Editorial RPG Codex Report: A Codexian Visit to inXile Entertainment

[Neanderthal]

I think I'm right on this.

Don't really care, just wanted to use Arnie quote.

 

[sser]

Well, maybe Kevin was right... The game sure need more content and time.

Game didn't need more content as much as it needed better content. The length was fine. Criticisms boil down to a) the combat & encounters, basically the crisis system shat the bed and the attempt to combine dialogue and combat through them just failed b) the companions, and c) the storyline and ending in my mind.

It wasn't a bad game visual novel, but InExile still have a misunderstanding of what parts of turn based games are enjoyable, and how to make a good one. Two narratives of shitty combat and "lol wat u betrayed dem backers" probably fed into the sales being so awful.

Lost momentum. Kickstarters like Chaos Reborn and D:OS had most of the game already completed and used KS as a sort of polishing tool. There's an immediacy to Kickstarters that makes them so attractive. If you wait a really long time to release, it kinda kills the buzz, especially when initial support comes from impulsive contributions. That's my thinking, anyway. It also seems to be harmful from an organizing standpoint -- if you got the game set in stone like the previously mentioned titles, then you can allocate funds accordingly. That does not happen if the project is a long way off and not even entirely finished -- which is what leads to major content cuts, no doubt.

I think devs should be more open about their shortcomings anyway -- people generally respond positively to honesty and ownership of mistakes. inXile might've gotten too panicked about the cut content, I don't really know, but IMO they really should have stepped ahead of it. People shouldn't have slowly learned thanks to the prying eyes of outsiders. It's not a good look.

D:OS 2 should be the game you're watching. D:OS sold better than Pillars, and is less of a nostalgia project in general. If isometric games really are doomed (a thesis I don't agree with), then D:OS 2 flopping would be proof of that. Pillars 2 underperforming wouldn't convince me.

From my limited and somewhat unscientific observation, sequels in general have not been doing well so some mind should be paid to that, too.

Spoiler

It's a farming and oil production town. Good luck.

I was being facetious. Bakersfield is the armpit of California and I don't mean that in the pejorative sense. It literally smells like an armpit.

 

[laclongquan]

Also first time knowing MRY is a district attorney.

Big OOOOops from someone there~

 

[MRY]

I'm not. Also, it's not like I'm some international man of mystery, I just prefer some separation between my career and my hobby.

 

[Fairfax]

I wanted to add a short response to the criticism of Colin, which I think is misplaced.

To begin with, I think the assertion that he's full of himself or incapable of hearing criticism is flat out wrong. Colin has always been sharply critical of his own work. While he has always demonstrated the "pride of authorship" that compels him to work hard on his craft, he never showed the excessive "pride of ownership" that stands in the way of editorial criticism. In fact, in every instance where he invited me to review and edit his work, his directions were always: (1) be as harsh as possible and (2) make as extensive changes as you want. Where he rejected my suggestions it was because he was right (or at least I was persuaded he was right; maybe we were both wrong). Thus, I find it simply impossible to believe that he is tuning out criticism of the game. To the contrary, I am certain he is listening attentively to it, probably to his dismay.

Second, I think the expectation people had for his role in the interview (i.e., that he would confess TTON's narrative was an inferior work and that the Codex's criticisms of it were well taken) was very unrealistic. It is perfectly consistent with PR norms to criticize the process of the game and its marketing, and thus the mea culpas you heard from others were a reasonable way to talk about a game that is still in its early sale cycle and less than two months post-release. It is not consistent with PR norms to criticize the game itself, even to a more thoughtful publication like the Codex that might be able to pick up the nuances. "Even Lead Writer admits TTON's story sucks!" would run the comment threads. Moreover, while it is perfectly consistent with being a good person to take blame for your failures and for your colleagues' failures, in this case many of the criticisms of the story are not really directed at his work but at his colleagues, and to endorse the criticisms would be crap on his colleagues' work publicly. For instance, he would never say, "Yes, the Meres turned out to be a bad idea, they were too dense and a large number of players got bored," even if it's true, because he would be looking to catch my flak, not to put a spotlight on me for enemy AA. Which is all to say that neither Colin's professional obligations nor his personal values would permit him to do what you guys want, not because he's arrogant or in denial but because he's a responsible person, and sometimes being responsible means putting a good face on things rather than engaging in criticism and self-criticism to obtain public absolution. I suspect that two years from now, when the marketing imperatives are different, you'll get to read interesting and self-critical post mortems.

