronounce and mispronouncing and saying, ‘Fuck, I hate this name,’ and [Obsidian CEO Feargus Urquhart] finally was like, ‘Josh. The names of things.’

"When you hear the Wasteland 2 music and you hear the preacher stuff, that’s actually my grandfather." - Brian Fargo

BF: ‘Stop.’

JS: And I’m like, ‘Okay, okay, okay, okay, okay, okay, I’m gonna rename everything. I’m gonna use-,’

BF: Use good Scottish names like Urquhart.

JS: I used Cornish, which actually surprisingly was much more straightforward, and people were like, ‘Okay, I still have some problems here but this is much more straightforward.’ But there was this huge set of names and naming conventions and everything that I had to throw out and redo because I overestimated people's willingness to steep themselves in weird spellings of shit.

Feargus brings some sanity to this mad house. More evidence that Josh Sawyer is most effective when kept on a short leash.

Hopefully Fergie will reel him in for PoE 2.. we don't want another shit show.

 

[Tigranes]

The real takeaway is just how very differently Josh Sawyer and Brian Fargo talk about the whole process, which reflects the different talents they have and the very different roles they play. Sawyer isn't someone who plays the visionary and organises the whole team together in a way Fargo or Swen does, he's much more knee deep in the game mechanics and he's trying to make the game the best it can be with less of an eye on the market or all of that other stuff. It would be interesting to compare with, say, what Avellone's role was like in the original PST, and what kind of oversight style Feargus has as opposed to Swen who is more likely to dip into every little detail.

If you want to whine about how you think Sawyer sucks all you have to do is say, I played POE, I think it sucks. If so, obviously Sawyer sucks since he had a lot of input, no need to dream about him every night and make up shitshows when he says something blindingly obvious. Every game designer, artist, musician, politician, writer, psychologist, engineer, architect, etc., etc. - every person in the universe who works with a client, pretty much - will agree with the basic point, so it's stupid as shit to whine about that when you can just argue his solutions suck.

 

[Infinitron]

Nobody cares about the aesthetic of game design. Games are supposed to be fun, PoE isn't. We're the customers, we're paying for his bills, hence we decide. Sawyer should have kept his artistic judgement to himself, he was after all developing a commercial product on a narrow set of pitched promises; don't like it? Go on and pitch your own Kickstarter. Even the numbers say he was wrong, BGI sold two million within a year, PoE couldn't even break 1 million despite a market several times larger and the overwhelmingly positive press.
Fuck those cunts.

Oldschool RPGs don't sell that much anymore.

You wanted a game that's not just a generic Infinity Engine game but one with specifically AD&D sensibilities, but there's every reason to believe that a game with those sensibilities who would have sold worse. "Why can't my fighters do anything except autoattack? Why do my characters attack at the same speed no matter if they're holding a dagger or a two-handed sword? Why do my low-level mages die in one hit? WTF kind of game is this?"

Or let's talk about one of those "solutions" that folks get mad about. Rest supplies. "That's a dumb brute force solution! Just add time limits to quests prevent people from resting all the time!" Great, now all the people who hate time limits hate your game and will never play it. "Add monsters that respawn every time you rest." Great, now all the people who like clearing out areas permanently hate your game and will never play it. "Add monsters that intelligently fortify the dungeon as time passes!" Great, now your designers are spending time adding complex scripting to dungeons in an already budget-starved game. Also, the time limit crowd probably hates that too. Etc, etc.

 

[Excidium II]

That's why big budget crowdfunded CRPGs will never be good. They can't risk alienating anyone.

 

[Hegel]

Oldschool RPGs don't sell that much anymore?

How do you know? How many old school rpgs have been release so far? How many copies did BG:EE sell?

monsters that respawn every time you rest." Great, now all the people who like clearing out areas permanently hate your game and will never play it. "Add monsters that intelligently fortify the dungeon as time passes!" Great, now your designers are spending time adding complex scripting to dungeons in an already budget-starved game. Also, the time limit crowd probably hates that too. Etc, etc.

Or use your brain to devise a solution. Like decent encounter design coupled with ambushes. Suddenly you're ambushed by a party of mages, clerics and fighters, it's a bit different from your average 13 xaurips of various colors and with your resources depleted, it's not going to be a walk in the park.
PoE's design runs from stupid to lazy.

 

[Infinitron]

Getting ambushed while resting, you mean? How does it make sense to argue that the game would have sold more if it was more punishing anyway.

How do you know? How many old school rpgs have been release so far? How many copies did BG:EE sell?

You should probably be looking at Divinity: Original Sin rather than BG:EE.

But actually, we have a good measure right now of which game people enjoyed more, BG:EE or PoE. We can look at which of their expansions sold more copies. Games can sell more or less due to hype, marketing and sales, but expansions and DLC tend to be bought only by those who really like the game six months later. I don't think The White March was very successful, but from what I can tell it's sold several times more than BG:SoD as of now.

 

[Excidium II]

Come on, it's not even close to being comparable.

 

[Kem0sabe]

I think a better measure of the sucess of these types of games, is how many players actually bothered playing past the first few hours.

A person who bought PoE on the hype and then never played again is probably someone who isn't going to buy a sequel.

 

[Infinitron]

Come on, it's not even close to being comparable.

I certainly agree with that, but Hegel's argument is premised on the two base games being on equal footing.

(Too bad D:OS didn't have a paid expansion with achievements to measure.)

 

[Hegel]

Getting ambushed while resting, you mean? How does it make sense to argue that the game would have sold more if it was more punishing anyway.

