Matt Chat Thread

[Hines]

Kevin Saunders has colon cancer and his odds of beating it don't look great.

 

[MRY]

Kevin Saunders has colon cancer and his odds of beating it don't look great.

Let me give you a taste of what a class act Kevin is. In between rounds of chemo, he invited me out to lunch to give me wisdom regarding managing and designing Fallen Gods. Not the slightest hint of low spirits or bitterness. If anyone deserves to roll a natural 20 and beat this crap it’s him. Wonderful person.

 

[Ninjerk]

Reverse chronology was the wrong decision that was a hard start

 

[Infinitron]

Wow, what an episode.

It's interesting to see the different focus that Kevin has when talking about Torment's failure. George & Colin basically went "it was overscoped, next question" while Kevin seems more regretful about a range of issues surrounding the game's crowdfunding and early development.

 

[Infinitron]

More Torment:

Kevin is back to talk more about the development of Torment: Tides of Numenera and how he applied lessons he learned from his earlier involvement Shattered Galaxy MMO. We also discuss the pros and cons of commercial publishers vs. crowdfunding and the fallout from the infamous turn-based vs. realtime with pause poll for TS:T. How faithful is Torment to Monte Cook's vision?

 

[Infinitron]

Oof, at the end Kevin reveals he was so bummed about getting kicked off Torment's development that he never played it. He also appears to confirm the stories about Monte Cook's complaints about the game's portraits.

Matt says probably two more episodes left.

 

[Infinitron]

In the third installment, Kevin talks about Dwarfs, Alpha Protocol, Neverwinter Nights 2 and the expansions Mask of the Betrayer and Storm of Zehir. We also chat about pre-made vs. custom characters, procedural vs. handmade content, and the future of natural language processing in games.

 

[Infinitron]

So, now Matt says there are still two more episodes left.

 

[Infinitron]

Matt looking to continue his new wave of RPG interviews:



Crooked Bee

 

[Infinitron]

It's the final episode after all:

In this final and often emotional segment, Kevin chats about Knights of the Old Republic II and his early days, when he worked on some of the first MMOs (Shattered Galaxy and Nexus). We then chat about games tend to have bad endings (so to speak). Kevin wraps up with some honest reflections on his life, family, and friends, and ponders if the time he's spent making games was really worth it.

Oh my.

 

[Infinitron]

The emotional part starts at 35:00. It's really touching.

Doesn't look like Matt has any new interviews lined up after this.

 

[Bester]

Kevin Saunders has colon cancer and his odds of beating it don't look great.

My god the awkward silences Matt gives him, and then doesn't want to go into the details of cancer at all and looks to switching the subject. Holy crap.

 

[Infinitron]

Well yeah, it's a gaming interview show and Kevin dropped that IRL bomb right at the beginning. I'm not sure he really wanted or expected to have a long talk about it (why go on Matt Chat to talk about your cancer) and Matt suspected that he didn't want it, and it left the conversation in a position where it was unclear how to proceed and awkward to move on. I'm sure a more verbally nimble interviewer would have dealt with it better, of course.

 

[zwanzig_zwoelf]

Interview with Winston Douglas Wood of Phantasie, Star Command and (cough) Starfire (cough) fame.

 

[Infinitron]

Interview with Winston Douglas Wood of Phantasie, Star Command and (cough) Starfire (cough) fame.

How'd you help?

 

[Bester]

GOG has an input form where you can propose your game, why do you need some "special knowledge"? Just use it.

 

[Infinitron]

People underestimate how many games are missing from GOG because the rights holders are just mentally checked out and "out of the game". A volunteer middleman/trusted party willing to do the work can do a lot of good here, because GOG aren't going to do it themselves.

 

[zwanzig_zwoelf]

How'd you help?

Just put them in touch with each other, nothing more.

 

[Boleskine]

 

[Infinitron]

 

[Infinitron]

The next interview in the Matt Chat Renaissance is with Brian Heins from Obsidian:

 

[Bester]

I have a question, but it's too long for twitter.

Compare BG and POE prologues in terms of dramatic character arcs.

In BG, your foster father gets killed by a mysterious stranger, and you find out that you're a child of a god.
This creates a need for your character to find out who's after you, and there's a serious promise of greatness ahead because of your divine heritage. In short, it's FUCKING INTRIGUING.

In POE you find out that you're a "watcher". Real life analogy: you suddenly find out that you're a train spotter -- is that supposed to excite anyone's imagination?

So my question is, who thought this up and why do they still have a job?

 

[hello friend]

There's nothing intriguing about divine heritage plots.

 

[Bester]

There's nothing intriguing about divine heritage plots.

When characters have characteristics that we'd like to have ourselves, that's called "engaging".

If you wouldn't like to have super powers, you're either a liar or have something wrong with you.

 

[hello friend]

If that were true marvel capeshit would be engaging, too. But it's not.

Special chosen one heritage is a tired plot device. It's pretty fucking close to the bottom of the barrel.