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

[Zed]

Tweet was liked by one of those 8 digit number Russian trolls whose purpose is to sow chaos.

the codex is littered with them

 

[Azarkon]

Honestly, half of what Chris has said in this thread should be said to a legal advisor and not us. Knowing about some of the stuff he talks about and not reporting it seems like it could get him in trouble, too.

I also feel like if he felt miserable over there, he could easily have screwed them over while at the studio.

Moving on, while calling the other owners cowards, it doesn’t seem to me like Chris was man enough to do anything about it.

They care about their payout, but Chris didn’t he knew about the problems of upper management for a long time. He could have quit. He could have reported them to the proper authorities. He could have showed some backbone.

Or is Feargod that fearsome?

I do feel sorry for Chris, but something could have been done while he was there, not now when he has nothing to do with them.

The timing of all of this info getting out is also awfully suspect. Don’t worry, though: I’m buying the Cainarsky game and the next Avellone game.

You can't sue a company owner for incompetence, or for playing favorites, or for hiring his family and friends.

NONE of this is illegal, by US law.

It's like Chris said. It's just business. This is how US management culture is, and anyone who has been in a company for long enough to see how top management works, knows this.

Now, it could get him in trouble, in the sense that it could lead to him being black list by other company owners.

But it seems he's ready for that.

Allegedly trying to hire his underage kids and using Tyranny funds for Pillars of Eternity development sounds illegal to me. Some shady ass contracts and more. But what the fuck do I know? I’m just a guy working at a school with no real knowledge in this area.

The key word there is trying - unless kids were actually hired, it's not illegal.

Using the funds from one project for another would likely violate publisher contracts and lead to a law suit. But you'd have to be able to prove it and Chris is on the outside, it would be very difficult and the publisher, in this case, might not want it, either, because they themselves are still working with Obsidian.

I think what Chris is doing is very smart. There's not much to be gained from attacking Obsidian through legal methods, but in terms of reputation and publicity, this could affect them significantly.

 

[Bohr]

It's becoming a full time occupation keeping up with this thread, page 200 tomorrow?

 

[fantadomat]

Chris Avellone Please make an RPG with Codex as the setting.

It will be isometric anarchic battle royal with more diversity than feminist SJW's coloured armpit hair.

 

[Kaivokz]

The shocking thing about Chris's revelations here isn't so much that they're all new, but that they're entirely consistent with stuff that's come out in dribs and drabs before. Like Josh and Adam going ha-ha about Feargus threatening to fire them the if Pillars doesn't ship by March. That made me go WTF? then but this casts it in whole new light.

That is not good management. A manager's job is to create the conditions in which the people he manages can get their shit done, and occasionally make tough calls when tough calls need to be made. This includes reassigning or even dismissing people if they're not working out, although that really ought to be a rare and sad occasion. "Perform, or else" is shit-tier.

It's not like he randomly threatened to sack them because he had a bad day. He threatened to sack them if they miss yet another milestone and another deadline.

Let's not forget the context here - the Kickstarter money has run out, the beta was a clusterfuck of epic proportions and the state of the entire thing was so bad, it had to be delayed additional half a year, during which they had to spend their own money to put it to finish line, money they didn't have.

It's easy to be Captain Hindsight and rant about how shortsighted it would've been to sack two people who eventually ended up delivering a solid success, but at the time PoE was anything but - it was a mess and they weren't exactly performing up until that point.

And if Chris is telling the truth, or even if half of what he has said is true, Feargus & co are the reason projects get so far behind. Not Josh and Adam.

 

[Lahey]

Ah, he finally mentioned Sawyer. The Avellonians and the Sawyerities can finally hug it out and have manly sweaty buttsex.

Let none speak of the Joshua Question or his past atrocities as we embark on the path towards reunification.

 

[Zakhad]

He probably meant he would keep them as gimps in the basement.

Spoiler

Oglaf and the Codex, two great Australian creations together at last.

