Chris Avellone: The Final Frontier

[Mannock]

A sad story this is.

 

But looking at it, Chris Avellone doesn't come off as the good guy in my book. I don't think he's really easy to work with. He did Planescape: Torment and basically ended up with hero status. Sure he's done other great stuff too, but making a game is a work of collaboration but he's the one who personally gets uplifted into demigod status.

 

So he and Josh obviously clashed during the development of PoE with Fenstermaker caught in the middle (sure don't envy that guy). And when push came to shove, the owners sided with Josh instead of Chris, which is really a big deal.

 

Just think about how big of star Chris is, being a stretch goal in every other kickstarter out there and being adored by most RPG nerds. To boot such a gem off your company says a great deal of things.

 

I don't see Obsidian being evil here but I also hope everything works out well for Chris in the future in other projects.

[LittleRose]

I'm not taking sides on this. On one hand, there are enough companies I could imagine doing something like that. On the other hand, every time he talks about this matter, Chris adds more to the story, but this accuse is business threatening, as it could drive the customers away for good. Some forum members here have already left. Could he be telling the truth? Certainly. Does he hold enough of a grudge to want to harm Obsidian? I could imagine that, too.

 

Therefore, I'm not taking sides in this case without any witnesses or evidence. And I'm not taking sides without hearing Obsidians version of the story, either. So, no boycotting anyone from my side until I believe to know what's really happened. After all, a company is more than its management. There are plenty of employees, many of them with families. I don't want to support companies who treat former employees like this. But I also don't want to take part in destroying the financial security of so many people by avoiding Obsidian's games without knowing if their management is really guilty.

[Mamoulian War]

Wherever the truth lies, is not for me to judge, but pulling this type of stunt, just before the flagship of the company is released is a pretty big **** move on part of Avellone, which could mean that some people might lose jobs, if this impacts the sales of the game in a meaningful way.

 

And for that very reason, I am more inclined to believe, that Obsidian, is in this case the lesser kind of evil...

[kirottu]

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.

[Mannock]

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.

That's Chris' version so I'd tread lightly there. I'm sure they wanted to quarantine him temporarily but forever? Highly doubt it.

[kirottu]

Wherever the truth lies, is not for me to judge, but pulling this type of stunt, just before the flagship of the company is released is a pretty big **** move on part of Avellone, which could mean that some people might lose jobs, if this impacts the sales of the game in a meaningful way.

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.

Edited May 2, 2018 by kirottu

[Blarghagh]

Now Eric Fenstermaker is slinging some mud himself, publicly accuses Avellone of sabotaging PoE's development "at a vital stage":

 

 

If Avellone hurt PoE's development that much, maybe he really was fired?

 

This doesn't seem like mudslinging? This just seems like defending himself.

 

Also, correct me if I'm wrong, but as I recall Eric Fenstermaker left Obsidian in 2016 and is now a freelance writer/designer just like Avellone. So the Codex labeling him as "Obsidian Entertainment" seems a misrepresentation.

 

https://forums.obsidian.net/topic/89393-is-eric-fenstermaker-still-at-obsidian/?p=1848340

 

Fenstermaker's account does jive with my personal observation that half the time Chris describes having worked on a project at Obs (or anywhere really) he's talking about all the things he was forced to cut. Despite his claims of having accepted it as part of the industry his preoccupation with it makes it seems he has a lot of trouble with killing his darlings. I think Avellone's style and personality just didn't fit in a management position because of that and I can imagine this would cause a lot of friction and bad blood. That's all speculation on my part, though.

 

Although sadly lately Avellone has come across to me as that old saying: "run into a jerk today, you ran into a jerk - run into jerks ALL day, maybe you're the jerk" - but that's probably because I rarely encounter interviews with him these days unless they're linked on this board, and this board generally links the clickbait. I mean, seriously, what's up with the BuzzFeed preamble? "What former employees say about Obsidian will BLOW your MIND!"

 

Either way, I do think Obsidian, based on Chris' account, possibly made some very questionable business and moral decisions dealing with his departure. But I doubt it's a good idea for Obsidian to publicly try to defend themselves. Chris is a critical darling and will always look like the underdog in the face of a company the size of Obsidian. They'll just come across as corporate speak regardless of what they say. Damned if they do, damned if they don't.

Edited May 2, 2018 by TrueNeutral
grammar and clean reading

[Urthor]

 

Hmm, yes, Shadows of Mordor, hmm yes, Horizon Zero Dawn.  Hmm, yes.  

[Urthor]

Although sadly lately Avellone has come across to me as that old saying: "run into a jerk today, you ran into a jerk - run into jerks ALL day, maybe you're the jerk" - but that's probably because I rarely encounter interviews with him these days unless they're linked on this board, and this board generally links the clickbait. I mean, seriously, what's up with the BuzzFeed preamble? "What former employees say about Obsidian will BLOW your MIND!"

