Incline Chris Avellone Appreciation Station

[Prime Junta]

If you want to be a leader in your field, there's always price to pay and 40h work weeks just won't cut it. This applies to every field, everywhere, not just games industry. It is what it is.

I don't give a shit about leaders in their fields, they're able to take care of themselves. The problem is when they try to drag everybody else with them.

And the idea that everyone could be, or should aspire to be, a leader in their field is one of the most evil, damaging, pernicious ones late capitalism has ever dreamt up.

 

[Sensuki]

Partially explains why his whole company was waiting on his design work & dialogue so they could actually produce content for Broken Age.

Every documentary episode "waiting on Tim for the dialogue *twiddle thumbs* ...."

 

[Roguey]

Avellone, seeing Fairfax take a hit, decides to go all out on reigniting Avellone/Sawyer-feud rumors. Particularly the "designers-requesting-not-married" part.

Would have been prouder if the real deadline had been given and then said... "no."

?

The initial deadline given to them by Interplay was four months. This was extended to 10 once it became clear that four was impossible. And people did say no, including the lead designer Josh Sawyer replaced. The choice to be made here was "You either finish this game in four ten months or everyone gets laid off now." Didn't see you quitting, Chris.

 

[Lahey]

Silly MCA with his naive notions of loyalty and respect for his peers. He should've thrown his hands up in the air and quit like based primadonna Sawyer at Midway.

 

[Roguey]

By the way, for context, here's JES defending the extra burden he put on the coders on IWD2 http://forums.obsidian.net/topic/49192-iwd2s-use-of-3e-was-a-mistake/

If you think it would have been better to stick with 2nd Ed. than to change the engine as we did, I cannot disagree with you more strongly. There's stuff that BioWare never got working even according to 2nd Ed. rules (and, in fact, would have been very difficult to change given the code base) that we got working properly according to 3E rules for IWD2. For example: multiclassing. On a personal level, I feel the incomplete 3E in IWD2 was still better than the incomplete 2nd Ed. in the other IE games. Based on the reviews that sites and individuals gave to IWD2, I think that the general consensus was that the use of 3E was one of the things that made IWD2 very appealing to many people.

Most of the work was on myself and programming, and I didn't spend the majority of my time working on it. The other designers were barely affected by any of the 2nd Ed./3E changeover stuff. As with any game, IWD2 had bugs, but the number and severity of bugs was pretty mild compared to the other IE games.

Most of the major flaws in IWD2 were developed during the first few months of the project, when we believed we were on a much shorter timeline. It was difficult to restore coherency or make other large course corrections later on. The 3E implementation was on a three-phase timeline that Malavon and I outlined early on. We never really knew if we were going to hit Phase 2 or 3, but luckily we did.

EDIT: A lot of the coherency issues came to light relatively late in the project, when we started doing extensive playthroughs. By that time, we could recognize that there were problems, but we didn't have time to overhaul the areas. For example, Targos and Shaengarne and the Ice Temple all feel very different and had many different problems during the course of development. It probably would have taken a long time to get those three areas to feel "right" and to better establish the story and characters in them.

Areas like the Fell Wood and Black Raven Monastery were the victims of vision exceeding grasp -- not because Dave made bad inherently bad designs, but because he kept running into engine and scripting limitations. There were aspects of the engine with which he was familiar on PS:T that were different in IWD2's code base, but he often didn't realize the difference until he had put a certain amount of time and effort into going down a particular path. He was disappointed with how he wound up having to implement those areas.

You have a different view of history than I do. We were working on FR6/The Black Hound, a very faithful 3E game, when Torn was canceled. Interplay wanted us to make IWD2, because they knew that it could be developed much more quickly than F3 (F3 later used the Black Hound engine). The question for us was never "do IWD2 or do something else". It was "leave IWD2 as a 2nd Ed. game or make it a 3E game". We didn't put 3E into IWD2 in "a fit of excitement". We put it in with a very clear idea of what we could and could not do in phased periods of development. We knew we couldn't implement meta-magic feats. We knew we couldn't implement AoOs. Given the responses of pretty much everyone in this thread (other than you and one other person), almost every professional reviewer, and my personal opinion on how the 3E in IWD2 came out, I have no doubt it was the right decision to make.

