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Chris Avellone

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Blog Entries posted by Chris Avellone

  1. Chris Avellone
    Some fan-based questions I answered recently, posting them to share - it's about Ravel Puzzlewell from Planescape: Torment and some of the thoughts behind her creation.
     
    What was the origin of Ravel?
     
    We had a number of physically powerful enemies in Torment, and I thought a night hag would be a good adversary, especially if she was a cryptic, deadly puzzle maker. As the game went on, the idea that Ravel was a branching creature whose life resembled a great tree (or bramble) stretching across the planes, was in love with the player and she genuinely tried to help people at times (only to have it turn against her and the recipient) seemed to be some good hooks to make an adversary.
     
    Writing Ravel was perhaps one of the experiences I
  2. Chris Avellone

    Questions about Work

    By Chris Avellone,

    I occasionally get interview questions from students aspiring to be designers. I try to warn them, but...
     
    ...anyway, if you're curious, here's some answers. And some questions to go along with them.
     
    1. What is a typical day for you as far as working on a project or projects?
     
    I get into work at 9:30, and try to work for an hour without checking email. This work can be writing design documentation, designing a system, doing mock-ups for an editor or toolset, or formatting an Excel sheet. After that, I check email, respond to pending requests, then hit lunch. After lunch, I resume work for and attend design meetings (interface, level reviews) for the rest of the afternoon. I usually hit dinner around 6, come back to work at 7, and work until 9 or 10 on raw design material while the office is quiet and most folks have gone home. Then I go to the gym and then go home and either play videogames or watch DVDs (usually in the genre related to the games I'm designing) until I fall asleep, and repeat the cycle the next day. It
  4. 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.
  5. 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
  6. 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.
  9. Chris Avellone
    Some Old World Questions from Rocky Justice (thanks, Rocky):
     
    1. What is your official title? I know in the credits it says you're a writer, but I was wondering if there was a more specific title for your job. Also, how'd you get in to your line of work? Did you study writing in college, or was it something you discovered later on?
     
    I'm Creative Director here at the studio - I'm involved with the design department, giving advice on best practices, design methodology, and helping to test and select new design candidates. I also set up designer expectations for each tier of designer as well ("here's what's expected of a Systems Sub-Lead, a Lead Designer," etc.), and also interface with the other owners and designers across the company. In addition, I attend design meetings, and actively participate in the game design process, which means I look at all the design documents, attend level reviews, reviewing scripts (usually narrative ones unless I'm scripting my characters), and I'm playing the builds and supplying feedback to the designers.
     
    Depending on the project, I also contribute content, flesh out characters, and do things like create region designs and plot arcs for the DLCs. While the managerial aspects of the job are satisfying in their own way, the ability to point to something concrete at the end of the day and say, "I designed/wrote/scripted that," is gratifying and caters to my old gamemaster instincts.
     
    I got into this line of work through my hobby - gamemastering pen-and-paper Superworld, Champions, D+D (N1 Against the Cult of the Reptile God, Temple of Elemental Evil), and Warhammer Fantasy Role-Play led to me trying to get my adventures and articles published, and from there, I got a few enemies and adventure books published for Hero Games' Champions (Underworld Enemies, Dystopia, Asylum, Widows and Orphans). Once that happened, I asked my editor, Steve Peterson, if he could recommend anyplace with a steady paycheck ($50 every few months wasn't paying the bills), so he gave me a good recommendation to Interplay Entertainment in California. I was living in Virginia at the time, so I flew out for an interview, they liked me, and I started as a junior designer. Over the course of 10-15 years, I got promoted upwards until I hit Creative Director, but even in my role as Creative Director, I'll sometimes jump into specific positions on a project (Senior Designer, Level Designer, Creative Lead, or even Lead Designer).
     
    I didn't formally go to school for writing (I studied Architecture and English), but I wrote a lot and gamemastered a lot in my spare time, and that ended up being the best teacher. College helped by exposing me to certain literary works I don't think I would have found on my own (or at least quickly), and the fact that William and Mary had some brutally efficient grammar professors to hammer the rules into your skull was a plus.
     
