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

[Goral]

Wow, what a weasel this Fenstermaker is, typical, dishonest PR response made by someone afraid that he might be hit by a ricochet.

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 (...)

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.

Right.

I don’t want to get into criticism here, but (...)

I did have a role in things turning out this way [but it's mainly Chris's fault] and I did apologize to Chris for it.

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.

Wow, talk about damage control.

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.

Of course not!

First he says that one can only talk about his own experience and in the next sentence he declares that whatever Obsidian management did had good intentions behind it :D :D :D. A mind reader indeed.

Seeing his dishonest way of speaking I find it very hard to believe what he has to say.

 

[Carnarium]

Cool, now do a Sawyer codex interview. That's what people here really want to read.

 

[a bear named spigot]

Not possible.

we have death rally avatars? that's sick.

 

[Prime Junta]

When things are left unsaid, they tend to bubble up in unfortunate ways. Chris needs to deal with his butthurt somehow or this will keep going forever. Or just have it out and stage a cage match to get it over with, that could work too.

I do find it significant that while he's talked a quite a lot of shit about Obsidian, to my knowledge nobody from that side has done it about him... until now, anyway, if that extremely mild, polite, and almost apologetic message from Eric even counts.

 

[Junmarko]

When things are left unsaid, they tend to bubble up in unfortunate ways.

Mr.YES! - How are you feeling?

 

[Roguey]

I do find it significant that while he's talked a quite a lot of shit about Obsidian, to my knowledge nobody from that side has done it about him

Feargus did indirectly with

Don’t dwell or hold grudges. I see developers at all ends of the spectrum start making bad decisions (me included) and get burned out. This, of course, can be due to long hours and too much crunch time. But, it can also be due the bad decisions or mistakes they have made, or that they have been subject to. If I dwelled on every bad decision I’ve made, I would probably be in the corner whimpering right now. I screwed up, I’m going to screw up again. The thing to focus on is how to do what I do better and let the milk that has been spilled be forgotten. However, it is not to have the attitude “I’m going to show them, and not let them screw me again”. That leads to decisions made for the wrong reasons.

Of course "t. guy who tried to screw Chris out of the money he already owed him by threatening to withhold it unless he signed a NDA"

Infinitron https://twitter.com/ChrisAvellone/status/930266474588938241

I used to have the naïve conception HR was there to help. Some in HR do. But the ones that don't can make you lose faith in human nature vs. corporate evil, greed, nepotism, and denial.

And always check your employment contract to see what rights they'll try and deny you if you take a job with them - sometimes you can see it there before you take the job.

And a last bit - before they try and pressure/blackmail you (usually with money they owe you anyway) for an NDA to cover their asses when you depart, think about it - do you want to be forced to be silent forever, even when you no longer have any connection to them? No. Way.

If ever in a situation w/ an NDA, note you rarely have to sign anything immediately. Take the time, go to a lawyer, even though the company will pressure you to sign then and there. I've chosen never to sign NDAs like this b/c the terms of silence aren’t (ever) worth it.

Imo, they’ve shown their true colors by leverage/bribing you w/something already earned, so signing an NDA giving those *same* people control over your actions/speech for life – you can’t put a price on it, esp. if you’re leaving to get away from them in the first place.

Additionally
https://twitter.com/legalinspire/status/930334967544115200

A lawyer, including a company lawyer, who pressures you to sign a legal document without your own counsel is a bad person, is not doing their client a favor, and may be acting unethically.

If they hand it to you and say “Sign it or don’t,” that’s just vague jerkitude. Anything more is pushing it, IMO.

That said, my clients have always offered, IMO, good value for their NDA and I respectfully disagree that it’s never worth it.

Much respect to your clients. My point is if they’re bribing for silence or withholding what’s earned for leverage, there’s likely a reason they’re doing so that you don’t want over you or be associated with any longer (or there’s other recourse that doesn't involve their terms).

