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

[VentilatorOfDoom]

The more you read those assertive MCA-posts, the more you get the feeling that the assessment of his t-levels being 3 std deviations above norm was accurate.

 

[Stainless Veteran]

Let's nominate songs for the Official Epic Thread soundtrack. I nominate this:

 

[Plane Escapee]

I do not know, beyond the fact David (whose work I like), does not post here anymore.

Which specific works of Gaiders have you enjoyed the most? Not just games but characters, quests, lore etc... You seem to approach writing very differently so I'm curious what kicks you get out of his style of writing/design.

Also, thanks for giving us so much of your time. I think you're being astoundingly generous towards your audience. I really appreciate your generosity.

 

[Sacibengala]

Hey, what I lost here? What is the tension between Infinitron and MCA?

 

[2house2fly]

Since you won't elaborate on the implied negatives, Chris: what is the best thing about Josh Sawyer?

 

[Zer0wing]

that would remove my right to work on RPGs

What, what? How is that juridically possible?

 

[Projas]

Posting in a future court docket.

Hey, what I lost here? What is the tension between Infinitron and MCA?

it's purely sexual

 

[ColonelTeacup]

Hey, what I lost here? What is the tension between Infinitron and MCA?

He refuses to answer any of Avellones questions, whilst constantly asking new ones. Now hes been locked out of asking further questions. Not a good look, him squandering this opportunity. So much for his using this to springboard his fame, and future opportunities.

 

[Bocian]

Hey, what I lost here? What is the tension between Infinitron and MCA?

Sexual.

 

[IHaveHugeNick]

Let's nominate songs for the Official Epic Thread soundtrack.

There's only one song that can explain this thread.

 

[Harold]

I do not know, beyond the fact David (whose work I like), does not post here anymore.

Which specific works of Gaiders have you enjoyed the most? Not just games but characters, quests, lore etc... You seem to approach writing very differently so I'm curious what kicks you get out of his style of writing/design.

Also, thanks for giving us so much of your time. I think you're being astoundingly generous towards your audience. I really appreciate your generosity.

Curious about this as well. I would assume he enjoyed HK47 the most, given how much he expanded his storyline in K2, and wasn't a big fan of Carth/Bastila, given their blink-and-you'll-miss'em cameos. Also, due to this gem

 

[Bohr]

Let's nominate songs for the Official Epic Thread soundtrack. I nominate this:

 

[2house2fly]

Hey, what I lost here? What is the tension between Infinitron and MCA?

He refuses to answer any of Avellones questions, whilst constantly asking new ones. Now hes been locked out of asking further questions. Not a good look, him squandering this opportunity. So much for his using this to springboard his fame, and future opportunities.

He made a joke about Avellone previously saying publishers are evil, Avellone said "when did I say that" Infinitron said "ok that's more of a meme than anything you actually said, just a joke" and Avellone said "I asked you a question, answer me or die"

 

[Jacob]

I just realised that sser is ignoring MCA, did they ever fight or was it something that happened in this thread that I missed?

 

[AwesomeButton]

You're trying very hard to dismiss this, i've noticed. Seeing as no word has been made by the higher ups by Obsidian, i'm not going to dismiss anything out of turn, as you seem to be doing.

You keep failing at reading comprehension dude. I'll cite the exact quotes:

Chris is an interested party

- A fact

many people ITT reacted to this impulsively

- A fact

it's never made clear if the "attempt to leverage" was made overtly

- A fact

If you choose to live with the narrative that Feargus cornered Chris in his office and bluntly told him "this is the agreement we are offering, oh, btw how is your mother doing?", that's entirely up to you. I consider it more probable that he was offered the agreement indirectly, not in person, he read it, and it struck him as a surprise that it's so constraining. The interpretation of it as an attempt by Obsidian to leverage his situation is most probably his own, and a hard one to prove anyway.

I would rather not poke into this story anymore, because I feel uncomfortable knowing, much less asking about it. Apparently for random gossipers it costs nothing to wave around someone's personal stuff so they can play outrage warriors. And anyone who refuses to poke, and takes a balanced view is considered to be "dismissive". I will dismiss you on this subject from now on, just so you know.