Finally, even though there is lots of criticism of the game's writing, which seems thoughtful and persuasive to me, there are also people who have said very nice things about it, and it seems a little unreasonable to expect Colin to disregard the praise entirely. God knows the world is bitter enough that we should take the sweet when it comes.

To be clear, I'm not saying that you're wrong to criticize the game's story, or the writers, and or ultimately Colin as the lead writer. He would be the first to say that the buck stops with him and that good criticism is the key to good writing. I just think you're wrong about his attitude here, almost entirely backwards, and it seemed unjust for me to say nothing about it. (As I've said before, though, I feel obliged to speak up for my colleagues in this respect, so I'm absurdly biased. Still, I think I'm right on this.)

The criticism of Colin, at least from my end, was not because he was defending the game. The problem was in how he answered the questions.

Look at the question about loredumps:

I think I should be a bit more specific. In Pillars of Eternity, Tyranny, and of course, Torment, the dialogue between the player and NPCs mostly take on an inquisitive tone, in which you have all these questions you can ask about the NPCs, their background, their culture, and so on. In response, they effectively dump lore at you, and you feel obligated to go through these interactions, because it comprises the bulk of the content. This often feels like a chore, because the information is frequently irrelevant. Do you guys think there is a major market for this kind of reading?

George: We don't necessarily think that is a bad thing to have - the option to ask characters about these things. We try to make it as interesting as we can. Some of these explorations may not be related to the player or the main quest, but we intended them to be fun and interesting for the player to read. There was a lot of this in Planescape: Torment as well, and they even make fun of it in the game, where characters would say "you sure ask a lot of questions" to the player. There were a lot of NPCs in that game who you could ask questions about, but who weren't related to the main character or his quest, and who had fun and interesting things to say. We tried to reproduce that experience to the best extent we could.

Colin: Also, every NPC in the game does actually have a thematic reflection in the game. We made sure that everybody there was interesting and answered a primary thematic question in one way or another. The player is certainly not obligated to click through all of these questions. It's all a player choice, and we just wanted to honor what the player's choices were.

Ziets defended the exposition, but he also tried to explained where they were coming from and what they were trying to do. Colin simply rejects the negative feedback, claiming the NPCs are all interesting and relevant, and that the player is not obligated to read the loredumps. Again, I don't think anybody has an issue with him for defending the game, but "you're not forced to read it" is pretty much the worst defense.

It had one of the few relevant follow-ups in the whole interview:

So from the sounds of it, you believe the wordiness was justified.

Brian: I think that was the experience we were trying to create. When you think about Wasteland 3, it's very different. I use the word 'banter' a lot. My favorite movies in the last couple of years have been Sicario and Hell and Highwater. They're more about banter and interpersonal relationships. That's a different type of writing and style and I really like that. But for this particular product we wanted to be more like Planescape: Torment.

But Colin didn't say anything.

George, Colin, any comments about why the game might have done poorly with sales?

George: I think it's a niche game to begin with. We knew that going into it. There's an audience that loves a lot of reading and a lot of character development and you're not going to get the Halo guys playing something like Planescape: Torment. I do agree with Brian in that I think it is going to find its audience, much like Planescape: Torment gathered steam over time, I think we're going to do the same thing.

Brian: I think the reading is definitely... We live in a world now in which watching other people play video games, whether via Twitch or video streaming, is now key. Watching people read - I can't think of anything more boring than that. I was watching Patrick Rothfuss stream it and, he's having a great time, maybe he's biased, but you're just watching him read.

Colin: The people who are open to enjoying this game are enjoying the hell out of it. There's a reason the professional reviews are just ecstatic. I saw some guy claiming today: I started playing Planescape: Torment again and I have to admit I'd rather be playing Torment: Tides of Numenera right now. This is a subjective thing, people enjoy the things they like and there's no accounting for taste.

Both Ziets and Fargo tried to answer the actual question, but Colin deflected. "People open to enjoying it and professionals all love it", he claims, with an implied criticism of the game's detractors included. The random "oh but this one guy likes it more than PS:T!" makes it even worse.

Colin, is it fair to say that in terms of the story and the writing, you think the game is going to find its audience, and that there's not a lot to take away from its reception?

Colin: There's always ways to improve your craft, to improve your writing. At the same time, there are a lot of people who are extraordinarily happy with this game, and I don't think necessarily that some of these reviews on the Codex have been particularly fair, for instance. I'm not going to complain, because obviously you guys like what you like, but I'm always looking for ways to improve and continue doing it.

