Gamespot's Matthew Rorie joins Obsidian

[funcroc]

http://www.gamespot.com/users/MattRorie/sh...=m-100-25398112

 

The New Gig

So, I'm the new Marketing & PR Producer at Obsidian Entertainment down here in sunny and hot Orange County, California. Suffice to say that I wouldn't have left GameSpot for just any old job. When the Marketing/PR position opened up down here at Obsidian, though, I had to leap at the opportunity.

 

Anyone who knows me knows that I am a big PC RPG guy from way back, and I was an especially big fan of stuff like Baldur's Gate and the other Infinity Engine games. So the opportunity to work with the people who created stuff like Fallout and Icewind Dale, you have to know that I'm going to take it.

 

At any rate, things seem pretty cool down here at Obsidian. People are hard at work on Alpha Protocol, Aliens RPG, and some other projects which I look forward to talking about in the future. We'll see what happens from here on in, but it should be a fun ride.

[Zoma]

Ohhh, now Obsidian's got its own PR mean machine!

 

Good to know he's a PC RPG lover like most of us here. Once again, awesome find from our Obsidian ninja.

[Xard]

"and some other projects"

 

lolwut

 

Also, nice stalking once again Stalker-san

Edited May 2, 2008 by Xard

[Gorth]

I wonder what Funcroc is outside the forums... P.I.?

 

And welcome to Matthew Rorie

[SteveThaiBinh]

Obsidian's very own Pete Hines, eh? Welcome.

 

So just how many endings does the Aliens RPG have? To the nearest thousand will suffice.

[Matthew Rorie]

I meant to make my own topic on this, but I guess this will do, heh.

 

Yeah, I joined up with Obsidian earlier this week, and am going to be doing my best to ensure that Aliens, Alpha Protocol, and all other projects in the future get their fair share of press, hopefully. I'll also be a bigger presence on the forums, hopefully. I won't be able to answer every question about the game, but hopefully some morsels will drop here and there.

 

My background with Obsidian mostly comes in the form of having written game guides for KOTOR2, NWN2, and Mask of the Betrayer. Needless to say, I'm a big fan of Obsidian games and am pretty pumped about contributing to the future projects. Some of the stuff that I've heard so far...well.

 

At any rate, looking forward to get to know some of the regulars around here a bit better as time goes on. As press ramps up for Alpha Protocol and Aliens, we'll certainly try to ensure that pointers to all of it are posted here in the forums so you guys don't have to scrounge around looking for all of it.

[Pop]

Sweet.

[mkreku]

Any word on the Eidos/Gerstmann incident..?

[Sharen the Exile]

Welcome Matthew! Let's get to the point.

My question: Kotor 3. I think I don't have to add anything more. *Waiting for an answer*

 

 

"and some other projects"

 

lolwut

Do we think about the same thing?

[Matthew Rorie]

Welcome Matthew! Let's get to the point.

My question: Kotor 3. I think I don't have to add anything more. *Waiting for an answer*

 

 

"and some other projects"

 

lolwut

Do we think about the same thing?

 

All I can say is that any other projects aside from Alpha Protocol and Aliens are probably in the "years away" category at this point. Sorry! My lips are sealed.

[Dark_Raven]

Like WoW.

[Zoma]

Do you have any ETA of the next batch of news concerning Aliens or Alpha Protocol?

 

Things are slow here for the past month or so :\

[Pop]

Couple of questions.

 

Is your position a new one? How did you come to get the job? Did you come into contact with Obsidz whilst working for Gamespot on the game guides and such and they sought you ought once the position became open, or did you discover yourself that the position needed to be filled and decided to leave your job at the time?

 

Moving on, there was some concern here over SEGA's record of keeping up PR for its games. We saw the AP Game Informer front page, which was certainly significant, but some people are uneasy as to the extent to which SEGA was going to support the game through advertising and publicity and the like. Are you taking over for (what we assume was) the SEGA effort? Are you working in tandem with them? How do you augment and improve the way things normally run? What about the more, oh, let's call them "informal" media sources? The blogs and such? What about showcases and cons and events? Is Obsidian in that racket? How do you feel you can best present Obsidian to potential consumers of their product?

 

Also, give us a sense of what your day-to-day duties and responsibilities are for the company. How would you describe your relationship with the games that are in production? Is it your job to make sure just that they get noticed? Do you do much hands-on stuff?

 

Are you a recent transplant to the OC? What sorts of things do you do in your spare time besides gaming? Do you own all the current-gen consoles? What games have caught your eye recently? What sort of music do you listen to? Favorite sport or pastime?

Edited May 3, 2008 by Pop

[Tigranes]

You've just been Popstalked .

 

Good questions though, I hadn't thought of them. Welcome Matthew.

[Starwars]

Welcome! I hope you can become a good "man of the people" while at the same time keeping the gaming magazines drooling.

[Sharen the Exile]

All I can say is that any other projects aside from Alpha Protocol and Aliens are probably in the "years away" category at this point. Sorry! My lips are sealed.

I perfectly understand that Obsidian is currently focused on AP and Aliens. But considering the ridicoulous ammount of turned-to-be-false rumors about Kotor3 in the last couple of years, any information that LA at least gave a green light for K3 would be good. So my second question is: Does your answer for my first question means I'll be very happy in couple of years or does it means that LA doesn't even think about K3 at the moment?

[Matthew Rorie]

Do you have any ETA of the next batch of news concerning Aliens or Alpha Protocol?

 

Things are slow here for the past month or so :\

 

No ETAs or anything. I think there's still a bit of time before you'll hear more about Aliens. We had a media event for AP last week, which was mostly for European print magazines, so hopefully more info on that will be out soon.

