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

[MajorMace]

Didn't RPS bash Primordia ?
These fuckers have no standard.


I guess Obsidian employees aren't allowed to like Chris' tweets anymore

 

[FreeKaner]

Didn't Josh also hang out with Vavra a bit? I wonder if that had or has any repercussions...

Why would that have any repercussions? Sawyer is much more historically literate than Vavra. I don't think he ever pulled punches when it came to plausibility regarding more sensitive aspects of realities of conflict.

 

[Blaine]

It must be depressing, being a developer who has no choice but to maintain an awareness of and interact with these trash gaming "journalism" outlets. I haven't seen hide nor hair of them in years unless they've produced something particularly controversial to gawk at.

Everyone who still supports those clowns is a scumbag, and that has absolutely nothing to do with Gamergate, which I also pay almost no attention to. They were absolute shit years before that.

 

[Crescent Hawk]

MRY just forget about RPS, its been dead for some time now. Except for the flare path segment.

Its a pit of the worst kind of regressive left retards imaginable. Seriously who in their right mind complain about the "suggests the complicity of the natives".

You can so easily pick up the underlying political tone pushing for utopia, they dont fucking care about brutality of real history, only the immediate polarization that the 2016 elections put on top of the table.

 

[ERYFKRAD]

So, the game has released. Who cares, Darth Roxor review when?

RPS says that the game is about "colonialism mixed with exploitation of natural resources" but says the story is very bad because it "suggests the complicity of the natives." Could Sawyer have balanced too far ...?

That's not a review, that's an opinion and it's a bad opinion. Natives did comply with the colonists everywhere. Moreover suggesting something is "bad" because it doesn't fit with (false) historical narrative is also clueless, as it doesn't even come close to understanding what's storytelling.

Whoa, is that dumbass John Walker reviewing this-

Yup. 'tis he.

 

[FreeKaner]

The agenda is so patronising too, denying agency to natives and ignoring the fact Europeans couldn't have colonised without native complicity. Who teaches these people history?

It also doesn't even matter if they were correct, since it's storytelling in a fictional world. It doesn't have to be historically accurate, it only needs to be internally consistent and plausible.

 

[Crescent Hawk]

John Walker is a fucking monster, the perfect example of the enablers within our midst. Fuck him to hell.

 

[Bocian]

You can't drive to Australia from California, dude.

Cleveland Mark Blakemore
Is that true?

 

[Ezeekiel]

Didn't Josh also hang out with Vavra a bit? I wonder if that had or has any repercussions...

Why would that have any repercussions? Sawyer is much more historically literate than Vavra. I don't think he ever pulled punches when it came to plausibility regarding more sensitive aspects of realities of conflict.

No I mean, sizeable parts of the gaming press basically declared Vavra the great enemy and a lot of the SJW-sphere hates him and has no tolerance for people who so much as suggest that he isn't literally Hitler.
The RPS guy is part of that crowd, so it made me wonder if some of the criticism is just thrown at the game in retaliation perhaps, or if there were other more direct reactions to Josh's fraternization with the enemy.

I'm not suggesting anything like Josh learned from Vavra or what, maybe I worded the previous post poorly.

 

[Life of the Party]

Well met, Chris Avellone! Hope you're having a fine day!

I also hope you'll forgive me for using your presence and the books discussion to promote my favorite setting, that unfortunately not enough people, even in this holy place, seem to appreciate.

Have you, by any chance, read The Night Land by William Hope Hodgson? And if yes, have you read Awake in the Night Land by John C. Wright?

 

[Paul_cz]

RPS says that the game is about "colonialism mixed with exploitation of natural resources" but says the story is very bad because it "suggests the complicity of the natives." Could Sawyer have balanced too far ...?

It's walker, isn't it.

 

[Hines]

Chris Avellone, can you speak to how Arkane perceived Prey's 79 score on Metacritic? I know on Xbox it's a little higher because there's a third of the reviews, but was there any discussion about why the game didn't connect with most reviewers? Since Arkane went through a massive crunch, did Bethesda give out any bonuses?

 

[IHaveHugeNick]

You guys think RPS is bad? Eurogamer had like 5 paragraphs of the review entirely dedicated to attacking Vavra as a sexist fascist nazi, or whatever the cool combination is these days. Attacking his choices of music even. Then they had quotes from alleged "historian" who with his first sentence made it clear he doesn't even know where medevial Bohemia is on the map.

I think just stared at the text in disbelief for what seems like an hour. It's like, I think the Soviet "Pravda" had more journalistic integrity than these people.

 

[FreeKaner]

It triggers me on multiple levels as someone who both loves history and fiction, that they are simultaneously wrong about history and shallow about fiction. I am not an European either.

