Worse yet, the management appears not to understand that for most publishers not doing what they want is a red flag.
Where did you get that from? The only project they probably haven't enjoyed is the tank MMO, which was only taken to survive. Other than that, they were always passionate of their projects. You confuse not being able to do whatever they want with not being exhusiast about their work.
I probably should have made this more clear: "... that for most publishers not doing what
the publisher wants is a red flag."
In principle I agree with Obsidian that game development has be done more sensible than what the typical publishing contracts define. But historically the big publishers, like EA, Ubisoft, Microsoft, Lucas Arts, Disney, have enjoyed a privilege of holding the majority of power in the industry and believed that it is up to them to shape the market and the products by telling developers what they have to do. I know that's shit, but it's a reality. The smart new wave of publishers like Paradox are different, they are perfectly fine to take a game as is and then make the most of it.
It's like a red thread that weaves itself through Obsidian's history, that they believed they have the competence to tell publishers how a specific game should be developed. But look at the reality. How many follow-up projects do they have received from publishers? Why did Lucas Arts insist that Obsidian has to meet the deadline and wasn't interested to follow up? Why did the Armored Warfare publisher insist to relocate development? Why did Bethesda not hire Obsidian for another expansion like FO:NV? Why did Ubisoft move away the development of the South Park RPG? You would think Obsidian had the process, tech and team in place and development should be cheaper than somewhere else in California. Why did Disney cancel the project? Why did Microsoft cancel the project after it became clear that Obsidian couldn't deliver on time?
With publishers being what they are, you have to put a process in place that ensures that the contractually fixed deliverables are met. If you are a pro with tons of experience you can draw up a process that meets the requirements in a day, at most in a couple. I'd even argue that you need to do that before you sign the contract, because this way you can see whether it's going to work out.
Instead Obsidian seems to define their own process with the goal to meet the final deliverable. That might sound like hair-splitting to most, but there is a critical difference. If you simply define your own process, your are bound to continuously resolve conflicts between your vision and the vision of the publisher.
What you need to do is to define a process that ensures that deadlines and deliverables are met as specified. Even if you are going to build a skeleton of a game to specification. Your creative freedom suffers here apparently, but it's merely shifted to how you fill out the skeleton with your vision. In principle you can even map the contractually agreed process to your own development process, if you can ensure that these are compatible.
But from everything I read here and otherwise, Obsidian doesn't do it this way. I wouldn't say Obsidian is wrong per se, but they appear ignorant to the reality how publishers work.
What are you talking about, the Internet is full of FO:NV fanboys who'd love Obsidian to get the opportunity to make more console action-RPGs. More than a few Codexers too.
The market has moved on, from games built to spec to what gamers want today: adventure and adaptable gameplay.
Somehow FO:NV fit that mould, possibly because MCA and Sawyer had a lot to say about Fallout. Or Kotor2 had a soul because MCA poured tons of work into it. The shelf of Star Wars sources that MCA consumed and Feargus pointed to is telling.
But in general I doubt that Obsidian still has a good grasp on what gamers want today. PoE is telling, even you discount the general issue of designing a game around the premise to make every build viable based on
Grunker's re-review that the encounters turned out much better post The White March. PoE is a conglomerate of features, of which some turned out good, like the art, Defiance Bay, Durance, the CYOA scripted events, but in general so many features felt unfulfilled, not only the megadungeon, stronghold and second city.
I agree with what MCA said about the big meetings for PoE each week, which didn't only consume the time of all the leads but were hugely disruptive to the work. If you do the math they burned at least half a million $ on this, while it is obvious that PoE could have been a much better game with some more effort. Likewise they burned resources big time on all the backer NPCs, once you figured out what they were they became a huge immersion breaker for the players.
People like me didn't buy Tyranny because they felt burned by PoE's midgame expansion. I can't remember where it was said, possibly in one of the pre-release streams, that Tyranny was planned as a trilogy, with the first release roughly one third of the game. In any case Tyranny feels incomplete, so it's only logical that lots of players take a wait-and-see approach. It's a pity, because Tyranny made a number of very good moves, with the artwork, the conquest mode, the faction interplay, the magic system, and the setting is brilliant. But again as a game as a whole it feels unfulfilled.
As I said initially, gamers expect more these days, increasingly. Being innovative and focusing on your players will pay big time, if you do it right. I admire the innovative spirit of Star Citizen, even with detractors pointing out that the development takes ages. But if the devs get it right, they will rule.
That's what I mean that Obsidian is possibly out-of-touch with what the gamers desire these days.