 

[Mikeal]

At the times of the "Brother-None-gate" I thought Obsidian was different to Fargo and friends, it seems not so much... My eternal appreciation to Chris, I hope you persevere, shame it ended this way.

What's the deal with this Brother-none-gate? I remember seeing his nickname mentioned several times during dramas about developers and something about him being nazi.

 

[taxalot]

Cleve is also not saying much.

Chris, where were you when Stones of Arnhem was being developed ?

 

[Projas]

I just realised that sser is ignoring MCA, did they ever fight or was it something that happened in this thread that I missed?

Well he was contracted by Obsidian at one point before the whole fiasco happened. Makes you think. Maybe Feargus requires all new hires to ignore MCA on the Codex.

 

[ColonelTeacup]

We found with PoE1 that the patches, later updates, and expansions fixed a lot of problems people had with the initial release.

True dat. I wrote about it at length both here (in a separate thread) and on Metacritic (reviews under the same handle in the expansions' pages).

Future revelations will likely be much more fun than mine.

Hohoho, this writing style again :D

A question of my own - I have inspected the manual and credits of IWD, but I never was able to find who specifically should I be thankful to for the tight and evocative fantasy prose style in the introductions to the chapters, the cinematics, and the longer expositions which single characters were giving the player. I just can't get enough of that style, and I wanted to know who was behind the writing and editing, in case you still remember.

Why do you quote other people, rather than what Avellone

Spoiler

Eric did apologize for how he handled the situation, it is true (and more than once), and there’s mistakes everyone makes when being a Lead. I made worse mistakes than Eric for sure – and saying Eric made mistakes is not an insult. There is no “but” or “however” in this statement.

I only had an issue with the process, and Eric admitted he did as well – and he told me himself after my departure that the Project Director was the reason the process didn’t work as Eric intended (and would have been correct for a Creative Lead in my eyes). If that was incorrect, that’s fine, but that’s what he told me at the time.

I will say that I did the fixes as quickly and cleanly as possible, and I could have done them much faster had a gotten a critique direct from the source. Instead, there was meeting after meeting where I said the same thing and we had to discuss things that really, none of us needed to discuss (I was happy to make the cuts). My only issue was the process, and it's not personal.

It’s also worth bearing in mind that the process issue was larger than it appears – what work I put into PoE wasn’t gained back when I went back to Tyranny, so any decision made on PoE (for example, assistance that was promised in implementing the characters) that was then retracted, it cost more and more time overall. I’m not bitter about this because that simply was the norm. I did not have time to work on both projects, but that is a failure of upper management and scheduling/double-timing two projects. That said, the employees from Tyranny did work hard to make the work they did for Pillars shine. Don’t take this as I’m angry that Pillars took time from Tyranny, or that Tyranny was my personal project (it wasn’t, Brian Heins was the PD), it just was something that I knew the team would pay for and it wouldn’t be given back, which turned out to be the case because again, that was the norm.

I don’t know why Eric left Obsidian, nor do I mean to draw a connection between Josh’s review of the Eric’s performance and the storyline process, the amount of control he wanted in the process, and Eric’s departure. I still think it is good Eric left/went contracting. If the two weren’t related, that’s ideal.

I can't recall who said this in this thread, but for the record, I would resist anyone's attempts to downplay the work Eric did on South Park – he did quite a bit, and shouldn’t be dismissed, and it was Creative Lead work (it’s also one of the reasons I don’t equate Creative Lead = the person who wrote the story). Both Eric’s boss and I did fight to get him Lead credit on South Park, which he deserved, since he was doing the job. His duties on South Park were also part of the reason we recommended he not be Creative Lead on Eternity.

Its strongly implied that he can't due to an NDA that he had to sign to get 'his share' back. I suppose that is one of the reasons why you get little tidbits here and there.

I didn’t get anything when I left Obsidian. There were no share payouts, no equity, and this was in addition to the other logistical problems around the departure – the sudden cancellation of my health insurance, problems with my 401K, errors in Obsidian’s accounting, and several existing independent contracts they refused to uphold.

