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

[Grauken]

I think the last one is the worst

 

[Jarpie]

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.

Do you know how much Obsidian paid to Feargus' wife? If she just got the normal salary like other grunts doing the work she was supposedly doing, according to my friend, it's not a problem, but if she got paid exorbitant salary, comparable for his own CEO salary, then it might be illegal, depending on how they handled it.

Also found this: http://www.wsrp.com/tax-smart-strategy-hire-spouse/

 

[Flou]

MCA hasn't revealed any huge secrets - we've long known Obsidian and Feargus had issues. He used to run Interplay after all and remember where that company went? Some French man bought it, sold most of their shit off at auction, and now their website looks like something from geocities circa 1999.

You must mistake Feargus for Fargo. Fargo ran Interplay, Feargus ran a division of Interplay called Black Isle, you might have heard about it?

 

[Edmund Spenser]

YOU KNOW WHAT, FEARGUS?

YOUR MANAGEMENT STYLE SUCKS!

YOU HAVE NO ETHICS!

YOU LIE WITH A STRAIGHT FACE!

YOU FORGET EVERYTHING!

YOU CHANGE YOUR MIND ALL THE TIME!

YOU HIRE YOUR WIFE! SHE DOESN'T EVEN KNOW WHAT A CRPG IS!

YOU TAKE ADVANTAGE OF PEOPLE'S MISFORTUNES!

YOU THREATEN YOUR PARTNERS!

YOU TRY TO CHEAT YOUR EMPLOYEES OUT OF THEIR MONEY!

YOU BETRAYED ME!

...Oh, and your taste in books sucks, too.

You say this as if it wasn't the best part of the thread!

 

[Flou]

Great!


Damn it! So only Obsidian has possession of those emails at the moment?

Of course they do if such emails even exist. Even if Avellone has them, he would be stupid to show them. Accusation like that might lead to a courtcase if Obsidian and their lawyer think that Avellone doesn't have any evidence to back his claim.
So he might be leading them onto a trap here. (If you believe such conversation even went down in the first place)

 

[Turtle-Zone 3000]

Since we've moved into a literature direction in this thread...

 

[Blaine]

Why hasn't someone updated Chris Avellone's wikipedia entry yet.

Oh, a typo... guess I'll just go back and do it all over again. HTML DID THIS TO ME!

 

[Edmund Spenser]

Updated my shitposting

 

[Jason Liang]

Why hasn't someone updated Chris Avellone's wikipedia entry yet.

Oh, a typo... guess I'll just go back and do it all over again. HTML DID THIS TO ME!

Plug the Codex this time, thx!

 

[Shilandra]

Fuck

I will personally break into MCAs house and slurp his bootyhole while he sleeps if you guys just stop posting for, like, 1 day.

Perpetually 30 pages behind. Can't keep up. Why is this happening?

 

[Latro]

best parts of this thread is when MCA goes to sleep or does something else, a variety of people come in trying to suck up the attention from his void

this thread will be very valuable for forum historian-psychologists in the future

 

[J_C]

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-.

Just skip the Codexian posts and search for MCA. If you have read 70 pages, you have seen everything the Codex has to offer.

 

[The Great ThunThun*]

felipepepe

Thanks for batting on my side here, but really nothing serious about my avatar. It was funny as hell. SO if DarkUnderlord is really to blame here, its to make it permanent until Chris Avellone decides when my punishment is over. Till then I will be the Prometheus whose face is eaten by darkness only to leave the nose behind.

The interesting thing is that I changed it to Chris Avellone 's avatar only to show support. I had no particular motive to cause trouble. No one has to believe that, but it is true. In fact, I like Chris Avellone 's work quite a bit and I want to see that he gets Justice at the end of all this. When a few people complained about the avatar, I ignored them (or rather the other way round) because I thought they were below average Int scores who could not tell who was writing those posts from an infinite number of giveaways. But regardless, when I was approached personally to change it, I finally gave in and changed it myself. It was after that for lulz value that I became a disembodied nose.

About the shitposting debate here, I agree with you 100%. It is quite clear, and I brought it up myself a couple of times, that certain people can not contain their ideological biases from contaminating every single incidence. Which itself is quite a giveaway. How can every single event in the world justify your worldview? But then, things being as they are I would not banhammer them or tag them just for that. I was rather surprised that in the codex tradition Infinitron simply did not excise them out. Whether that was bias or not, I care not to comment.

