kirottu

I reported everyone who participated to Fionavar. Japanese culture is not your forum game. You all should be ashamed.

It's Master of Ceremonies Avellone, MC Avellone, MCA. It's from hip hop or rap or something. I think Sawyer started it.

Guys, I'm pretty sure someone saying the f-word and accusing someone else being a shill is just another day at codex. Sidenote: Could IHaveHugeNick be nick-i-am?

From the codex. Avellone posted lot of stuff during my sleepy-go-bye-bye time and this is just one of his posts. That wasn't it (although it would have helped). The issue was I felt loyalty and indebted to Feargus. To explain, for a long time, I thought Feargus had protected me from my early management failures back at Interplay (I definitely made some as a first lead on Torment) and watched out for me when I was under stress and working double-time on Fallout 2/Torment - and he told me as much, which I thought was a noble thing for a manager to do, so I resolved to support him as best I could because he clearly had my back. During the last year at Obsidian, however, one of the breaking points (and I think he didn't realize how much his Interplay protection had meant to me personally) was he then told me he had actually done the exact opposite of what he said he'd done and that he hadn't done anything at all, and in fact, encouraged some of the troubles I had experienced. Other Obsidian employees have experienced similar revelations of past actions that turned out not to be true by Feargus's own admission. Again I have hard time of believing what Avellone says, not because he makes Urquhart seem really evil, but because he makes him seem unbelievably stupid. Why would Urquhart try to sabotage his lead designer and deliberately make Avellone's work harder? And then admit about it? I can't even wrap my head around how would this conversation go. FU: Remember those times you were the lead on both Fallout 2 and Torment? MCA: I do. Thanks for having my back back then. FU: Oh, I wasn't having your back. I was backstabbing you. Fun times. MCA: What?! FU: I was backstabbing you. Now about this Pillars of Eternity stuff... Only way that could make even little bit of sense if Urquhart was trying apologize his past behavior. I'm nitpicking here, but previously Avellone said employees got paid back, but they had do pester Urquhart to do so. Now he's saying they weren't paid back at all? Was there more than one situation where some employees gave their wages to Obsidian? I know people don't always act in the most logical fashion, but why would the owner who doesn't want to do anything be the most frustrated when there isn't a plan what to do next? This kinda reminds me of some story I read or saw in TV or something. In it were this group of horrible people who lived or worked together. Everyone of them thought they were the good guy and all the others were horrible people. They always blamed others for their misery and didn't see how they themselves caused their own misery. Like, Jones doesn't want to anything, because Urquhart either micromanages or changes his mind on they fly making all the work Jones does null. And Urquhart does what he does, because if he isn't constantly on top of Jones Jones stops working. Maybe this is Avellone's plan. He makes Obsidian into a rotting corpse no publisher wants. So no owner gets away from the personal hell they have created for themselves. Sorry for going dark. You should never meet your heroes or read their posts at codex.

The question is, why would MCA make up a story like this, which can be so easily refuted by anyone in the company? He is either believing that nobody will testify against him and makes a bluff like this, or ...you know... it is the truth. And this is true for everything he said. He made soooo many harsh claims in the last few days, and he knows that he has to prove these if he is getting sued for defamation. Now he is either an idiot, or knows that this is the truth. For me it seems like Avellone's resentment towards the owners has been building up for years. In his resent posts he pulled up stuff from the production Fallout 2 and Kotor 2. Fallout 2 is almost 20 years old. I think during all this time his resentment has started color his interpretations. Until he sees pretty much everything owners do in worst possible way. With the payback thing I'm with Fluoride. Loaning money from your employees and not paying it back isn't just evil, it's unbelievably stupid. I can't believe Urquhart would do something like that.

From the codex: I can't see how someone could be this bad at business and still keep the company afloat. Especially since it's in an industry where most companies last only couple of games before going down. I would expect Obsidian having much bigger turn over of employees if this is true. Or is the gaming industry just so bad they thought it wouldn't be any better if they left Obsidian?

But judging other people is like half the fun of being in the internet. Other half being the pr0n.

Couldn't it simple have been if the stories had similar strokes it would be prudent to change the one which wasn't so far along? PoE 2 comes out next week and the Boyarsky/Cain one hasn't been even properly announced yet.