 

 

I think it's fair to say though that Avellone has never given the impression of being a jerk.  The quiet guy in the corner who does his own thing and writes way too much for Durance and isn't the cool kid in the yard like Josh, yes definitely. 

 

But keep in mind he is happily employed as a freelancer at a number of shops and is generally welcomed by a huge sections of the industry on a regular basis.  He was invited back to work on Into the Breach after doing FTL.  You generally do not invite someone back a second time if you don't like them and they are jerks.

 

Meanwhile, looking at Obsidian, Matt Stone and Trey Parker have referred to their fairly poor relationship with Obsidian working on the Stick of Truth, a game that Josh and Trey pretty much gave Obsidian to make as a love gesture to the studio from what I understand, since they are huge RPG fans.  Sequel moves to Ubisoft.

 

According to Avellone's post earlier, Obsidian shadily lent devs whose salary was paid by Paradox to their own project, and after the completion of Tyranny, largely a financial failure almost entirely due to the fact some genius release it in the first two weeks of November next to 50 AAA games instead of delaying it a few months to January, Paradox has not published PoE2.  

 

So when Obsidian seemingly has a history of seemingly burning business relationships behind them like that, and shall we say a troubled history delivering games on schedule and bug free, things start to be a little more suspicious.

 

All of Chris' talks about Feargus not setting standards, poor performance by senior management, while he's seemingly welcomed and chummy with almost all the people he used to work with?  And Obsidian's Glassdoor entries being what they are?  Maybe he isn't making all of this up.  

Edited May 2, 2018 by Urthor

[Mannock]

 

Hmm, yes, Shadows of Mordor, hmm yes, Horizon Zero Dawn.  Hmm, yes.

Wow. So in this post Chris Avellone is explaining to everyone who Eric Fanstermaker hates. Mindblowing.

 

I have no clue about the working conditions at Obsidian, but maybe, just maybe, Chris should take the edge of a little bit?

[Drowsy Emperor]

MCA should just have done a remix of 'Without Me' and departed in style. 

 

 

 

Two vault park girls go 'round the outside...

 

'Round the outside...

 

 

....

 

*no offense to the girls, dunno who they are but the opportunity was too good to pass up

Edited May 2, 2018 by Drowsy Emperor

[Katphood]

We should beat Eric after school.

[kirottu]

From the Codex:

 

 

Process is a bitch to change. It has massive inertia because every single person has developed their own workflow and changing it is unpleasant.

 

I would ask Chris Avellone though: as one of the founders, what did you do to shape and improve that process? You were there from the start. You were one of the people best-positioned to push through process reforms before **** got completely out of hand. What's your responsibility for the process?

 

From where I'm standing, it looks a lot like you failed to effect meaningful process improvements, and then retreated to your cubicle to play your war requiem while everybody else was going about their bumbling chaotic process. And now you're being pretty hard on Eric for failing to accomplish the changes you failed to accomplish from a higher spot up the totem pole. That's not entirely fair in my opinion.

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.

Edited May 2, 2018 by kirottu

[Ethics Gradient]

Planned or not, it could be he simply didn't know leaving Obsidian would immediately end his health insurance.

 

In the US, as part of your compensation, the employer pays your salary and subsidizes your private health insurance.  The employee chips in a little of their paycheck, but your insurance benefits easily cost the company several thousand dollars per month.  When your paycheck stops, so does your private insurance.  In America it's been a fact of life for decades, and only in fairly recent history has anyone attempted to address the issue.  The concept of job "lock-in" is very real, and employees are often hesitant to leave a company because they will lose their employer-sponsored insurance plan.

 

Of all the details in this dumb drama "the sudden cancellation of my health insurance" bit is 100% sensationalism.  It's a fact of life, and would be equivalent to whining that your paycheck ended after you quit.

 

And as I and others have brought up, the moment you're terminated, you're eligible to enroll back into the plan through COBRA.  It sucks to be responsible for those thousands of dollars per month to continue your private health insurance, but there is seriously no company out there that would, as a normal practice, continue paying for that benefit after an employee's departure.

Edited May 2, 2018 by Ethics Gradient

[Infinitron]

So, how many of you can say you've been trolled by Chris Avellone

[Ethics Gradient]

So, how many of you can say you've been trolled by Chris Avellone

 

Can't say that I have, but if anyone is looking for a master class in how to burn bridges in a small community, they've come to the right place.

[Blarghagh]

 

Although sadly lately Avellone has come across to me as that old saying: "run into a jerk today, you ran into a jerk - run into jerks ALL day, maybe you're the jerk" - but that's probably because I rarely encounter interviews with him these days unless they're linked on this board, and this board generally links the clickbait. I mean, seriously, what's up with the BuzzFeed preamble? "What former employees say about Obsidian will BLOW your MIND!"