 

[Flou]

Chris Avellone, why would you have chosen Ziets over Fenstermaker to work as the Creative Lead of Eternity? Ziets was brought in as a strech goal to work on the game and wasn't a full time employee at Obsidian (afaik). Wouldn't that have been a bad management decision and alienated rest of your writers and driven them away from the company? I imagine a Creative Lead position given to an outsider wouldn't have resulted in much joy with the full time writers you had to choose from.

 

[Taka-Haradin puolipeikko]

He probably meant he would keep them as gimps in the basement.

Spoiler

Oglaf and the Codex, two great Australian creations together at last.

 

[Roguey]

Chris Avellone, why would you have chosen Ziets over Fenstermaker to work as the Creative Lead of Eternity? Ziets was brought in as a strech goal to work on the game and wasn't a full time employee at Obsidian (afaik). Wouldn't that have been a bad management decision and alienated rest of your writers and driven them away from the company? I imagine a Creative Lead position given to an outsider wouldn't have resulted in much joy with the full time writers you had to choose from.

Chris already mentioned that he recommended that Eric not be the creative lead because he was too busy creative leading South Park.

Looking at the list of PoE's writers, they really didn't have anyone there qualified for the job except maybe Matt MacLean who was busy elsewhere (also a lead on South Park, eventually leading Tyranny). Perhaps Avellone should have stepped up himself like Feargus initially wanted.

 

[Maculo]

Chris Avellone, why would you have chosen Ziets over Fenstermaker to work as the Creative Lead of Eternity? Ziets was brought in as a strech goal to work on the game and wasn't a full time employee at Obsidian (afaik). Wouldn't that have been a bad management decision and alienated rest of your writers and driven them away from the company? I imagine a Creative Lead position given to an outsider wouldn't have resulted in much joy with the full time writers you had to choose from.

I believe Chris addressed this. If that was the logic behind upper management's decision, then upper management just needed to communicate that consideration, but seemingly didn't at any point. Instead, management asked them to pick the best individual for the position, with no other criteria, and when they chose Ziets, upper management responded "wrong answer, pick Festermaker."

 

[deepfire]

I think what Chris is doing is very smart. There's not much to be gained from attacking Obsidian through legal methods, but in terms of reputation and publicity, this could affect them significantly.

Obsidian now seems a black hole disguised as a paradise -- instead of being a good place for cRPG talent to flourish, it will suck their creativity and motivation dry -- and will make them feel miserable in the process.

In short, Obsidian is the most dangerous agent of decline, because of this mimicry.

Bethesda isn't our enemy. The management of Obsidian is.

 

[Darth Roxor]

"Who would you pick as the Eternity lead writer, and why is it Fenstermaker?"

 

[Sextant]

Chris Avellone , how do you specifically write dialogue for companions? On a large Word document? In some markup language for parsing? Or is there some copy-pasting slave inputing your valuable output into little windows after the fact?

 

[azimuth]

Let's not forget that MCA helpfully gave us some insight into Eric's personality:

Eric absolutely drove away a lot of talented writers (esp. John Gonzalez – Shadow over Mordor, Horizon Zero Dawn), although John likely wouldn’t ever admit to the fact that Eric hated him; also, we were forced to isolate Eric from John’s Lead Writer responsibilities (which was a failure on our part, but I wasn’t in charge of New Vegas, which had a lot of inner development conflicts across the board).

Even more after John left, we actually changed our hiring procedure to cater to Eric on Eternity, since we knew if he didn’t approve of a writer, you might as well set a torch any writer that worked with him.

Maybe they preferred George because they all hate Eric as a person. (Best thread in history.)

 

[2house2fly]

He probably meant he would keep them as gimps in the basement.

Spoiler

What is with all the retarded gay porn?! Can't you at least go for futa ?