But I'm not a lawyer, so I defer to your experience - mine have only been my own, and for me, there's not a price tag you can put on silence, esp. to people who have already proven their character.

 

[Prime Junta]

You need some pretty high-magnification goggles to read between those lines, Roguey good zir.

 

[Stainless Veteran]

For me it's the question of merit and character. Do I believe a very nice guy, who gave me the most beloved game of my life, and who is (or at least was) a masterful writer? The guy, who not only made PST, but also had a large role in making Fallout 2, made KOTOR 2? The guy who even talks to us here, in our hive of scum and villainy? The guy who apparently wasn't into office politics and it cost him his place in a company, of which he was co-founder?

Or should I believe a guy who made a couple of passable companions and areas, and whose credits are basically this:

"Lead Writer/Narrative Designer on South Park: The Stick of Truth ("Lead Writer" being an internal title on SoT - Trey Parker was effectively the Lead Writer on the project), Pillars of Eternity, Pillars of Eternity: The White March, and Pillars of Eternity 2. Shipped titles: Neverwinter Nights 2, Neverwinter Nights 2: Mask of the Betrayer, Fallout: New Vegas, South Park: The Stick of Truth, Pillars of Eternity, Pillars of Eternity: The White March Parts I & II. Primary responsibilities have included writing, level design, scripting, tools design, gameplay systems design, and management.

Oh, what a hard choice... not.

 

[Infinitron]

I don't get it, what outrageous claim are you being asked to believe here?

• 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.

Hasn't it always been pretty obvious that something like this is what happened? I don't see that anything that Chris has said contradicts it.

 

[Stainless Veteran]

I don't get it, what outrageous claim are you being asked to "believe" here?

• 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.

Hasn't it always been pretty obvious that something like this is probably what happened? I don't see that anything that Chris has said contradicts it.

the Creative Lead told me after my departure that the Project Lead had interfered but didn't specify the reasons. I don't even know what the reasons were (although I couldn't tell if I did, to be fair). In short, the Creative Lead said he should have handled the whole matter differently and didn't, regretted it, and apologized for it.

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.

Of those three reasons, the first was the only one I ever recall communicated to me (I had to get confirmation on it and these other points, since it’s been a long time). The other two reasons weren’t, and I actually got multiple other reasons from multiple people – and some of those people admitted they were just the messenger. This confused things, since they couldn’t articulate what the critiques were since they either didn’t understand them or hadn’t read the material (both our CEO and Parker among them – ironically, after a long speech ending with his admission he hadn’t even read what he was arguing against, Parker did go back and read the companions and found nothing to object to, which cost even more time – to his credit, he did admit his error, but things like that happened a lot).

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 read the Creative Lead's (Eric’s) interview on the PoE story, and whether true or not (I couldn't speak to the entire team's reception) - if the 1st draft's reception by the team was "tepid" with the second draft being "slightly" + "less tepid" but "could run with it" - well, that's pretty disheartening. The fact it got approved by someone is also disheartening. Sometimes you have situations like that imposed on you (I've been there), but rarely with an internally-owned franchise.

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.

New: In talks, I’ve never got the impression anyone in the approval process was happy with the story (I wasn’t part of that process). I was told that Josh, in his review, wanted more control and oversight over the sequel storyline, and I don’t know how Eric’s review went. I was a little surprised he left Obsidian but I think that was a good move for various reasons.

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.

Infinitron, do you really suggest that there's no contradictions in these quotes and overall tone?

 

[serch]

• No one perspective should be taken for gospel.

But that of JC in general or MCA's in Codex particular. This is an uphill battle if I ever saw one.

 

[Prime Junta]

The bare facts of the matter are common knowledge. Chris exceeded his word count for GM/Durance, Eric and Josh cut it, butthurt ensued. The why and the wherefore of this unfortunate series of events is a different matter. It's interesting to hear all these different perspectives on it though.

