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

[Sentinel]

Are you stating that DU only started this policy 3-4 years ago?

I'm saying that we got hit by a huge wave of idiots and edgy retards following GamerGate and DU doubled down on the "you can't touch them, they can shitpost everywhere!" policy, even as they were hurting some great RPG debate.

Bee helped make this the best forum on the Internet about RPGs, but DU made it clear it's more important for him to be the "free speech" forum. So the quality of threads greatly decreased, shitposting and edgy politics increased and a lot of people who actually wanted to debate RPGs left or stopped posting here, creating discord channels and the likes - even before Bee left.

I agree with your assessment that the quality of threads has probably decreased, and I fully realize I am part of the problem. However, I think part of the isue is that there just aren't any RPGs worth discussing that I've played recently. I didn't like Underrail or DivOS, so I don't tend to go into their threads to tell them their game is shit. I didn't care for AoD. I couldn't be arsed to complete any of the Shadowrun games. Numenera was terrible. Wasteland 2 was worse. The only RPGs I have an interest in have already been discussed to death. The ones I'm mildly curious about still have 0 info out.

Another part of this problem is the shift in the way people communicate with each other that has affected the quality of discussion. But you could probably write 5 books on that.

 

[Chris Avellone]

IHaveHugeNick is only looking after his job at Obsidian, and raising a fair point that running a business that's making a game is hard, given Chris Avellone's never really been in that position himself (given what he's saying about Obsidian, that can't count). Can't fault a guy for that.

If DU is right and IHaveHugeNick works at Obsidian, he can ask about any of the claims himself - I didn't realize I was speaking to an actual Obsidianite, or I wouldn't have made the shill comment. (The intent behind my response remains, though, but now I understand why you were responding like you did.)

If running a game business is hard is Nick's point, sure, but that doesn't mean you make it worse for yourself by repeating mistakes and even doing worse and worse things over time. What's problematic about this is that once you "get away" with a bad practice, unfortunately, this becomes a confirmation that you can get away with it again - so they start to add up because no one's ever held accountable and it can become a comfortable, default way of handling situations.

If Nick does work at Obsidian, though, this is an opportunity to easily confirm or clarify anything here - you can find Feargus's wife on a employee roster and payscale sheet, for example. You can also ask Anthony about our conversation that led to me tell the owners about my situation, since I didn't want to tell them before. You can also ask Feargus if Obsidian paid anything to me on departure, or if they'd made 401K and accounting errors I had to fix for them on my departure when HR screwed all these things up - these are easy things to check, and I'd love to hear what shakes out.

You can also ask each of the owners, in turn, starting with Jones if they were threatened with "sounds like you don't want to be an owner anymore." I'm sure you'd start getting some confirmations of the truth, even if you still support Obsidian, but I would ask them the "why" of all these things vs. ignoring it.

On the employee payback situation, you can absolutely ask those specific employees if they were repaid once we recovered or if it was a strangely long time before sets of payments trickled in. And Darren Monahan is the owner who eventually turned around and supported me to get it done because one of the designers asked him (and this was good, because it made Darren accountable for an answer) what was going on with the paychecks they'd sacrificed. Some of those employees who sacrificed don't work at Obsidian anymore, but a few still do.

It's not hard to do, and at least some of the people there would be willing to tell you.

 

[Jason Liang]

If Codexers are reading page 175 (other than for MCA's posts), they deserve what they get.

 

[Blakemoreland Hybrid Boss]

To be fair, lowering the paywall/1 year subscription for GD is causing most of the problems we’re having now.

In the past people would come to talk about rpgs, and then GD would open up, and then the shitposters would be all “oh look. Lots of people are saying nigger and behead muslims and kill jews. How nice”

In the past they would do the same thing they are doing now. Bring all the bulshit to game threads and be moved back. The wall is to prevent intolerant laymen to access the thing and try to hurt codexers careers as they have done in the recent past.