    2. Do you just write the dialogue for the characters, or do you also get to help design the personalities and names of the NPCs? What aspects of the DLCs did you work on (like, the plot)? I know you're known for the DLCs, but are there any parts of the base game you did? Also, I saw in the credits that J.E. Sawyer did Honest Hearts, and you did the others. Why didn't you do Honest Hearts?
     
    I do both, and I enjoy both. I love specific character narrative arcs, I like creating "emotional narrative moments" (the poor man's version of a visual vista using narrative and plot moments), and oddly enough, I like making backstories for inventory items and magic items (which I got to do a lot of back at Black Isle) - it's like telling micro-stories that help round out an item's purpose and place in the world.
     
    In terms of workflow, sometimes I'll suggest a character or general set of characters to another designer ("hey, Travis, can you make a bunch of appliances like in Transmetropolitan to round out the Sink?" - then Travis Stout ran with them and made them his own), other times I'll design the full character and write the dialogue (Dead Money, the Think Tank). In Honest Hearts, Josh did both as well - Travis wrote Follows-Chalk and Waking Cloud, among others, and John Gonzalez (Creative Lead for New Vegas who worked on DLC2) took the Happy Trails Caravan and the well-received Survivalist journals, while Josh tackled Graham and Daniel (there were other characters as well).
     
    As for the division of labor, if I recall, Josh wanted to do Honest Hearts, so he did (the theme/plot was all him), and that worked out well since we were leapfrogging DLC production at the time, so that allowed me to focus on DLC3 and then 4 while DLC2 was entering the homestretch.
     
    3. I don't know if the creators of video games spend time thinking up their own ideas of what goes on in the game world when the player character isn't there, but I've been thinking a lot about Big MT and what is was like before the Courier, or even the other visitors' arrivals.
     
    We do both, but usually when you have a project or a pitch, they focus your ideas. It helps if there's already a direction to take the ideas in, but like I suspect most designers do, I have hundreds of pages of ideas, quips, cool lines, character names lying around on my computer that I sift through whenever I get a breather to see if I can make use of them.
     
    >> Have you ever thought about what Doctor 8's voice sounded like, or what his true personality is? I can infer from the Courier's friendly responses and the fact he carries a Meeting People magazine he is (or was) very social, but the other doctors say that they "like him better this way".
     
    Dr.8's current state in the game is the way I envisioned him in the first place - 8 being abstract was largely the point (and not that anyone ever wants to hear developer reasons for things, but it also cut down on resources and localization, since his "voice" didn't need to be localized or translated, so it was a low-impact way to get another colorful character in the mix without taxing our limits), and I think it makes him more sympathetic to be voiceless - much like ED-E and Dogmeat and other silent companions who stick with you - you can impose your own voice and personality on the little bits they give you (Seth McCaughey, one of our animators on the DLC, did all the ED-E's animations for DLC4, just like he did with the Think Tank chassis, and that did more to create emotion than anything I can write - especially the animations when Borous in DLC3 breaks down at his own memories). I feel the critiques of the other Think Tank regarding 8 are probably unfair in their negativity, and if they disliked his previous personality and voice, it may be because he was less annoying and more practical than anyone else. It's a mystery.
     
    How does Mobius remember that he wiped his own memory? Are the memories erased at the discretion of the wiper, or does the act of erasing not get erased? Also about Mobius, how does a Think Tank ingest chems like Mentats, which you have to chew?
     
    Mobius is able to reflect back on a number of his own bizarre actions that on a surface level, he can't recall easily - for example, he claims he was tripping on Psycho when he sent the threats to the Think Tank, but when questioned and queried, the real underlying logic of what he did reveals itself to him. Also, like the Think Tank, Mobius isn't a reliable narrator and what he claims to have forgotten isn't always correct when he puts his mind to it and walks back down memory lane - it's just a matter of focusing him (the more you speak to him in DLC3, the more focused he gets). Plus, in terms of reliability, he's had -many- experiments that haven't had the results he thinks they've had.
     
