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Chris Avellone

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Blog Entries posted by Chris Avellone

  2. Chris Avellone
    There were some concerns floating around about Aliens being an action RPG, so I thought it would best to clarify. While there will be action elements to it, it is still an RPG in every sense of the word.
     
    An analysis of the elements, along with diagrams as to what constitutes an action RPG in the aliens universe, is presented for your viewing enjoyment here. Hypothetically, the diagrams may resemble cartoons. And it may not be a serious analysis. All other standard caveats apply.
     
    Happy pre-Memorial Day week, everyone.
     
    Chris
  3. Chris Avellone
    As part of the discussion involving Aliens interface design, our Systems Lead, Paul Boyle, showed us this supercool lighttable interface.
     
    Here's a glimpse of what future keyboards may be like.
     
    There's also pretty lights and a cartoon in there as well, for your viewing pleasure.
  5. Chris Avellone
    I have to confess, I was pretty happy to hear the Writers Guild of America, West was giving awards for video game writing.
     
    Award Criteria and Submissions
     
    Then the fine print came out, which basically invalidates all the writing work we did at Black Isle and Obsidian for the past ten years, including:
     
    "Submitted games MUST have separate credit for writing (i.e. Written By, Story By, Writer, Story Designer, etc.). Writing credits must be verified by their inclusion in the game manual. If writing credits are not printed in the game manual, the publisher must fax or e-mail screenshots of the game's complete writing credits directly to Melissa Gage at the WGAW, fax no.: (323) 782-4810 e-mail: Melissa Gage. Alternate proof of writing credit will be addressed on a case-by-case basis.
     
    While there is no limit on the number of credited writers a particular game may have, credits not specifically tied to videogame writing are not acceptable (i.e. Lead Designer, Designed By, Produced By, etc.)"
     
    This is a little frustrating because we didn't employ solely writers at Black Isle or Obsidian, mostly because our writers are designers... and I believe part of being a game writer is being able to do design work that complements the story within the engine you're "writing" for. I could go on a seperate rant on how the story should express itself through game mechanics as much as possible, but I'll leave that for another blog.
     
    Anyway, enough venting. I'm pleased to see awards being given out, but not so much the criteria invalidates a % of writers that also do design work.
     
  6. Chris Avellone
    So, I generally despise writing companion romances (I think unrequited and/or doomed ones are ultimately more dramatic), but there are some techniques I've accumulated over the years that I try to incorporate into writing and designing romances in RPGs.
     
    A lot of these things came out while writing Gannayev-of-Dreams in Neverwinter Nights 2: Mask of the Betrayer, and I suppose it could hold true for other inter-party romances in games. What follows is a summary of some points we kicked around for how to foster romances with the PC.
     
     
    Any suggestions or examples of other techniques that work would be welcome because us Obsidian folks (or at least me) aren't the romantic types.
     
    Note: I'm going to cite examples from Season 1 of Lost a lot, so if the character examples below don't make sense to you, watch that and come back - although there's no spoilers below. I think. It's hard to tell with Lost what's a spoiler and what's not. Also, I haven't watched Lost past Season 2, so it's possible all the examples below are overturned in Season 3.
     
    Anyway, here's how to foster romance between characters - part one, and subject to iteration.
    First, the NPC romantic interest must be good in combat or contributes effectively to a mission. It is much easier to like/love someone who fulfills an effective combat role in the party (Final Fantasy VI/Final Fantasy III was always my model for this). Kate from Lost, for example, pulls this off - she's a good tracker, good with a gun, and can handle herself in a fight for the most part. The NPC is not subservient to the player, but either equal or not quite his or her equal. Kate from Lost does not feel she
  7. Chris Avellone
    So a designer's job is to make jumping through hoops fun, and calibrating the challenge/frustration ratio of jumping through said hoops.
     
    This blog post stems from a question from the AMA Brian Fargo and I did on Reddit (long ago) concerning the issues with this in regards to one infamous piece of game design: time limits, and how two different games dealt with the challenge.
     
    From a gamemaster/game designer perspective, the idea of time limits is appealing. It creates pressure, and it creates an urgency for the player that's hard to beat.
     
    In Fallout 1, the skill system and the plot was built around the design that you only had a certain number of days to find the water chip for your vault and then defeat the mutant army or game over. If you don't recall that, then chances are you played it with the patch that removed that design element, as the mutant-hunting-your-Vault-down-time-limit was patched out of the game in 1.1 because of the outcry.
     
    So I love time limits. In Fallout 1, it was appropriate because:
     
    - It reinforced the urgency and pressure of saving your Vault.
    - It reinforced the brutal nature of the world you were in.
    - It made time-usage skills more risky for players to use. Sure, Doctor was helpful, but you had to be careful because it could consume a lot of time if used repeatedly.
     
    Players reacted negatively because:
     
    - The time limit was unforgiving.
    - It prevented them from exploring areas at their leisure, which undermined the non-linearity of the game -- suddenly you didn't want to go everywhere and explore everything, because the clock was ticking.
    - It couldn't be reset/extended beyond the time limit except in a few places in the game, and only a finite number of times.
     
    So the question becomes - if I, as a game designer, want to introduce the same level of time pressure and instill the player with a sense of urgency, what can I do?
     
    System Shock 2 had an elegant answer to this: It associated all the time limits with your inventory items. If you powered up an implant, it had X amount of time to function before you needed to recharge it. Here's the conditions:
     
    - It was forgiving. When the time limit ran out, you would be inconvenienced, not fail the game.
    - It could be reset. The player had some measure of control over resetting this time limit.
    - Yet, it STILL created a sense of urgency while exploring the environment - the loss of item functionality was enough of an inconvenience that it made you keep an eye out for recharge stations and keep an eye on the clock for when you needed to start heading back to get recharged.
     