[Matthew Rorie]

All I can say is that any other projects aside from Alpha Protocol and Aliens are probably in the "years away" category at this point. Sorry! My lips are sealed.

I perfectly understand that Obsidian is currently focused on AP and Aliens. But considering the ridicoulous ammount of turned-to-be-false rumors about Kotor3 in the last couple of years, any information that LA at least gave a green light for K3 would be good. So my second question is: Does your answer for my first question means I'll be very happy in couple of years or does it means that LA doesn't even think about K3 at the moment?

 

I hope you'll understand when I say that I really can't talk about it one way or another.

[Matthew Rorie]

Any word on the Eidos/Gerstmann incident..?

 

I think everything that could be said about that has been said about it...luckily Gerstmann and Ryan Davis are up and running at www.giantbomb.com and things seem to be working out for everyone involved.

[H]

Congratulations with getting the job! Obsidian has been pretty weak at public relations thus far, I hope this is going to change.

[Matthew Rorie]

Couple of questions.

 

I'll do my best to answer these...

 

My job is a new one for Obsidian. As far as the mechanics of acquiring it, I'll just say that it revolved around the usual factors of networking, a decent resume, a good interview (I think), and willingness to move for it.

 

I don't think I can say much about Sega at this point; I just started here on Monday and haven't had a lot of time to interface with them. When I get a feeling for how my job will interact with the Sega people, I'll try to let you know. We all want the games to sell millions of copies, though, so hopefully that'll be a good starting point for our interactions.

 

As far as other, informal stuff, I'll definitely be trying to ensure that Obsidian is better represented on fansites, blogs, forums, etc. Part of that begins here on the Obsidian forums, but as time moves on and more information is revealed about our games we'll see how much broader it gets. We're definitely thinking more about various events and cons, but a lot of that needs to be coordinated with Sega, so I can't say a huge amount about it yet.

 

The day-to-day stuff will evolve over time; this first week was mostly getting my computer set up, entering contacts in Outlook, catching up on AP and Aliens (reading design documents, etc.), and so on. In time I'll work on filtering interview requests for the staff, dealing with inquiries from the press and websites, interfacing with Sega, posting on forums, traveling to events, and so on. I doubt I will be interfacing with the games in development on a daily basis, but obviously I am going to try and stay in touch with the milestones as they're made just so I know how the projects are developing. My job will mostly be to simply ensure that the games have presence in the mind of people who might buy them. I'll also probably help brainstorm swag and goodies to give away at events, I think.

 

I worked in San Francisco for GameSpot, so I've been in the OC less than a week now. (Flew in on Sunday evening and started work on Monday morning.) I didn't bring much down besides a laptop, a bunch of clothes, and some magazines, so I'm currently hunting for something to occupy my time with. The fact that I don't own a car is somewhat limiting, though. Luckily you can't walk more than half a mile in Santa Ana without hitting a strip mall, so I suppose I will do some book shopping today.

 

I own all of the consoles except for the Wii, although my PS360s are still in storage up in SF, as is my HDTV. Hopefully I'll reclaim them soon and get started on GTAIV. Apart from that, I've recently played Crisis Core and Dark Sector before I moved. I've been playing a lot of WoW lately, but this laptop I'm on gets around 10 fps with everything turned down low, so I'm in a bit of a pickle there. It's good to get time away from WoW every once in a while, though.

 

So far as music goes, I don't follow much recent stuff. I'm a big fan of people like Joanna Newsom, Feist, Regina Spektor, Rainer Maria, Sleater-Kinney, Mates of State, Mirah, etc. Mostly indie rock/indie folk stuff. I haven't had much time to think about extracurricular activities just yet. There's not much you can do in the OC without a car, so that's kind of constraining me at this point. Hopefully I'll be able to partake of some of the Obsidian activities in the future, like the intramural soccer stuff. Good workout.

 

Hopefully that answers some of the questions. Obviously there's a lot of stuff that I can't talk about regarding our games (it's still weird saying "our" when it comes to Obsidian, heh), but as more information comes out hopefully I'll be able to be more forthcoming.

[Alvin Nelson]

Welcome and congrats on becoming an Obsidianite, Matt! You made me laugh at our Obsidian Movie day, so you'll do fine here.

 

Oh, and play WoW on your work comp if you stay late, tis much better than a laptop.

[Hydrogen]

Welcome to Obsidian, or more precisely to the boards... hope you stay for a long time!

 

 

 

 

 

Oh, and play WoW on your work comp if you stay late, tis much better than a laptop.

 

oh yeah, Alvin, that's it... corrupt him early.

[BIOShazard]

Better yet, don't play it at all

I used to be there (Gamespot. Regular Member, not staff) until I quit going. So between you and me, we're kinda alike (And all the people who quit during the Gerstamann Incident >_>)

Anyways, congrats on going from the Reviewers there to actually making the games, where you get to put in the cheats

[Humodour]

I meant to make my own topic on this, but I guess this will do, heh.

 

Yeah, I joined up with Obsidian earlier this week, and am going to be doing my best to ensure that Aliens, Alpha Protocol, and all other projects in the future get their fair share of press, hopefully. I'll also be a bigger presence on the forums, hopefully. I won't be able to answer every question about the game, but hopefully some morsels will drop here and there.

 

My background with Obsidian mostly comes in the form of having written game guides for KOTOR2, NWN2, and Mask of the Betrayer. Needless to say, I'm a big fan of Obsidian games and am pretty pumped about contributing to the future projects. Some of the stuff that I've heard so far...well.

 

At any rate, looking forward to get to know some of the regulars around here a bit better as time goes on. As press ramps up for Alpha Protocol and Aliens, we'll certainly try to ensure that pointers to all of it are posted here in the forums so you guys don't have to scrounge around looking for all of it.

 

Excellent news. I look forward to reading your updates.