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

[Sentinel]

why do you hate obsidian so much bro

 

[Nano]

Literally who cares about this shit. It sold tons of copies and is considered by many to be among the best RPGs of all time.

Obsidian cares because they burned their reputation in the process and now they can't get a big contract. You can't act like a player when you run a business. Grow up.

No publisher would care about the slightly below 85 Metascore the game got because of the bugs it had at launch. What they would care about is the 10+ million copies it sold.

 

[Fry]

If there's one thing the Codex understands, it's how the actual business of video games works.

:ehue:

 

[Glaucon]

Where was all this juicy drama in the Road to Eternity documentary?

 

[Junmarko]

from official obsidian discord;

...tell them to adopt NK-Intranet. (swearing = salt mines)

 

[Blakemoreland Hybrid Boss]

why do you hate obsidian so much bro

Ok, let’s put things in perspective. After the closure of Black Isle Studios, they created Obsidian. They had the pedigree of being the last developers that would give us the cRPGs that nobody wants to make anymore. But after more than 14 years in existence, cancelled projects and complaints about publishers they gave us three good games: KOTOR 2, F:NV, and MotB. Everyone wanted more CRPG’s and were cheering for them. The studio was struggling and almost close its doors, and then there is steam, kickstarter, cRPG renascence and whatnot. So they finally have an opportunity to do a cRPG without undue publisher influence, save their studio and what is that they do? A series of bullshit IE clones. To add insult to injury the guy in charge says condescending things about the game they were supposed to clone, their target audience that he criticises as traditionalists and treated like a dog one of the best developers in the the genre—and I’m not even considering the repeated eulogies to Bethesda and popamole games made in public.

If everyone was still dying for new cRPGs, I would not be picky. I would gladly accept IWD 2.0 and say thank you. But times are different now and there is an explosion of new cRPGs, many of them made by genuine cRPG fans that actually care about the salubrity of the genre instead of waiting for some big publisher and a big contract. So yeah, I think I'm entitled to be just a litle bit angry, bro.

 

[Sentinel]

why do you hate obsidian so much bro

Look, let’s put things in perspective. After the closure of Black Isle Studios, Obsidian was created. They had the pedigree of being the last developers that would give us the cRPGs that nobody wants to make anymore. But after more than 14 years in existence, cancelled projects and complaints about publishers they gave us three good games: KOTOR 2, F:NV, and MotB. Everyone wanted more CRPG’s and were cheering for them. The studio was struggling and almost close its doors, and then there is steam, kickstarter, cRPG renascence and whatnot. So they finally have an opportunity to do a cRPG without undue publisher influence, save their studio and what is that they do? A series of bullshit IE clones. To add insult to injury the guy in charge says condescending things about the game they were supposed to clone, their target audience that he criticises as traditionalists and treated one of the best developers in the story of the genre like a dog—and I’m not even considering the repeated eulogies to Bethesda and popamole games made in public. If everyone was still dying for new cRPGs, I would not be pick. I would gladly accept IWD 2.0 and say thank you. But times are different and there is an explosion of new cRPGs, many of them made by genuine cRPG fans that actually care about the salubrity of the genre instead of waiting until some big publisher offers a big contract. So yeah, I think I'm entitled to be just a litle bit angry, bro.

it's true that sawyer's said some pretty retarded shit & backstabbed a huge part of the IE audience, but I don't think you need to retroactively hate their other games & blame them for shit outside of their control because of Sawyer's garbage.

 

[Blakemoreland Hybrid Boss]

it's true that sawyer's said some pretty retarded shit & backstabbed a huge part of the IE audience, but I don't think you need to retroactively hate their other games & blame them for shit outside of their control because of Sawyer's garbage.

But I was not being retroactively anything, I was just being realistic. I like F:NV, but this QA publisher thing was always a bad excuse.

 

[Sentinel]

it's true that sawyer's said some pretty retarded shit & backstabbed a huge part of the IE audience, but I don't think you need to retroactively hate their other games & blame them for shit outside of their control because of Sawyer's garbage.

But I was not being retroactively anything, I was just being realistic. I like F:NV, but this QA publisher thing was always a bad excuse.

Personally I feel like the QA thing is irrelevant. If it was Bethesda's responsibility, then it's obviously not Obsidian's fault. If it was Obsidian's fault, then I'd still give them a break because of the incredibly short amount of development time. Plus, I'll always prefer a good game that comes out buggy but is eventually fixed to a game that got important content cut to avoid bugs/complications & is lesser for it (which seems to be Sawyer's philosophy, someone probably told him to fuck off in New Vegas or something).

