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

[Elwro]

So, for me the take-away message of the last few pages consists of two parts:

1. Chris appreciates Iain M. Banks;
2. RPS really hits a new low with the 'complicity of the natives thing'.

(Why the hell can't the natives be complicit in basically any evil whatsoever, in a FICTIONAL universe? Because what, we shouldn't suggest such things to the kids or what?)

in the Hegelian spirit of synthesis I would like to point out, then, that Iain Banks wrote a very good novel called Complicity . I'd say it was his best non-sf novel I read, I highly recommend it!

 

[Kev Inkline]

I made an account a few days ago and I think everything's fine here. It's not the Codex's job to cater to outsiders and make them feel special.

As an outsider I know I'm entering into a culture that I am not a part of and it's up to me to integrate. You know, like a considerate person.

Which faction will you join? Nazis or Communists? Nihilists? Weaboos? Grognards? Wannabe-Journalists? Satanists? Or perhaps even Latro's prestigious VolCels?


Just kidding, you can just join all the factions and become king of all of them after an extensive and boring quest-line for each one.

 

[sahib]

Just leaving my first post on the codex in an epic thread, don't mind me

 

[aratuk]

How much did Feargus pay for this to happen?

 

[Generic-Giant-Spider]

Everyone's having fun playing PoE2.

And here I am jerking off to S&M porn and standing strong with Avellone.

 

[Tim the Bore]

I know I'm already 20 pages behind, but I have to sleep for one hour. But:

but NCR felt lacking and tacked on (which wasn't John's call, but the problem overall was throughout the game there was no one was like "Tandi" who exemplified the NCR faction on a personal level - the leadership of the faction felt disconnected and distant).

Wasn't that the point? That NCR is so disorganized, scattered and deprived of the central core, that the two of yours superiors have given you conflicting orders all the time? I've always thought that NCR was written very well - as a massive clusterfuck; given what this thread showed I know now why.

Anyway, sorry for offtoping.

EDIT: Nevermind, someone already mentioned that. Rate me "old" then.

 

[Average Manatee]

Of course this place is intolerant, Cael. You’d have to be a complete moron to claim otherwise.

The difference is that this place’s intolerance comes without censorship.

What does intolerant mean without censorship? Just having different opinions and being loudmouthed about it? Doesn't seem like a reasonable definition, I'd say we're tolerant.

 

[Bohr]

We do not owe it to anybody to be nice and welcoming.

And for this very reason, people like me that have been playing RPGs for a quarter of a century, choose to only watch the your displays and simply chuckle.

It's fun to think you're elite, but it's even funner to laugh at someone who thinks they're elite.

And don't reply. I don't care.

Welcome to the forums!

Sounds like you have sufficient underlying butthurt to become a valued member of the community

 

[IHaveHugeNick]

Oh hey, that thread on Obsidian forums is fun. They try to figure out my sikret identity and some dude claims to have played Xbox games with me.

It's a plausible story, but there's one problem. I don't have an Xbox.

 

[SausageInYourFace]

Obsidian Devtag for HugeNick when?

Edit: and some absolute madman actually did it

 

[Grunker]

Of course this place is intolerant, Cael. You’d have to be a complete moron to claim otherwise.

The difference is that this place’s intolerance comes without censorship.

What does intolerant mean without censorship? Just having different opinions and being loudmouthed about it? Doesn't seem like a reasonable definition, I'd say we're tolerant.

Intolerance obviously isn't restricted to judicial acts. If I hurl insults at you for even the slightest breach of social codes, I am less tolerant than someone who does not and handles disagreement in a civil manner.

While the Codex is way, waaaaay more tolerant in terms of rules and censorship, we're extremely intolerant as far as social codes go. Relatively innocent posts can prompt strings of ridicule, political spam and insults.

Even if the latter is sometimes tiresome, I think judicial tolerance is the only way to go for an internet forum and I also think that judicial tolerance is way more important than social tolerance, for the same reason I think freedom of speech is more important than people's feelings. Even if I personally think you're a retard if you insist on bumbling around shouting "nigger" because it's your right to do so. Because the alternative is and has always been an Internet Nerd Police taking silly debates about video games way too seriously and then start censoring people they disagree with. Which then, fuck it, I'm outta there.

Also, I like to yell at people for silly reasons sometimes and enjoy them yelling back at me.