---> tangent

I would really love to see this feud resolved. Chris is the only genuine auteur in the genre. If computer games ever become a serious art form with lasting appeal, he'll be remembered like Murnau or Fritz Lang or Eisenstein are remembered for cinema. He's wasting a tremendous amount of energy on this stuff as well as doing penny-ante tinkering in way too many unambitious little projects.

And Obsidian... Obsidian is a flawed company with flawed people none of whom are genuine visionaries, but they're trying to do something that's at least a little tiny bit more ambitious than awesome-button appealing to the lowest common denominator. It really is a missed opportunity of historic proportions that Obsidian did not turn into a vehicle for Chris's genius, but instead clipped his wings and a left him in the cold.

 

[TT1]

I can understand Eric response to MCA and I can also understand Chris frustrations. I work on IT projects since 2005 and looks like its the same with game development: a lot of developers working with deadlines and budjets, and A LOT of bad communications. This happens all the time.

I I'll repeat myself here:

I really enjoy Chris's work and I have a lot of respect for him, but he talks too much. Instead of writing a text where he exposes the whole story, he throws little chunks of resentment at every turn. This is questionable and at least unprofessional.

Come on, Chris, tell all you have to say and get it over with.

Of course, its an interview, so we just have MCA point of view, but I dont know if its good to anyone to have this floating around for so long.

 

[Sensuki]

Come on, Chris, tell all you have to say and get it over with.

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.

 

[Otterz]

from official obsidian discord;

Official Obsidian Discord? Heh, hardly. That screenshot's been taken from the Pillars of Eternity FAN Discord, my dudes. Don't lose your sleep over it.

 

[Infinitron]

Infinitron, do you really suggest that there's no contradictions in these quotes and overall tone?

I guess I agree that there's a contradiction in tone, but that's not so interesting to me. One man says "interference", the other says "professional and warranted by the circumstance", whatever.

I'm interested in why Durance and Grieving Mother grew to the size that they had to be cut in the first place, and to what degree they could have been salvaged. Chris, I'm sorry, is mostly tip-toeing around that by focusing on all the process issues surrounding how he was informed that they had to be cut. It's an inside baseball spat that doesn't tell us who was ultimately responsible for screwing them up by turning them into text wall dispensers.

The closest he comes to saying something constructive in that regard is here:

In the end, they were not a point for discussion, and it was at the stage where the team had to take stock of where things were, and figure out a way for the game to get done. I do feel there’s other ways to accomplish the implementation, but you have to think outside the box for ways that save resources and maintain consistency. My only goal was to write Planescape-style companions and try to do something interesting that would set them apart from being solely traditional fantasy.

The art for the dream sequences would have required maybe 12 images, and it was designed so you could do 1 large image and split the scene, so each image could be repurposed. I will say there were other cuts (the GM’s special Planescape-y weapons and Durance variant equipment) that were just simply dropped and would have required little in the way of resources – it was more a matter of will vs. time in some instances.

We'll probably never have enough information to make the call about whether Durance and GM could have been implemented in a better way, but it'd help if people focused on the right things.

 

[Junmarko]

We'll probably never have information to make the call about whether Durance and GM could have been implemented in a better way, but it'd help if people focused on the right things.

Junta wants to start a new thread by the looks anyway. Obsidian is stealing hype from the Reds.

 

[Blakemoreland Hybrid Boss]

Eric Fenstermaker,

when you say or insinuate certain things you can't take them back. People like to believe that they can, using a simple apology or a formal statement, but the damage is done and the other part knows what you did. In fact, everyone who is paying attention knows that too. The same thing applies when you and your pals at Obsidian decide to treat one of the best designers and writers in genre as a junior with not experience. I’m sure that you had a smirk on your face when you got to the lead instead of him and you gutted his characters with poorly made excuses. You probably enjoyed acting like a gang in the schoolyard when he had to work from home, all the talking behind his back and all that. Finally you could put that “arrogant prima dona on his place”, right? Because there was “the real world with none of that undeserved ass-kissing he received from the game journalists, other developers and players”. Here you and you buddies call all the shots, right? “He wants to be a kickstarter goal? Fine! But here well are the ones still in charge”. I can understand that, even if you can be naive enough to delude yourself in thinking that your motivations were pure instead of being motivated by the usual low instincts.

