Tony Evans leaving Obsidian for BioWare

[Nepenthe]

https://twitter.com/...019864445304834

 

That link to the Free Radicals article is quite something. It seems to reinforce this notion that publishers don't care about quality, but only about releasing the game as quick as possible.

Only inasmuch as it impacts the sales. If they can sell **** on a short dev cycle (guitar hero, cod), they'll think they've found the holy grail.

[Nathaniel Chapman]

It's not that publishers don't care about quality, per se. It's more that, for AAA development, it's a hit/flop mentality.

 

If a publisher thinks something will be a hit, they will sink a ton of money into it and try to make it as good as they can. If they don't, the assumption is it will be a "flop" (meaning not sell millions) and they'll try to get it out as cheaply as possible to recoup losses or make a modest profit.

 

The biggest problems with this are that players pay the same price for both kinds of games, and feel cheated when they get a game that a publisher hasn't invested enough in, and that not everyone at a publisher is great a recognizing ahead of time what will be good and what will fail. So even if they do care about quality, they're not always in a position to recognize it (this can also be true of developers, not trying to single out anyone in that equation).

[GhostofAnakin]

It's not that publishers don't care about quality, per se. It's more that, for AAA development, it's a hit/flop mentality.

 

If a publisher thinks something will be a hit, they will sink a ton of money into it and try to make it as good as they can. If they don't, the assumption is it will be a "flop" (meaning not sell millions) and they'll try to get it out as cheaply as possible to recoup losses or make a modest profit.

 

The biggest problems with this are that players pay the same price for both kinds of games, and feel cheated when they get a game that a publisher hasn't invested enough in, and that not everyone at a publisher is great a recognizing ahead of time what will be good and what will fail. So even if they do care about quality, they're not always in a position to recognize it (this can also be true of developers, not trying to single out anyone in that equation).

 

In regards to the hit/flop mentality, I'm curious why a publisher would even fund a project they forecast will "flop". Financially speaking, what's the point in even allocating funds for a project if they don't think it will sell well, or at all?

 

Or is it a case of them sinking as little as possible in the off chance that it will actually make money? Sort of a low risk investment that could pay off?

[Nathaniel Chapman]

It's not that publishers don't care about quality, per se. It's more that, for AAA development, it's a hit/flop mentality.

 

If a publisher thinks something will be a hit, they will sink a ton of money into it and try to make it as good as they can. If they don't, the assumption is it will be a "flop" (meaning not sell millions) and they'll try to get it out as cheaply as possible to recoup losses or make a modest profit.

 

The biggest problems with this are that players pay the same price for both kinds of games, and feel cheated when they get a game that a publisher hasn't invested enough in, and that not everyone at a publisher is great a recognizing ahead of time what will be good and what will fail. So even if they do care about quality, they're not always in a position to recognize it (this can also be true of developers, not trying to single out anyone in that equation).

 

In regards to the hit/flop mentality, I'm curious why a publisher would even fund a project they forecast will "flop". Financially speaking, what's the point in even allocating funds for a project if they don't think it will sell well, or at all?

 

Or is it a case of them sinking as little as possible in the off chance that it will actually make money? Sort of a low risk investment that could pay off?

 

Note that flop doesn't mean financially unsuccessful, it just means non-huge sales. In practicality, it means they limit their risk by investing as little as possible, targeting a certain amount of sales, and very tightly controlling the budget so that it can be profitable at that amount of sales.

[WorstUsernameEver]

flop/hit stuff

 

Little aside, but I imagine that at Blizzard you don't have to worry about this kind of calculations about your project's success, or do you think that even a company that big and prestigious is tied down in that sense?

 

(Forgive the wording, it's the headache, I swear.)

[Gromnir]

flop/hit stuff

 

or do you think that even a company that big and prestigious is tied down in that sense?