That was a distinct question as implied by your logical disjunction (Or let's talk about one of those "solutions"). Besides, there should be little correlation between sales and difficulty, if it were the case FPSs or that japanese hard rpg game wouldn't sell at all.

I don't think The White March was very successful, but from what I can tell it's sold several times more than BG:SoD.

How does a relative comparison answer the question. They are different examples, and I certainly didn't draw the comparison for that reason, however I'll bite. Case in point, do old school RPGs still sell well? You say PoE's expansion didn't sell well, yet BG:EE - the shanty 2d remake of a 18 years old game - sold almost a million (pc sales, no number for the ipad sales).
On a risk-return basis, each dollar spent on the development of BGEE returned more than the equal amount spent developing PoE.

 

[ZagorTeNej]

I read that part too, and yet his gestalt solutions were often no better than implementations during the IE years; sometimes, they were worse.

My point is that he's an egostist who believes he knows best. He may hear and understand the description of a problem, but his solutions to the problems he is presented with are utterly self-involved.

I haven't taken the Codex's temperature regarding Pillars of Eternity lately, but in general, I'm fairly sure it's not considered a shining paragon of cRPGs even within the party-based RTwP category.

And? That's not really a problem in itself as it's probably true for the majority of designers, artists etc. that made some great pieces of work in any era. My problem with Sawyer is not that he's arrogant (and he is), it's that I disagree with his design approach and he doesn't make the games that hit the spot for me.

Honestly, all this feedback crap is so vastly overrated and outright dangerous to the quality of the final product. It's hard to get big enough of a sample or to find that handful of insightful ideas/criticism amidst the sea of requests for romances, story modes and quest compasses from today's gaming audience.

All those classics of yesteryear were probably done with little to no feedback from the plebs yet today with social media, forums, internet etc. so developed and more open communication with the fans all we get is watered down crap that takes inspiration from MMOs and MOBAs.

 

[Infinitron]

How does a relative comparison answer the question. They are different examples, and I certainly didn't draw the comparison for that reason, however I'll bite. Case in point, do old school RPGs still sell well? You say PoE's expansion didn't sell well, yet BG:EE - the shanty 2d remake of a 18 years old game - sold almost a million (pc sales, no number for the ipad sales).
On a risk-return basis, each dollar spent on the development of BGEE returned more than the equal amount spent developing PoE.

Dude BG:EE has sold about 500,000 copies on Steam (less than PoE) after being discounted to $5 a bunch of times. It was obviously a cheap nostalgia impulse buy for lots of people who weren't really invested into it, hence the SoD debacle

 

[Excidium II]

Honestly, all this feedback crap is so vastly overrated and outright dangerous to the quality of the final product. It's hard to get big enough of a sample or to find that handful of insightful ideas/criticism amidst the sea of requests for romances, story modes and quest compasses from today's gaming audience.

All those classics of yesteryear were probably done with little to no feedback from the plebs yet today with social media, forums, internet etc. so developed and more open communication with the fans all we get is watered down crap that takes inspiration from MMOs and MOBAs.

They don't listen to feedback yet feedback is the problem. Interesting.

Feedback is actually a great thing to have, the problem with those games I repeat is the fact they are made for EVERYONE.

 

[Nihiliste]

Honestly, while I disagree with Sawyer's design ideas often, he's at least an intelligent and rational guy who'll go to bat for his ideas without throwing a tantrum. Sadly, in this day and age, we can't always expect that.

Pretty interesting interview overall.

 

[ZagorTeNej]

Oldschool RPGs don't sell that much anymore.

Too early to tell, can't conclude that based on the first wave of kickstarter stuff made on shoestring budgets, short development time, new engine and by devs that spent better part of the last decade making either popamole or mobile games and hence had to relearn the whole process.

 

[Hegel]

Dude BG:EE has sold about 500,000 copies on Steam (less than PoE) after being discounted to $5 a bunch of times. It was obviously a cheap nostalgia impulse buy for lots of people who weren't really invested into it, hence the SoD debacle

You're still not answering. We know that BGEE sold 1 million overall, and that the last AAA party based RPG (Dragon Age: Origins, in terms of production values it should be comparable to BG2) sold just as well as ME2.

 

[ZagorTeNej]

They don't listen to feedback yet feedback is the problem. Interesting.

Feedback is actually a great thing to have, the problem with those games I repeat is the fact they are made for EVERYONE.

I don't think that feedback is crucial and wrong type of feedback (the one that is usually listened to in practice) can hurt the final game. Do you think PoE benefited from Sawyer patrolling the Goonland and listening to all those geniuses that had trouble with Mulahey and had their mages squashed regularly in IE games?

 

[Kem0sabe]

They dont need to sell a lot, they just need to be sustainable.

The problems start to dhow up when you have large developers with ridiculous fixed operating costs making old school rpg, expecting to keep themselves in operation with sales alone.

If it wasn't for KS, obsidian would have gone broke, so probably would larian.

 

[Excidium II]

They don't listen to feedback yet feedback is the problem. Interesting.

Feedback is actually a great thing to have, the problem with those games I repeat is the fact they are made for EVERYONE.

I don't think that feedback is crucial and wrong type of feedback (the one that is usually listened to in practice) can hurt the final game. Do you think PoE benefited from Sawyer patrolling the Goonland and listening to all those geniuses that had trouble with Mulahey and had their mages squashed regularly in IE games?

The main audience, of which goons are representative, benefitted.