 

[Roguey]

Avellone interview thread turns into a Sawyer thread.

Had some nice laughs at the goons who find Durance and the Codex too icky.

 

[ColonelTeacup]

from official obsidian discord;

What they mean is people don't suck their dick for mediocre to bad content here like reddit would.

 

[Fry]

Avellone interview thread turns into a Sawyer thread.

Probably because he hasn't done anything of note in years, and the only way to gin up any interest in him is to set him up as an enemy of the developer the codex loves to hate.

 

[Ocelot570]

Avellone interview thread turns into a Sawyer thread.

Had some nice laughs at the goons who find Durance and the Codex too icky.

It has turned into a Civil War between Avellonians and Sawyerites. May God bless the Codex as unnecessary bloodshed is not spilled.

 

[ColonelTeacup]

Literally who cares about this shit. It sold tons of copies and is considered by many to be among the best RPGs of all time.

Obsidian cares because they burned their reputation in the process and now they can't get a big contract. You can't act like a player when you run a business. Grow up.

Obsidian burned their relationship? With who, Bethesda/Zenimax? The company that cut their development time out from under Obsidian, forcing them to release the game within 1&1/2 to 2 years? Or how they had their bonus tied to metacritic, which Bethesda most likely had their employees review bomb to try and deny Obsidian their bonus, after making a game that has made Zenimax/Bethesda hundreds of millions of dollars?

The same Zenimax/Bethesda that has a track record of sabotaging smaller dev studios with stretch goals to try a hostile takeover, while having them develop a game for them? All to steal the devs intellectual content for cheap, as well as own them and their employees for a pittance rather than try and buy them out legitimately, instead tricking them and sabotaging them into losing all their money and forcing the devs to submit to them or lose everything like a pimped out street hooker? That burned reputation?

 

[Junmarko]

Ok, let’s put things in perspective. After the closure of Black Isle Studios, they created Obsidian. They had the pedigree of being the last developers that would give us the cRPGs that nobody wants to make anymore. But after more than 14 years in existence, cancelled projects and complaints about publishers they gave us three good games: KOTOR 2, F:NV, and MotB. Everyone wanted more CRPG’s and were cheering for them. The studio was struggling and almost close its doors, and then there is steam, kickstarter, cRPG renascence and whatnot. So they finally have an opportunity to do a cRPG without undue publisher influence, save their studio and what is that they do? A series of bullshit IE clones. To add insult to injury the guy in charge says condescending things about the game they were supposed to clone, their target audience that he criticises as traditionalists and treated like a dog one of the best developers in the the genre—and I’m not even considering the repeated eulogies to Bethesda and popamole games made in public.

If everyone was still dying for new cRPGs, I would not be picky. I would gladly accept IWD 2.0 and say thank you. But times are different now and there is an explosion of new cRPGs, many of them made by genuine cRPG fans that actually care about the salubrity of the genre instead of waiting for some big publisher and a big contract. So yeah, I think I'm entitled to be just a litle bit angry, bro.

Look, jokes aside, regardless of how you feel about the newer IE games - Josh wasn't insulting anyone, the "traditionalist audience" includes himself and the people who worked themselves to death developing 3 of these games, in-a-row. For an industry that used to ignore them, applauded EA dumbing them down, and today largely focuses on "competitive gaming innovators" or "social-jihadism" above all else. I'm grateful Obsidian has remained independent for this long, they've shown more conviction than Bioware ever has. If any of them want a bigger challenge in their careers, they should go for it. The AAA field needs to start setting good trends again - experienced devs passionate for gaming. It's currently a shit-show filled with people resenting the entire medium - some openly admitting it Lol...

If the Bethesda "popamole" you refer to includes FO:NV and everything Arkane Studios, as a hands-off publisher, you are angry at the wrong groups.

 

[Kyl Von Kull]

Literally who cares about this shit. It sold tons of copies and is considered by many to be among the best RPGs of all time.

Obsidian cares because they burned their reputation in the process and now they can't get a big contract. You can't act like a player when you run a business. Grow up.

