Is Chris Parker dragging Obsidian down?

[Forest Dweller]

I can't think of any explanation for New Vegas other than Bethesda was being nice, to be honest.

 

[denizsi]

I think the point of NV is to expand the sphere of influence of Bethesda as a publisher (they also recently bought ID) and to keep the interest in the franchise alive and the money flowing in, while they work on something else and plan to return to Fallout themselves a little longer later.

 

[crufty]

, but because "commercial Darwinism" determined that this direction was what the masses wanted

That's the bathwater. Did the masses ask for flower? For Shadows of the Colossus?

I don't buy games with level scaling or real time combat. I think the trick is difficulty levels, or options. And I also think the trick is player tunable content. Post-release modding, little big world style, on scenarios. Maybe focus on the real-time level scaled game play and sell DLC for turn based options to cover $$$ for a patch release.

It seems like to me with PC, Xbox 360 and PS3 all converging on content, it would be easier now then ever to make money in gaming. Troika's problem was probably timing more then anything. That wasn't as easy an option 10 years ago!

Sure, the console tards put a dent on the reviews. I wince everytime I read a gamefaqs score of 3 on two worlds because it's too hard. AH MANG that sucks. I look back at Castlevania where insta-death / no save / level restarts are all over the place and wonder how lazy our youth have become (given that gamers are lazy to begin with :twisted.

 

[Azarkon]

Obsidian spent a single year developing KOTOR 2, which sold 785,000 units on Xbox ALONE. That is to say, better than ALL THREE OF TROIKA'S GAMES COMBINED.

Jesus. It sold so many copies?

I think it's pretty fair to say that Obsidian's financial strategy is much better than Troika's. Whether it produces better games, by Codex standards, is a different issue, but until both Fallout 3: New Vegas and Dungeon Siege 3 crash and burn, it's hard to argue that Obsidian did the wrong thing going down the path that it did.

Yeah okay, but setting aside the question of good games, I'm kind of surprised they're still going. By now they have a shit reputation of releasing unfinished, bug-ridden games: how are they still finding publishers and shit to fund their projects? How did they land New Vegas? Isn't Alpha Protolol, even as we speak, flopping horribly? I don't get it.

Judging by mainstream reviews, their reputation as a dev house isn't that terrible. KOTOR 2 averaged a 85 on metacritic. NWN 2 and MOTB are 82, each. Only SOZ and AP can be considered major failures with scores in the low 70s and high 60s. And before people scream mainstream rating inflation, let's remember that AAA heavy hitters Mass Effect, Fable, and Morrowind only scored in the high 80s (unfortunately, Oblivion scored in the 90s, but what are you going to do). The average RPG just isn't that highly rated, typically.

Having said that, it's clear that Obsidian's in a tough spot right now. They've been on a downward trajectory since the company began, and going after that new IP with AP seems to have really hurt them. While they're not out of it yet, their next two projects will probably be the equivalent of Troika's VTMB: that is, make or break.

 

[Felix]

But unlike Troika, New Vegas has the hype of Fallout 3 to boost the sales. They also have their own in-house engine to use for their future games, if those previews are right it's pretty impressive, and even though I hate Square-Enix they're what I'd call a strong backing.

 

[Azarkon]

Yeah, DS 3 and NV might pull through. I'd be worried about DS 3's release date, though. It's looking like it'll butt heads with Diablo 3, and it's never a good idea to butt heads with Blizzard.

 

[Felix]

I read somewhere DS3 has been in development for some times now and will be released in early 2011 while Diablo 3 possible release date is at the end of 2011. I believe they're smart enough to avoid a direct competition against blizzard.

 

[Clockwork Knight]

Whether it produces better games, by Codex standards, is a different issue, but until both Fallout 3: New Vegas and Dungeon Siege 3 crash and burn, it's hard to argue that Obsidian did the wrong thing going down the path that it did.

Bullshit it is. I'll argue it. Not one of the games you mentioned except for MotB can even sniff the feet of Troika's worst offering. They're probably more financially successful, that I won't argue with, but I'll sure as hell argue that the slam dunk approach is shit. Fuck Obsidian, I hope they die in a fire.