    In any event, this was the answer promised on Reddit, and to @VipulManchala.
  9. Chris Avellone
    Found this in the backroom, although the disk was probably still lodged inside the C64. Love the credits page.







    And even found my old school handmade Wasteland Vegas map. The Scorpitron is clearly indicated in... uh... faded pencil. Along with everything else.



    Happy holidays, all!
  10. Chris Avellone
    A question from Chris Norris:
     
    Greetings, Mr. Avellone
     
    I saw your lecture at Framework 09 and was deeply inspired. I am currently studying to be an animator, but writing and design speak to me more than art or animation does. I was hoping I could ask you a few short questions?
     
    1) I've looked at transferring to a games design degree and they teach classes such as physics, programming (LUA, C++) -and- manage to pack one or two art classes in there as well. I am wondering if these classes are actually necessary. As a designer, do you find yourself needing to know physics and programming? They seem somewhat irrelevant and the course structure as well seems schizophrenic with all the different subjects they pack in.
     
    2) I admit I smiled when I heard you ran possible scenarios for BIS games with your development staff. I have to agree that that is an excellent way to gauge a written scenario and receive quick feedback. However, do you think it a faux pas if one mentions one does gamemastering during a job interview for a design position? What do you think are helpful things one should say during such an interview?
     
    Thank you very much for your time!
     
    Chris Nonis
     
    PS - Very much looking forward to Alpha Protocol.
     
    1. No, it's not mandatory, but it does help to understand scripting, physics, and programming. Same with art.
     
    Any designer who can script their own AI tactics simulator to test squad behavior, automate testing routines for balancing alien enemy one-on-one fights, or can hop into 3D Max and block out their concept for how they want the boss fight scaffolding to be set up, is going to have an advantage over any designer who can't.
     
    Ideally, you want to be constantly working to broaden your knowledge base across all departments, both for ease of communication and to see ways of accomplishing your designs that you may not have realized. Being able to speak in the language of another department's toolset or editor can get your ideas across quicker as well.
     
    2. No, it's not a faux pas to bring up gamemastering, as long as you have concrete materials you developed for the sessions that are applicable to the position, and they can be presented in design document format. For example, when running dual campaigns at Black Isle, I wrote a lot of explicit direction for cut scenes, mapped out Denver, mapped out scavenger camps, detailed out all the stats and voice direction for 30+ salvagers, did all the quest lines, dungeons, boss critter stats, weapon charts, and loot tables for the city, and trust me, that stuff is pretty damn relevant in most RPGs out there. A lot it made it into design documentation as well, some of which is already out on the net. Ferret Baudoin also did gamemastering for scenarios that took place in Neverwinter Nights 2 while we were at Obsidian for the NWN2 original campaign, and that was a lot of fun.
     
    I will say it's much more relevant to actually have done design in a computer game mod or module for NWN1 or NWN2, however (whenever possible, you want to make a submission that someone can load up and play), so if you have time and the choice, do it from the computer game development angle, not the pen and paper game angle.
     
    Note that if I got someone in an interview and they said they did gamemastering, it's not the kiss of death, far from it. I would have a number of questions, however - first off would be the system they use, what house rules they made and why, how do they incorporate PC backgrounds and traits into the campaign, how long they've been running the campaign (and if it fragmented, how often and why), and finally, what the player turnover rate is in the campaign (there are GMs who run a lot of campaigns, but the best sign of being a good entertainer is how long people stuck with the campaign because they were enjoying themselves).
     
    Hope that helps.
     
    Chris
     
  11. Chris Avellone
    Got back from Comic-con, and here are some pix from the show, in case anyone is interested.
     
    Just a heads up that we'll be at Gen Con and PAX in the coming weeks, so keep an eye out for Mask of the Betrayer.
  14. Chris Avellone
    Quick question from Rafał Adamek:
     
    I have a question: what types of characters do you prefer? Do you like to create a mass of different episodic persons who can gave you quest, have some background story but are not related to the main hero and don
  15. Chris Avellone
    With Dead Money coming out for the PC and PS3 this week, I got into a discussion about how I feel about its reception and some of the design decisions. In short, my feelings concern the context of the specific design elements. Some folks understand the "why" of the challenge elements even if they don't agree with them, which is fine, as long as they get why we did it the way we did - and that may not be apparent. So: If you play the adventure and want to dig deeper into the reasons behind the content and challenges, read on (although play first and form your own opinions).
     
    Slight spoilers apply (although most was in trailers and interviews already). Most of this is general enough that you may be able to read safely - a lot of this concerns the overall design decisions made in the DLC, it's more a general treatment than a series of details.
     
    First off, Dead Money is a short story in the Fallout universe, pulp fiction style: it's a dime-store comic book (issue one in a limited series), an adventure story, a casino heist with a post-holocaust spin. It's never intended to have the length of a regular product, and being able to do a "game short story" is something that was fun to work on... usually we work on multi-year products, so doing a one with limited scope in a short time frame was gratifying in many respects. How do you create a game-equivalent ($10 vs dime store) paperback adventure? How long should it be, how should you present it?
     
    As it says at the outset, Dead Money's a brutal, vicious adventure that puts the player in a bad situation, and it was designed to scare the hell out of Fallout players - although it didn't, in my opinion. The Survival and tension aspects ended up trumping that, which is fine, since survival's a subset of fear in my book.
     