Obsidian burned their relationship? With who, Bethesda/Zenimax? The company that cut their development time out from under Obsidian, forcing them to release the game within 1&1/2 to 2 years? Or how they had their bonus tied to metacritic, which Bethesda most likely had their employees review bomb to try and deny Obsidian their bonus, after making a game that has made Zenimax/Bethesda hundreds of millions of dollars?

The same Zenimax/Bethesda that has a track record of sabotaging smaller dev studios with stretch goals to try a hostile takeover, while having them develop a game for them? All to steal the devs intellectual content for cheap, as well as own them and their employees for a pittance rather than try and buy them out legitimately, instead tricking them and sabotaging them into losing all their money and forcing the devs to submit to them or lose everything like a pimped out street hooker? That burned reputation?

Obsidian burned their relationships with every publisher they’ve ever worked with. It’s practically their trademark. They have a bad track record when it comes to resource management, not to mention releasing buggy/unfinished games.

I think Paradox may be the only publisher that’s put out more than one of their games (correct me if I’m wrong). Seems like Feargus really loves to overpromise and is a piss poor manager.

The fact that Chris was treated like an asshole for wanting a clear hierarchy really says it all. The alternative to a clear hierarchy is not a non-hierarchical environment, it’s an unclear hierarchy. No one benefits from that.

 

[Ninjerk]

from official obsidian discord;

What they mean is people don't suck their dick for mediocre to bad content here like reddit would.

What that guy "Advisor" is talking about just factually false, but who cares what anyone thinks there?

 

[Once more unto the Codex]

Avellone interview thread turns into a Sawyer thread.

Had some nice laughs at the goons who find Durance and the Codex too icky.

Every Codex thread eventually turns into a PoE/Sawyer/Obsidian Thread.

All-around this was a great read. A lot of great insight mixed with a nice dose of whining and bitching (not to say that Avelone doesn't have every right to bitch and whine about Obsidian, given how that relationship ended). From reading this, I sense that, if Avelone had been the Project Lead on PoE, it would have probably had great writing and shittier combat and would not have been released until May 8, 2018.

 

[Blakemoreland Hybrid Boss]

Josh wasn't insulting anyone, the "traditionalist audience" includes himself and the people who worked themselves to death developing 3 of these games, in-a-row.

No dude, you are confused. He only works on these games to take your money. He is not like you at all. He would be much better working in triple-A gaming.

For an industry that used to ignore them, applaud EA dumbing them down, and today largely focuses on "competitive gaming innovators" or "ideological zealots" above all else. I'm grateful Obsidian has remained independent for this long, they've shown more conviction than Bioware ever has.

Independent compared to Bethesda and Bioware, release three good games in 14 years, some with even worse combat and C&C than DA:O. That's a low bar for all the attention and money you give them, and the pedigree they have. The market changed completely in the meantime. We have more cRPGs that we have time to play and most of them look more fresh, or hardcore, or innovative than their games. The haters are not the ones obsessed with them, you fanboys are. It seems you guys are stucked in the past with a false idol.

The industry is a shit-show of "developers" who resent the medium and see it as a tool

You mean, two or three bad apples treat their audience like garbage because they have no self-esteem. That hardly qualifies as the industry.

And if the Bethesda "popamole" you refer to includes their hands-off approach for FO:NV and everything Arkane Studios as a publisher, you are angry at the wrong people.

The proper comparison is not between Obsidian and Bethesda, but between them and every other cRPG studio out there. Times changed, stop living in the past.

Obsidian burned their relationships with every publisher they’ve ever worked with. It’s practically their trademark. They have a bad track record when it comes to resource management, not to mention releasing buggy/unfinished games.

I think Paradox may be the only publisher that’s put out more than one of their games (correct me if I’m wrong). Seems like Feargus really loves to overpromise and is a piss poor manager.

The fact that Chris was treated like an asshole for wanting a clear hierarchy really says it all. The alternative to a clear hierarchy is not a non-hierarchical environment, it’s an unclear hierarchy. No one benefits from that.

In other words, they are unprofessional.

 

[Puteo]

From reading this, I sense that, if Avelone had been the Project Lead on PoE, it would have probably had ... shittier combat

Not possible.

 

[Blakemoreland Hybrid Boss]

From reading this, I sense that, if Avelone had been the Project Lead on PoE, it would have probably had great writing and shittier combat and would not have been released until May 8, 2018.

Suggesting that Sawyer implements better combat system and release games faster, and that the choice between him and Avellone is some kind of trade off. Fuck this gay world.

