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

[Kem0sabe]

Reading the pillars of Eternity sub reddit post on this and I had no idea that place was full snowflakes terrified of the alt right.

 

[Tacgnol]

Reading the pillars of Eternity sub reddit post on this and I had no idea that place was full snowflakes terrified of the alt right.

Yep, full of people trying to bury this and deflect attention.

Look at this snowflake:

 

[Fry]

Somebody from the PoE2 team should be posting here tbh, whether Josh or badler. I mean Chris is now making claims about PoE2's development which is kind of outrageous if you think about it.

 

[Chaotic_Heretic]

I have long since said that the banal verbose grunking of PE helps no one and is downringht awful.

And that is besides the junk rotten autistic moba core gameplay of PE.

and apparently PE2 will also have massive issues now.


How do you shameless cocksucking shills Infinitron Grunker and Prime Junta feel, when the codex icon Chris Avellone spills the shit on your whitewashed neutral positive narrative of PE?

When is the neutral positive "reviewed" interview of Chris Avellone approved by the Ministry of Truth coming?

Sensuki and Darth Roxor both of you were alwys fighting the good fight in PE.

The shills might try to bury your work and opinions. But the truth is here from Chris Avellone's mouth.

Edit: Also jewtron, you sucjed fargos cock a lot didn't you hoping for more access. And Brother None banned codex accces making you the scapegoat. Despite that you still kep on sucking the dev cocks. Truly shameless whore.

 

[Haba]

Sometimes I wonder if Infinitron is a variant of Wyrmbot. I recognize some parts of the code, but so many parts of it is alien to me. Baffling.

 

[Darth Roxor]

 

[Chris Avellone]

Process is a bitch to change. It has massive inertia because every single person has developed their own workflow and changing it is unpleasant.

I would ask Chris Avellone though: as one of the founders, what did you do to shape and improve that process? You were there from the start. You were one of the people best-positioned to push through process reforms before shit got completely out of hand. What's your responsibility for the process?

From where I'm standing, it looks a lot like you failed to effect meaningful process improvements, and then retreated to your cubicle to play your war requiem while everybody else was going about their bumbling chaotic process. And now you're being pretty hard on Eric for failing to accomplish the changes you failed to accomplish from a higher spot up the totem pole. That's not entirely fair in my opinion.

That’s a fair statement and fair challenge. I did it by establishing a foundation of expectations - something no other department at Obsidian had. I did this because I thought setting expectations and benchmarks for each role would be helpful for people taking on those roles.

What I did was simple - list out expectations for every designer position, and say, “here’s the least we expect from you in this position, but we expect more, because we as a company are better than that.”

That turned out not to be the case.*

I firmly believed in these expectations, I believed in titles, lead roles, and responsibilities – not to be limited by them, but “this is the foundation of what you should do.” If you’re doing the job, you get the title (including folks like Eric, who were continuously denied a Creative Lead role due more to politics than what they were actually doing).

But - I was told 8 years into the process that this was irrelevant, and that what guidelines I established for designers and lead designers (of every category) wasn’t worthwhile – this was conveyed to me by Feargus. As he told me, giving expectations for every position was, in fact, wrong. Feargus doesn’t give expectations to his producers - nor should we in other departments, as owners. I didn’t have a good response to this at first because I was genuinely shocked.

I argued my case (since his response was a surprise – and the very late response after so many years genuinely surprised me), and I lost – he simply said to provide expectations for each role was the wrong thing to do because “people will only do the expectations you lay out” which is a dim view of human nature. And it says an unfortunate amount about who we hired.

So – to say it, and I covered this in presentations on hiring: I don’t believe “people only do the littlest required” if you’ve hired the right people and plus, assigning roles and responsibilities solves a lot of problems before they become problems. I did feel I was alone in this aspect, but it seemed self-evident to me - give people the title, the responsibility, and the least of your expectations, and good people will do amazing things beyond anything you could dictate to them.

But I was surprised by his late-term response, his lack of faith in design, and I was disheartened by it. Everything I had been coaching and trying to develop as a foundation had been struck out in one, casual and dismissive, 5-minute conversation.