And, as someone around here once said, if you can't take the heat...

 

[Volrath]

Everyone's having fun playing PoE2.

And here I am jerking off to S&M porn and standing strong with Avellone.

Suuuuure

 

[Average Manatee]

Of course this place is intolerant, Cael. You’d have to be a complete moron to claim otherwise.

The difference is that this place’s intolerance comes without censorship.

What does intolerant mean without censorship? Just having different opinions and being loudmouthed about it? Doesn't seem like a reasonable definition, I'd say we're tolerant.

Intolerance obviously isn't restricted to judicial acts. If I hurl insults at you for even the slightest breach of social codes, I am less tolerant than someone who does not and handles disagreement in a civil manner.

While the Codex is way, waaaaay more tolerant in terms of rules and censorship, we're extremely intolerant as far as social codes go. Relatively innocent posts can prompt strings of ridicule, political spam and insults.

Even if the latter is sometimes tiresome, I think judicial tolerance is the only way to go for an internet forum and I also think that judicial tolerance is way more important than social tolerance, for the same reason I think freedom of speech is more important than other people's feelings, even if I personally think you're a retard if you insist bumbling around shouting "nigger" because it's your right to do so. Because the alternative is and has always been an Internet Nerd Police taking silly debates about video games way too seriously and then start censoring people they disagree with.

Also, I like to yell at people for silly reasons sometimes and enjoy them yelling back at me.

And, as someone around here once said, if you can't take the heat...

I disagree.

To me, tolerance means tolerating someone's presence on the forum. Intolerance means either outright bans from the administration or other posters specifically targetting someone to stalk and make their life a living hell until they leave.

Tolerance does not mean tolerating someone's opinion on any specific subject. This is the nature of free speech. Any speech, however nasty, is entire within the realm of tolerance. If we start judging tolerance by how nice the target of the response to an unpopular opinion feels we'll reach the point of twitter crybabies who claim victimhood because they said something dumb and were politely disagreed with a hundred times over.

The major difference is that the former targets a poster, the latter targets the poster's opinion. I've almost never seen people on the codex targeting personally, in that even when outside the problematic topic people are targeted for their opinions. Plenty of posters with really dumbfuck, extreme, borderling troll ideas participate in totally normal civil discussions in GRPG, GG, and other subforums. This is different from other forums where posters who have once expressed an unpopular opinion are either banned or stalked mercilessly across the whole forum until they self eject. This is tolerance, the ideas are attacked and criticized, the people are left to go their own way when its over.

 

[mastroego]

Woaaaa, ok, skimmed through the first 80 pages so far.
ID'ing the relevant posts by the explosions of ratings.

For now, I will just comment on the usual Great Divide inside the Codex:

• On one hand, those Codexers of proven and tried prestigiousness who take the correct side since the Fiery Truth resonates with them, and they can unerringly spot it when they see it.

• On the other hand, those who would be ready to fully trust the PR sugary words of male feminists, right until the point when they're outed as creepy sex predators and get disavowed EVEN by the democratic party.

Great read so far.

 

[Roguey]

Idea: RPG Codex is an unwelcoming hivemind.

Reality: We argue all the time about everything (including this), also flags indicating where some of youse live

 

[Prime Junta]

I've almost never seen people on the codex targeting personally

Lies. Just ask Crispy.

(On a more serious note: I have certainly seen people getting targeted personally, up to and including doxxing and stalking off-Codex. I've even seed Codexian pile-ons of complete bystanders. Usually the admins have stepped in when things have gone that far, but it's a relatively common occurrence to a somewhat lesser extent, and that reflects worse on the Codex IMO than the Nazi larpers and other snowflakes running loose without supervision.)

 

[Absinthe]

Well, to be fair, I was pretty gullible for believing Nick might be an Obsidianite (again, well-played, DU).

Still am curious on the story elements and companion arcs for Deadfire, though, and how those turned out (I've only read a few reviews, but if someone has a larger grasp, I'd love to hear their thoughts) - this isn't for the sake of snark, btw, I'm genuinely curious how it turned out compared to PoE1.

To be fair, we do have a lot of devs lurking and posting incognito on our forums. I'm pretty sure some of the CD Projekt crew frequents our boards, for instance, and they're far from the only ones. And IHaveHugeNick really does sound like he has a personal stake in the matter.