"Some of the Codex reviews are unfair" -> "I'm not going to complain". Really? And I assume he means posts, since there's only Cunta's review and he wasn't even harsh.

Colin dodged/deflected/ignored all of the harder questions, criticized part of the players, and gave the shortest answers of the bunch. Now compare his answers to George and Brian's, who answered the actual questions and tried to make them interesting to readers. If he's not in denial, he's extremely salty.

 

[Darth Roxor]

I wanted to add a short response to the criticism of Colin, which I think is misplaced.
[OBJECTION !!!!]

No wonder you're an attorney.

the devil's advocate you could say

 

[Sensuki]

Yeah I pretty much just skip MRY's posts in Torment related threads these days.

 

[Azarkon]

I wanted to add a short response to the criticism of Colin, which I think is misplaced.

To begin with, I think the assertion that he's full of himself or incapable of hearing criticism is flat out wrong. Colin has always been sharply critical of his own work. While he has always demonstrated the "pride of authorship" that compels him to work hard on his craft, he never showed the excessive "pride of ownership" that stands in the way of editorial criticism. In fact, in every instance where he invited me to review and edit his work, his directions were always: (1) be as harsh as possible and (2) make as extensive changes as you want. Where he rejected my suggestions it was because he was right (or at least I was persuaded he was right; maybe we were both wrong). Thus, I find it simply impossible to believe that he is tuning out criticism of the game. To the contrary, I am certain he is listening attentively to it, probably to his dismay.

Second, I think the expectation people had for his role in the interview (i.e., that he would confess TTON's narrative was an inferior work and that the Codex's criticisms of it were well taken) was very unrealistic. It is perfectly consistent with PR norms to criticize the process of the game and its marketing, and thus the mea culpas you heard from others were a reasonable way to talk about a game that is still in its early sale cycle and less than two months post-release. It is not consistent with PR norms to criticize the game itself, even to a more thoughtful publication like the Codex that might be able to pick up the nuances. "Even Lead Writer admits TTON's story sucks!" would run the comment threads. Moreover, while it is perfectly consistent with being a good person to take blame for your failures and for your colleagues' failures, in this case many of the criticisms of the story are not really directed at his work but at his colleagues, and to endorse the criticisms would be crap on his colleagues' work publicly. For instance, he would never say, "Yes, the Meres turned out to be a bad idea, they were too dense and a large number of players got bored," even if it's true, because he would be looking to catch my flak, not to put a spotlight on me for enemy AA. Which is all to say that neither Colin's professional obligations nor his personal values would permit him to do what you guys want, not because he's arrogant or in denial but because he's a responsible person, and sometimes being responsible means putting a good face on things rather than engaging in criticism and self-criticism to obtain public absolution. I suspect that two years from now, when the marketing imperatives are different, you'll get to read interesting and self-critical post mortems.

Finally, even though there is lots of criticism of the game's writing, which seems thoughtful and persuasive to me, there are also people who have said very nice things about it, and it seems a little unreasonable to expect Colin to disregard the praise entirely. God knows the world is bitter enough that we should take the sweet when it comes.

To be clear, I'm not saying that you're wrong to criticize the game's story, or the writers, and or ultimately Colin as the lead writer. He would be the first to say that the buck stops with him and that good criticism is the key to good writing. I just think you're wrong about his attitude here, almost entirely backwards, and it seemed unjust for me to say nothing about it. (As I've said before, though, I feel obliged to speak up for my colleagues in this respect, so I'm absurdly biased. Still, I think I'm right on this.)

With all due respect, I don't think this is a fair assessment.

Colin McComb came off poorly because he didn't admit to any of the criticism raised against the writing, but fell back on the "it's subjective and plenty of people praised it" argument which is, at best, arrogant, and at worst, out of touch. You can acknowledge the potential short comings of your work without bashing your writers, and in response to such a display of humility many people, even here, will probably come to his defense. Colin could've received a better reception, therefore, by admitting to a few flaws, while at the same time drawing attention to a few positives, and offering a few more insights like he did in the Eurogamer interview. Instead he chose to not play, essentially, out of a seeming grudge over either the review of Torment being biased and not objective, or because he considers the Codex so beneath his contempt that he can barely tolerate communicating.

It's probably a combination of the two. We all know Colin's politics and how sensitive he can be in such matters. We also know from the interview that he doesn't think the review was in any way fair. He's never praised the community here to my knowledge, so unlike Brian Fargo and George Ziets who at least paid lip service to the value of a constructive relationship, I don't necessarily think Colin feels the same way. We can understand why he might have a problem with engaging people sent from the Codex. But the price, of course, is that people will like him even less now.