It’s worth noting that after this occurred, I got accused by a number of designers as “not enforcing the expectations more.” I told them that the expectations had been overruled for every position and was now catch-as-catch-can for each project.

* These expectations, however, are now apparently in use today, because it’s not what they were about, but who speaks to them – which is a topic for another time. In my opinion, the truest test of a manager is they treat the facts they are evaluating as facts, not judging them based on the person relating those facts. True story from a DS3 designer (who left for Blizzard after Stormlands) - we did one not-so-amusing test of this during Dungeon Siege 3, where we had two people tell Feargus the exact same thing, and he dismissed one out of hand, but gladly listened and agreed with the other – even though they were both telling him the exact same thing. At that point, I did break a little inside, but I added it to my manager post-mortem of what not to do as a manager.

 

[Urthor]

I thought MCA was talking about Eric who allegedly promised to do extra work to get Durance and GM as concieved by MCA into the game, but then didn't have the time to do it, and instead basically went "Chris wrote too much" in front of Josh, and then in front of the other non-MCA company owners.

from this?

I strongly suspect PoE2’s lead would take responsibility for going over budget vs. blaming someone who edited his work as soon as he was aware of his boss’s requests, especially if that person editing his own work was an owner and technically their superior.

PoE2's lead is Josh.

Adam B(renneke?) is the producer as well, contrary to popular belief it's not just Josh. The setup on paper is that Josh is the creative lead and Adam is the project manager who controls the purse strings, plans hours, scopes stuff and says no to Josh and I think that's true for 1 and 2? But de facto I'm not entirely sure Adam says no to Josh that often because Josh personality.

I think it's fair to say if the release from Obsidian was professional and the meetings over the cut content were't rude and abusive that it would be fairly unprofessional to reach the stage of no longer talking to someone and ending relationships over the process and cut content. Even if he didn't want to work there any more.

 

[Fry]

Sometimes I wonder if Infinitron is a variant of Wyrmbot. I recognize some parts of the code, but so many parts of it is alien to me. Baffling.

Nah. Infinitron's sole operating principle is making the world take the Codex seriously.

A task of turd polishing so epic it would make Sisyphus fall on his sword.

 

[ColonelTeacup]

Process is a bitch to change. It has massive inertia because every single person has developed their own workflow and changing it is unpleasant.

I would ask Chris Avellone though: as one of the founders, what did you do to shape and improve that process? You were there from the start. You were one of the people best-positioned to push through process reforms before shit got completely out of hand. What's your responsibility for the process?

From where I'm standing, it looks a lot like you failed to effect meaningful process improvements, and then retreated to your cubicle to play your war requiem while everybody else was going about their bumbling chaotic process. And now you're being pretty hard on Eric for failing to accomplish the changes you failed to accomplish from a higher spot up the totem pole. That's not entirely fair in my opinion.

we did one not-so-amusing test of this during Dungeon Siege 3, where we had two people tell Feargus the exact same thing, and he dismissed one out of hand, but gladly listened and agreed with the other – even though they were both telling him the exact same thing. At that point, I did break a little inside, but I added it to my manager post-mortem of what not to do as a manager.

Ouch.

 

[Valtiel]

E3 2018,
Obsidian logo shows up on screen,
Fans are shrieking, Boyarsky Cain vibes all over the place,
"Announcing our next big project...",
CHRIS AVELLONE LAWSUIT,
By Obsidian Entertainment.

 

[ColonelTeacup]

Don't even want to know what the kickstarter stretch goals would be for that one.

 

[Prime Junta]

That’s a fair statement and fair challenge. I did it by establishing a foundation of expectations - something no other department at Obsidian had. I did this because I thought setting expectations and benchmarks for each role would be helpful for people taking on those roles.

(snip the rest)

Thanks for a very candid answer. So basically you had the rug yanked out from under you by Feargus. That's some seriously bad management. If it happened eight years into the exercise though it does seem like things had gone awry much earlier, manifested as that fan favourite, "lack of communication." Did you ever get along well with him or the other founders? If this is how things work at Obsidian I don't blame you at all for leaving; if anything it's remarkable you stuck it out as long as you did.