 

[Kev Inkline]

Usually "going off topic" is what is known as a carrying on a natural and organic conversation. Imagine you and some friends are having a discussion about a certain topic, one friend mentions a certain subject that may not be central to the overall topic but is an organic off-shoot, everyone finds it interesting so the course of discussion naturally shifts--then some asshole walks out of nowhere and starts yelling in your faces that you aren't allowed to change the topic, and proceeds to drag away the one friend who made the "off topic" remark.

Seriously. I 100% agree with this. We can be talking about politics or whatever, but changing the subject to some woman we are dating is just a natural conversation flow. Getting worked up would be ridiculous.

Who are you dating these days, btw? Still the same voluptous latina you were head over heels with?

 

[laclongquan]

Dear God! Everytime I glance at the forum there's another thirty or fourty pages more added to this thread. I am still at 70 80 120 . 100 pages to go

 

[fantadomat]

Are you stating that DU only started this policy 3-4 years ago?

I'm saying that we got hit by a huge wave of idiots and edgy retards following GamerGate and DU doubled down on the "you can't touch them, they can shitpost everywhere!" policy, even as they were hurting some great RPG debate.

Bee helped make this the best forum on the Internet about RPGs, but DU made it clear it's more important for him to be the "free speech" forum. So the quality of threads greatly decreased, shitposting and edgy politics increased and a lot of people who actually wanted to debate RPGs left or stopped posting here, creating discord channels and the likes - even before Bee left.

I agree with your assessment that the quality of threads has probably decreased, and I fully realize I am part of the problem. However, I think part of the isue is that there just aren't any RPGs worth discussing that I've played recently. I didn't like Underrail or DivOS, so I don't tend to go into their threads to tell them their game is shit. I didn't care for AoD. I couldn't be arsed to complete any of the Shadowrun games. Numenera was terrible. Wasteland 2 was worse. The only RPGs I have an interest in have already been discussed to death. The ones I'm mildly curious about still have 0 info out.

Another part of this problem is the shift in the way people communicate with each other that has affected the quality of discussion. But you could probably write 5 books on that.

Well it is natural,people do get fired up when there is a good game coming up. Both ELEX and KCD have pretty good discussions when the games came out. PoE 2 have good discussion now. When there is nothing to be said people shitpost to kill the time,the same way they shitpost here when MCA doesn't drop information. It is only natural for such forums,expecting anything else is stupid and maybe insane.

 

[a cut of domestic sheep prime]

You can also ask each of the owners, in turn, starting with Jones if they were threatened with "sounds like you don't want to be an owner anymore."

"owner"

 

[Glaucon]

This is a complete nonissue. Anyone who doesn't want to read the shitposting/politics/[insert thing you don't like] doesn't have to in the first place. People learn how to skim for the useful info and relevant discussions.

 

[Ismaul]

I find it pretty appropriate and on-topic that a discussion on management hierarchies, what makes a good leader and bad worker management at Obsidian also delves into societal management (the communism debate) and what makes a good moderator. It's all the same problem, just differently instanciated.

Of course you do. You are always trying to look progressive and the cool guy in these discussions about moderation. I see right through you. Since when unionisation is taken seriously in the real world of adults? This is an outdate vocabulary that only appears in the internet forums with communist larpers. But suuuure, let's pretend that this is a meaningful discusion instead of retards using the whole thing to push some teenager agenda that have nothing to do with anything.

I didn't say the add-on debate was meaningful or productive, I said it was appropriate. Let go of your anger man; it's pointless.

 

[santino27]

IHaveHugeNick is only looking after his job at Obsidian, and raising a fair point that running a business that's making a game is hard, given Chris Avellone's never really been in that position himself (given what he's saying about Obsidian, that can't count). Can't fault a guy for that.

If DU is right and IHaveHugeNick works at Obsidian, he can ask about any of the claims himself - I didn't realize I was speaking to an actual Obsidianite, or I wouldn't have made the shill comment.

99.99% sure that DU was just fucking around with that comment.