    As for drug ingestion, I always assumed he just plopped the Mentats directly into his biogel through a side compartment and let them dissolve like Alka-Seltzer.
     
    What did/does Dr. Dala actually do research wise? And why does the Think Tank think "formography" is so repulsive? They all seem very sexually frustrated as it is, so why are they so against this indulgence?
     
    I always saw Dala as a bizarre botanist, toxicologist, and physician/surgeon, but I left it vague because after a few hundred years, they gravitated all over the place, as evidenced by Dala's insane number of doctorates. As for "formography," the Think Tank believes that being a big brain in a tank is the highest form of evolution, since... well, it's what they are. How could that be anything more than the highest ladder of the evolutionary scale? The fact that ANYONE would be obsessed or achieve any sort of stimulation from regarding a PRIMITIVE human form is just repugnant. Bleh.
     
    And imo, the only sexually frustrated members of the Think Tank is really Dala, 8 attends to himself. Somehow. Sonically.
     
    Dr. 0 seems very incompetent with machines... but yet he managed to build Muggy, who while is a psychological disaster, is able to perform the task he was created to do. Is his lack of skill perhaps due to the memory erasing? I know that might sound like a pointless question, but he does seem very confident in the fact that he is a "zero" and is basically useless, and I was curious if this was a mere side effect of more recent events.
     
    0 had his moments - if his greatest creation is a tiny janitor bot that can only collect dishes, that feels in-character to me. Especially considering how far he missed his original target by (figure out what makes Securitrons tick and make them better - whoops!).
     
    And lastly, what is Dr. Klein's true purpose? All he seems to do now is be the main voice, and overall boss for the Think Tank. What was his line of study? And what did he do that made him take place as "leader"?
     
    Klein served the role of the "stuffy Dean of a college." He's the head lab manager, who is the voice of authority and the threat - (he's one of the more sane members and ones able to act with some level of authority). If he wasn't there, I don't think the Think Tank would have much of a sense of menace, and that's Klein's story role - to be a big, stuffy, and potentially dangerous jerk. That was my sole goal with him - considering how bat**** crazy the others are, I needed someone with a slightly level head.
  10. 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?
     
     
     
  11. Chris Avellone
    We had a few winners with the Fallout T-shirt contest - the contest: do a one sentence Fallout movie pitch (in honor of the Fallout movie script being leaked).
     
    Lot of submissions (and too much to do in a Twitter post). I finally decided to break it into 3 categories: Best Trailer Speak, One That Made Me Laugh, and the Most Honest. So without further ado...
     
    (And forgive the formatting, this'll be the last time I experiment with size, color, or fonts).
     
    First the "ONE THAT MADE ME LAUGH," the most important of all categories.
     
    (@RowanKaiser) PipBoy goes on hero's journey, defeats raiders and mutants, becomes PipMan.
     
    Honorable mentions:
     
    (EthanTheMutant) A woman falls in love with a baby deathclaw and must run away from her tribe to be with him, it eats her in the end.
     
    (Krinkle8) main character plans to get water chip, but dies 20 mins in so a series of companions do a chinese telephone, **** it all up
     
    (Stiif) Tribal searches a legendary place, to solve a problem the tribe has, the place turns out to be Disneyworld; everybody dies.
     
    (owlwot) Mutated owls invade the wasteland causing unknown carnage.
     
    Then was "BEST TRAILER SPEAK," that I could see being used as a tagline for the movie.
     
    (@Darathy) To cleanse the water, first he must cleanse the wasteland.
     
    Honorable mentions:
     
    (Darathy again) In a post-nuclear nightmare, the only thing that matters is the fallout... of one man's choices.
     
    (WellDidYouEvah) James Trigg is a lonely man, one day he meets the sole surviving woman. However, she
     
    (MaulYoda) Banished from his home, a man was forced to confront the wasteland that he feared, but instead, it came to fear him (so close)
     
    (officefanguy) The world may have ended, but it was only the beginning.
     
    (FourIronDires) If there was only one person that said, 'War never changes'... They'd be right.
     
