RPG Codex Interview: Chris Avellone on Pillars Cut Content, Game Development Hierarchies and More

[Big Wrangle]

Sherry's too pure for this, how could you think of such a thing?

 

[Ninjerk]

Sherry's too pure for this, how could you think of such a thing?

who is Sherry

 

[MRY]

If everything he said in the post is true (and I'd bet it is), Obsidian deserves all the shit it's going to get and then some. I don't see any pettiness in that. To the contrary, huge respect for Chris Avellone having the balls to say what he did. Not every man would be capable of that.

I think he would be a happier man now had he gotten it over with sooner. A boil can only start to heal after it's been lanced.

As a medical matter, boils definitely can heal without lancing.

 

[agentorange]

Why the hell should he hold off on saying what he wants to say because the company that showed him an utter lack of respect is releasing a game. It's because people are so terrified of burning corporate bridges and being labeled a pariah for giving honest criticism that the game industry is such a pit, an environment completely antithetical to the creativity it is supposed to thrive on.

 

[FreeKaner]

We must thank Feargus and rest of Obsidian for delivering what they deliver best.

A dumpsterfire of a company.

 

[Fry]

If everything he said in the post is true (and I'd bet it is), Obsidian deserves all the shit it's going to get and then some. I don't see any pettiness in that. To the contrary, huge respect for Chris Avellone having the balls to say what he did. Not every man would be capable of that.

I think he would be a happier man now had he gotten it over with sooner. A boil can only start to heal after it's been lanced.

As a medical matter, boils definitely can heal without lancing.

Sadly, butthurt is incurable.

 

[Sentinel]

Was Infinitron a double-agent all along? Decides to publish an interview that isn't too kind on Obsidian opening the way for further dumps on the company right before they release the sequel to one of the most important games in their history.

 

[Bocian]

Sadly, butthurt is incurable.

Chronic bootlicking mentality isn't either.

 

[Prime Junta]

I wonder if MCA considers Josh one of the upper management?

Who knows but Obsidian did turn Josh into a union agitator.

 

[Infinitron]

Was Infinitron a double-agent all along? Decides to publish an interview that isn't too kind on Obsidian opening the way for further dumps on the company right before they release the sequel to one of the most important games in their history.

As I was just telling Delterius:

22:49 - Delterius: you just put obsi forums on suicide watch
22:49 - Delterius: you mad man
22:49 - Infinitron: haha yep
22:49 - Infinitron: I like Obsidian but when there's drama I spread that shit everywhere
22:50 - Infinitron: It's my patriotic duty

 

[Blaine]

When they made me an offer to contract me to write for Tyranny (which might seem to be an olive branch, but it turned out to be something they needed for contractual reasons with Paradox, but no one had ever communicated it to me), these were the reasons I refused – I didn’t wish to be part of Obsidian’s upper level development process and their pipelines any longer, as these processes were coming from a bad place, and it showed.

I wonder what it's like to be the type of people who'll use a good man for the sake of the weight his name carries, throw him away like a piece of trash when it'll save them a buck, and then have the temerity to ask him to return and be name-dropped again?

Chris, I don't really know you outside of your work. I'm not going to pretend to care deeply about you on a personal level, but you're a consummate and talented professional and I am sorry to hear that you were used. "Business is business" is one thing and something that anyone above the age of 19 understands, but this is in a completely different category.

 

[Krzysiek]

Who exactly does Chris mean, when he speak about upper management? Feargus, Parker and who else?

 

[Delterius]

After Todd Howard and Pete Hines, it appears that we finally found the third and final Shadowlord.

Spoiler

 

[Haba]

Burn baby burn!

 

[ga♥]

Sounds like you've been holding a grudge on Josh without ever confronting him first hand with the issues.

Sounds like you need a "Sawyerist" tag or something.

 

[Blakemoreland Hybrid Boss]

Just remember guys. Obsidian wanted Avellone to be banned from cRPGs for life. Never forget, never forgive.

Edit: Bumvelcrow, "meh" rating? Go fuck yourself!

 

[Infinitron]

Who exactly does Chris mean, when he speak about upper management? Feargus, Parker and who else?

It is possible that for Chris "upper management" is just a polite way to say "Feargus" without mentioning a name. I don't know why, say, Darren Monahan the chief IT guy who is also a co-owner would be involved with this. Who knows though.

 

[Kem0sabe]

To leverage a sick family member to gain an upper hand in negotiations, if I'm interpreting this correctly, is fucking dispicable, and reason enough for me to never support an obsidian game ever again.

Eric did apologize for how he handled the situation, it is true (and more than once), and there’s mistakes everyone makes when being a Lead. I made worse mistakes than Eric for sure – and saying Eric made mistakes is not an insult. There is no “but” or “however” in this statement.

I only had an issue with the process, and Eric admitted he did as well – and he told me himself after my departure that the Project Director was the reason the process didn’t work as Eric intended (and would have been correct for a Creative Lead in my eyes). If that was incorrect, that’s fine, but that’s what he told me at the time.

I will say that I did the fixes as quickly and cleanly as possible, and I could have done them much faster had a gotten a critique direct from the source. Instead, there was meeting after meeting where I said the same thing and we had to discuss things that really, none of us needed to discuss (I was happy to make the cuts). My only issue was the process, and it's not personal.