 

[a cut of domestic sheep prime]

This is a complete nonissue. Anyone who doesn't want to read the shitposting/politics/[insert thing you don't like] doesn't have to in the first place. People learn how to skim for the useful info and relevant discussions.

It's pretty easy itt, since you just need to search for the last avellone post.

 

[fantadomat]

This is a complete nonissue. Anyone who doesn't want to read the shitposting/politics/[insert thing you don't like] doesn't have to in the first place. People learn how to skim for the useful info and relevant discussions.

It's pretty easy itt, since you just need to search for the last avellone post.

Well he is not the only good poster here, DU's post a while back are pure incline. A lot of memes to.

 

[Blakemoreland Hybrid Boss]

Go back to lurking,in all 175 pages of shit i haven't seen a single good post from you. It is amusing how YOU are talking about derailing and not having enough time to read all. Seeing how you were posting shit every page,good thing that i know how to info read and skip pointless shit.

See, I could understand why you would post like that from your tags. Unfortunately for me, not all posters are correctly tagged like you. The upper management here is just like the guys at Obsidian, probably because the mods were promoted because they were good posters or Dark Underlord cousins, but being a good poster or cousin doesn't make anyone qualified to be a mod.

 

[Jason Liang]

Requiring that people talk about Avellone stuff in threads about Avellone stuff is not political correctness you mongrel, it's common sense. Most people are busy and don't have the time to read through all this bullshit because you feel entitled to say the first nonsense that comes through your head. You can tell how much the codex declined by how older posters were more respectful of other posters time. Let's pretend that you are defending some freedom of speech when you are really defending the right to derail threads with nosense because you don't have anything better to do, cretin.

SOUNDS LIKE YOU DON'T WANT TO BE A CODEXER ANYMORE

 

[Blakemoreland Hybrid Boss]

This is a complete nonissue. Anyone who doesn't want to read the shitposting/politics/[insert thing you don't like] doesn't have to in the first place. People learn how to skim for the useful info and relevant discussions.

It's pretty easy itt, since you just need to search for the last avellone post.

Easy my ass. Readers shouldn't be forced to use the search function to read Avellone's posts because idle idiots want to shit in the whole thread.

 

[Zakhad]

Since the choice of community online is voluntary, self-selection is the most basic form of censorship that we all practice.

An important point. There's a particularly aspergic take on free speech that sees it as a mountain, and you just need to be higher up the mountain to get more free speech. Similarly with free markets, the idea that there's just freedom or control and this is a simple scale. But sometimes there is more freedom in a given space when there is some restriction, to prevent monopolies dominating; just as a zero-moderation policy can be worse than a restrictive one if it means the only laws are created bottom-up by whomever it is has the loudest voice or biggest metaphorical stick.

Or another way of putting it: there is a trade-off between freedom and moderation, and extremes in either direction can end up squashing interesting debate. Reddit has been just as damaged by brigading as it has been by top-down interventions, perhaps more so.

 

[santino27]

Go back to lurking,in all 175 pages of shit i haven't seen a single good post from you. It is amusing how YOU are talking about derailing and not having enough time to read all. Seeing how you were posting shit every page,good thing that i know how to info read and skip pointless shit.

See, I could understand why you would post like that from your tags. Unfortunately for me, not all posters are correctly tagged like you. The upper management here is just like the guys at Obsidian, probably because the mods were promoted because they were good posters or Dark Underlord cousins, but being a good poster or cousin doesn't make anyone qualified to be a mod.

Has anyone asked DU for his books? I want to see some hidden rows in the payroll spreadsheet!

 

[a cut of domestic sheep prime]

being a good poster or cousin doesn't make anyone qualified to be a mod.

And sometimes the person most qualified to be a mod is passed over for the job year after tiresome year...

 

[fantadomat]

Go back to lurking,in all 175 pages of shit i haven't seen a single good post from you. It is amusing how YOU are talking about derailing and not having enough time to read all. Seeing how you were posting shit every page,good thing that i know how to info read and skip pointless shit.