    We didn't set out to make Dead Money a Survival experience - we set out to make a Horror game that put Survival second. In terms of horror, I don't feel we succeeded, although it was a conscious effort to try and shake things up a bit with the enemies you faced to scare the player, definitely. The enemies are not only tough (which is easy to do with numbers, so I don't feel that's a real challenge), but also intended to be unpredictable when they fall, so you couldn't always count on shooting an enemy until they fall as being a guarantee that you're safe. The original hope was that the enemies couldn't simply be headshotted continuously - this is a selfish reason, as I get tired of watching people play like that non-stop (it doesn't feel like they're experimenting with limb-targeting tactics, despite the array of weapons), although the non-headshotting tactical diversion didn't turn out that way (it's just as easy to decapitate a head as a limb with the right blasts).
     
    So why did we choose survival? Well, the question of Survival sums up questions I've had about Fallout as its timeline advances... the post-wasteland's gotten more civilized as the decades since the nuclear war have gone on, and when I was scripting Dead Money's layout, one thing that kept coming up was that I missed the desperate "Road Warrior" feeling when I hit the wastes. I miss being in a situation where I'm scrounging for every last bullet, water's precious, and I have to fight tooth and nail for any edge I can get. That goes double for the environment, I want it to be terrifying and be something you're constantly fighting against, Vault 34-style. I confess, there's been times I wish someone would drop more nuclear warheads on the Fallout world if only to bring parts of it back to its roots, so I wanted to create an area in the Wasteland that felt just as desperate as you'd expect a post-holocaust environment to be.
     
    So the Sierra Madre and its surrounding Villa were designed as a reminder that some sections of the wastes are still scary, hazardous places where few can tread and survive, and while NCR may tame parts of the Mojave, there are other parts they can never hope to settle and claim as their own, and that's just the way I want it.
     
    Regardless, we were shooting for a Horror experience with Dead Money. As for what we tried to do with Horror, to make the game scary, we tried to do two things - one, have enemies you couldn't headshot and required a different approach (holograms, toxic cloud), and worse, they could headshot you if you weren't careful (bomb collars + radios). My experience with most horror games is that the enemies become scarier when you can't kill the adversaries (which most role-players will try and do if the enemy has any number of hit points or any measurable way to hurt them, no matter how small). So what am I happy about, even if the final result ended up veering from the intention, is watching YouTube playthrough videos where folks (1) start panicking when they hear beeping (exactly the experience we wanted), and (2) seeing players take a step back, figure out the puzzle, and then study the environment to solve it (again, what we wanted).
     
    As for Horror: Things get scarier and tense when you can't escape, no one's coming to help you, and your resources are limited, and Dead Money was built around this. Watching the YouTube playthrough footage where players started re-appreciating chems and Stimpaks made me happy - these things are miracles of medicine, and they should be viewed as such and appreciated for that in the world of Fallout. One issue I've always had with Fallout is it's really easy to amass a lot of chems and stims, so much so you lose the sense of wonder and relief when you get these items, and I feel situations like in Dead Money can give you a new appreciation for food, crafting (we put a higher priority on crafting and supplies to make crafting worth more in the DLC), unconventional water sources, and the joy at finding an otherwise common chem in the Mojave takes on a new level of preciousness when you're in hostile territory. One YouTube video showed someone finding Buffout - and to hear them say, "thank god" and hear genuine appreciation for finding something so rare is exactly the kind of value I want people to attach to these items... usually people seem to care less when they find Buffout, but it all depends on the environment context. I want players to attach value to them again rather than, "oh, more Buffout." It's BUFFOUT. It's a STIMPAK. Your character should be OVERJOYED to find these things, each and every time.
     
    We also wanted to maximize the real estate. We couldn't build a whole other world for a DLC, so we paid more attention to what we put in it and increased the gameplay density. We did a serious, quantified exploration and loot pass, included challenges that required paying attention to your surroundings (hazards above and below, hidden cache markers to encourage targeted exploration and navigation, second story adventure areas, and even putting crafting items on walls) - artists spend a lot of time fleshing out rooms and environments, and we wanted to include challenges and rewards for folks who carefully hunted through the environment - and were rewarded for their efforts. In short, make them pay attention to their surroundings.
     
    Dead Money's story: Narratives in games should be entertaining first, and also have a theme when possible. I wanted to make sure that despite the Survival elements and the adventure story elements, there's still something larger being told beneath the DLC's surface for people who care to delve into it. There's a thematic spine that we built the characters and the Sierra Madre which most folks appreciated, and our lead level designer put the finishing touch on (thanks, Charlie, that was brilliant). I feel when your adversary sums up his frustration with the human condition, and you get to see the results of what the bomb collars do to four (five?) individuals who would normally butcher/devour/assassinate/con each other, that's the point... but it's reflected in the design as well, notably their Perks. The idea was always intended that if you talk to them and study their abilities, you see how they can help you survive much easier as long as you cooperate and choose the right companion for the right time... a level of cooperation that would be impossible if your lives weren't wired to each other. And when Elijah snarls about that exact issue, I wanted players to realize that as much as they may hate him, he's got a point... in this situation.
     
