Fairfax
Arcane
- Joined
- Jun 17, 2015
- Messages
- 3,518
MCA joined another project, this time a book about writing for video games:
Some interviews with the writers involved and more info here.
Some interviews with the writers involved and more info here.
CHRIS AVELLONE
Chris started his career at Interplay’s Black Isle Studios division where he worked on Planescape: Torment (Lead Designer), Fallout 2, the Icewind Dale series, and Baldur’s Gate: Dark Alliance, andBaldur’s Gate 3 and Fallout 3 (both canceled). Chris was the Lead Designer on Star Wars Knights of the Old Republic II: The Sith Lords, moved on to a Senior Design role on Neverwinter Nights 2 andMask of the Betrayer, worked briefly as the Creative Lead of the Aliens RPG, then went on to lead design on Alpha Protocol, SEGA’s espionage RPG. He worked on Fallout: New Vegas as a Senior Designer, went on to be Project Director of most of the Fallout New Vegas DLCs (Dead Money, Old World Blues, and Lonesome Road), then back to narrative design on Pillars of Eternity. Other work includes inXile’s Wasteland 2 (area and systems designer), FTL: Advanced Edition (encounter design), Wayside Creations’ Grimrock movie treatment (and consultant on Fallout: Nuka-Break), inXile’s Kickstarter Torment: Tides of Numenera, and Divinity: Original Sin II by Larian Studios.
How Chris Became a Professional Video Game Writer
My background was as an Architecture/Fine Arts minor at VA Tech (2 years), and then once my architecture professors pointed out that even if they liked the buildings I was designing (I was an “A” student, I’m proud to say), my sketchbook was often filled with more sentences than sketches… and it made me seriously question what I was doing with my life, so I switched over to English at William and Mary for the next three years.
I had no idea what I’d do with my career, but during this entire process (including high school) I had been gaming as a gamemaster and had a stack of pen-and-paper supplements and adventures I’d created for various campaigns – superheroes, fantasy, sci-fi, etc., so rather than let them rot, I started submitting them. Most of them were rejected, but persistence paid off: I kept at it until I got a few gigs, which while cool, they were not enough to pay the bills or maintain a full-time job writing. Still, I was doing what I enjoyed, so the money didn’t matter so much as long as I could support myself in other ways.
However, it turns out I did well enough on these small gigs I was able to use my work there to get an interview with Interplay Entertainment as a junior game designer (a few of the other authors working in pen-and-paper games were also working there and moonlighting there). Interplay was looking for designers for their “TSR” division (Dungeons and Dragons) and especially for the D&D Planescape license, so I flew across country, pitched my take on how to do a Planescape game (which became the opening and premise for Planescape: Torment) and then they hired me… and I’ve been in game development ever since. Like, 20 years since. Wow. Maybe 21. (I’m a writer, so math is hard, forgive me.)