From the codex: If hypothetically, the game industry is an overall "no" next year, I could relax for 200+ years and not worry about a thing. Even my funeral is paid for. I don't have many expenses, and I don't need to work anymore - I work because I love writing for games, so I do. Shocking, I know, but... yes, it's the truth. Couple years ago Avellone was in debt, he left Obsidian and got nothing from them. Now after two years of doing freelance games writing, he has made enough to never have to work again. Never mind his writing skills. He should become an agent and negotiate contracts full time.

This is where I think Avellone is being glass half full. He couldn't see the finances so he assumes Urquhart was doing a bad job. But Obsidian has been running for 15 years. Urquhart couldn't have been that bad at his job. Damn. Nepotism is cancer. This sounds downright illegal.

The more I read the codex thread the more I get the feeling Avellone started to see interactions with other owners as glass half empty kind of situation. And not just was the glass half empty, but the glass was ugly too. And my god, is the water lukewarm? I bet it's tap water as well... I think you only gave me this half empty ugly glass of lukewarm tap water, because you're out to get me. Let's take this "deownering" thing for example. Avellone had created tensions between the owners and developers since Dungeon Siege 3. So at least for seven years. For me that could very well be reason enough to "deowner" him. Not to mention they still wanted Avellone to keep working on Tyranny as a developer. Avellone took that offer as some kind of slap in the face, but was it? Maybe the owners didn't think Avellone could keep working in management anymore, but still respected him as a developer. Why does the job offer need to be something bad? Edit: I apparently got ninja'ed by Avellone.

On the codex thread Avellone has repeatedly said he likes everyone else at Obsidian except the owners, but here he's gleeful over the prospect Paradox might sue Obsidian. There's no way Paradox could somehow hurt just the owners. It is the whole company that will suffer. If that's what you're after then be honest about it.

Haha, really? This sounds like a poor scientific experiment. What's the lesson here for managers? "If you disagree with one person who comes to you with a problem, you're not allowed to change your mind if more people say the same thing"? I'm about to do some wild speculation and jump in to conclusions, but that's half the fun of being in the internet. Other half being the pr0n of course. Firstly, Davis has had vastly different experience working at Obsidian than Avellone. He tells how management has really helped him when he had family problems. Secondly, this "scientific experiment" Avellone pulled might actually been hurtful. He didn't perceive it as "when we work together we can make Urquhart change his mind" but as "Urquhart plays favorites". This would create tension between the developers and management not to mention between the developers themselves. According to Avellones interpretation your idea was shot down, because of you not because it was a bad idea. And someone elses idea gets accepted, because of them not because it was a good idea. Why wouldn't this create tensions between developers? Thirdly, Avellone says Gonzales and Ziets leaving could have been avoided implying the management was to blame. Davis is a programmer, both of these guys are writers. Avellone was the creative director famous for his writing, meaning he probably worked much more closely with Gonzales and Ziets than Davis. Perhaps Avellone himself created a toxic working environment, without meaning to, with his "experiments" and his interpretations. Maybe Urquhart is simply the kind of guy who gives idea merit based on how many come to talk to him about it. Or maybe he does play favorites. I don't know. I do think this whole thing might have been avoided if Avellone had simply gone to talk to Urquhart instead of making interpretations.