Realizing my family issues and the debts therein, however, they did make an attempt to leverage that into a far more confining separation agreement that would remove my right to work on RPGs, and my silence on all issues that could pertain to Obsidian or any other company they were involved with or the CEO had a % in (Fig, Zero Radius, Dark Rock Industries, etc.). This included an inability to critique games I’d worked on – much of my critiques on my own games tend to be blunt, and not being able to speak to them felt unnatural to me.

The company involvement silence worried me more, however, as it meant that if anything illegal happened with any of those companies (these could include serious charges like accounting issues, silence on harassment issues with regards to employees, perjury related to company documents and payments), I couldn’t speak about the issue, even if I felt strongly against what was being revealed.

While all this is good for Obsidian's upper management and is what is sometimes considered "good business," I did feel it showed a lack of ethics.

Still, that attempt at leverage did cause me to re-evaluate aspects of my life. Realizing debt was affecting my decision, I instead focused on working as hard as possible to make up for the amount Obsidian tried to use as leverage to force a signature – and succeeded.

When that happened, I realized I was free of the situation – completely free, for the first time. Feargus and the owners had no hold on my voice, my time, and my creativity any longer. And it was great.

When they made me an offer to contract me to write for Tyranny (which might seem to be an olive branch, but it turned out to be something they needed for contractual reasons with Paradox, but no one had ever communicated it to me), these were the reasons I refused – I didn’t wish to be part of Obsidian’s upper level development process and their pipelines any longer, as these processes were coming from a bad place, and it showed.

Also, realizing there was no restitution for the issues mentioned, I made a promise to myself that nothing I would do would ever cause Feargus and the owners any further financial gain. If my silence was that important to them, then there's no need to be silent because that right hadn't been signed away. Simply put, I like the developers at Obsidian very much, I work and correspond with many of those who are there or have left, and I would work with the developers again. I do feel upper management at Obsidian has serious flaws that need to be addressed, and I stand by that statement.

himself has already stated. You then use your uncomfortableness at knowing more as an excuse to enable you try and deflect from actually discussing the topic, whilst trying to dismiss it outright as well.

 

[ColonelTeacup]

Cleve is also not saying much.

Chris, where were you when Stones of Arnhem was being developed ?

Perhaps he is refusing to answer any further questions until Infinitron answers his questions first? Ironic that the man who posts news will be responsible for the death of such an opportunity.

 

[Ninjerk]

I just realised that sser is ignoring MCA, did they ever fight or was it something that happened in this thread that I missed?

Tsundere

 

[Blaine]

At the times of the "Brother-None-gate" I thought Obsidian was different to Fargo and friends, it seems not so much... My eternal appreciation to Chris, I hope you persevere, shame it ended this way.

What's the deal with this Brother-none-gate? I remember seeing his nickname mentioned several times during dramas about developers and something about him being nazi.

Brother None had been a well-known member of No Mutants Allowed since way back in the day, then became the chief wampum curator of The Vault Fallout Wiki (I think). He did some work (modding? level design?) on his own, and then was hired on by inXile while Wasteland 2 was still being developed.

He was quite full of himself after that, as an old skool Fallout fan who was now officially on board with some of the beloved old industry insiders. His use of the word "we" increased by approximately 7600%.

When Wasteland 2 turned out to be a piece of shit, he vanished. Maybe there's more to it than that and some drama or specifics that I missed, although there can't have been much to it, because I have a finely-tuned controversy detector. Then again, maybe it was so minor that I've just forgotten.

 

[Urthor]

Isn't Brother None still employed and happily posting on the InExile forums as a Sear style refugee? I thought that was the status quo not too long ago. He was absolutely around for Torment at least posting.

 

[FreeKaner]

Chris Avellone seems to be avoiding even writing down the name of Josh Sawyer. Considering he has given names of people that are not necessarily involved directly while avoiding names of the management such as Feargus, we can assume safely that Sawyer was involved in the downfall, of RPGs and Obsidian alike.

 

[AwesomeButton]

Why do you quote other people, rather than what Avellone himself has already stated.

For the nth time - he is an interested party.

Presenting the interpretation of events of an interested party as fact - "They extorted Chris" - is what's commonly known as fake news.

Also, where did you get that I'm not quoting Chris, when this is what I have been doing all the time?!