It’s also worth bearing in mind that the process issue was larger than it appears – what work I put into PoE wasn’t gained back when I went back to Tyranny, so any decision made on PoE (for example, assistance that was promised in implementing the characters) that was then retracted, it cost more and more time overall. I’m not bitter about this because that simply was the norm. I did not have time to work on both projects, but that is a failure of upper management and scheduling/double-timing two projects. That said, the employees from Tyranny did work hard to make the work they did for Pillars shine. Don’t take this as I’m angry that Pillars took time from Tyranny, or that Tyranny was my personal project (it wasn’t, Brian Heins was the PD), it just was something that I knew the team would pay for and it wouldn’t be given back, which turned out to be the case because again, that was the norm.

I don’t know why Eric left Obsidian, nor do I mean to draw a connection between Josh’s review of the Eric’s performance and the storyline process, the amount of control he wanted in the process, and Eric’s departure. I still think it is good Eric left/went contracting. If the two weren’t related, that’s ideal.

I can't recall who said this in this thread, but for the record, I would resist anyone's attempts to downplay the work Eric did on South Park – he did quite a bit, and shouldn’t be dismissed, and it was Creative Lead work (it’s also one of the reasons I don’t equate Creative Lead = the person who wrote the story). Both Eric’s boss and I did fight to get him Lead credit on South Park, which he deserved, since he was doing the job. His duties on South Park were also part of the reason we recommended he not be Creative Lead on Eternity.



I didn’t get anything when I left Obsidian. There were no share payouts, no equity, and this was in addition to the other logistical problems around the departure – the sudden cancellation of my health insurance, problems with my 401K, errors in Obsidian’s accounting, and several existing independent contracts they refused to uphold.

Realizing my family issues and the debts therein, however, they did make an attempt to leverage that into a far more confining separation agreement that would remove my right to work on RPGs, and my silence on all issues that could pertain to Obsidian or any other company they were involved with or the CEO had a % in (Fig, Zero Radius, Dark Rock Industries, etc.). This included an inability to critique games I’d worked on – much of my critiques on my own games tend to be blunt, and not being able to speak to them felt unnatural to me.

The company involvement silence worried me more, however, as it meant that if anything illegal happened with any of those companies (these could include serious charges like accounting issues, silence on harassment issues with regards to employees, perjury related to company documents and payments), I couldn’t speak about the issue, even if I felt strongly against what was being revealed.

While all this is good for Obsidian's upper management and is what is sometimes considered "good business," I did feel it showed a lack of ethics.

Still, that attempt at leverage did cause me to re-evaluate aspects of my life. Realizing debt was affecting my decision, I instead focused on working as hard as possible to make up for the amount Obsidian tried to use as leverage to force a signature – and succeeded.

When that happened, I realized I was free of the situation – completely free, for the first time. Feargus and the owners had no hold on my voice, my time, and my creativity any longer. And it was great.

When they made me an offer to contract me to write for Tyranny (which might seem to be an olive branch, but it turned out to be something they needed for contractual reasons with Paradox, but no one had ever communicated it to me), these were the reasons I refused – I didn’t wish to be part of Obsidian’s upper level development process and their pipelines any longer, as these processes were coming from a bad place, and it showed.

Also, realizing there was no restitution for the issues mentioned, I made a promise to myself that nothing I would do would ever cause Feargus and the owners any further financial gain. If my silence was that important to them, then there's no need to be silent because that right hadn't been signed away. Simply put, I like the developers at Obsidian very much, I work and correspond with many of those who are there or have left, and I would work with the developers again. I do feel upper management at Obsidian has serious flaws that need to be addressed, and I stand by that statement.

 

[Deadass]

guys obsidian won't fall for this, they still have the cainyarsky project right??

 

[Quillon]

Who exactly does Chris mean, when he speak about upper management?

He means God ofc. He has a problem with the god. Josh wrote Pallegina inspired by MCA's situation with the god.

 

[Hobo Elf]

The sad thing is that there will still be people in this very forum pretending that Obsidian care about being trve kvlt RPG devs instead of a cynical corporate machine that strives to be the next Bioware and couldn't give a damn about the RPG fans who kept them afloat all these years.

 

[markec]

I do hope my dream of seeing Obsidian crashing and burning will soon become reality.

 

[Prime Junta]

The sad thing is that there will still be people in this very forum pretending that Obsidian care about being trve kvlt RPG devs instead of a cynical corporate machine that strives to be the next Bioware and couldn't give a damn about the RPG fans who kept them afloat all these years.

I never gave a shit about what they thought about the fans. The fans can go fuck themselves. Thinking of the fans just produces bland fan service.

But this...

Realizing my family issues and the debts therein, however, they did make an attempt to leverage that into a far more confining separation agreement that would remove my right to work on RPGs

...this is some Jeff Bezos level evil here.

 

[Dagobert]

What a piece of shit company. It's good MCA is out, his work was one of the main reasons I was buying Obsidian products, hopefully he will start his own studio asap

 

[hivemind]

Canceled my dumpsterfire pre-order.

Fuck Obsidian, I was still willing to give them a chance but not anymore. Gonna send an email with Avellone's post to a couple of my Euro gaming journalists friends, I hope at least some will decide to cover this.