Silly MCA with his naive notions of loyalty and respect for his peers. He should've thrown his hands up in the air and quit like based primadonna Sawyer at Midway.

But he did quit. In fact, he quit Interplay before Sawyer did (who inherited Fallout 3).

 

[Infinitron]

I wonder if Josh would have gotten in at Day 1 at Obsidian and played a part in developing KOTOR2 if he'd quit at the same time as Chris, Feargus and the rest.

 

[Lahey]

But he did quit. In fact, he quit Interplay before Sawyer did (who inherited Fallout 3).

Not due to crunch though.

 

[IHaveHugeNick]

I think Chris makes a poor argument here. IWD2 production shouldn't be blamed on crunch culture. Interplay was about to go tits up, the options were either try to make a game with whatever money they had left and hope it makes a big bank, or leave and company tanks. In a situation like this it's not unique to gaming industry that people rally together and put in the extra hours.

 

[Lahey]

IHaveHugeNick for which part of my earlier post do you require citation?

 

[Nano]

I wonder if Josh would have gotten in at Day 1 at Obsidian and played a part in developing KOTOR2 if he'd quit at the same time as Chris, Feargus and the rest.

Kevin Saunders wouldn't have been as involved in KotOR2 system design, thus not proving himself enough to be promoted to the lead designer position? Maybe he wouldn't even have been hired in the first place?

 

[IHaveHugeNick]

IHaveHugeNick for which part of my earlier post do you require citation?

It was a missclick.

 

[Quillon]

I wonder if Josh would have gotten in at Day 1 at Obsidian and played a part in developing KOTOR2 if he'd quit at the same time as Chris, Feargus and the rest.

Wildly speculating: Feargus & Co prolly encouraged each other/their best friends at the time to quit early with a plan to open a new studio and didn't tell Sawyer or many else about their plans, else Obs'd have 10 owners instead of 5

 

[J_C]

Partially explains why his whole company was waiting on his design work & dialogue so they could actually produce content for Broken Age.

Every documentary episode "waiting on Tim for the dialogue *twiddle thumbs* ...."

It's also funny that despite experiencing the bad effects of crunch, Tim himself leads a company that does crunches.

 

[Sentinel]

EDIT:

It's very nice to be a populist demagogue when you're not the one under pressure and trying to save a couple dozen of jobs.

 

[Fairfax]

Avellone, seeing Fairfax take a hit, decides to go all out on reigniting Avellone/Sawyer-feud rumors. Particularly the "designers-requesting-not-married" part.

It's not the first time he brought this up:

Icewind Dale 2 almost destroyed the programmers in the attempts to implement the new systems (although arguably, that wasn’t an executive row decision, it was a director decision).”

By the way, for context, here's JES defending the extra burden he put on the coders on IWD2 http://forums.obsidian.net/topic/49192-iwd2s-use-of-3e-was-a-mistake/

Crunch is always supposed to be justified by fixing things and trying to make the game better. I believe MCA's criticizing it because it wasn't part of the initial plan, and they knew the burden it would put on the programmers beforehand:

RPGDot: First there were the enhancements of BGII planned to go into Icewind Dale II like kits and a few 3rd edition enhancement. Then you made a complete(r) move to 3rd edition. Why did you consider it? Is IWDII in your opinion a better game now?

Dave: I don't want to put words in the mouth of Josh Sawyer, the game's Lead Designer at that point in development and champion of the 2nd edition to 3rd edition switch, but there were a multitude of reasons. We wanted to do something more with the sequel, not just add some more dungeons, kits, and monsters and call it a day. We believed the 3E rules set would provide a better game-play experience, and they seem to be doing that admirably - more balanced, a wider variety of player options, easier for new gamers to understand, and so on. I could go on, but suffice to say that we simply felt the conversion would make Icewind Dale 2 a better game despite the effort it would entail.

And in my opinion, worthless as that may be, yes: I feel the game is much better for it. The poor programmers might protest, bleary-eyed from lack of sleep and well-scarred by the producers' whips as they are, but I'm certainly glad that Josh pushed for the change and that management allowed for it to happen.

Dave Maldonado agreed with Sawyer, but then again, he wasn't a programmer.

 

[Trashos]

Although the devil is usually in the details (and have never gotten around to playing IWD2), I gotta disagree with MCA on this one. I doubt I have ever seen a quality product that didn't require significant crunch time or men ending up shadows of their former selves due to overtime. I don't think it's possible, tbh. A man has to do what a man has to do.