 

[almondblight]

That's why it all went to shit. They should've checked if the embargo had been broken before blacklisting and antagonizing the Codex. I guess someone (Brother None, I assume) simply told them Infinitron broke the embargo and they took his word for it.

The whole thing is incredibly vague and it's hard to believe they're being honest. At the time Fargo and Brother None were both saying, "Cancelled, huh? we don't have control over that, it's in Techland's court. They say you broke the embargo? Well, if you did, be careful in the future!" But I mean, it's not like Techland would be reading the Codex. But then Fargo says stuff in the interview like:

Then we find out the embargo really wasn’t broken, but that information didn’t come out until later. But then the Codex reacted negatively and put some things up there, I don’t know what, and that made some people upset.

Which implies they do have control over the situation, or else why would it matter when InXile found out the embargo wasn't broken? Why would it matter to Techland if some forum users were upset?

It's hard to believe the official line here. I have my own pet theory, but everything is speculation at this point.

I think the production timetable might be off -- possibly Brian misspoke or the interviewer jotted it down wrong. According to all of the Kickstarter updates and interviews from that time period, the game was in pre-production (or something less than full production) until late 2014, not late 2013.

"Misspoke" is being incredibly generous here. He also says this at a later point:

Kevin left the project in late 2015, right? At that point, we were roughly two years into production.

and:

It really got into full production in late 2013. The crowd funding was finished around summer but there was a lot of writing and pre-production for 5 or 6 months. We didn’t really start rolling until the end of that year. So a little over three years.

You're right, full production didn't start until at least 2014, and possibly later - they were still hiring people in early 2015, and some of the WL2 time didn't move over because they were working on WL2 DC (released in late 2015). So at most Saunders was there for a year of production, probably less, and during that time production was screwed up because Fargo kept changing the scope of the game to make it smaller. It's also possible Saunders was never working with a full team with some of the WL2 DC people only coming over after he was fired (fired in Oct. 2015, WL2 DC released in Oct. 2015).

Also interesting to consider this when remembering Fargo's line about how he let Saunders go because the game wouldn't have been finished until 2018 if Saunders was in charge. Given the late 2014/early 2015 start of production, if the game actually had a little over three years of production as Fargo claimed, it would mean it would have been released...in 2018.

 

[Slimu]

Great Codex interview! I wasn't expecting for them to be this open. I liked that they apologized for the whole Gamescon fiasco.

I liked Wasteland 2 DC, but haven't yet played TToN since I'm hoping that with further updates, it will be a good game. That being said, I hope W3 will have a better item progression since in the first half it was very easy to get some overpowered weapons which made the combat trivial.

 

[Saxon1974]

Great read, thanks for the efforts codex team!

Makes me wonder what happens to inxile post Fargo. Is there a young gun with the same love for old school RPGs to carry the torch?

 

[Yannos]

People also dislike the purple prose where the video game writer thinks they're a better writer than they are. You know, instead of writing "There's a waterfall in the distance" they write, "In the distance you see a segment where the river stops lazily flowing down the countryside and suddenly and violently finds itself being thrown over the edge as the bottom drops out into a gorge. The resulting fall leaves splashes of water and mist that lazily float around the drop, and through them you can barely see the point of impact where the water hits the ground, as if you're viewing something from the edge of a dream."

A thousand times this... It has basically become a running joke between me and a buddy who are playing it simultaneously to take mundane expressions and turning them into "torment speak".

For me the game became somewhat of a chore because I'm not a native English speaker so it was very tiring to be presented by words I've never heard before and very detailed descriptions of stuff that just confused me more. For example, at one point Callistege says something in the lines of "Mmh, you've brought the mood-dampener along with you. You can't get to ebullient I suppose?" ... I had to alt-tab and google that word which apparently just means "overflowing with enthusiasm". Why not just use that?

Planescape never made me feel this stupid and I was much younger when I played that. The lore and motivations were also that much clearer there. The setting was weird but understandable.
Almost everything in this game also seems to exist on a meta-physical layer which makes the explanations even that much more complex. What the hell were the adversaries even? I finished the quest-line and I still didn't understand what they were after. Same with the Tabath(?) and the Underspine. Again, it's probably because I am retarded but everything is so much easier to digest (and remember!) when it's just hobgoblins threatening a village instead of a creature from parallel dimension that feeds on negative emotions that tries to absorb a village that only exists when two celestial beings are dancing a merry jig.

