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

[Chris Avellone]

(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.

First off, I'm glad you said Scrum and not Agile development.

I don’t blame Eric for not being able to change any of these things – I do think he provided guidance to a lot of new Eternity writers, and we did work to accommodate him after New Vegas.

But before you think I’m being overly magnanimous, Eric absolutely drove away a lot of talented writers (esp. John Gonzalez – Shadow over Mordor, Horizon Zero Dawn), although John likely wouldn’t ever admit to the fact that Eric hated him; also, we were forced to isolate Eric from John’s Lead Writer responsibilities (which was a failure on our part, but I wasn’t in charge of New Vegas, which had a lot of inner development conflicts across the board).

Even more after John left, we actually changed our hiring procedure to cater to Eric on Eternity, since we knew if he didn’t approve of a writer, you might as well set a torch any writer that worked with him.

Overall, I thought John was a great writer.

When I talked to Eric about the perspectives on John (since no one else had), his solution was, “let’s just divide New Vegas tasks so John and I never have to interact with each other,” which was like, that moment where all the sound evaporates from the room and all you see is the other person’s lips moving, but you can’t bring yourself to acknowledge what they’re saying. I mean, the person you're denouncing - he’s your Lead. He’s a good writer. So are you. Try to meet in the middle. But – no, that was not to be.

Despite the situation, John turned in his notice (which also broke me a little more) and went on to bigger and better things – Mordor, Horizon: Zero Dawn. Kudos to him, but a huge loss for Obsidian in writing talent (much like George Ziets and Travis Stout). All could have been prevented, imo.

 

[Chaotic_Heretic]

I know a couple of Germans.

Even though they are inflexible rigid cucks, they have integrity and absolutely hate office politics.

Looks like Sawyer retained the cuckoldry and inflexibility from his german ancestry and assimilated backstabbing/dirty politics from kwa kulture.

Le 56% character.

Also Eric sounds like a speshul snowflake, if what chris said is true.

 

[Quillon]

Shitstorm's spreading back in time; New Vegas was its last victim. Alpha Protocol's braced for impact. NWN2's calling for help. KotOR2's pretty confident it wouldn't reach that far...

 

[Kem0sabe]

Mods locked the reddit thread on this...

"Alright this is devolving into personal attacks, especially since we are getting linked to from other forums, so I'm locking this thread now and removing the worst.

The interview itself was relevant enough to PoE that it can remain, but copy pasting big swathes of other peoples posts from other forums is not, if you want to read or discuss the drama go there."

 

[Turtle-Zone 3000]

 

[SausageInYourFace]

a huge loss for Obsidian in writing talent (much like George Ziets)

Why did he leave again? And how it could it have been prevented?

 

[Cross]

So the working conditions at Obsidian are so awful that critical staff like Gonzalez and Fenstermaker literally couldn't stand to be in the same room?

Looks like my prediction from earlier in this thread was spot on:

The most interesting takeaway from that story isn't the fact that Obsidian would try to impose such a draconian NDA on him; it's what the NDA implies, that what went on at Obsidian was so incriminating that Feargus & co were absolutely terrified of Avellone spilling the beans about it.

Which means we might see even more shocking truth bombs about Obsidian being dropped in the future.

 

[ColonelTeacup]

Mods locked the reddit thread on this...

"Alright this is devolving into personal attacks, especially since we are getting linked to from other forums, so I'm locking this thread now and removing the worst.

The interview itself was relevant enough to PoE that it can remain, but copy pasting big swathes of other peoples posts from other forums is not, if you want to read or discuss the drama go there."

Reddit censoring opinions once things stop going their way? Color me surprised.

 

[AwesomeButton]

although John likely wouldn’t ever admit to the fact that Eric hated him;

Man, I understand the emotional factor but it's just bad form saying things like that.

 

[ColonelTeacup]

a huge loss for Obsidian in writing talent (much like George Ziets)

Why did he leave again? And how it could it have been prevented?

Better management, I would imagine.

although John likely wouldn’t ever admit to the fact that Eric hated him;

Man, I understand the emotional factor but it's just bad form saying things like that.

If it's true, it's true. Don't shoot the messenger.

 

[Bohr]

I know a couple of Germans.

Even though they are inflexible rigid cucks, they have integrity and absolutely hate office politics.

Looks like Sawyer retained the cuckoldry and inflexibility from his german ancestry and assimilated backstabbing/dirty politics from kwa kulture.

Le 56% character.

Also Eric sounds like a speshul snowflake, if what chris said is true.

Come on bro, does such an epic thread need moar edge thrown into the mix?

 

[Darth Roxor]

Even more after John left, we actually changed our hiring procedure to cater to Eric on Eternity

well that worked well

 

[Infinitron]

Chris what is you doing

Nobody even asked about New Vegas

 

[Killzig]

Chris what is you doing

Nobody even asked about New Vegas

Let it happen.