It sounds like you excuse shitty game design because it's financially profitable, which is bullshit. It's that type of fucking attitude that has caused the colossal fucking decline in the game industry in general, and the rpg genre in particular. There hasn't been a good RPG released by a major studio in almost ten years. That's a fucking problem. Troika at least tried, although they failed. Obsidian is just sucking BioWare's leftovers and making bad games with good excuses.

Sure, but you're talking from a player's perspective, who wants companies to take risks to fight the good fight and cares about the decline. Azarkon is talking from a company's. He is correct, Troika was comically inept as a company, and a good example of what not to do if you want to stay in the business. Obsidian's model worked until now, we'll see how DS 3 and F:NV fare. They'll probably do well too.

You two aren't in disagreement. FFS.

 

[TwinkieGorilla]

a little longer later.

*giggle*

 

[Curious_Tongue]

As some of you already know, a supposed real developer on Alpha Protocol posted an angry rant about the game on some forum. Here it is for those who haven't read it:

There was a ton of work put into this game. The problem is that it was a ton of undirected work, or work on things that were just stupid. The Executive Producer for the game, Chris Parker (also an owner of the company), seemed to think he was the world’s greatest designer ever, and created all these absolutely shitty systems and wouldn’t listen to any of the real designers or devs about things that just didn’t work. And you can’t exactly argue with one of the owners of the company when he doesn’t want to listen. He basically took over the game and dictated exactly how everything would work (or not work, as the case may be). The other producers realized this early on and just gave up, leaving Parker to micromanage all the designers and programmers directly.

Sega also was a factor, because they kept changing the design requirements (yes they had heavy influence there), which never gave the producers and designers time to actually decide on one set of features to make and polish. The blame is still mostly Obsidian’s because the execution was absolutely terrible, and it was obvious 2 years ago that this game should have been scrapped. Instead, though, they focused on adding still more features and never fixed the ones they already had. That is a recipe for tons of bugs and no polish… as is obvious.

This game was just an absolute failure of production, and it’s no wonder that so many of the developers left the company, even after the 40% staff layoffs. I am still happy about some of Obsidian’s other current projects, New Vegas included, because they are going pretty well. Their big unannounced project is looking great and is already much better than AP ever was, and that may end up being the game that everyone was looking for with AP.

Sega should have canceled AP instead of Aliens.

There's debate on whether it's real or not but I'm willing to bet that it is.

I know threads have already been retardo'd because it was posted in the discussion thread, but this raises some interesting issues so FUCK YOU MODS. This totally deserves it's own thread.

Mainly what I find curious is the specific mention of Chris Parker. Chris Avellone, the creative lead, is nowhere mentioned, nor the company CEO, or anyone else in a high position. Whoever wrote that seems to think that the majority of the blame lies solely with Chris Parker. Which raises some interesting questions. First, we all know that every one of Obsidian's games have been unpolished or unoptimized at release. And after AP being continually delayed and still being unpolished, we can't really blame the publishers anymore. They obviously have some internal management issues that are the root of these problems. And if Chris Parker, as stated by the unknown developer, is the root of those problems in AP, might it also be true for their other games? I don't know what exactly his roles were for those other games, but I'd imagine they'd be similar? What do you think? CAN WE BLAME IT ALL ON ONE MAN?

Because someone is obviously fucking up over there.

Chris Avellone

Are you the disgruntled developer quoted in this post?

 

[TemplarGR]

 

[Forest Dweller]

As some of you already know, a supposed real developer on Alpha Protocol posted an angry rant about the game on some forum. Here it is for those who haven't read it:

There was a ton of work put into this game. The problem is that it was a ton of undirected work, or work on things that were just stupid. The Executive Producer for the game, Chris Parker (also an owner of the company), seemed to think he was the world’s greatest designer ever, and created all these absolutely shitty systems and wouldn’t listen to any of the real designers or devs about things that just didn’t work. And you can’t exactly argue with one of the owners of the company when he doesn’t want to listen. He basically took over the game and dictated exactly how everything would work (or not work, as the case may be). The other producers realized this early on and just gave up, leaving Parker to micromanage all the designers and programmers directly.