I’m sure that Avellone had a different perspective since you all acted like this when he was in one of the most vulnerable moments in his life, with his mother having cancer and all. I’m also sure that the players who were watching all the development updates and wanted to see his work shining in his own goddam studio were bothered by it. It doesn’t feel right. Here we have the best cRPG writer in the industry and yet he can’t be the lead in his own studio? That’s the most preposterous thing I ever heard. Do you really thought that you could all throw Avellone under the bus and no one, including him, would say anything? He must have been acted really passive all this time so that you could feel so full of yourselves. Know this. Your public statements betray your motives, because you keep talking as if Avellone was just another guy that could have his content removed. He is not, he is much better than you and your lot. You don’t get to call the shots, buddy. You are not as half as good as Chris.

 

[Blakemoreland Hybrid Boss]

Wow, talk about damage control.

yeah, and how about this:

Good people ran the place. Good people (besides a few genuine personality disorder sufferers) worked there when I was there.

What the fuck is that?

 

[Big Wrangle]

It would be interesting too see what would Avellone say about all this in some sort of Obsidian post-mortem if/when it goes bankrupt.

 

[Sentinel]

best anime arc

 

[Bohrain]

I believe this calls for a shirtless fistfight between Fenstermaker and Avellone.

 

[Sensuki]

I'm interested in why Durance and Grieving Mother grew to the size that they had to be cut in the first place, and to what degree they could have been salvaged. Chris, I'm sorry, is mostly tip-toeing around that by focusing on all the process issues surrounding how he was informed that they had to be cut. It's an inside baseball spat that doesn't tell us who was ultimately responsible for screwing them up by turning them into text wall dispensers.

I'm going to make an educated guess, and we'll see what comes back.

It is clear that one or more Obsidian devs have badmouthed Chris to you in confidence, and there have been a few times where it seems you are relaying their accusations. One of those I recall was something about the reason for communication breakdown due to internal grudges/mistrust.

In Eric's PM/email he also admitted he gave Chris little oversight.

Throughout the entire development there were hints in interviews, videos etc that there was a rift between Chris and (some of) the others. It seems like there may have been some passive aggressive animosity that caused a communication rift between them. On the one hand you have Chris' work which more closely resembles what we (the informed 'fans') expected from the Pillars companions, based on the Kickstarter pitch and earlier media. Chris wrote the companion guidelines for the project from memory and his design fits what he was telling us in his earlier narrative updates. You then have the rest of them which feel far more 'produced' and formulaic, more closely resembling Baldur's Gate style companions.

From what I recall, Chris may have started working on his companions earlier in development than everyone else, and his role was basically reduced to 'write these two companions' down from a bit more. The other narrative designers all had other jobs to do such as area design and writing for quests etc, and it appears Chris did not, despite having a lot of OTHER things to do. Chris is also the most experienced Narrative Designer there, and seems to be more productive at producing (quality) content.

I don't think it's too difficult to image how Chris ended up coming up with a lot more words than everyone else, and a different tone to everyone else, if he wasn't talking to the others very much and they also weren't talking to him and the manager(s) on the project weren't managing him properly.

 

[Prime Junta]

Junta wants to start a new thread by the looks anyway. Obsidian is stealing hype from the Reds.

It'll be a while before the comrades in Tallinn and London release their masterpiece. I doubt it'd be possible to maintain this level of hype about it that long, so no. Let's all get excited about Deadfire and get it over with so we can charge our hype batteries for when we really need them.

 

[Junmarko]

I doubt it'd be possible to maintain this level of hype about it that long, so no.

I don't believe you. The sarcasm in that post was painful comrade...



(sorry I forget you're Estonian too)