But I do think you're being too hard on Eric for not being able to change things where you also failed.

One thing that strikes me about your answer is that it sounds really top down. Expectations for roles are crucial of course -- that's what a role is, at the heart of it; a set of expectations you need to live up to; without expectations it's just an empty title.

My experience with getting process changes to bite though is that it works really badly from the top down. I always start with a single scrum team: four to ten people collaborating on some particular, concrete thing. We establish who's going to be the scrum master, work out the basic nitty-gritty of daily work -- coding standards, how to use the process tools like source control and issue tracking to stay in sync and up to date with what everybody's doing, whether and how we're going to apply code reviews to enforce the standards, what exactly is going to happen in the scrum and how long it's going to take -- and then get that to actually work on the ground, so people just do it without thinking about it. Once that foundation is laid, we can move up to the sprint level and establish what the roles at that level are supposed to do. And once that's working, up another level, however many levels are needed. In my experience it really doesn't do much to establish the responsibilities of a product owner, lead designer, QA lead, or any of the other slots that need filling until you've got that fundamental thing running -- and once you do, defining those roles becomes pretty easy; it doesn't quite happen by itself but it's more of a gardening/steering thing than drawing up boxes.

Moreover, this way a lot -- not all, mind, but a lot! -- of the hierarchy just withers away. The scrum teams will be able to resolve a lot of problems and conflicts before they even become issues, without having to go to a superior to make a call on it. And it's specifically this kind of structured yet flexible environment that brings out the best in people, makes them do more than just the minimum. Conversely, a top-down management culture will get people just to tick the boxes -- at least people who aren't exceptionally driven internally, and those people tend not to thrive in hierarchical, top-down environments unless they happen to sit at or near the top of the totem pole.

 

[boobio]

Reading the pillars of Eternity sub reddit post on this and I had no idea that place was full snowflakes terrified of the alt right.

Yep, full of people trying to bury this and deflect attention.

Look at this snowflake:

If you would like to dispute that claim. https://www.reddit.com/r/projectete...odex_interview_chris_avellone_on_pillars_cut/

 

[Chaotic_Heretic]

I am glad to see Obsidian burning. Burn more crash more. And FagAss CuckHeart should go die in a fire and take SJW Autist control freak Josh with him.

 

[abnaxus]

Footage of Avellone's final moments at Obshitian

Spoiler

 

[The Great ThunThun*]

Process is a bitch to change. It has massive inertia because every single person has developed their own workflow and changing it is unpleasant.

I would ask Chris Avellone though: as one of the founders, what did you do to shape and improve that process? You were there from the start. You were one of the people best-positioned to push through process reforms before shit got completely out of hand. What's your responsibility for the process?

From where I'm standing, it looks a lot like you failed to effect meaningful process improvements, and then retreated to your cubicle to play your war requiem while everybody else was going about their bumbling chaotic process. And now you're being pretty hard on Eric for failing to accomplish the changes you failed to accomplish from a higher spot up the totem pole. That's not entirely fair in my opinion.

That’s a fair statement and fair challenge. I did it by establishing a foundation of expectations - something no other department at Obsidian had. I did this because I thought setting expectations and benchmarks for each role would be helpful for people taking on those roles.

What I did was simple - list out expectations for every designer position, and say, “here’s the least we expect from you in this position, but we expect more, because we as a company are better than that.”

That turned out not to be the case.*

I firmly believed in these expectations, I believed in titles, lead roles, and responsibilities – not to be limited by them, but “this is the foundation of what you should do.” If you’re doing the job, you get the title (including folks like Eric, who were continuously denied a Creative Lead role due more to politics than what they were actually doing).

But - I was told 8 years into the process that this was irrelevant, and that what guidelines I established for designers and lead designers (of every category) wasn’t worthwhile – this was conveyed to me by Feargus. As he told me, giving expectations for every position was, in fact, wrong. Feargus doesn’t give expectations to his producers - nor should we in other departments, as owners. I didn’t have a good response to this at first because I was genuinely shocked.