I'm glad they added the "what did you say again" option which usually reduced the lore dump to something concrete

 

[Israfael]

After reading it again, I thought that I'd also ask if Fargo et al. feel now that their games (and Obsidian games too, to be fair) suffered greatly from NIH (not invented here) syndrome in regards to the game systems (screw DnD, lets try something else (turned out to be not really suitable for CRPG) or create our own (bland copy of already bland and simplistic DnD4), worldbuilding and lore. Meanwhile, there was 0 proper DnD games in recent, what, 8 years?

 

[FeelTheRads]

Again, it's probably because I am retarded but everything is so much easier to digest (and remember!) when it's just hobgoblins threatening a village instead of a creature from parallel dimension that feeds on negative emotions that tries to absorb a village that only exists when two celestial beings are dancing a merry jig.

I actually can enjoy that sort of thing. The problem, I think, is that they failed to make it enjoyable because:

1. Many times it's just mundane things dressed up in 10 adjectives (or purple prose) trying hard to make it more than it is. I'll have to mention again how ever other NPC you meet is somebody who touched the wrong Numenera and was changed or somebody that is "not quite there". FFS, they even managed to make mundane stuff that shouldn't have been. The companions are boring as it is, but when you find out that there are other people with the same thing going as Callistege is just...
It really feels like they gave the source book to each writer and each of them decided to write about the same things and nobody ever checked what the fuck the others were doing.
2. If not that, then there's the exact opposite where they just describe something as "weird" or "unnamable" when I imagine the writers patting themselves on the back and brofisting eachother for discovering how easy it is to convey to the reader the message that something is not normal in just one word!
3. Finally, the setting has this sort or disclaimer that you shouldn't explain things which I feel they took too much to heart.

And of course, I found the same thing regarding PST... I don't think I ever needed to check a dictionary for that, and everything in it felt much more weird and mysterious than anything in TTON even when a lot of it was explained to you, something that, as previously said, TTON doesn't really do. Because instead of explaining an object or idea it just puts 10 adjectives in front of it.
To be honest I also didn't actually use a dictionary for TTON, but it was because it would've probably been even more annoying to find out that "dascungumeniant" or whatever similar words actually meant "nose" or something similarly mundane.

 

[Aenra]

The Codex relies on volunteers to handle visits like this. Given we can't pay said volunteers, it means we're limited to people who aren't stupid
...
Given the quality of the output, those conditions were acceptable to us on this occasion.

I didn't know we had such people!!?
Your wonderfully tactful approach aside, will admit i occasionally neglect the 'volunteering' part.. Point taken.

 

[Ismaul]

His request.

Ha-HA! Now we know it's not a girl!

Not a man either.

Crooked Beenis

 

[Infinitron]

I love how Fargo considers MRY a codexer who worked on the game rather than a developer who posts on the Codex.

Actually, he's been a Codexer for longer than he's been a developer (there are...previous accounts )

Lost momentum. Kickstarters like Chaos Reborn and D:OS had most of the game already completed and used KS as a sort of polishing tool. There's an immediacy to Kickstarters that makes them so attractive. If you wait a really long time to release, it kinda kills the buzz, especially when initial support comes from impulsive contributions. That's my thinking, anyway. It also seems to be harmful from an organizing standpoint -- if you got the game set in stone like the previously mentioned titles, then you can allocate funds accordingly. That does not happen if the project is a long way off and not even entirely finished -- which is what leads to major content cuts, no doubt.

Yup, this can't be emphasized enough. Like I said when the PoE2 Fig campaign concluded successfully - Make your game. Sell your game. inXile can't do what they've been doing anymore, they have to switch to the Obsidian/Larian model.

 

[grotsnik]

(Colin)'s never praised the community here to my knowledge, so unlike Brian Fargo and George Ziets who at least paid lip service to the value of a constructive relationship, I don't necessarily think Colin feels the same way. We can understand why he might have a problem with engaging people sent from the Codex. But the price, of course, is that people will like him even less now.

I remember Colin being pretty respectful about the community when we interviewed him back in 2013 - he was a little late sending his answers back to us, but apologised and said something like, 'I wanted to make a real effort to be precise, because I know these guys will actually pay attention to what I say.'

But yeah, it does seem as if things have been curdling ever since.

 

[Jedi Master Radek]

Whoever did this interview was more concerned with asking questions from a list rather than paying attention and asking relevant follow ups. Several interesting thoughts were not expanded upon because the topic was suddenly changed by the interviewer.