    There's a few other things I'm happy with and always wanted to do, and I'm glad DLC allows for experimentation with this. Having an opening narration movie per location is something I've wanted ever since running Van Buren pen and paper games at Black Isle (and thanks to Bethesda for being on board with that), reactive end slides per DLC, having a "join the bad guy Fallout 1 style end movie" (which I missed ever since joining the Master's Army in Fallout 1, so we put it in DLC1 to allow the player to join Elijah), and being able to hook into some of the backstories in previous Fallouts as well as Mojave hooks (Veronica's relationship with her mentor, who Dean Domino really was, and Dog/God's ties back to the origins of the Nightkin and how some folks have exploited that in the present).
     
    A few last minor things that make me happy that doing a DLC gave a chance to experiment with - I got to finally try to write a Torment "they communicate everything via text" character for a modern-day role-playing game with Christine to see how that would be received (mixed reaction, some people thought we were lazy or cheap, and they're partly right, even if that wasn't the intention - voice acting is expensive, and if we can get more story with less voiced words, I'm fine with that). Wouldn't have gone over so well in a larger game, I suspect, so glad the DLC allowed for it.
     
    So while I have mixed feelings about the DLC, I'm pretty happy with it, and I like the fact the way DLCs are structured allows for some degree of experimentation. And the price of admission and the amount of gameplay Dead Money provides (including explorers, there's a lot to find even in supposedly confined world spaces), I'm more than happy with it in the end, as difficult as it can be at times for even veteran players. I always figured if folks had played F3 and FNV for 100+ or more hours total, they may be ready for the stakes to be raised.
     
    I also like the fact that the DLCs can have continuity, they don't need to exist in isolation. If I had to picture the DLC series, it would be it's a limited series in the Fallout universe, spiraling to its final conclusion that brings everything back to the start, so Dead Money sets a nice pattern for future FNV DLCs, especially layout and narrative-wise, which folks have picked up on - and many thanks to them.
     
    The Courier's adventures aren't over yet.
  16. Chris Avellone
    Questions from Davide Scalzo:
     
    1) What do you think about the concept of emergent narrative?
     
    1. I think the concept of emergent narrative is stronger than any enforced narrative. I think a blend can work well (and it's what I prefer whenever possible), but I think the stories players create on their own from interesting system mechanics and AI behavior has more weight and meaning than anything a designer tries to do. My favorite example is that no enforced narrative can really trump the story of planting dynamite on victims in Fallout, superstimming people to death, or how a character's 3rd level dwarven fighter with 5 hit points trained 20 orcs into a narrow, funneled corridor and killed them all one by one with a ball-peen hammer, Oldboy-style. The player makes stories like that happen, and those are the stories I hear players talk about most in relation to games, computer game or pen-and-paper games, not necessarily their reaction to specific cued story events or anything the designer or GM tried to force on them.
     
    Note that realization came pretty quickly on in my GMing days, and it's another lesson I learned from pen-and-paper games which still holds true in computer games. The amount of glee the Fallout PNP players had when they did a critical hit against one of the major NPC adversaries early on in the campaign was another reminder - and a reminder to myself to let the gaming session chips fall where they may. Generally, I don't like to make major characters in games sacred and invulnerable unless I absolutely have to.
     
    2) Do you think is something already out there or it is still and embryo?
     
    2. It's already out there, and was present in Oblivion and other open-world style games and even in many MMOs, where player raiding stories are generally more involved than the actual pacing of the raid itself. It's been around for almost as long as gaming has been around, in my opinion.
     
    3) How do you think will influence the game-play in the next (let's say) 10 years?
     
    3. I think it will always be a certain open-world game "type" for the next few years, and it may evolve into something greater afterward.
     
    4) How do you think will influence the emotional side of the games?
     
    4. I think when done properly, it can add to the sense of wonder and exploration, and if done poorly or if mechanics in the game are difficult to pull off or don't give proper feedback (stealth, planting explosives, poison and drug effects on self and others) then it only adds to the frustration.
     
  17. Chris Avellone
    Alex Nistor:
     
    Concerning Fallout 3 , I really was curious to hear your more in-depth opinion about it.
     
    So you said you had a similiar opinion on it to Sawyer, but what was missing from that, in my opinion, was a breakdown of your pro's and Con's for Fallout 3.
     
    Considering Bethesda made it in a similiar style to Oblivion, I just wanted to know specifically, how was the transition?
     
    And like I said in the above comment, what did you like and not like.
     
    :: Floodgates open ::
     
    It's a testament to the game that for every thing that initially bothered me, there was a solution or a tool to counterbalance it. For example, I was exploring Hubris Comics, dropped my Power Fist so I could haul some extra loot, then came back and couldn't find it on the floor. Pissed. And then I remembered Dogmeat has the dialogue option to go "fetch" existing weapons in the environment and bring them back - so I asked him to go hunt down the Power Fist for me, and he found it in 5 seconds. Awesome. The game had enough options and tools at my disposal to insure I was having fun no matter what the challenges, so I can't ask for much more.
     
    So here's the list:
     
    The negatives: Dogmeat's breathing if you don't adjust the sound sliders. The tiny model house in Minefield not containing anything special. Anyone armed with a flamer can kick my melee-specialized ass, and thus, can kiss my ass. It was confusing to find one's way around Megaton, although it had beautiful set pieces and I got used to it. I played with a 4 ST character and regretted it, but it made me appreciate the ST boost from alcohol more (1st time I've ever considered alcohol a viable drug in any game system, ever) and also made me appreciate Buffouts. I suck at the Science minigame, which is a horrible confession for an English major. Thought Hubris Comics should have had more Grognak issues, although I really liked the fan mail and the text adventure game in there. Didn't like not being able to kill Amata or Andy the Robot at the outset because I hated them both. I didn't like that the first potential companion was a bad karma companion and expensive, but then the twin goals of being an **** and scrounging up a thousand caps became bait and a challenge in trying to get him - when I got Jericho, I felt like I'd earned him as a companion. I think Repair became too valuable as a skill, but it's better than the special case it was in Fallout 1 and 2, so I'd rather that than it remain a broken skill (like Doctor in F2). Maybe because I'm approaching it from the development end, I didn't care, but I think the level cap turned a number of people off, as did not being able to play after and continue the game until Broken Steel came out. Some of the locations I think broke the 4th wall (Dunwich, which I actually enjoyed playing, just not the premise).
     