    (Micleee) "A Canadian rebel fights for freedom from the oppressive United States after the annexing of Canada."
     
    And last was the "MOST HONEST" category:
     
    Man spends 3/4s of the film finding powerful and unusual weapons, but keeps using the hunting rifle he's had since the start. (John_Hann)
     
    Honorable mentions:
     
    Wanderer stops wandering after third village, spends next 17 hours (director's cut) shuffling guns between unpowered fridges. (PerspiringFan, who almost won based on the name alone).
     
    Guy wanders wasteland, looks for water chip. (Nutinushanka)
     
    Next contest up in a bit, @ChrisAvellone on Twitter if you want to participate.
  12. 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
  13. Chris Avellone

    Writing --> Studio

    By Chris Avellone,

    Minor addition to the writing question list.
     
    Also how is it like to write without having any idea how the character will sound?
     
    When writing, most designers envision how the character sounds as they're writing - when the time comes for auditions, they provide a series of sample lines, a picture of the character in-game, breakdowns of the age, brief history, etc., and then the casting agency will run through auditions looking for someone who can deliver the lines as envisioned. I was happy with the auditions Blindlight delivered for New Vegas, and I thought the companion actors they brought into the studio for the characters I wrote, while not big names, did a great job - a lot of it is in how Blindlight handles the auditions, and so much of a character is in the delivery, that if you can get the casting right, it just makes the process go more smoothly.
     
    If you're fortunate and the schedule works in your favor, you can also request a specific voice actor. This depends on timing and cost, and as a general rule, the more famous an actor is, the less flexible the time in the studio and less availability for pick-ups (the equivalent of Voice-Over bugfixing if a level quest changes, a character's line is missing, or we need to add a line to fix a missing sequence).
     
    Other times, you're told who the voice actor is first, which is rare for me. When that happens, you watch everything you can featuring that actor and try to write to the actor's strengths. As an example, for Fallout: New Vegas, John Gonzalez studied John Doman's acting when writing and Eric Fenstermaker did research on Felicia Day to get the tone of the characters that played to the strength of the actors.
     
  14. Chris Avellone

    Writing, Cont.

    By Chris Avellone,

    2 More:
     
    How do you choose who writes each (major) character in a game, also who's allowed to do any writing?
     
    Depends, sometimes it's just necessity (you have the most bandwidth, so you do X person, or you're already doing the main city where the character resides, so it's best if you write Y antagonist), other times we're able to purposely assign folks with skill sets to characters (which Josh did on Fallout New Vegas). For Fallout New Vegas, Josh broke down the companion personalities and assigned them to designer he felt showed strengths in those character backgrounds - for example, understanding of certain psychological conditions, or (in my case) because I'd written the father of one of the companions, or because the person has a fluid storytelling style (Travis Stout, which is only one of his strengths), which makes him great for characters with campfire stories to share.
     
    What if a programmer/artists/whatever suddenly really wanted to do some writing, would he/she have a chance, even if minor?
     
    If there was room in the schedule, sure. We'd probably ask they do a minor character first to get a feel for their writing, since it's more than just writing - it's the scripting and editor knowledge as well. In my experience, however, it is very difficult to break out of a role, and even designers that are jack of all trades usually take on one specific role per project because that's all there's time for. That's true across all departments. I have found developers that knock their own writing are actually much better than they realize, however, and all they need is to be told that to make them more confident about stepping up.
     
  15. Chris Avellone
    From a multi-part question on Twitter.
     
    How do Project Directors and/or Lead Designers get selected?
     
    To clarify the hierarchy at our studio, a Project Director isn't necessarily a designer, and at Obsidian, a Project Director is above all other disciplines except Feargus, who is all-powerful, even if he might debate that.
     
    At the moment, we have four project directors - one from design (Josh Sawyer), another from design (me), one from programming (Rich Taylor), and one from art (Zane Lyon). In the past, Project Directors have been from production (Feargus on DS3, Chris Parker on AP), and sometimes the Project Director on a project is instead the Lead Producer (Kevin Saunders on Mask of the Betrayer).
     
