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

[Grauken]

Haha, not really

 

[Infinitron]

I don't know about sinking companies, but this could be the day the Codex triggered a libel suit.

 

[frajaq]

Starting the month with a good step I see

 

[agentorange]

Fuck obsidian

 

[Prime Junta]

I don't know about sinking companies, but this could be the day the Codex triggered a libel suit.

If they're dumb. Not all publicity is good publicity.

Besides which, there's bound to be a paper trail. This is clearly not one heat-of-the-moment shouting match with no documentation. And in the US truth is a defence against libel.

 

[Big Wrangle]

I was already disillusioned with Obsidian later down the line, but reading what Chris wrote brings it to a whole new level.

 

[Blakemoreland Hybrid Boss]

why do you hate obsidian so much bro

damn. Fuck Obsidian. Blakemoreland Hybrid Boss was right.

 

[Big Wrangle]

Congratulation, you have been vindicated by the hand of Avellone himself. That doesn't happen a lot, be proud.

 

[Bohr]

Wow.

Thread took a turn for the Sir-Tech.

 

[abnaxus]

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.

Never go full Zionmax.

 

[Blaine]

This is the sort of statement that could sink companies.

Nah, they'll keep on polishing Obsidian's knob regardless.

 

[Projas]

Wow.

Thread took a turn for the Sir-Tech.

Does that mean it will take Chris 20 years to make another game

 

[Mustawd]

Good for you Chris Avellone. I'm glad contracting is working out for you.

 

[Fry]

Does that mean it will take Chris 20 years to make another game

Assuming he even wants to be in charge of a game again, airing dirty laundry in a public forum seems like a bad thing to put on your resume.

 

[Infinitron]

If they're dumb. Not all publicity is good publicity.

Especially not a week before the release of your next game

 

[AwesomeButton]

The added benefit of Torment and BG-style “openers” is they can tell you something else beyond the character vs. the intro text (it’s like a bonus line, and you don’t have to match the opening text).

Give this man a medal. FFS, I've been saying the same so many times!

It's enormous stupidity to have random people in PoE respond with white text over their heads when clicked, as opposed to open the dialogue UI, show the same text, and pronounce a random voiced line, which doesn't need to be the same line as the one I will read.

This is how you give the player an idea about the character of the person he is talking to, and it doesn't make you look "cheap", neither does abstaining from using the dialogue UI somehow "preserve immersion".

 

[Jedi Master Radek]

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

It is all that is left unsaid upon which tragedies are built

 

[IHaveHugeNick]

So Chris says nothing for 5 years and then a week before Pillars 2 launches, he suddenly takes a monumental Godzilla-sized dump on entire Obsidian leadership.

This level of pettiness is something I aspire to, I take my cap off to you sir.

 

[Ninjerk]

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.

Have you been listening to Jordan Peterson??!

 

[Jenkem]

we need Sherry's take on what was said

 

[Blakemoreland Hybrid Boss]

This is the sort of statement that could sink companies.

Nah, they'll keep on polishing Obsidian's knob regardless.

If you think Paradox will not consider legal action after his statements you are less realistic than you look. You also need to think about the loss of godwill with game journalists, developers, their public image, etc.

 

[Bocian]

This level of pettiness is something I aspire to, I take my cap off to you sir.

If everything he said in the post is true (and I'd bet it is), Obsidian deserves all the shit it's going to get and then some. I don't see any pettiness in that. To the contrary, huge respect for Chris Avellone having the balls to say what he did. Not every man would be capable of that.

 

[Fry]

If they're dumb. Not all publicity is good publicity.

Especially not a week before the release of your next game

I'm sure the timing of this is just an amazing coincidence.

 

[Ninjerk]

we need Sherry's take on what was said

?

 

[Prime Junta]

If everything he said in the post is true (and I'd bet it is), Obsidian deserves all the shit it's going to get and then some. I don't see any pettiness in that. To the contrary, huge respect for Chris Avellone having the balls to say what he did. Not every man would be capable of that.

I think he would be a happier man now had he gotten it over with sooner. A boil can only start to heal after it's been lanced.