I already have one divorce, btw.

 

[Neanderthal]

Mrs Schafer probably blesses crunch though for making her see sense an ditch the twat.

Personally I don't see problem wi a bit on overtime, I work six twelve hour night shifts a week an i'm alright, an if it weren't for SNEAKY ELVEN BASTARDS i'd be as happy as a pig in clover.

 

[J_C]

I doubt I have ever seen a quality product that didn't require significant crunch time or men ending up shadows of their former selves due to overtime. I don't think it's possible, tbh. A man has to do what a man has to do.

So you are saying that working as a zombie each day for months produces a better quality product than working with a fresh mind, well slept and with a healthy relationship. Those quality products were good despite the crunch, not because of it. Do you think programmers are at their best when they are tired, their fingers hurt and their eyes are dry? I have a feeling they are making much more bugs in that condition.

 

[Prime Junta]

We used to do crunch, back in the day. We don't anymore, not counting rare emergency situations of at most one weekend (of paid overtime). The quality of the stuff we do now is on an entirely different plane than it used to be. Not perfect, but good enough for banks, hospitals, the military, and nuclear safety inspectors. We're also a hell of a lot more efficient at producing it.

tl;dr crunch happens if somebody fucked up

 

[fantadomat]

I doubt I have ever seen a quality product that didn't require significant crunch time or men ending up shadows of their former selves due to overtime. I don't think it's possible, tbh. A man has to do what a man has to do.

So you are saying that working as a zombie each day for months produces a better quality product than working with a fresh mind, well slept and with a healthy relationship. Those quality products were good despite the crunch, not because of it. Do you think programmers are at their best when they are tired, their fingers hurt and their eyes are dry? I have a feeling they are making much more bugs in that condition.

The Crunch is normal and ok,it keeps people focused and sharp.Having too lax game development is bad,look at all the double fine games.While games like Witcher 3 are pretty good with their crunches.Also a lot of crunches are equivalent of a normal work day for the rest of the world.

 

[J_C]

I doubt I have ever seen a quality product that didn't require significant crunch time or men ending up shadows of their former selves due to overtime. I don't think it's possible, tbh. A man has to do what a man has to do.

So you are saying that working as a zombie each day for months produces a better quality product than working with a fresh mind, well slept and with a healthy relationship. Those quality products were good despite the crunch, not because of it. Do you think programmers are at their best when they are tired, their fingers hurt and their eyes are dry? I have a feeling they are making much more bugs in that condition.

The Crunch is normal and ok,it keeps people focused and sharp.Having too lax game development is bad,look at all the double fine games.

LOL, Double Fine was crunching like hell, just look at their documentaries. How do you stay sharp when you are working without the needed sleep and relaxing? It is the polar opposite of sharpness.

 

[Luckmann]

I doubt I have ever seen a quality product that didn't require significant crunch time or men ending up shadows of their former selves due to overtime. I don't think it's possible, tbh. A man has to do what a man has to do.

So you are saying that working as a zombie each day for months produces a better quality product than working with a fresh mind, well slept and with a healthy relationship. Those quality products were good despite the crunch, not because of it. Do you think programmers are at their best when they are tired, their fingers hurt and their eyes are dry? I have a feeling they are making much more bugs in that condition.

False dichotomy based on strawmen. Crunch and overtime happens when you want to make the best thing possible, aside from what you could do with the luxury of an infinite schedule. Nothing exceptional was ever developed on time once the last bullet-point was crossed off the list at a set deadline. I'm not saying it's good for the people involved or even healthy when such internal cultures develop, but it's still true. There's a reason most of the greatest works of mankind were essentially made by relentless autists and sordid shells of men with unhinged personal relationships - and throughout most of history, that can't be blamed on board rooms or corporate masters.

They want to do something healthy? Stop blaming others for their own decisions and what their passions have cost them. Crunch culture was a thing long before gaming companies were corporate giants, and it's almost always been a defining trait of the exceptional and the dedicated. If you don't want that, if you just want to be drone #5 with the 9-5 work and a steady paycheck, there's nothing wrong with that. But most of the people involved in this conversation, Avellone, Schafer, we all know that that's not them, or at least it wasn't. They could've quit, and sometimes they did, and do. And they may have been right to do so.