Oglaf started as a straight-up porn comic, then they kept making jokes so now it's a sex porn comic

 

[Blakemoreland Hybrid Boss]

I remember a video from early POE beta, where they filmed a morning meeting. A vfx artist asked if the programmers could implement some simple console command to let him test spells easier in game somehow, I don't remember the details. And someone said "nope, impossible, sorry..." and there was some uncomfortable silence for 10 seconds. I was already familiar with poe's code at the time, so I knew that it would take literally 10-15 minutes to code, which I even did in the IEmod to test my idea.

I was going like "but why... why? why didn't they help their colleague with something as simple? WHY?". Now I know why. I may have even posted about it here and received the usual "oh you so smart, smarter than everyone, fuck you bester you retard, Obsidian knows better". Also, I remember that presentation where Josh said it took them a month to make a revolver reload in FN:V and to be able to interrupt reloading. A month. Fucking Christ in a wheel chair. It was probably an owner who was doing it.

I remember this, we then sent the code to Obsidian and they said thanks, but we won't use it.

 

[Lycra Suit]

Eric absolutely drove away a lot of talented writers (esp. John Gonzalez – Shadow over Mordor, Horizon Zero Dawn), although John likely wouldn’t ever admit to the fact that Eric hated him; also, we were forced to isolate Eric from John’s Lead Writer responsibilities (which was a failure on our part, but I wasn’t in charge of New Vegas, which had a lot of inner development conflicts across the board).

Even more after John left, we actually changed our hiring procedure to cater to Eric on Eternity, since we knew if he didn’t approve of a writer, you might as well set a torch any writer that worked with him.

And yet Pillars of Eternity's story was banal, shit and boring save for the parts we can attribute to other talents (that Eric then promptly drove away early in development). That's textbook sabotage just like Josh and his OCDs ridden approach to game systems. I sincerely hope this guy doesn't get close to writing for RPG projects again.

 

[deepfire]

I remember a video from early POE beta, where they filmed a morning meeting. A vfx artist asked if the programmers could implement some simple console command to let him test spells easier in game somehow, I don't remember the details. And someone said "nope, impossible, sorry..." and there was some uncomfortable silence for 10 seconds. I was already familiar with poe's code at the time, so I knew that it would take literally 10-15 minutes to code, which I even did in the IEmod to test my idea.

I was going like "but why... why? why didn't they help their colleague with something as simple? WHY?". Now I know why. I may have even posted about it here and received the usual "oh you so smart, smarter than everyone, fuck you bester you retard, Obsidian knows better". Also, I remember that presentation where Josh said it took them a month to make a revolver reload in FN:V and to be able to interrupt reloading. A month. Fucking Christ in a wheel chair. It was probably an owner who was doing it.

I remember this, we then sent the code to Obsidian and they said thanks, but we won't use it.

This could have a legitimate explanation -- they wouldn't want any potential legal complications stemming from third-party contributions.

This isn't open source..

 

[2house2fly]

Perhaps Avellone should have stepped up himself like Feargus initially wanted.

 

[Roguey]

how do you specifically write dialogue for companions? On a large Word document? In some markup language for parsing? Or is there some copy-pasting slave inputing your valuable output into little windows after the fact?

I figure they write it directly into Obsidian's own dialogue editor. Anything else would be inefficient.

 

[Nano]

Chris already mentioned that he recommended that Eric not be the creative lead because he was too busy creative leading South Park.

Might also be related to how Eric is hard to work with and needs accommodations to get along with his fellow writers. Doesn't sound like the best type of lead to me.

 

[Blakemoreland Hybrid Boss]

It's not like he randomly threatened to sack them because he had a bad day. He threatened to sack them if they miss yet another milestone and another deadline.

For fucks sake.

 

[Zakhad]

He probably meant he would keep them as gimps in the basement.

Spoiler

What is with all the retarded gay porn?! Can't you at least go for futa ?

Oglaf started as a straight-up porn comic, then they kept making jokes so now it's a sex porn comic

...sex porn?

Like, porn about sex? Revolutionary.

 

[Ovplain]

Well, the last couple of hours just FLEW BY!