If I did not know it was a life interview I would have thought it was conducted by an email.
I am quite happy that inXile tries to fix its mistakes and reconcile. This may be because they are in a difficult situation, but whats matter the most is them getting their shit together. Reasons for that are less important in the end.

 

[Irenaeus]

Why the fuck this long and boring damage control post has 12 brofists?

Moreover, while it is perfectly consistent with being a good person to take blame for your failures and for your colleagues' failures, in this case many of the criticisms of the story are not really directed at his work but at his colleagues, and to endorse the criticisms would be crap on his colleagues' work publicly.

This is just a lie.

The main plot, 99% written by Colin "I hate Cheetoh Hitler" McComb, was one of the major points of criticism in the gayme.

You don't even know what you don't know, my dude boyo.

Spoiler

My wife liked the map

 

[Kalin]

The more I argued with them, the better I came to know their dialectic. First they counted on the stupidity of their adversary, and then, when there was no other way out, they themselves simply played stupid. If all this didn't help, they pretended not to understand, or, if challenged, they changed the subject in a hurry, quoted platitudes which, if you accepted them, they immediately related to entirely different matters, and then, if again attacked, gave ground and pretended not to know exactly what you were talking about.

Whenever you tried to attack one of these apostles, your hand closed on a jelly-like slime which divided up and poured through your fingers, but in the next moment collected again. But if you really struck one of these fellows so telling a blow that, observed by the audience, he couldn't help but agree, and if you believed that this had taken you at least one step forward, your amazement was great the next day. The Jew had not the slightest recollection of the day before, he rattled off his same old nonsense as though nothing at all had happened, and, if indignantly challenged, affected amazement; he couldn't remember a thing, except that he had proved the correctness of his assertions the previous day.

 

[Irenaeus]

D:OS 2 should be the game you're watching. D:OS sold better than Pillars, and is less of a nostalgia project in general. If isometric games really are doomed (a thesis I don't agree with), then D:OS 2 flopping would be proof of that. Pillars 2 underperforming wouldn't convince me.

D:OS story/writing was very boring. Maybe if D:OS 2 fails again in that department (I hope not, I pledged AGAIN), only isometric games with shitty writing are D00MED.

In my HUMBLE opinion, Pillars 2 will be even more of a success than PoE, unless they let the crazy purple-haired "I love GAYS" faghags run the show (Josh "I scream at writers to make the game more GAY" Sawyer is included in this group).

 

[MRY]

I love how Fargo considers MRY a codexer who worked on the game rather than a developer who posts on the Codex.

Actually, he's been a Codexer for longer than he's been a developer (there are...previous accounts )

My first paid work as a game writer was in 2001, $5k to write the script for Infinity, an unreleased Gameboy jRPG. Before I found the Codex, I'd done considerable paid work for TimeGate (02-04), and additional paid work for Bioware (04), Nikitova (03), and S2 Games (05). After finding the Codex I did more S2 Games work, Primordia, and TTON, as well as some random piecework.

Still, you guys should get all the credit for my good stuff, since my earlier work was pretty mediocre.

 

[Infinitron]

I love how Fargo considers MRY a codexer who worked on the game rather than a developer who posts on the Codex.

Actually, he's been a Codexer for longer than he's been a developer (there are...previous accounts )

My first paid work as a game writer was in 2001, $5k to write the script for Infinity, an unreleased Gameboy jRPG. Before I found the Codex, I'd done considerable paid work for TimeGate (02-04), and additional paid work for Bioware (04), Nikitova (03), and S2 Games (05). After finding the Codex I did more S2 Games work, Primordia, and TTON, as well as some random piecework.

Still, you guys should get all the credit for my good stuff, since my earlier work was pretty mediocre.

Yeah I actually suspected that, but I guess what I really meant is "developer of games we give a shit about who created an account to post as their developer"

 

[Lurker King]

Colin simply rejects the negative feedback, claiming the NPCs are all interesting and relevant, and that the player is not obligated to read the loredumps. Again, I don't think anybody has an issue with him for defending the game, but "you're not forced to read it" is pretty much the worst defense. (...) Colin dodged/deflected/ignored all of the harder questions, criticized part of the players, and gave the shortest answers of the bunch. Now compare his answers to George and Brian's, who answered the actual questions and tried to make them interesting to readers. If he's not in denial, he's extremely salty.

Colin McComb came off poorly because he didn't admit to any of the criticism raised against the writing, but fell back on the "it's subjective and plenty of people praised it" argument which is, at best, arrogant, and at worst, out of touch.