    So that said...
     
    Likes: Opening immersion and re-introducing you into the Fallout world. Fallout 1 and 2 had consistently broken or special case skills that were rectified in F3 (for example, Repair - and Doctor vs. First Aid in Fallout 2 became broken without a time limit, so Medicine was clearly an improvement). Fast Travel. Felt my skills mattered in general. The kitchen bell XP sound. I love radiation more in F3, it makes me pay close attention to the environment, I loved the Grognak text adventure game, I loved the Gutsy and Robobrain combat barkstrings, I liked the usage of the radio and the reactivity to the player's actions - that seemed an elegant way of reinforcing your actions in the world as well as introducing a bad guy you couldn't immediately shoot in the face, I liked a lot of the moments in the game, including suddenly being surrounded by the creepy Andale residents after entering the basement in town, I never thought a neighborhood filled with land mines would be a good adventure locale and I ate my words, loved the juxtaposition of real world mundane locations and their change into dungeons (Campgrounds, Springvale School, Super Duper Mart). Liked tracking down radio transmission signals for rewards. This is the first game I've ever played where I was excited to see barricades.* Nerd Rage surprised me as a Perk - chose it by default at one level only so I could drop grenades on myself to increase my carrying capacity and found it surprisingly useful at saving my ass when I walked into an ambush. The Pitt DLC, especially the opening vista crossing the bridge, is incredible. Liked the lockpick minigame. The Arlington Cemetery actually hit me pretty hard, and as a location it really drove home the futility of war to me - just seeing all those graves with Washington DC stretching out behind it made me feel really bad. Loved firing my combat shotgun into a bus with 5 ghouls trapped on the Dupont Circle freeway below and watching the whole screen erupt in fire. Consistently being rewarded for exploring the environment - there was always at least three things to see on the horizon that you wanted to go check out. I didn't think I would like Liberty Prime, but the Iron Giant aspect worked for me and made me do a 180. I liked the Brotherhood camping out at the Pentagon. The sign inside the portable bomb shelters made me smile. I liked the Time Bandits aspects of Mothership Zeta. Seeing Dogmeat on fire, and being so tough that he didn't even care that he was on fire. Liked playing as a Psycho-using alcoholic and murdering caravan folks for things I didn't even need. Thought beer was valuable as a ST enhancer to carry loot. Liked the Well-Rested Perk. Shiskebab rocks - tap and burn.
     
    * Yes, barricades. I have never had anything but hate for barricades until this game. They block my progress. **** barricades. But in F3, they are filled with the equivalent of RPG candy - containers are usually embedded in the wreckage, which was a great way to turn something hated into a gaming loot opportunity.
  19. Chris Avellone
    Couldn't fit all the entries on Twitter, so here's a selection of winners for the Fallout New Vegas perk contest.
     
    Broke them into Most Useful/Interesting, Most Ennio Morricone-Inspired and Most Humorous. #FNV
     
    Most Useful/Interesting: @ericsiry Six Million Cap Man, @Spartan3995 The New You!, @Spartan3995 Burden to Bare, @Soultaker696 Sole Survivor.
     
    Most Thematic and Ennio Morricone-Inspired: @ericsiry Trick Shot, @gogukaizer Evil Eye, @amoebasoid A Few Caps More.
     
    Most Humorous: @amoebasoid Hot Temper, @ericsiry Human Goat, @amoebasoid Nudist.
     
    A summary of the details:
     
    Trick Shot: Small chance in VATS you'll have a 100% hit chance and auto critical hit against enemies' targetable weapons.
     
    Six Million Cap Man: Allows you to get three implants beyond your END limit (still a maximum of 9).
     
    Human Goat: You can eat any Misc item in your inventory for 1 HP per pound of weight. Rounds down, not affected by Pack Rat. --> Finally, a use for Paperweights.
     
    The New You!: One time only. Allows you to replace all skill points, SPECIAL points, facial features, hair, and name. LvL 30
     
    Evil Eye: Lvl req 18; Other req LU 5, CH 6; Any humanoid wielding a weapon has a 15% chance to drop it when used against you. --> Liked it.
     
    'Sole Survivor' Only works when not accompanied by any follower, otherwise adds half as much for each follower.
     
    Burden To Bare: Armor no longer impairs movement: Strength: 8 Endurance: 6.
     
    Nudist (Trait, but can work as a Perk). Let it hang loose and move freely as nature intended! Fast AP regen but can't wear armor (hats are allowed). --> Can't beat nudity. I believe GURPS had a variation called "Bulletproof nudity."
     
    [Hot Temper] Eating multiple jalapenos will temporarily grant fire resistance + fire breathing as an unarmed special attack. --> Liked it.
     
    [A Few Caps More] Extra damage and faster firing rate with revolver weapons. --> Lump in revolver reload speed with this, I'd get it.
     
    Putting the next contest up on Twitter (@ChrisAvellone). If you want a free black FNV T-shirt, feel free to participate.
     