From the Codex: That’s a fair statement and fair challenge. I did it by establishing a foundation of expectations - something no other department at Obsidian had. I did this because I thought setting expectations and benchmarks for each role would be helpful for people taking on those roles. What I did was simple - list out expectations for every designer position, and say, “here’s the least we expect from you in this position, but we expect more, because we as a company are better than that.” That turned out not to be the case.* I firmly believed in these expectations, I believed in titles, lead roles, and responsibilities – not to be limited by them, but “this is the foundation of what you should do.” If you’re doing the job, you get the title (including folks like Eric, who were continuously denied a Creative Lead role due more to politics than what they were actually doing). But - I was told 8 years into the process that this was irrelevant, and that what guidelines I established for designers and lead designers (of every category) wasn’t worthwhile – this was conveyed to me by Feargus. As he told me, giving expectations for every position was, in fact, wrong. Feargus doesn’t give expectations to his producers - nor should we in other departments, as owners. I didn’t have a good response to this at first because I was genuinely shocked. I argued my case (since his response was a surprise – and the very late response after so many years genuinely surprised me), and I lost – he simply said to provide expectations for each role was the wrong thing to do because “people will only do the expectations you lay out” which is a dim view of human nature. And it says an unfortunate amount about who we hired. So – to say it, and I covered this in presentations on hiring: I don’t believe “people only do the littlest required” if you’ve hired the right people and plus, assigning roles and responsibilities solves a lot of problems before they become problems. I did feel I was alone in this aspect, but it seemed self-evident to me - give people the title, the responsibility, and the least of your expectations, and good people will do amazing things beyond anything you could dictate to them. But I was surprised by his late-term response, his lack of faith in design, and I was disheartened by it. Everything I had been coaching and trying to develop as a foundation had been struck out in one, casual and dismissive, 5-minute conversation. It’s worth noting that after this occurred, I got accused by a number of designers as “not enforcing the expectations more.” I told them that the expectations had been overruled for every position and was now catch-as-catch-can for each project. * These expectations, however, are now apparently in use today, because it’s not what they were about, but who speaks to them – which is a topic for another time. In my opinion, the truest test of a manager is they treat the facts they are evaluating as facts, not judging them based on the person relating those facts. True story from a DS3 designer (who left for Blizzard after Stormlands) - we did one not-so-amusing test of this during Dungeon Siege 3, where we had two people tell Feargus the exact same thing, and he dismissed one out of hand, but gladly listened and agreed with the other – even though they were both telling him the exact same thing. At that point, I did break a little inside, but I added it to my manager post-mortem of what not to do as a manager. TL;DR Avellone did try to change management practices, but got shot down by Urquhart.

Yeah, to me Avellone has come out as quite passive aggressive during this whole thing and the timing of these latest complaints about Obsidian is no exception.

I have now read 28 pages of the Codex thread and I want a prize, like cookies or something. I still feel like I don't know enough to comment this whole thing, but that has never stopped me before so why should it now. I find it strange how much Avellone complains about the management when he was one of the owners. He even goes to blame Fenstermaker for accepting bad management practices, like Fenstermaker should have changed things. He was just a developer, man. You were one of the owners. I have no idea if Avellone ever tried to change management practices, because he never mentions doing so. I my mind someone who complains about something a lot, but never tries to to fix it, is more wrong than a person who simply accepted that something. I think how little Avellone got when leaving is ****ty, but I don't know if that's bad game industry practice in general or was he singled out. I'm leaning on bad game industry practice in general. The "you can never work on RPGs ever again" part was a colossal **** move. I'm glad Avellone didn't sign that ****, because he still is an excellent RPG writer.

It can't be overstated. When Chris left Obsidian back in 2015, everybody assumed it was an orderly and planned "resigned to pursue other interests" scenario. Maybe there was some bad blood involved, but it happened entirely out of his volition. Now all of a sudden he's talking about how his health insurance was abruptly cancelled and he was left in the lurch. That would not have happened if he had planned to leave Obsidian! So if Chris Avellone was fired, the question that needs to be asked is - why? Planned or not, it could be he simply didn't know leaving Obsidian would immediately end his health insurance.

New Tool song! Well, it plays more like an intro than a song really, but perhaps there actually is new Tool album coming...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uarJSt0hXv8

No Way Out? Aliens on 'Super-Earth' Planets May Be Trapped by Gravity

I bought Dragon Age Inquisition for 8€ today and spent only 4 hours in character creation. Worst Dragon Age game ever!

You´re wrong and I'm going to prove it with science! Thor is an European man and their average life expectancy is 78 years. Black Panther is an African man and their average life expectancy is 61 years. Therefore waiting Black Panther DVD for 123 days would actually be racists and it definitely should come out before Infinity War. I can prove this with quick maths. 61y / 78y = 0.78. 123d * 0.78 = 96d. Wait, what, 96 days? Damn. Well, I almost proved you wrong with science, which makes me almost right. Since almost right must be better than almost wrong, that has to mean I won this debate.

I do seem to remember the Church took quite a long time to say African people had souls. Just to give one example of Europeans justifying slavery.

I do like Maiden's X Factor album and I think Blaze did a good job with the vocals there, maybe darker, more pessimistic songs fit his style. The Virtual, XI on the other hand, is the worst Maiden album. There's not a single song there I like and the singing feels lazy. Futureal and Clansman are kinda okayish though, but it's still a horrible album.

I do think three years in prison is overdoing it.