 

[Junmarko]

He only works on these games to take your money.

Gonna assume you're still a student if you think that cheap.

Greedy developers do not have further success using crowd-funding, and the brazenly disreputable never go near it to begin with - or fail outright.

 

[Infinitron]

Heads up - I just received this from Eric Fenstermaker:

• I don’t like discussing anything remotely negative about coworkers in the press. No one comes out looking worse than you when you do that. But here, I think I need to get more detailed than I would want to in order to clear something up.
  
  To the suggestion that Josh “interfered” in the process involving cutting down Durance and the Grieving Mother, everything he did was professional and warranted by the circumstances. The budget on those companions was blown, not just a little but a lot. Very late in development. They were unimplementable in the time we had, and the company had promised them to the Kickstarter backers. So while I’d have preferred to have just worked it out between myself and Chris, at that point in production it was unfortunately not what the situation called for. A high-level decision needed to be made, so more people had to be looped in.
  
  The interview characterizes ownership as having gotten worked up over something they didn’t know the specifics of, and I won’t speak for them, but if I were in their shoes, faced with this development, I would have been concerned. None of the potential outcomes looked rosy.
  
  It’s been thrown around that objectionable subject matter was the reason behind the cuts. Sexual violence is dealt with elsewhere in the game, and there is swearing all over the place. So there was no looming censor. I don’t want to get into criticism here, but there were some choices that Chris made later in the writing that I thought bore more consideration, and in better circumstances if we’d been able to keep the thread, I’d have liked to discuss a different approach in some specific places. I believe it would have been possible without altering their story or defanging the material. It ended up being beside the point – the easiest cuts to make by far involved that story thread, and so it was left on the cutting room floor.
  
  I did have a role in things turning out this way and I did apologize to Chris for it. I gave far too little oversight, thinking that a set of constraints and approval of an initial design, with periodic email check-ins would be sufficient. Chris was often offsite, I was swamped, and it was all too easy to backburner communication. I thought more regular feedback would only have been a hindrance to someone who’d made a lot of his reputation off of so many well-liked companions. If I had caught the issue sooner, we could have made the cuts sooner, in a much better context, and in that regard I should have done better. He did put genuine effort into the creative aspect, and that made the outcome that much more regrettable. I don’t know what Chris thinks about his own responsibilities and missteps in the matter, but I hope he recognizes them.
  
  
• The PoE story was approved by management not because of poor judgment but because it was time to say “good enough” and hope for the best. We had something that was a completed draft that incorporated many of the best elements from previous pitches. As a place to start, it was workable. An independent developer can only pay its employees to spin their wheels with nothing to work on for so long. I suspect that the story wasn’t far off from something that was more deeply satisfying, so I don’t think it was a bad bet to make, even if the end result was flawed. Sometimes in development, we get the story figured out well in advance, sometimes it doesn’t work out that way. Here, it didn’t.
  
  
• There’s kind of a strange insinuation in the interview that maybe I got a bad employee review because of the PoE story (?), and the phrasing almost seems to imply that this might have been related to my departure. I didn’t and it wasn’t. I always found Obsidian to be forgiving of mistakes as long as you were earnest in your efforts to learn from them, and I tried to be that. I appreciate the owners and my managers bearing with me.
  
  Chris’s experience with Obsidian is his own. But it’s just that, one experience, filtered through a particular point of view, selective in its memory, and biased by its nature. So is mine. No one perspective should be taken for gospel. Me, I liked it there, enough to stay for more than a decade, and I wasn’t without more lucrative options. Good people ran the place. Good people (besides a few genuine personality disorder sufferers) worked there when I was there. Josh was a good director, the owners were good owners. I strongly disagreed with them many times, but it was never because they were coming from a place of bad intentions. Everyone’s just trying to navigate an insanely difficult and stressful business, and for that alone I think you have to approach the profession with a lot of forgiveness in your heart.

• There were a lot of other corrections I wanted to make or explanations I wanted to give about this or that, but looking at it now, I don’t think they’re important in the scheme of things.

 

[Nano]

I don’t like discussing anything remotely negative about coworkers in the press. No one comes out looking worse than you when you do that.

He says while insulting Avellone in the process.

 

[Kyl Von Kull]

Well, fuck me, this is getting interesting. I guess we should be careful to remember that Chris is an expert storyteller when we read his answers.