    Project Directors are selected based on their ability to hold or create the vision for a project, motivate and inspire the team, and their ability to focus the game to the vision and the game pillars. Any individual on a team who has demonstrated these qualities at a senior level as they've risen through the ranks in their discipline (usually to lead status) is considered a candidate for Project Director. Rich Taylor, for example, consistently demonstrated strengths as a lead programmer, and also demonstrated good judgment and decisions on how to go about making the game he was leading (Mask of the Betrayer, Storm of Zehir, and now Dungeon Siege).
     
    Lead Designers are selected for much the same reason - they're usually senior designers who've shown the same strengths in upholding the game vision, ability to motivate and lead a team, and can manage effectively. Like other lead roles, Lead Designers are not necessarily chosen for their design ability, and they may not be the best designer in their discipline, they simply need to understand the design pipelines, understand the toolset and its breakdowns, and how to manage a team - this is because leads spend more time managing the designers in their discipline than doing actual core design work. If they excel in design, as Josh does, then that's a bonus.
     
    More answers on this topic to follow.
  17. Chris Avellone
    Some questions from forum goers/emailers: TheJokester
     
    Do you have any recommendations on what schools would be good to go to for game development?
     
    The Guildhall's pretty solid (a few of our designers on Fallout New Vegas were hired from there). They usually have strong portfolios based on classwork they've done, which they can usually use for quick submission in designer tests, too.
     
    If you end up going to any gaming school, just make sure they put you in group projects, as no game developer works alone, so the team experience is important.
     
    I've mentioned this before, you don't need school - more often than not, it's what you do outside of school and the results you get on your own that really end up giving you the experience you need for the gaming industry. For example, working on mods, making your own Neverwinter modules, doing Oblivion/Fallout mods, writing for magazines, compilations, web sites, mod communities, characters for mods, comics, game strategy guides, etc. The important thing is that you do something and have results of your efforts to show others.
     
    Finally, having something folks can play rather than just documentation of what they can play is preferred. If your submission shows you've built it and played it and others can play it, that makes your submission stand out.
     
    And same question, for art schools.
     
    I polled some of the designers here at work, and the following schools they endorsed were:
     
    Ringling College of Art and Design in Florida (one of the artists on AP and our unannounced titles went there, and I believe the founder of Massive Black, whose company did F3/FNV concept art went there). One of the school's strength is in 3D animation and illustration.
     
    If you're in the SF area, our interface artist on FNV recommended the Academy of Art in SF, and he strongly recommends the computer art program there, and he has friends that teach in Art Institute of California in SF and recommends the program there as well.
     
    One of our environment artists on FNV recommended the Rio Hondo Community College and she went to Cal State Fullerton, and she thinks it has a pretty strong Animation/Art program.
     
    One of our animators on FNV, however, says **** it and just make sure you develop a good portfolio, regardless of the school.
     
    Some other general stuff:
     
    I have an idea for an FNV game system or perk, and it's X.
     
    If you have an idea, my suggestion is to post it on the forum for discussion and send us a link - while our opinion is great, having the opinion of 20+ folks to it may help refine the suggestion and get more feedback on it.
     
    This applies to song suggestions as well, but those are okay to send at any time.
     
    How do you set up technical constraints for dialogues for your titles?
     
    We're actually giving a talk at GDC Austin (it's on the Narrative/Writing track - the actual name of the conference is GDC Online now, I believe) on the dialogue standards we set up individually for our titles - the standards depend on the genre (D+D is different than Star Wars which is different than Alpha Protocol which is different than New Vegas which is... well, you get the idea). The standards encompass the amount of text on screen, formatting for skill placement, how to set up item description text, quest logs, quest log entries, clarifying objective text, amount of voice-acted dialogue players should see on screen, how the game mechanics of the dialogue and the dialogue systems work and how they should be paced (alignment shifts, reputation shifts, Light Side/Dark Side gains and how to communicate that to the player), and more. With any luck, John Gonzalez (our story lead and creative lead for New Vegas) and George Ziets (Mask of the Betrayer story crafter and designer) will be joining me up there. Hopefully, we can talk about our unannounced title then and the work George has been doing on it, even if he's modest about it as always.
     