  20. Chris Avellone
    Game design...
     
    One game design question from Nicole Swimley:
     
    How do you go about getting ideas into a cohesive format? And what methods do you use to start narrowing down what makes for a better design?
     
    - Write one sentence about your game, tell it to someone you trust, then study their expressions to see if they get the hook. Repeat this to various people until you have a good sampling. Ideally, any game you do should be cool enough to explain why it's cool and fun in one sentence. If not, you may need to rethink the game... or the sentence.
     
    - Even better, draw a sketch about your game and gameplay and show it to someone - if that immediately communicates why the game is fun, that's good. The reason I say sketch of the game is because I would play Psychonauts or Deathspank solely by looking at a character concept shot. Shallow, I know.
     
    - After the steps above, choose 3 things about your game that you want to be the coolest things about it, and choose the priority of those cool things (1st, 2nd, and 3rd or A, B, and C priority). Do not choose more than 3. Arguably, I wouldn't recommend choosing more than one cool thing for your first outing - keep it manageable (see below).
     
    - Once you have the coolest of the three ideas, do what you can to prototype that element first. Keep design documentation to a minimum until you get something working on screen, and the sooner, the better. (Doing design documentation, formulas, stat charts, etc. and even the story usually ends up being worthless once a sampling of the mechanisms and content are actually in the game - it's more important to get the basics in and be able to easily iterate on it). Also, don't have the tweakable numbers or the gameplay solely in the hands of programming, make sure they can expose the mechanics and values to you so you can play around with them. This is not to cut programming out of the loop, it's done so you don't have to bother them every single time you want to adjust the sword swing speed by a a few milliseconds.
     
    - If you can't program or don't know enough about a toolset engine to do it yourself, grab a programmer who's excited about your idea. Then bring them cookies to help you out, if need be.
     
    Game pitches...
     
    Also, got a lot of questions concerning game pitches recently, and here's my first pass of thoughts on doing a game proposal pitch:
     
    - Again, if you can't make your game idea sound cool to your friends in a single sentence, consider re-evaluating your idea.
     
    - Make sure you specify all the target platforms in your pitch document.
     
    - Any publisher is going to want to know how long the project is going to take, who's on this project, who your team is - so if you don't have a team, budget, or time table, it's time to assemble all of these.
     
    - Whenever possible, having a prototype your target publisher or developer can play - or you can demo - is worth far more than just a written pitch.
     
    - Having an idea for a game is worth far less than the strength to implement it. No game company is at a loss for game ideas, they're usually more interested in people who can make it happen.
     
    - If this is your first game, don't put in every single cool feature you can think of (for example, I'd shy away from an adventure game with RTS elements and a full heroic RPG dungeon crawl mode). My suggestion is break down each of the systems of your game and do a smaller game based solely around that, polish the hell out of that game mechanic, then do a second game that proves the next mechanic out (possibly adding what you learned about the first system to that), and so on. A lot of successful games on the market have a number of systems that have been iterated on heavily until they're polished.
     
    - Concept art is worth more than a text description. When in doubt, show visuals or screenshots of gameplay rather than describing it with words.
     
    - Reviewers at publishers get a lot of pitches, so keep your pitch brief, no more than 3-5 pages (5 pages is pushing it).
     
    - Learn to use Excel, you'll need it for budgets and spreadsheets showing your man month cost. And you'll need to provide that at some point, even if it's just for yourself.
     
    - Not sure who to contact? Sign up on LinkedIn.com, look for Business Development guys, drop them a line (don't send the idea), and ask for advice. If they don't get back to you, you wouldn't want to work for that company anyway.
     
    - Start with companies you like.
     
    - If that doesn't work, look for companies that are in the same game space (social games, for example) but don't look for ones that do games close to the one you're thinking of - look for ones that have a hole in their game portfolio that your product would be perfect for.
     
    - Don't send unsolicited pitches to Obsidian. It's not because we hate you, it's because we can't review them legally.
     
    - Make sure your pitches are submitted electronically - don't do a physical pitch, the pitch usually needs to be emailed around to a bunch of folks.
     
    - Watch out for fonts in your docs and make sure the fonts you're using are common ones that the recipient is likely to have on their system (or else submit the pitch as a pdf). Nothing looks worse than a pitch that's missing the unique font that you used to assemble it.
     
    - Lastly, make sure you're legally protected before you send in a pitch - if you're not sure how to do this, contact your IGDA chapter or look up the lawyers or other legal speakers for the current year's GDC and drop them a line. There's usually a panel every year at GDC focusing on law in the game industry, and the speakers are putting themselves out there so you can ask them questions, and potentially hire them down the road.
     
    Good luck!
     
    Chris
  21. Chris Avellone
    Got some general questions from Joakim, and wanted to post them in 2 parts in case folks were interested. If not, that's fine, too. Joakim had some Knights of the Old Republic 2 questions as well, and I'll post those in a few days.
     
    1. If you couldn't be a game designer what would you be, and why? (in the game industry of course)
     
    I would either be cartooning (I still do one-shots for the comic "Knights of the Dinner Table" from Kenzer & Co), writing game supplements (Champions/Dark Champions) or scripting comic books. My current job allows me to do a little of all of this (my last stint was doing some of the Clone Wars Adventures with Jeremy Barlow, and that was great fun, especially having a chance to write Aurra Sing). Being able to do a little bit of each is a nice break from doing computer game design full time. Still, if I could get a job as a full-time gamemaster, I'd take it - that's what got me into the industry in the first place.
     
