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

[m_s0]

Google image search is getting really good

I think I now understand where Kreia came from.

Well played, Chris Avellone.

 

[fobia]

This has little to do with capitalism itself. it has to do with the problem that we have a global economy without global legal structure.

So the accumulation of capital, that leads to the legal schemes Prime Junta described is not an inherent part of capitalism? Tax evasion and the call for a laissez-faire regimen not a logical conclusion of the axioms of capitalism themselves?

No. I mean it has nothing to do *with* capitalism. If a state operating under theoretical socialism did this, it would still be a viable strategy. It is a result of a legal loophole.

I guess you wanted to say: "financial actors within a state operating under theoretical socialism", whatever that's supposed to be. Because a state avoiding it's taxes... well, you know.
But no, it is a direct result of the axiosm of the economic system we call capitalism.


Edit. Damn you guys type fast... Well, I'll let this post stay anyway.

 

[Flou]

https://www.manta.com/c/mh1zv4k/dark-rock-industries-limited
Dark Rock Industries, Limited

Dark Rock Industries, Limited is a privately held company in Irvine, CA and is a Single Location business.

Categorized under Systems Software Development Services. Current estimates show this company has an annual revenue of 57798 and employs a staff of approximately 2.

Fake page with no content
http://darkrockindustries.com

The company was created just to ensure the intellectual property of Pillars. Two people? Maybe Sawyer and Parker?

Feargus has two kids, right?

 

[MuscleSpark]

https://www.manta.com/c/mh1zv4k/dark-rock-industries-limited
Dark Rock Industries, Limited

Dark Rock Industries, Limited is a privately held company in Irvine, CA and is a Single Location business.

Categorized under Systems Software Development Services. Current estimates show this company has an annual revenue of 57798 and employs a staff of approximately 2.

Fake page with no content
http://darkrockindustries.com

The company was created just to ensure the intellectual property of Pillars. Two people? Maybe Sawyer and Parker?

Feargus' children, surely. They were lacking a job after all.

EDIT: Ninja'd.

 

[Blakemoreland Hybrid Boss]

This has little to do with capitalism itself. it has to do with the problem that we have a global economy without global legal structure.

Oh, you mean it's not ***real*** capitalism?

Prime Junta, capitalism isn’t perfect and doesn’t have all the answers, but is the best we can get. It basically redirects peoples flaws and lower instincts into the creation of wealth and services. It certainly better than the alternative you advocate, as history abundantly shows. You should be ashamed of espousing outdated ideas as if it had any sort epistemic dignity, especially when you are so clearly ignorant about the basics of economics.

Infinitron, it seems you are becoming like a Codex’s Feargus. You are always separating threads in subforms to prevent derailing discussions, but in this thread “you don’t feel like it”. If you don’t do anything about these communists, I will spam this thread with Austrian economics faster than you can say free market. I don’t care that the staff has retarded communists. I will make readers' lives miserable.

 

[Turtle-Zone 3000]

Makes idle threat that he wont follow up.

 

[Blakemoreland Hybrid Boss]

Feargus has two kids, right?

Avellone mentioned that only two people had access to PoE royalties. One of them was Sawyer. So I guess is not Feargus family then.

 

[mondblut]

And we're just about to launch Operation Uranus.

I suspect you launch "operation ur anus" all the bloody time.

 

[conan_edw]

Jeez catching up with 15 pages after sleeping everyday is getting tiresome

 

[Blakemoreland Hybrid Boss]

Makes idle threat that he wont follow up.

I will show you my idle threats.

 

[Prime Junta]

I suppose you have not read Das Capital. I would not be surprised. According to its (idiotic) The capitalist mode of production does not make the profit from sales strategies. It makes it from the surplus labour extracted from the labourer.

This is such a weird non sequitur I don't even know where to start with it. For one thing, what we're discussing here is rent-seeking, not production of value. Marx's analysis of rent-seeking is pretty sparse and mostly based on agricultural or extractive land rent, although others have elaborated on it later. He considered rent-seeking to be a fully parasitic form of economic activity and as such was not as interested in it as in the production of value.

This would be a loong digression mostly interesting to people already interested in Marxist theory, and I don't think this is the time or the place.

(BTW it's spelled Das Kapital.)

 

[Big Wrangle]

Makes idle threat that he wont follow up.

I will show you my idle threats.

Turn-based threats > Real-time with pause threats

 

[MuscleSpark]

Jeez catching up with 15 pages after sleeping everyday is getting tiresome

Maybe try not sleeping and see how that helps?

 

[Bohr]

Jeez catching up with 15 pages after sleeping everyday is getting tiresome

Possible solutions:
- sleep less
- temporarily ignore everyone doing the communism/capitalism thing again
- send fake C&D to MCA
- log out of Codex (impractical option)

 

[Blaine]

Rostere What's the third option?

Both, obviously.

I am not saying that is the case, only that it is a logical possibility given the premises in your post.

That's a fair point, but either one or the other is much more likely. The thing is, we already know that Obsidian's artists are pretty good, so we're really left with only one option.

 

[Jazz_]

You know, I would be a petty cunt too if I looked like Feargus tbh.

I've always said that Lombroso's theories should be re-evaluated.

 

[fobia]

This has little to do with capitalism itself. it has to do with the problem that we have a global economy without global legal structure.