 

 

 

am doubting size and prestige are serious factors. am betting that the giants o' publishing is actual far more likely to engage in the flop/hit calculus than does smaller publishers. you is more likely to Need a hit if you only got one game to be released in the span o' a few years, no? on the other hand, if you is a big publisher releasing loads o' titles per quarter, perhaps you are a bit more invested in those quarterly reports, eh? releasing a modest success or two before the end o' the next quarter to offset some unfortunate losses is the kinda thing that the really big publishers is needing to consider.

 

HA! Good Fun!

[Wombat]

What?

[funcroc]

OT: ex-OEI programmer Erik Novales' formspring

 

What was it like working on the Neverwinter Nights 2 Toolset?

 

Very tiring! Heh.

 

It was an interesting, and very big challenge. It did give us an opportunity to really enhance and modernize some aspects of the content creation process, and try and eliminate some of the really troublesome or tedious aspects of making content for NWN. We considered retrofitting the new graphics engine into the old toolset, and then trying to fix a few of the major productivity drains, but we thought there might be some serious technical issues in trying to do so, and so the new toolset was born.

 

I was basically redoing an enormous existing application, on a technology platform new to Obsidian (though I had worked with it before, at Totally Games), with new game engine features that had yet to be written. And, with a few exceptions, I was writing it nearly all by myself! (A lot of the terrain functionality was done by Adam Brennecke, and Steve Weatherly worked on bug fixes and a lot of the internationalization work for the toolset. For the expansions, Josh Verrall took over tools programming, so thank him for all the new stuff that was added in MOTB and SOZ. We also reused the existing script compiler, and of course the graphics engine from the game itself.) If you take a look at the credits for NWN1 vs. NWN2, you may get an appreciation of the resource disadvantage I was at...heh.

 

It wasn't all bad news on the scope front, though. One thing that simplified matters was that it was an editor being written to support many data structures that already existed and were extremely well-documented. There were many examples of "correct" data, and many applications and tools that already existed to produce and consume many of the Bioware data formats. This made it much easier to verify that things were working correctly. Similarly, given that the UI was intended to be an improvement of an existing one, there was a lot of existing guidance on how things should be laid out, and certain obvious improvements that could be made. The content creators at Obsidian also had a laundry list of desired improvements, from working on earlier titles with the Bioware engines, and where possible we implemented those suggestions.

 

A big win on the technology front was our decision to use the .NET platform, which worked really well and provided us with a great starting point for the application. The ability to easily integrate third-party components with the framework and Windows Forms was also incredibly useful, and paid huge dividends both in time saved and a much more polished UI. The docking toolbars, tabbed windows, and property grid UI were all big winners in my opinion. There was also a third-party tree list control that we used which was really helpful -- it made the conversation editor much more efficient in terms of letting you see more information at a glance.

 

One thing that I wish had existed while I was working on the toolset is the LINQ extensions in .NET 3.5. In particular, it would have made writing a lot of the code in the conversation editor much simpler -- there was a lot of code to deal with the conversation tree structure that could have been written much more succinctly with LINQ, with fewer opportunities for bugs to creep in. Some of the code for the more esoteric features, like the "question node" in the conversation editor, could definitely have made great use of LINQ. (And hey, with all of that hypothetical time I would have saved, I could have made the interface for it much more intuitive!) Another area where I think LINQ would have also been a big help is the script editor parsing.

 

Another set of tools that would have been great to have on NWN2 (not just the toolset) were the crash and bug reporting tools I later wrote for the Onyx engine at Obsidian. These tools allow one-click crash and bug reporting, with tons of useful information automatically collected, submitted, and analyzed. This would have helped tremendously with hard-to-reproduce bugs and sped up development.

 

I could probably go into some more detail, but the tl;dr summary would be: interesting work, huge scope, and, as always, the wisdom of hindsight and more modern tools would have saved me a heck of a lot of effort.

[Pop]

via Avellone's Twitter account:

Design meeting w/ 2 old colleagues tonight: Anthony Davis and Tony Evans. I never thought I'd get to work with again. Thanks Wasteland 2!

Edited July 20, 2012 by Pop

[Starwars]

That's awesome!

[Tale]

That is absolutely incredible.