See, I could understand why you would post like that from your tags. Unfortunately for me, not all posters are correctly tagged like you. The upper management here is just like the guys at Obsidian, probably because the mods were promoted because they were good posters or Dark Underlord cousins, but being a good poster or cousin doesn't make anyone qualified to be a mod.

Oh,i agree with you here,seeing how you still don't have the truly retarded tag.

 

[Lahey]

I agree. There are 170 jobs on the line. I have no issue with Feargus's reputation getting destroyed but after this shitshow is over no publisher will be eager to collaborate with Obsidian.

I think they will if there's money to be made, for sure - although the publisher will be more likely to check the burn rate and the accounting while doing so, which would be a good thing - and they would also probably keep a closer eye on where the employee efforts are going (employee shifts are hard to do when you've got a publisher producer actually working in an office in the developer's company).

Also, despite all the publishers Obsidian cycled through, they've always managed to find another - I just wish they could have kept one relationship intact, as I think it would have benefited both the studio and the publisher.

Without some change, I do think turning to self-publishing will end up being the only long-term solution, though.

Which leads us to Fig, A company whose advisory board includes Feargus, Fargo, Schaefer, and Pitchford - all of whom have allegedly engaged in funnelling funds from one project to another behind the backs of publishers and/or backers. It's my understanding that Fig is Feargus' territory and you obviously exited Obsidian before it was announced, but I'm curious about your thoughts on it given these circumstances (and the connection to Robot Cache via Fargo). There has been much skepticism here and around the web regarding both.

 

[Blakemoreland Hybrid Boss]

SOUNDS LIKE YOU DON'T WANT TO BE A CODEXER ANYMORE

Dude, they just gave me a free shitpost-derail card. I can do the fuck I want, anytime I want, ruin the whole thing, and still pretend that acting like a teenager among adults is a good thing.

 

[IHaveHugeNick]

He is insulting Avellone all the time.

Take note people, this here could be a lovely medical study of how rabid fanboysim and celebrity worship causes damage to the brain. This fine specimen of homo sapiens actually managed to rewrite his synapses and entirely erase from his memory the moment when his holiness Chris Avellone got shitfaced drunk/his meds stop working and he detonated on me and Infinitron for no plausible reason anybody could even comprehend.

And hey, this is the Codex. It's a lazy day of posting if someone doesn't call you a colossal fuck at least once. Part of the charm of the place is that everybody is swinging with no remorse, and the next day you shake hands and continue on as if nothing happened. But Avellone doesn't even have the balls to do that, does he. Not that I expected to find anything resembling testicles in a guy who was so terrifed of big bad Feargus, he literally didn't even ask why is he being robbed of his shares.

And now apparently I'm the mean person for tossing some mild jabs back. Brilliant. Sorry bub, if Chris wants to play without gloves, we can play without gloves. Just make sure he doesn't bring a toothpick to a knife fight.

 

[Cael]

being a good poster or cousin doesn't make anyone qualified to be a mod.

And sometimes the person most qualified to be a mod is passed over for the job year after tiresome year...

Wait... That was Ron Paul??? I thought it was Ian McKellan and was wondering at the link...

 

[fantadomat]

Go back to lurking,in all 175 pages of shit i haven't seen a single good post from you. It is amusing how YOU are talking about derailing and not having enough time to read all. Seeing how you were posting shit every page,good thing that i know how to info read and skip pointless shit.

See, I could understand why you would post like that from your tags. Unfortunately for me, not all posters are correctly tagged like you. The upper management here is just like the guys at Obsidian, probably because the mods were promoted because they were good posters or Dark Underlord cousins, but being a good poster or cousin doesn't make anyone qualified to be a mod.

Has anyone asked DU for his books? I want to see some hidden rows in the payroll spreadsheet!

I have,he said that they are Harry Potter and the Lord of the Flies. Pretty good taste i must say.