But to paint this as abusive, or claim that crunch and dedication and passion-driven relentless exceptionalism is somehow inherently evil? Kindly go fuck yourselves, guys.

How do you stay sharp when you are working without the needed sleep and relaxing? It is the polar opposite of sharpness.

Drugs, obviously. God, it's like you've never witnessed an artist's descent into madness and unhealthy dependence before.

 

[J_C]

I doubt I have ever seen a quality product that didn't require significant crunch time or men ending up shadows of their former selves due to overtime. I don't think it's possible, tbh. A man has to do what a man has to do.

So you are saying that working as a zombie each day for months produces a better quality product than working with a fresh mind, well slept and with a healthy relationship. Those quality products were good despite the crunch, not because of it. Do you think programmers are at their best when they are tired, their fingers hurt and their eyes are dry? I have a feeling they are making much more bugs in that condition.

False dichotomy based on strawmen. Crunch and overtime happens when you want to make the best thing possible, aside from what you could do with the luxury of an infinite schedule. Nothing exceptional was ever developed on time once the last bullet-point was crossed off the list at a set deadline. I'm not saying it's good for the people involved or even healthy when such internal cultures develop, but it's still true. There's a reason most of the greatest works of mankind were essentially made by relentless autists and sordid shells of men with unhinged personal relationships - and throughout most of history, that can't be blamed on board rooms or corporate masters.

They want to do something healthy? Stop blaming others for their own decisions and what their passions have cost them. Crunch culture was a thing long before gaming companies were corporate giants, and it's almost always been a defining trait of the exceptional and the dedicated. If you don't want that, if you just want to be drone #5 with the 9-5 work and a steady paycheck, there's nothing wrong with that. But most of the people involved in this conversation, Avellone, Schafer, we all know that that's not them, or at least it wasn't. They could've quit, and sometimes they did, and do. And they may have been right to do so.

But to paint this as abusive, or claim that crunch and dedication and passion-driven relentless exceptionalism is somehow inherently evil? Kindly go fuck yourselves, guys.

Except there is a difference between having a passionate coder or designer who wants to work overtime because he just enjoys working on the game and doesn't have better things to do, and between being forced to crunch for months because the project lead couldn't set up a managable timetable. Saying that they could have quit anytime is true, but they probably didn't because they like making videogames. And team leaders take adventage of this dedication. I don't know where do you get that these dedicated people just loved crunching from. Most of them crunched becaues they had to finish the game and they wanted the game to be finished. But that probably doesn't mean that were happy about it.

And besides, nearing the end of the development cycle (when crunch occurs) there are far less creative work to do, and more fine tuning, bug fixing etc. And that kind of work goes better with a fresh mind.

 

[drae]

Avellone is starting to sound like a whining fucking bitch

 

[Trashos]

Quality in non-trivial work is a goal-oriented endeavor. In adequately large/complex/ambitious projects, there are going to be numerous goals that won't be reached in the 9-5 timeframe. I think this should be obvious, isn't it?

So you are saying that working as a zombie each day for months produces a better quality product than working with a fresh mind, well slept and with a healthy relationship. Those quality products were good despite the crunch, not because of it. Do you think programmers are at their best when they are tired, their fingers hurt and their eyes are dry? I have a feeling they are making much more bugs in that condition.

Eating and sleeping are important indeed. Other than that, quality takes a certain amount of focus and determination (ie, dedication). I don't know if exceptions exist, but personally I have never met any teams that work 9-5 and have produced anything awesome. I am talking about products of adequate complexity, of course, and video games look like quite complex products to me (I am not in this industry, though).

We used to do crunch, back in the day. We don't anymore, not counting rare emergency situations of at most one weekend (of paid overtime). The quality of the stuff we do now is on an entirely different plane than it used to be. Not perfect, but good enough for banks, hospitals, the military, and nuclear safety inspectors. We're also a hell of a lot more efficient at producing it.

tl;dr crunch happens if somebody fucked up

I am genuinely happy for you and your team, but have never had a similar experience. I have been in teams that at some point stopped doing significant crunch (usually because the boss got old and stopped giving a fuck), and the result was always watered-down, unambitious products. Good enough maybe, but still mediocre.

EDIT: Luckmann above said it better than I just did.