 

[ColonelTeacup]

Chris what is you doing

Nobody even asked about New Vegas

It sounds endemic to the studio that persisted and most likely worsened to such levels that people like Gonzalez and others left, which were in fact talented developers. Context is important.

 

[Blakemoreland Hybrid Boss]

carrie patel is a cutie

Like them old, do you?

Like them dike, do you?

 

[Darth Roxor]

inb4 infinitron closes the thread because it's devolving into personal attacks

 

[ColonelTeacup]

carrie patel is a cutie

Like them old, do you?

Like them dike, do you?

That post was yesterday. Stop living in the past Blakey.

inb4 infinitron closes the thread because it's devolving into personal attacks

Doubtful. Infinitron seems to be fully invested at this point.

 

[Prime Junta]

First off, I'm glad you said Scrum and not Agile development.

I didn't even say Scrum. I said scrum. I have a distaste for Capitalised Buzzwords, because when somebody breaks them out they're almost invariably oversimplifying a problem in order to sell you a solution that won't actually work. Anyway most of the good things about agile development have just become regular best practices; most software development houses do scrums and sprints in one form or another for example. Traditional documentation-driven waterfallish stuff is getting rare these days, and good riddance to that. I do feel very strongly -- from experience -- that informal communication is more important to a team's health and productivity than formal communication, and horizontal communication is more important than vertical communication. Overemphasising vertical lines of communication and "chain of command" will really quickly slip into a pattern where people sitting next to each other aren't talking to each other, but instead pass messages through their hierarchical superior, and that's a recipe for instant sclerosis. (But that's a tangent, although one I'd be happy to explore any time.)

It's often easy to see in retrospect that things could have been prevented. A lot of the time they're not because people don't like conflicts and try to avoid them. Getting into a huge shouting match at the slightest provocation is obviously destructive (been there, done that, have the scars), but if that gets into a dynamic where the problems causing the shouting are never addressed, that's worse. Conflict-avoidance slides into resolution-avoidance. These are the kind of situations that really test a corporate culture's mettle -- and ultimately the CEO's. Clearly both failed badly. I do still think that as a founder you were in a position to do more to shape that culture. When you died a little in those incidents you're relating, did you actually do anything about it at the time? Like, comment on it immediately, or talk about it with Feargus later, or discuss it with everybody involved? Culture is shaped by little interventions like that, and when they come from someone in a position of authority, they carry a lot of weight. Perhaps even Feargus could have been nudged into becoming a better boss.

Thing is, you strike me as a non-confrontational person. I get the impression that you ended up sidelined at Obsidian years before things blew up. Do you think this could have anything to do with conflict/resolution avoidance? If so, how much of that conflict avoidance was from your side, and how much from everyone else? I also know what it's like when you're trying to bring up a really unpleasant problem but everybody else just kind of fades away instead of dealing with it, and how forcing the issue involves spending some of your social capital as well as likely causing collateral damage; I've done all of that, both when it's justified and sometimes and to my great regret when it's not.

Perhaps I'm projecting from my own experiences, but something about the social dynamics of this whole thing just feels really, really familiar: relatively mundane interpersonal conflicts, chemistry mismatches, and minor fuckups related to organisation and work escalating into something much worse because the people involved and their bosses just don't want to tackle the difficulties before they turn into real problems. The main difference appears to be that I'm lucky enough to have a CEO who tries his best to be fundamentally fair -- and corrects course when he fails.

 

[Chris Avellone]

Chris what is you doing

Nobody even asked about New Vegas

It's like asking you to report the news, what's wrong with that?

 

[skacky]

Chris what is you doing

Nobody even asked about New Vegas

 

[Artyoan]

You strike me as being intensely optimistic, Chris. Perhaps too much so. You notice the dysfunction. You see the sources. You see the wreckage. You become agitated. And over time you become detached.

And a detached mindset has a way of overestimating how great things might be if everyone was performing as one believes they ought to be.

I'm not going to say that things wouldn't be better if your ideas of management/expectations had been followed. But its unlikely that its a paradise lost.

 

[I ASK INANE QUESTIONS]

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

If you like a corporation, it's a charming little worker's trust, filled to the brim with enthusiasts.
If you don't like it, it a soulless profit-driven man-breaking megaconglomerate(of bourgeois bigots)

 

[Chris Avellone]

You strike me as being intensely optimistic, Chris. Perhaps too much so. You notice the dysfunction. You see the sources. You see the wreckage. You become agitated. And over time you become detached.

And a detached mindset has a way of overestimating how great things might be if everyone was performing as one believes they ought to be.

I'm not going to say that things wouldn't be better if your ideas of management/expectations had been followed. But its unlikely that its a paradise lost.

I would play this RPG you envision.

 

[ColonelTeacup]

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

If you like a corporation, it's a charming little worker's trust, filled to the brim with enthusiasts.
If you don't like it, it a soulless profit-driven man-breaking megaconglomerate(of bourgeois bigots)

When I was scrounging through his comments, he did have one post complaining about the capitalist system requiring you to work for money.