I argued my case (since his response was a surprise – and the very late response after so many years genuinely surprised me), and I lost – he simply said to provide expectations for each role was the wrong thing to do because “people will only do the expectations you lay out” which is a dim view of human nature. And it says an unfortunate amount about who we hire.

So – to say it, and I covered this in presentations on hiring: I don’t believe “people only do the littlest required” if you’ve hired the right people and plus, assigning roles and responsibilities solves a lot of problems before they become problems. I did feel I was alone in this aspect, but it seemed self-evident to me - give people the title, the responsibility, and the least of your expectations, and good people will do amazing things beyond anything you could dictate to them.

But I was surprised by his late-term response, his lack of faith in design, and I was disheartened by it. Everything I had been coaching and trying to develop as a foundation had been struck out in one, casual and dismissive, 5-minute conversation.

It’s worth noting that after this occurred, I got accused by a number of designers as “not enforcing the expectations more.” I told them that the expectations had been overruled for every position and was now catch-as-catch-can for each project.

* These expectations, however, are now apparently in use today, because it’s not what they were about, but who speaks to them – which is a topic for another time. In my opinion, the truest test of a manager is they treat the facts they are evaluating as facts, not judging them based on the person relating those facts. True story from a DS3 designer (who left for Blizzard after Stormlands) - we did one not-so-amusing test of this during Dungeon Siege 3, where we had two people tell Feargus the exact same thing, and he dismissed one out of hand, but gladly listened and agreed with the other – even though they were both telling him the exact same thing. At that point, I did break a little inside, but I added it to my manager post-mortem of what not to do as a manager.

Chris, man, why now? Why here?

Footage of Avellone's final moments at Obshitian

Spoiler

Low taste detected.

 

[ColonelTeacup]

Reading the pillars of Eternity sub reddit post on this and I had no idea that place was full snowflakes terrified of the alt right.

Yep, full of people trying to bury this and deflect attention.

Look at this snowflake:

If you would like to dispute that claim. https://www.reddit.com/r/projectete...odex_interview_chris_avellone_on_pillars_cut/

This guys post history is littered with him arguing about antisemitism, complaining about nazis in every corner, calling people cum stains and accusing people of being "/pol/". Additionally, the person has marx in their name. This person is about as credible as alex jones on a meth binge.

 

[Kem0sabe]

The public perception I have of Sawyer is that he's a nice guy, with good taste in tattoos and a quirky sense of humor.

I can identify with that at some level, it would be a shame if it came out that he was part of this conspiracy against MCA.

 

[ColonelTeacup]

Yep, called it. A marxist.

 

[Quillon]

My last question for the day is was this the greatest shitstorm of 2018? or will there be more to come as we sail towards Deadfire?

 

[The Great ThunThun*]

Defending the corporation against the employee? Yep. A real Marxist here guys. Not surprised one bit.

 

[ColonelTeacup]

I never said he was smart. Though that's a given. Intelligence and marxism rarely go hand in hand. :mrpresident:

 

[HoboForEternity]

I spent like half of my work day reading this whole thing and not regretted it.

i do not really have much to say really. Honestly iam still just a kid who graduated college last year and only start working a real job for 1and half a year. I cannot say i have experience or say in analyzing a corporate work culture especially one that is so far away and different from my current job.

That cast aside, i do have an opinion regarding this problem. A project being cut off, content being cut is nothing new.

Shitty upper management and bad communication is also nothing new. Most of you who have more experience working should know.

In the end it is just sad that company i love and whose games i grew up with ended up like this. In the end, shitty owners aside, i still believe obsidian has capable, good creative people who love the media, even josh, who is generally unpopular here and eric who clashed with chris, and the whole of new people who grew up with kotor 2, new vegas nwn 2 , and decided to work at their dream company etc gonna get hurt if something do happened to obsidian.

Indeed, like everyone said, this isnt an obsidian exclusive problem, but a widespread cancer happening in most creative industry with stakes high enough to bankrupt alot of people.

It is probably just gonna get worse in the coming decade until shit gets too much and it just implodes.

 

[Nuclear Explosion]

Although it is an extremely harmful ideology, it is fairly likely that most Western Marxists are of above average intelligence.