Finally, I would say that this thread has made quite a few perspectives clear: there is a side that is totally fanboyish in Chris Avellone 's support. There is a skeptical but supportive side (I hope to belong to that) and then there is a purely skeptical but antagonistic side. All these views are okay and even IHaveHugeNick (but lacks other significant appendages) guy, despite being so mad at me, is actually making sense from a certain point of view. This is just debate and debate needs to happen so progress can be made.

 

[ERYFKRAD]

Fuck

I will personally break into MCAs house and slurp his bootyhole while he sleeps if you guys just stop posting for, like, 1 day.

Perpetually 30 pages behind. Can't keep up. Why is this happening?

Pfft, git gud.

 

[Kyl Von Kull]

That goodreads list is the most shocking thing to be revealed in this thread.

Consider:
Feargus is a terrible manager with a fragile ego and the emotional impusle control of a mad dog? Hey, bosses like that are a dime a dozen.
Feargus and Parker have committed atrocities against the genre? The details are surprising, but we knew something like this was happening.
Chris was treated worse than you’d treat a dog? Again, we see this all the time in sports: franchise players occasionally get treated like crap because your team has a really bad GM.

Feargus’ reading list is something else altogether. It’s as though FU is deliberately trying to read every shitty, self-published, $2.99 piece of trash that Amazon tries to foist off on me in its “Sponsored Products” list. I could see someone reading a lot of SF/F who happens to read this garbage in addition to some decent books. But FU’s list is 90% trash, at least. When the best authors on your goodreads page are David Weber and L.E. Modesitt, something has gone seriously wrong. That’s no knock on either author (I had a fondness for both as a teenager but can’t stomach their recent stuff, or Weber’s older stuff in retrospect) they’re just not what anyone would describe as top tier.

His taste isn’t just bad, it’s legendary. Chris Avellone, we’d all be very interested to hear what he recommended to you. Like it or not, you’re an accomplished fantasy author/editor yourself (I know, I know—you’re a designer!). The thought of Feargus telling you to read some self-published paranormal romance novel had me laughing out loud. It’s like telling Guy Gavriel Kay to read some third-rate Tolkien knockoff: “bro, I wrote the Silmarillion.”

 

[Grauken]

Kay is overrated though

 

[Kleptocratic debt serf]

best parts of this thread is when MCA goes to sleep or does something else, a variety of people come in trying to suck up the attention from his void

this thread will be very valuable for forum historian-psychologists in the future

Is that before or after felipepepe's harem of devout femquisitors nuke the Codex from orbit for it's misogynistic, patriarchal, toxic masculinity, and RPG tastes?

How can every single event in the world justify your worldview?

That is the basis of any ideologue, right or left leaning. Have you ever experienced the raw unfiltered proclivities of a feral Trigglypuff on a university campus? I would wager the feminazi sjw crowd outnumbers Codex's "anti-sjw" dudebro types by several order's of magnitude. And the big difference, my money is on the dudebro's just being in it for the LOLs... If you're going to go off tilting at windwills at least aim a little higher.

-EDIT-

Oh and Nick do you truly work at/for Obsidian? If so, in what capacity? (Or was that some inside joke)

 

[TT1]

Can you start to make hard questions instead of shitposting? I need chaos, blood, tears and drama.

So, Chris Avellone lets say that Obsidian is planning an orgy and they invited you. Who would you like to be there?

 

[taxalot]

One unspoken time-consuming part of the story process, however, was that we’d get reading recommendations from Feargus – I won’t name the books

Give us a hint.

If you really want to know, Feargus' goodreads reviews should be a good starting point.

Quite the extensive list for a 13 year old.

 

[ERYFKRAD]

One unspoken time-consuming part of the story process, however, was that we’d get reading recommendations from Feargus – I won’t name the books

Give us a hint.

If you really want to know, Feargus' goodreads reviews should be a good starting point.

Quite the extensive list for a 13 year old.

You saying Feargus is using Obsidian funds to pay his kids to maintain his Goodreads account? Because that's downright diabolical.

 

[taxalot]

Do not trust anyone whose readings only include dorkish fantasy.

 

[taxalot]

One unspoken time-consuming part of the story process, however, was that we’d get reading recommendations from Feargus – I won’t name the books

Give us a hint.

If you really want to know, Feargus' goodreads reviews should be a good starting point.

Quite the extensive list for a 13 year old.