    For any aspiring narrative designers, Austin GDC's a great place to meet narrative designers in the industry, too, highly recommended.
     
    Obsidian should be at Comic-Con, too, although more on that in a bit.
     
    Your Messenger Inbox has been full for years and I want to send you a message.
     
    Send any emails to CAvellone@obsidian.net - that account never fills up, much to our IT department's chagrin. I've tried clearing out the Forum Messenger Inbox in the past, but history has shown I can't keep up with the flow, especially across multiple email accounts and still stay sane. So when possible if you have something you want to ask or is really urgent, drop me a line at that email address and I'll do what I can to help you.
     
    The only thing I'd ask is understand that we're working hard on Fallout New Vegas, so it might be a while before I can respond to you if your email has a lot of questions. Regardless, I will try.
     
    Chris
  18. 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.
     
  19. Chris Avellone
    Translation from PCAction.de, although I'd argue Google does a more amusing job than my original text.
     
    Please introduce yourself (full name, age, company, position):
     
    I'm Christopher Frederic Avellone (you want the full name, you got it, even the embarassing middle name that my Mom picked from some French emperor which I've never understood). My job? Creative Director at Obsidian Entertainment, which means I review and do a lot of design. I'm almost at the 4 decade mark (minus 2 years), I still feel young at heart.
     
    Please share some interesting moments of your career (e.g. games your worked on or companies you worked for etc.):
     
    I helped train police officers and FBI agents in Quantico, VA in a fake town called "Hogan's Alley" where they built an entire three block radius as a training ground for criminal scenarios - each day we'd go in, be given a cast sheet and a schedule (you're a kidnapper today, and you need to be in the pool hall by 3pm). I've written for pen-and-paper role playing games, and I've worked on a lot of computer role-playing games, especially Dungeons and Dragons (Torment, Icewind Dale, Neverwinter Nights 2), Fallout (Fallout 2, Van Buren, Fallout New Vegas), and I was also Lead Designer on Torment, Van Buren (stage 1, Josh Sawyer took over for Stage 2 after I left to help found Obsidian), Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic II, and most recently, Alpha Protocol. My high school guidance counselor neglected to mention game development as a career option, and I am somewhat irritated by this because as a career, it's GREAT.
     
    Some funny/curious/entertaining facts about your life (e.g. you would kill for an ice cream/you
  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
    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
     
  22. Chris Avellone
    Some minor tips for interviewing... or deciding where to interview.
     
    First off, know what you want to do. If you're not sure if you want to be a programmer or a designer, choose one and focus on that until you (1) realize you hate it, or (2) discover you love it. More than that, if you decide to be a certain discipline - art, programming, design, or production, research the field enough to know what sub-set of that discipline you want to pursue. For example, for design, knowing whether you want to pursue technical design, systems design, narrative design, etc. is important when seeking out a job in the industry.
     
    Second, don't use a recruiter. Please. Spend an extra hour and check the game companies in your area, then apply to them on your own - if given the choice between candidates, we're less likely to go with the candidate sent via a recruiter because they have the recruiter's fee on top of the normal salary that we have budgeted for the position. If you absolutely must use a recruiter, try to do enough research to choose one wisely - there's certain recruiters that know the business, others that don't know the difference between production and design candidates, nor do they know the first thing about how to place a programming candidate. Popular recruiting agencies don't mean much if the recruiter you're assigned to is a junior or is new to the industry.
     
    Third, good samples and a good cover letter can overcome work experience. You may not get hired as a senior, but if you have a good set of samples and a passionate, well-written cover letter, that's sometimes enough to land a junior position.
     
    Fourth, even if studios don't list a position, don't be afraid to apply anyway. They may be 2 weeks from posting their ad for a position when your resume suddenly pops into their inbox.
     
    Chris
     
  23. 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.
  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.
     
     

     
  25. 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!
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