    2. Do you have some/a favorites people that are in the industry?
     
    I have a lot of respect and admiration for Richard Dansky, I think he's done a lot to help aspiring game writers and has also been a strong advocate for writers and assisting with promoting game writing in the IGDA. He actually makes me feel guilty, since he makes me wonder if I could do more than answer random inquiries from students and designers. So now that I think about it, Dansky makes me feel like crap, so I guess I actually hate him.
     
    I have a lot of respect for Tim Cain for the role-playing mechanics in Fallout (he's also a great guy, even with his obsession with pomegranates), Tim Donley and Kevin Saunders for teaching me aspects of management that a book can't teach you, David Gaider (who I hadn't met until recently) for the amount of investment he has in his writing and the way he's able to quickly and efficiently critique what's wrong with a character or story (he nails it pretty well in a lot less words than I do), Josh Sawyer and Dave Maldonado for the passion with which they express their design ideas, and Dan Spitzley and Eric Campanella for their work on Torment, which showed me what a strong work ethic combined with the "labor of love" perk can accomplish - Eric was one of the first artists I've encountered who not only read design documentation, but expounded on it in his concepts and character modeling. There are plenty of others whose work I respect, but this list is getting pretty long. Maybe I'll expound on it in another interview.
     
    3. You have told many times that you're sick of certain stuff in certain genres... What do you think is missing from most of the games that makes them boring in the long run - or in the industry in general?
     
    Lack of ambition in game premises. I don't think enough developers ask "what's the one thing that's going to set this game apart?" and then stick to it. I've seen pitches and proposals that don't even bother ask this question and are content to embrace being a lesser clone of a more popular game in the same genre, which makes me sad. At least choose *some* new mechanic you're bringing to the table to try and push the genre forward.
     
    4. a) Who has been your favorite character (of all the characters you have worked on) to develop and why?
     
    Morte and Fall-From-Grace in Torment, Myron in Fallout 2 (he was the first full companion I'd ever done) followed by Cassidy (the second), then Kreia in Knights of the Old Republic II.
     
    Just about every character I've worked on, though, has "moments" that I've really enjoyed scripting for them (writing HK-47's definition of love, or the Handemaiden's Echani philosophy of combat, how Atton obsesses over Pazaak to prevent his thoughts from being picked up by Jedi, or Visas Marr's feelings for your character).
     
    b) Also, what makes a good character?
     
    Consistent, believable motivation and a believable personal agenda. A tie to the game's theme either to reinforce it or as a sounding board for exploring a different perspective on the game theme. An emotional tie to the player (either hate, envy, love, friendship, respect) and reacts appropriately to the player character's actions. Proper casting of a voice actor or, if text only, insuring that the right writer is assigned to developing that character because they understand it (some narrative designers can't write sociopaths, do reverse gender romances, or commit to doing a goodie-two-shoes character). For a computer game, I feel it's also essential that the player understand the purpose of the character and that the character fulfills that role in the game mechanics and the world (for example, companions in F2 needed to be an asset in and out of combat, which I learned in Fallout 2 - Cassidy was much more valuable and appreciated than Myron).
     
    5. Who was your first character to design, and what has changed in your design process since then? (how you design characters now)
     
    The first characters I designed was Myron for Fallout 2. I was given the "child genius," but I did what I could to make sure he wasn't the Wesley Crusher archetype, which I thought was pretty played out in most media forms. In the end, however, Myron had his problems - he talked too much, could get really annoying in parts (especially if you were female) and was useless in combat. I do think he succeeded in being a highly-reactive character to events in the game and things your player did, and it was pretty awesome for high Intelligence and high Science guys to argue with him about his own creations. I really like it when he gets frustrated when you keep asking him insightful chemistry and pharmaceutical questions about Jet.
     
    6. You have said that you weren't very "happy" when you were announced to on K2 because how the force works and so on. Any other franchises you will try to avoid (if possible), and what franchises would you like to work on?
     
    That was my reaction at the beginning of the project, and it vanished after a few weeks. Star Wars and Dungeons and Dragons were acid tests that proved to me that any franchise has room for you to express yourself within the franchise and have a great time doing so. I am fond of both now that I've been able to work with them and contribute to them.
     
    Franchises I'd love to work on: The Dresden Files, System Shock, Wasteland, Syndicate, a Bully RTS, the Wire (don't get me started), Aliens (I love the human psychology component), and anything involving superheroes (if they did a Dark Champions game, I'd be on that in a second). There's probably some I'm forgetting, but those are the ones that jump to mind.
     
    7. What do you find the most difficult thing with your job?
     
    Juggling some of the co-owner stuff along with design. I like to work - so being in a position where you're not in the trenches as much as I used to be during Torment and F2, I don't always feel good about going through the day without having something to point to that I physically did in game production, even if to say "hey, I did THAT."
     
    8. What are the disadvantages/advantages to move from a very sci-fi game such as Neverwinter Nights to something more realistic-based (Alpha Protocol)?
     
    It depends - on one hand, it was refreshing to work with characters who use real-world speech patterns and phrases and actually reference things a player can empathize with, but you also have to keep the game within real world parameters which aren't a concern with a fantasy title.
     
    For Alpha Protocol, we had to come up with the "bookends" of the powers, abilities, and gadgets of the character and the world, while in Neverwinter Nights, Dungeons and Dragons had set up that framework for us. Also, we'd done a number of titles with that ruleset already, so with Neverwinter Nights, we had many years of experience in area and dialogue creation to draw upon - with Alpha Protocol we were re-inventing some of these aspects, especially the one-route conversation system, the stance choices, dossier research, positive/negative reputation mechanics, and so on. I think they turned out well, and definitely complement the game's genre (just to be clear, the dialogue stance system isn't my creation, that was Mitsoda and Spitzley).
     