You saying Feargus is using Obsidian funds to pay his kids to maintain his Goodreads account? Because that's downright diabolical.

No. His reading list actually coincides with MCA's testimony that Feargus is terrible at just being human and social.

 

[Blaine]

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.

Well, to be honest, being a stupid fucking retard isn't something you guys weren't known for before Gamergate. In fact, as one of those 4chan refugees I can promise you I heard nothing but pure, unmitigated hatred towards the Codex - you guys were the fat neckbeard types who looked at Mass Effect fans having fun and started screeching at them to stop enjoying things.

I mostly started to actually use my account here because I liked PoE, and wanted to see what else there was out there. And so I got into it. I've read some really great, incredible, fascinating threads. There was a fucking amazing thread where it derailed off-topic and got right down into the hard and gritty math of bard viability in Baldur's Gate 2, and I don't mean "bard is good" vs "bard is bad" but like, a level by level comparison of equipment, damage output potential, spell potential etc etc etc. That was in 2015, and Gamergate was pretty active then. Also, Gamergate types complain alot about this forum not letting people run roughshod over the site.

Real talk: Infinitron, Crooked Bee, felipepe, and others like them have put a lot of "avocational" volunteer work into the Codex or ancillary pursuits. For example, felipepe asked me to write an article for an RPG book he'd been working on, and I obliged. Some may debate the real value of this type of work, and I might even be one of them from time to time, but others do see it as valuable—and in this case, value is in the eye of the beholder.

It's natural for these types of Codexers to feel a sense of proprietorship. What the Crooked Bees and felipepes of the Codex fail to understand or acknowledge, however, is that the influx of Gamergate WOMAN-HATING LITERAL NAZIS didn't originate from vacuum. The gaming industry itself suffers from an ever-increasing infestation of toxic, vitriolic SJWs. Yes, that's right, SJWs. Social justice warriors, that is: iconoclastic ideologues whose hateful, vitriolic rhetoric (seen in tens of thousands of social media posts, among other less visible venues) demonizes traditional games, bullies and cajoles developers, and ultimately contributes enormously to the decline. That's THE Decline—that thing the Codex is purportedly dedicated to fighting at all costs.

Personally, I've been shitposting on chans and other Internet hives of scum and villainy since the very early 2000s. I finally registered for the Codex because of the Kickstarter boom. Lately, I've been watching the same development companies that were part of that initial boom fill up with pink-haired fucking pronoun-mongers: inXile and HBS, for example, and it looks as though Obsidian's next on the chopping block given their "writing" staff.

So basically, although I respect their contributions, faggypepe and Crooked fucking Bee the Something Awful Goon/weeaboo can tonguepunch my fartbox if they expect me to stick my head in the sand alongside theirs while these disgusting fucking twats ruin what's left of fun in cRPGs. It's not just Anita Sarkeesian and dangerhair landwhales bloviating on Twitter anymore, folks. They're fucking up the actual games now.

I wish I had screencapped it, but there was a post on Kotakuinaction that outright named the Jew(infinitron) as a "fucking proto-sjw" and they resolved to never come back. So you sitting there telling me debate is actively being ruin't by the gamergaters and poltards is just embarassing, in their eyes you're as compromised as SomethingAwful or RPG.net. Don't pretend you understand fuck-all about this shit.

It's true. Both extremes of the political spectrum believe that the Codex is a cesspool of the opposite extreme, because they aren't used to seeing both extremes (and everything in between) in the same place at the same time.

It may be compromised in their eyes, but it actually isn't, despite the existence of containment boards and threads. What felipepe, Crooked Bee et al. don't understand (whereas DarkUnderlord seems to) is that if they get their wish and the Codex becomes a safe space, it will turn into a version of RPGnet, RPG Watch, Something Awful, and/or Resetera in actuality, and not just in the eyes of Gamergaters. There will be no more interesting "debates" after that.

So Crooked Bee and others have (mostly) left the Codex. Where did they go? Back to Something Awful? To Resetera, perhaps? Fuck no, because those forums are now unreadable shithole echo chambers full of uninteresting retards. That fate can be the Codex's fate too if it ever goes the politically correct safe space route.

 

[Prime Junta]

I think the last one is the worst

A man's taste in books is a window into his soul.

 

[Blaine]

A man's taste in books is a window into his soul.

Go ahead and post the sepia-filtered Instagram pics of you contemplatively reading Das Kapital. Don't be shy, now. Come on, I know they exist.