 

[MRY]

I've always liked RPS, even if they haven't always liked our games*! The site is well formatted and attractive, a decent percentage of the writing is readable at a stylistic level, and there is a lot of content. I think they do a pretty good job of shining a light on stuff that otherwise would get missed. I have a hard time with most gaming sites that have articles popping up all over the place and video reviews you're supposed to watch and click-25-times-to-read-me nonsense and weird color schemes and the like. Recently RPS has started complaining about ad blockers, and the pop-up telling me to stop blocking pop-ups might actually be what causes me to stop reading it, not any disagreement over its content. (I don't care enough about their content to feel any need to agree or disagree with it.)

(* I am not wild about their review of Primordia, but they did give a nice bit of coverage to a random free game we made and to Strangeland. At the end of the day, enough people disliked Primordia that if I held a grudge with each of them, it would be a lot to carry.)

[EDIT to fix a typo.]

 

[Lahey]

IHaveHugeNick nevar 4get Eurogamer and RPS are both Gamer Network.

 

[IHaveHugeNick]

Oh hey, good info, I had no idea. Strange though, with RPS having such a hip layout and Eurogamer looking like a Geocities blog circa 1998.

 

[Lahey]

Eurogamer only acquired RPS last year. Also related http://www.rpgcodex.net/forums/inde...t-release-upcoming-games.118467/#post-5317292 :D

 

[fantadomat]

MRY when a site ask me to stop adblocker i just stop the site. I only let ads on the codex and a few.....other sites.

 

[IHaveHugeNick]

By the way, the colonialism angle is such a bizarre argument. Does Walker even realize he is mentally transplanting real political issues from our realm, into a fictional setting, and expects them to just magically remain coherent and make sense? Chances are, Deadfire natives were in fact complicit in the colonial era. This is not Earth, it's Eora. Things could have been different. Isn't that why we write and read fantasy/scifi , to explore the what if scenarios?

Just...what the hell.

 

[fantadomat]

By the way, the colonialism angle is such a bizarre argument. Does Walker even realize he is mentally transplanting real political issues from our realm, into a fictional setting, and expects them to just magically remain coherent and make sense? Chances are, Deadfire natives were in fact complicit in the colonial era. This is not Earth, it's Eora. What the shit?

That is so true,it all depends on the player. I for example intend on wiping out all the locals,the same way i burned down defiance bay . Death to the badly written NPCs!

 

[agentorange]

Didn't Josh also hang out with Vavra a bit? I wonder if that had or has any repercussions...

Why would that have any repercussions? Sawyer is much more historically literate than Vavra. I don't think he ever pulled punches when it came to plausibility regarding more sensitive aspects of realities of conflict.

 

[fantadomat]

Eurogamer only acquired RPS last year. Also related http://www.rpgcodex.net/forums/inde...t-release-upcoming-games.118467/#post-5317292 :D

Totally forgot about this thread,some of you guys could go there and bump it .

Didn't Josh also hang out with Vavra a bit? I wonder if that had or has any repercussions...

Why would that have any repercussions? Sawyer is much more historically literate than Vavra. I don't think he ever pulled punches when it came to plausibility regarding more sensitive aspects of realities of conflict.

OK that is pretty good,never expected him to stood his grounds against SJWs in such a way. Kudos to him .

 

[HanoverF]

yes, rape

Typical edgy tryhard goon.

 

[Nihiliste]

Chippy I think I've made my position crystal clear by now. I think that MCA's story seems plausible, and I think it's good that he came out with it.

I just have hard time believing that he suddenly felt this strong urge to be very ethical, two days before Deadfire launches, and then when it launched, he suddenly has "something else coming up". I don't doubt his story, I doubt his motivations.

And the comedy highlight of this thread is when DarkUnderlord made a joke that I'm Obsidian employee, and Avellone sheepishly believed it and immediately tried to get me to spy on Feargus and report back to him. All this while still having me on ignore. It's like, take a step back here for a minute and contemplate about this chain of events. The whole thing is just fucking weird, dude.

Blaine is the only person he has on ignore.

Anyways, I actually agree with you on some things - a number of the complaints are kind of naive. Obviously the shareholder agreements were designed in such a way as to give Feargus control and the option to remove partners. Similarly, not sharing royalties with the employees seems like a relatively common business practice.

Certain other things do sound unethical, and many others do sound incompetent. A lot of them just sound like dick moves. Not really earth shaking stuff in a corporate environment, especially at a middle tier company, but good for Chris to get out and find some creative and economic freedom.

The thing that me rage hardest in this thread was hearing that Chris and Josh wanted to offer the narrative lead on Eternity to Ziets. For that alone, Feargus can fuck right off.