[WorstUsernameEver]

They both worked on Storm of Zehir iirc, right? I mean, any ex-Obsidianite offering his/her own RPG expertise is appreciated by me, but that sounds particularly indicated in this case, since SoZ offered a pretty damn decent (if maybe underdeveloped due to the expansion scope) take on the fully-player-created party mechanics.

[funcroc]

OT: Former OEI/BioWare lead designer Ferret Baudoin currently working for Bethesda Game Studios

 

Senior Designer

Bethesda Softworks

October 2012 – Present (1 month)

Senior designer on unannounced project.

 

Lead Designer

BioWare

May 2006 – August 2012 (6 years 4 months)

Lead Designer on The Exiled Prince and the Black Emporium.

Senior Designer on Dragon Age II.

Lead Designer on Dragon Age: Origins - Awakening.

Lead Designer on Warden's Keep and Stone Prisoner (Dragon Age DLC).

Senior Designer on Dragon Age.

 

Lead Designer

Obsidian Entertainment

October 2003 – March 2006 (2 years 6 months)

Was a designer on Knights of the Old Republic 2: The Sith Lords.

Was lead designer on Neverwinter Nights 2.

 

Designer

Black Isle Studios

March 2003 – October 2003 (8 months)

Was a designer on Baldur's Gate 3 (Jefferson).

Was a designer on Fallout 3 (VanBuren)

Edited October 14, 2012 by funcroc

[C2B]

Ferret's switching places. From the west coast to canada to the east coast.

[WorstUsernameEver]

Going back to Fallout, I expect.

[Riddlewrong]

Standing on its own merits, Dragon Age 2 is a solid modern RPG. It's a departure from the style of the first game, which is probably its biggest crime in the eyes of consumers. It's Zelda II all over again. I like Zelda II.

 

Opinions will vary based on a variety of factors none of us can control.

Most people don't want to hear an opinion that doesn't match their own.

People like to hear opinions that validate theirs.

People like to hear themselves talk.

 

Thus, we have forums.

[NOK222]

Standing on its own merits, Dragon Age 2 is a solid modern RPG. It's a departure from the style of the first game, which is probably its biggest crime in the eyes of consumers. It's Zelda II all over again. I like Zelda II.

 

Opinions will vary based on a variety of factors none of us can control.

Most people don't want to hear an opinion that doesn't match their own.

People like to hear opinions that validate theirs.

People like to hear themselves talk.

 

Thus, we have forums.

 

I can have a discussion on Fallout 3 vs. Fallout NV and respect opinions.

 

Not Dragon Age 2, a half completed cash grab in which half the game was left for a cancelled expansion, sorry.

Edited October 17, 2012 by NKKKK

[NoMan2000]

Dragon Age II was not respectable. It featured an incredibly bad plot with awful writing in the main dialogue. Your emo brother dialogue scenes? Anderson's dialogue? The lack of a viable love interest? All of it was utter garbage compared to Dragon Age I. Minus the Dwarf, there was not one memorable or likeable character introduced. Tell me which one you liked and why?

 

Some of the best dialogue happens inbetween the scenes if you stand around and listen to them banter, but that shows the shift in development. Stick the best dialogue so it's hidden from sight? What sort of RPG is that?

 

The gameplay is likewise awful. You play the role of the Great Janitor of the City. You must fight identical enemies in the exact same brown/grey palatte places over and over and over again. Nothing you do matters, much like ME:III. The art was pure garbage as well. The gameplay reduced tactical RPG elements to a mash-your-fist "Press A" repeatedly sequence. Lame.

 

Bad gameplay, poor artwork, awful storyline, unmemorable characters, and a lousy plot. That's what you get in Dragon Age II. That game was an abomination to humanity.

[Tale]

Let's not derail this into a Dragon Age thread, please.

[Farbautisonn]

Uhg, Bioware? Really? Not a respectable company like Blizzard or Valve?

 

So...

 

Baldur's Gate - Best CRPG of our time is not respectable?

Neverwinter Nights - A CRPG that started some things for Obsidian, not respectable?