    9. Is there some you would thank extra that made you come into the industry?
     
    Scott Bennie was a colleague I
  22. Chris Avellone
    It's been a while - aside from Obsidian work, I've been doing quite a bit of talks here at Dragon*Con and across the sea in Spain at Gamelab on a variety of subjects, from advice to getting into the industry, to Kickstarter, and even our approach to designing characters for video games. Even better, I'll be doing the same coming up here in October at Austin GDC's narrative track concerning Obsidian's narrative approach - and going through our design process at the end of the month overseas concerning design as well (more on this as it happens).
     
    Still, it's nice to be home and back into the thick of things here. Speaking of which, for those of you who've come to visit the page, you may have noticed our countdown. Our countdown to what? It should become clear in 4 days or so -- stay vigilant.
  23. Chris Avellone
    Here are my ruthlessly subjective winners for the most honest act in Fallout: New Vegas that made your heart hurt.
     
    Of the 200+ entries, here are the winners followed by a lot of honorable mentions.
     
    Next contest for Old World Blues should be up on Twitter soon. It'll probably involve experiments. Or captions. Or something blue-sy.
     
    Warning: Spoilers below.
     
    Winner ==============
     
    KnotworkOrange
    Created my account just to answer. Though it has been said before it must be the Hanlon affair, truly morally ambiguous.
     
    Realised I should probably expand. I chose to turn Hanlon in, and his speech touched me and I regretted my actions.
     
    After that I felt the consequences of my actions greater than ever before. A good man died because of me, and I knew it.
     
    Runner-Up (Still gets a shirt) =============
     
    David_Vanek When is saw hostile animals i didn't kill them i just ran away because im afraid they'll get extinct.
     
    Honorable Mentions ============
     
    razorangelwings The hardest honest act was convincing Lily to take her medication, and forget her grandchildren
     
    VLVX telling Davison his master is just an inanimate Brahmin skull.
     
    (Humor Bonus) Digitalvitriol It was tough to decide whether or not to carpet-bomb Camp Golf with mini-nukes, but drinking made it easier.
     
    (Because I agree) Stevens4932 Healing Snuffles Leg was pretty cute so that made my heart hurt.
     
    tittlekid Found Mr Cuddles for that Boomer kid... then took it home instead to decorate my presidential suite. Sorry, kid.
     
    sirboulevard Activating Archimedes instead of redirecting power to help everyone. I chose a death ray over helping us all.
     
    (Agree on coolness) Ben_Parsell When Benny gave me advice on how to carry on his legacy even though he knew he was getting a machete in the neck.
     
    Delixe I stole everything in Doc Mitchells' house. I did it right in front of him so I was honest about it.
     
    darnellmeghan Ripping Melody's teddy bear in half just to gain influence in the Legion.
     
    nuclearmission Shooting down the men in Nipton off their crucifixes after the Legion came through. Almost cried, but it was just, right?
     
     
     
  24. Chris Avellone
    Next question about game writing is from Jonas...
     
    WARNING: This blog is a spoiler, so if you haven't played Knights of the Old Republic II you may want to stop reading here.
     
    Hey Chris,
     
    I'll try to keep this short out of respect for your time. I just found myself with a deep desire to know how much background material you tend to write for an average companion NPC in the party-based games you've worked on. I'm trying to get a feel for how much background material I should aim to write in my own work. I realise the proper answer is "as much as your game calls for", but I'd just like some sort of milestone to compare my own characters to. If you need me to narrow it down, I'm one of those Torment fanboys; how many pages of background material (give or take) did you write for the companions in that game? If you've found that there's a significant difference between the amount of work you do on characters in certain games or settings, I would be very interested to hear that as well.
     
    Answer: Attached is the amount of background material we wrote for Kreia on Knights of the Old Republic II, if this gives you an indicator.
     
    My advice: A lot of what you imagine a character to be is simply not going to make it when the rubber hits the road and you start scripting that character in the game engine and in conversations - it's only then they truly find their voice and their theme, so I try not to get bogged down with too much backstory. Anything more than a page or two I find is probably enough to get started and go from there. For example, some of the events in the first draft of what we intended for Kreia ended up not surviving once we were designing full force and discovered there were other more interesting things we could do with the character rather than what we initially thought. But hey, that's part of the design process.
     
    Note that a lot of the "backstory" for Kreia also involves concrete details for what a voice actor needs to know - since it's becoming a staple in the industry that every character is voice-acted, a lot of that stuff we need to write out for the studio (and for our own reference).
     
    Also, one thing I've found often can bog people down is they want to keep exploring the abstracts about a character, when I think sometimes the best thing to do is charge in, start swinging, and find a voice and attitude for the character. There's even times when I write a sample short story for how the player specifically encounters that character and see if that helps me to get rolling on themes and the spine of the character (I'm doing this on our current project, and it's a new approach).
     
    One other thing (I know, I know, can I ever shut up?) that is helpful is also (if the CNPC is going to interject into conversations, like K1, K2, NWN2, etc.) and other designers may be writing dialogue, include a list of key words and situations that the CNPC is likely to "pipe up" and say something because it's true to their character - for example, with Kreia, mention of Sion and Nihilus, mention of Jedi or Sith philosophy, etc. If I can find our interjection charts, I'll post that in a future blog.
     
     

     
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