Sega also was a factor, because they kept changing the design requirements (yes they had heavy influence there), which never gave the producers and designers time to actually decide on one set of features to make and polish. The blame is still mostly Obsidian’s because the execution was absolutely terrible, and it was obvious 2 years ago that this game should have been scrapped. Instead, though, they focused on adding still more features and never fixed the ones they already had. That is a recipe for tons of bugs and no polish… as is obvious.

This game was just an absolute failure of production, and it’s no wonder that so many of the developers left the company, even after the 40% staff layoffs. I am still happy about some of Obsidian’s other current projects, New Vegas included, because they are going pretty well. Their big unannounced project is looking great and is already much better than AP ever was, and that may end up being the game that everyone was looking for with AP.

Sega should have canceled AP instead of Aliens.

There's debate on whether it's real or not but I'm willing to bet that it is.

I know threads have already been retardo'd because it was posted in the discussion thread, but this raises some interesting issues so FUCK YOU MODS. This totally deserves it's own thread.

Mainly what I find curious is the specific mention of Chris Parker. Chris Avellone, the creative lead, is nowhere mentioned, nor the company CEO, or anyone else in a high position. Whoever wrote that seems to think that the majority of the blame lies solely with Chris Parker. Which raises some interesting questions. First, we all know that every one of Obsidian's games have been unpolished or unoptimized at release. And after AP being continually delayed and still being unpolished, we can't really blame the publishers anymore. They obviously have some internal management issues that are the root of these problems. And if Chris Parker, as stated by the unknown developer, is the root of those problems in AP, might it also be true for their other games? I don't know what exactly his roles were for those other games, but I'd imagine they'd be similar? What do you think? CAN WE BLAME IT ALL ON ONE MAN?

Because someone is obviously fucking up over there.

Chris Avellone

Are you the disgruntled developer quoted in this post?

Obviously not. That was written by a grunt, not someone in a senior management position.

 

[Quillon]

"and it’s no wonder that so many of the developers left the company, even after the 40% staff layoffs."

When did this happen? Sounds like it was before Stormlands layoffs.

He was talking about Obs then(when they were making NV), like we do now: "So many talented people left" etc.

 

[IHaveHugeNick]

Why the fuck do you necro a 10 year old post?

 

[Forest Dweller]

Can't do math?

 

[Curious_Tongue]

Chris Avellone was taking a swipe at Chris Parker in another thread. I googled his name and this thread came up.

 

[Chris Avellone]

Chris Avellone

Are you the disgruntled developer quoted in this post?

No, we never knew for certain who it was, only guesses - but that's all they were, guesses. It caused a wave of gruntles within the company, though.

On the subject of that post, though, Parker was pretty heavy-handed in design and interface, for sure - for design, the impact on systems was strongest (I always felt bad for any Systems Designer who had to work with him).

I had to deal with him on interface and eventually gave up b/c of how he was managing it and because it was wasting so much time we didn't have.

 

[Feargus Jewhart]

No, we never knew for certain who it was, only guesses - but that's all they were, guesses. It caused a wave of gruntles within the company, though.

On the subject of that post, though, Parker was pretty heavy-handed in design and interface, for sure - for design, the impact on systems was strongest (I always felt bad for any Systems Designer who had to work with him).

I had to deal with him on interface and eventually gave up b/c of how he was managing it and because it was wasting so much time we didn't have.

Can you tell, did you ever feel like the ...questionable... behaviour in Obsidians management could have been fixed? Do you think something like Microsoft taking Obsidian in their hands will help them focus and force the management to calm down with the questionable behaviour?

Also, would you consider working with Sawyer on his bikeshop simulator?

 

[aweigh]

I wonder if Obsidian devs ever drew giant dicks and vaginas on the enemy creature designs like how the Stones of Arnheim devs did when Cleve was working there.

 

[Forest Dweller]

Looking back on that initial post, if I had included Feargus along with Chris Parker, it seems it would have been pretty accurate.

 

[Luckmann]

I wonder if Obsidian devs ever drew giant dicks and vaginas on the enemy creature designs like how the Stones of Arnheim devs did when Cleve was working there.

Since there is no way to know for sure, we can only assume that yes, yes they did.