By the way, on the subject of NDAs, if someone were to sue Obsidian/Feargus or if you were to be sued for libel, the ensuing discovery process would allow you to subpoena people under NDAs and bust them open (since a subpoena trumps a NDA). Combined with court proceedings being a matter of public record the relevant NDA would be thoroughly in tatters, although they still wouldn't be able to talk about it outside the relevant proceeding, unless you want to fight it out that by becoming public information through the trial it is now non-confidential and no longer protected by NDA (which is a valid argument since NDAs cannot restrain the disclosure of public information, but expect lots of hair-splitting on what is and isn't public). Similarly a NDA can be invalidated if it was overbroad ("Never talk about Feargus" for instance or "don't talk about anything that went on behind closed doors") or improperly constructed (ie. if Obsidian has a different legal name from its business name, but signed the agreement on their end with Obsidian's business name, which has no legal authority, or if the person you signed that agreement with similarly did not have the legal authority to act in Obsidian's name).

I may as well ask a question people are curious about here, btw: How exactly did you get de-ownered? What exactly was done?

 

[Chippy]

But management seem to be jerks, and there's rarely change at that level unless the company product isn't profitable.

Management is often full of jerkdom. So what?
Game ratings is serious stuff, you can't just fool around with them!

My first post was the question (that there's a hypothetical comparison to be made between hacking a rating, and attacking the ethics of a company) because the second post was addressing the accusation by IHaveHugeNick that Chris Avellone has created a thing that will negatively impact Obsidian. The distiguished gentleman at 'Top Hats and Champagne' said it: "Do we want to give our money to an unethical company?". So MCA has created this thing that for some people where the only response is: "This is haram, I refuse to further support this company".

So when I said Chris Avellone has done a great thing with this thread, I mean he has the balls to put himself and his career at risk. Because all people remember is that you were involved in that "shitty thing", no-one cares if you were justified or validated - they especially care if you started it and they really pay attention if you created a controversey aimed at past crappy managers. Because those managers was making money, who cares about the employees - there's more where they came from. What? we're choir boys here? How can we trust a guy that doesn't appreciate some shady shit happens in every company, we turn a profit, and people didn't care about the stink this troublemaker/non team player created - they still bought the game.

I hope MCA really makes it clear in future interviews that it's his ethics, good buisness practice, and standard for employees that fueled this and maybe publishers will look closer at Obsidian upper management. He'll gain more rep as a hero among devlopers and RPG connoisseurs.

And he'll still be my hero... even though he hasn't responded to my question, disclaimer-reponded to my hypothetical question aimed at the Codex, and recommended Siege of Dragonspear to me.

 

[Infinitron]

lol.

I guess he's referring to Carrie Patel there. Married to an Indian, not half-Indian.

 

[Elwro]

So when I said Chris Avellone has done a great thing with this thread, I mean he has the balls to put himself and his career at risk. Because all people remember is that you were involved in that "shitty thing", no-one cares if you were justified or validated

Well, isn't it so that no matter what Chris is doing now and probably no matter what he does in the future, he will be 'the guy who wrote Torment', and nobody will care about what he someday wrote on some alt-center internet forum :D?

 

[SausageInYourFace]

To be fair, we do have a lot of devs lurking and posting incognito on our forums. I'm pretty sure some of the CD Projekt crew frequents our boards, for instance, and they're far from the only ones.

Thats just an assumption, though. Its probably true but how would you know?

 

[IHaveHugeNick]

And IHaveHugeNick really does sound like he has a personal stake in the matter.

That's preposterous, offensive and you should be ashamed of yourself for even saying this.

Just because I'm Feargus' dad, doesn't mean I can't stay objective.

 

[ERYFKRAD]

Just because I'm Feargus's dad, doesn't mean I can't stay objective.

Bullshit, you lost all claims to objectivity when you failed to close his Goodreads account.

 

[IHaveHugeNick]

Just because I'm Feargus's dad, doesn't mean I can't stay objective.

Bullshit, you lost all claims to objectivity when you failed to close his Goodreads account.

That's "bullshit, sir". Address your elders properly. Nothing personel, kid.

 

[ERYFKRAD]

Just because I'm Feargus's dad, doesn't mean I can't stay objective.

Bullshit, you lost all claims to objectivity when you failed to close his Goodreads account.

That's "bullshit, sir" for you, son. Address your elders properly.

Gotcha, you geezer.