Knights of the Old Republic - Another CRPG that started some things for Obsidian, not respectable? Come on man.

Jade Empire - Okay, I get these being unrespectable

Sonic Chro - SHUT THE HELL UP SELF! myself OK myself

Dragon Age - You would be a fool to call this unrespectable

Mass Effect - I will kick you in the gut if you call any game in this series unrespectable.

 

Awards:

 

* Video Game Hall of Fame - ...

* 2010 Studio of the Year - This one award proves you wrong all the way.

 

ME3 Retroactively destroyed the entire franchise for me. No mean feat. And Im not the only one who feels that way. Bioware used to be the Benchmark studio for storytelling. Now its a punchline. As for the "award", that can go cram whatever statuette it awared up its hinie. The fans were so upset with Bioware that they voted EA worst company stateside, beating bank of america. Thats bad.

 

The leading benchmark studio for storytelling is CD Projekt RED. Witcher2 still sells at full price, whilst ME3 has dropped a third in my local gaming stores. Obsidian is a close runner up after NV. Im personally hoping that Obsidian can take the number one spot.

Edited October 18, 2012 by Farbautisonn

[alanschu]

Let's not derail this into a Dragon Age thread, please.

 

Some people just have bones to pick

 

 

Ferret's a good guy and I was glad to have met him. Was sad to see him leave, though in talking with him it was motivated in large part by family reasons as new parents.

 

 

Minus the Dwarf, there was not one memorable or likeable character introduced. Tell me which one you liked and why?

 

I have no problems admitting that Dragon Age 2 is not as good of a product as Dragon Age: Origins, but I absolutely will not agree with this.

 

I have to go to a movie festival so I can't detail the reasoning by which I liked some of my favourites (three of which are Isabela, Aveline, and Varric) at this time, but if you *really* want me to, I will.

Edited October 18, 2012 by alanschu

[NerdBoner]

I think that Dragon Age 2 was the best Bioware's game

[NOK222]

Let's not derail this into a Dragon Age thread, please.

 

Some people just have bones to pick

 

 

Ferret's a good guy and I was glad to have met him. Was sad to see him leave, though in talking with him it was motivated in large part by family reasons as new parents.

 

 

Minus the Dwarf, there was not one memorable or likeable character introduced. Tell me which one you liked and why?

 

I have no problems admitting that Dragon Age 2 is not as good of a product as Dragon Age: Origins, but I absolutely will not agree with this.

I have to go to a movie festival so I can't detail the reasoning by which I liked some of my favourites (three of which are Isabela, Aveline, and Varric) at this time, but if you *really* want me to, I will.

 

Look,

 

a lot of folks don't like the characters because their un-positive traits that were forced on us prevented the players from truly looking at their hidden depths. Their hidden depths were there, it was just underwhemed by some of the shallowness that the characters present themselves on.

 

Example

Anders: Roar, Templars!

 

You want to the only real way to have him reveal a deep problems that wasn't that obvious in the acts? Rivalmancing him will reveal the true struggle inside. Guess what Alan? Not everyone did that.

 

The characters appear shallow and only reveal their hidden depths in certain situations. Most of the time, their flanderilizations take a hold of them. The party members of the first game also suffered through this, but not as much.

 

This isn't my opinion, I can see what the writers were trying to do and perhaps if they actually made a complete game it would have worked out well. I love all the Dragon Age characters, but a lot people do not like the characters, one of the reasons being what I just outlined.

 

But you know, like you said, I'm not a "fan" anymore so my opinion isn't valid. It's funny, I defended Bioware when Dragon Age 2 was announced, I believed in Hawke.

 

Le sigh...

 

Let's not derail this into a Dragon Age thread, please.

 

This was my last post on the subject here, I promise. I just think it needed to be said.

Edited October 19, 2012 by NKKKK

[funcroc]

OT: ex-OEI designer/producer Kevin Saunders leaving Alelo

Edited October 22, 2012 by funcroc

[Starwars]

Now get him back to OEI damnit!