So the accumulation of capital, that leads to the legal schemes Prime Junta described is not an inherent part of capitalism? Tax evasion and the call for a laissez-faire regimen not a logical conclusion of the axioms of capitalism themselves?

Before wasting my time further. Kindly first read the related source material. Then, when you have, ponder over your own statements.

I guess you wanted to say: "financial actors within a state operating under theoretical socialism", whatever that's supposed to be. Because a state avoiding it's taxes... well, you know.
But no, it is a direct result of the axiosm of the economic system we call capitalism.


Edit. Damn you guys type fast... Well, I'll let this post stay anyway.

Not its own taxes. A state operating under such a strategy can also bypass taxes of *other* states.

Yes it could avoid taxes from other states, but that's not what we were talking about, right? Also "theoretical socialism" is a non-word you can pretty much fill with whatever bullshit you wanted, to deliberately dodge whatever I write.
I'm also not wasting your time. Your accusation of incompetence is a cheap strategy to mask your own errors in reasoning. But I'm willing to say that maybe the problem was your phrasing, not reasoning.

 

[Russia is over. The end.]

Don't know if it was discussed, I'm still on page 152 today, but anyway.

Chris Avellone after Paradox acquired White Wolf, there were rumors going around that they invited studios to pitch VTMB2 to them, and that Obsidian gave it a shot. And got turned down along with the rest. Was there any truth to that?

 

[ERYFKRAD]

utopian

Ain't no such, and anyone promising it is lying or trying to sell you on something.

 

[Prime Junta]

I'm willing to say that maybe the problem was your phrasing, not reasoning.

Naw I'm pretty sure it was the reasoning.

 

[The Great ThunThun*]

I'm willing to say that maybe the problem was your phrasing, not reasoning.

Naw I'm pretty sure it was the reasoning.

That's alright PJ. When you have an axe to grind, you can find all kinds of weird reasoning errors.

 

[Azarkon]

Interesting story about chinese corporate culture(relayed by people at my work who sometimes cooperate closely with chinese): For almost all managerial positions, they hire two people for the same job and keep them in constant competition to try and get more/better work out of them. To keep the amount of people down in important meetings, they apparantly often divide it in two, the first part everyone is present and is essentially just a presentation of the issues. Then they'll go have lunch (or something), and only invite the people who had something useful to say during the first part of the meeting, and it's during this lunch the actual decisions will get made.

I know American companies love their hierarchies, european ones tend to be way flatter. I suspect that like the chinese, it might come down to cultural differences that make the optimal configuration different in different places.

In other words Chris might need a clear and somewhat rigid hierarchy to be at his best, whereas this would be counter productive in other places.

Also, Chris Avellone Kotor2 was one of obsidian's finest hours imo.

Another obvious factor is how many people the company has.

A company with 10 employees can and should use a relatively flat structure.

A company with 1,000 employees won't be able to get away with such a structure, it'd be a complete mess to coordinate.

My experience with corporate giants is that they tend to rely on a hierarchical structure, because senior management needs to be able to hold junior management responsible, in order to accomplish large-scale tasks. It's especially necessary in mass production companies ie factories, because there are standardized, tested and validated processes proven to be more efficient in such cases, and they also help the fact that 90% of the employees in these factories are low skill and don't benefit from initiative. This would explain why the Chinese corporate culture is so hierarchical - because that's what works in that industry.

Game development these days, depending on who you ask, is closer to a factory pipe line than a small software work shop. This is strictly due to the amount of people who have to be involved to produce a premium game in a 3 to 5 years development cycle. The amount of artists, writers, designers, programmers, technical quality testing, etc. that you have to coordinate is too large for there to be a flat structure. I agree with Chris, in this respect.

But for independent studios producing small games, where you have maybe a dozen people working on a project at a time, flat structures bring out more creativity. Trying to scale it up is the challenge.

 

[Alienman]

This thread currently:

Spoiler

With a little bit:

 

[The Great ThunThun*]

Another obvious factor is how many people the company has.

A company with 10 employees can and should use a relatively flat structure.

A company with 1,000 employees won't be able to get away with such a structure, it'd be a complete mess to coordinate.

My experience with corporate giants is that they tend to rely on a hierarchical structure, because senior management needs to be able to hold junior management responsible, in order to accomplish large-scale tasks. It's especially necessary in mass production companies ie factories. This would explain why the Chinese corporate culture is so hierarchical - because that's the standard in that industry.

Game development these days, depending on who you ask, is closer to a factory pipe line than a small software work shop. This is strictly due to the amount of people who have to be involved to produce a premium game in 3 to 5 years development cycle. The amount of artists, writers, designers, programmers, technical quality testing, etc. that you have to coordinate is too large for there to be a flat structure. I agree with Chris, in this respect.

But for independent studios producing small games, where you have maybe a dozen people working on a project at a time, flat structures bring out more creativity. Trying to scale it up is the challenge.

I could not agree more. However, once Hierarchies become too "tall" efficiency necessarily takes a hit because of bad communication between progressively distant layers. The real reason behind this is that tall Hierarchies amplify problems at any layer.

 

[Volrath]

Chris Avellone, have you played any of Piranha Bytes games (Gothic series, Risen series, recent Elex)?
If yes, what do you think about them?

I played a little of Gothic 3 and liked it. I want to play Elex based on discussions I've seen on this site.

Don't. Trust me on that one.