I think it's fair to say though that Avellone has never given the impression of being a jerk. The quiet guy in the corner who does his own thing and writes way too much for Durance and isn't the cool kid in the yard like Josh, yes definitely.

 

But keep in mind he is happily employed as a freelancer at a number of shops and is generally welcomed by a huge sections of the industry on a regular basis. He was invited back to work on Into the Breach after doing FTL. You generally do not invite someone back a second time if you don't like them and they are jerks.

 

Meanwhile, looking at Obsidian, Matt Stone and Trey Parker have referred to their fairly poor relationship with Obsidian working on the Stick of Truth, a game that Josh and Trey pretty much gave Obsidian to make as a love gesture to the studio from what I understand, since they are huge RPG fans. Sequel moves to Ubisoft.

 

According to Avellone's post earlier, Obsidian shadily lent devs whose salary was paid by Paradox to their own project, and after the completion of Tyranny, largely a financial failure almost entirely due to the fact some genius release it in the first two weeks of November next to 50 AAA games instead of delaying it a few months to January, Paradox has not published PoE2.

 

So when Obsidian seemingly has a history of seemingly burning business relationships behind them like that, and shall we say a troubled history delivering games on schedule and bug free, things start to be a little more suspicious.

 

All of Chris' talks about Feargus not setting standards, poor performance by senior management, while he's seemingly welcomed and chummy with almost all the people he used to work with? And Obsidian's Glassdoor entries being what they are? Maybe he isn't making all of this up.

 

I feel like I'm being roped in to defending Obsidian, which is not my intent. I'm not saying he is making it up, and you bring up valid points. I'm sure Obsidian made mistakes, otherwise Chris wouldn't have [left/gotten fired/speculate as you wish] especially since he was Obsidian's big name, industry cred, cult darling seller. I'm not surprised Obsidian tried to dump those non-compete non-disclose clauses on him, and that's an awful move. But here's the thing, precisely BECAUSE he was their cult cred lead-singer-leaving-the-band-situation, I don't buy his "they pushed me out and it's all their fault" narrative for a second. You don't kick your main draw to the curb for ****s and giggles.

 

You're totally correct that Obsidian has a record of poor business decisions but for a lot of that time, Chris was Obsidian. And he has a similar history even before that. There's a reason all this freelance work he does is as a writer. In fact, by his own admission he was invited back to write on Tyranny (supposed contractual nonsense notwithstanding). Chris' portfolio coincides with the most egregious examples of Obsidian's "troubled history" with finished and complete products, and for such a big name in the industry a disproportionally huge number of projects he worked on, before and while at Obisidian, got cancelled. It's a testament to the power of his writing that he still got senior roles after serving as a lead designer on KotOR II, whose very public development failure and unfinished nature are all but legendary and would have buried the career of most other game designers.

 

Look back at early Chris interviews regarding KotOR2 cut content: Chris' plans seem to describe a game three times the size of what we got, and even the extra three months Obsidian didn't get wouldn't have made a dent in that. Alpha Protocol, his last credit in a lead design capacity exemplified it so much that the opening blurb on its Wikipedia page says that "it was generally considered by [critics] to be ambitious, but executed many concepts poorly". It's hard to find an interview where Chris doesn't lament plans or content he "was forced to cut" on games he had a lot of creative control over. Eric's description of the trouble he had implementing Chris' PoE characters because they had been developed with ambition and vision that was completely out of spec imply this hasn't changed. From an outside looking in perspective, it's hard for me not to conclude Chris simply can't work with budget, time or technological restrictions. If your content is always getting cut or releasing unfinished, especially when you're in a management role on those games, how feasible is it to keep claiming it's always someone else's fault?

 

This consistent finger pointing (remember when Chris threw LucasArts under the bus for KotOR II's ending, and Feargus stepped in to admit he screwed up?) paints Chris in a poor light and makes it hard for me to believe him at his word. We KNOW Obsidian has made a lot of terrible business moves because Obsidian has been relatively open about them - that LucasArts thing, Bethesda and the Metacritic deal, Microsoft cancelling their contracts and generally they take responsibility. Chris, however, generally puts the blame on others. If you keep finding yourself getting screwed, maybe it's time to consider how you keep ending up in that situation. That's what I meant with my "run into jerks all day" saying, I wasn't calling him a jerk. However, that quote you posted before you said he never comes across as a jerk, where he literally school-yard gossips about Eric not getting along with the other children in response to Eric defending his design decisions? Yeah...

 

Unpopular opinion: I think his departure from Obsidian, willing or otherwise, came far too late anyway. I think he's a fantastic writer and his newfound success as a freelance writer seems best for everyone, including his fans, since his poor game design work always just makes it harder to enjoy his stories. His cult status only served both parties to stay in a status quo that was never going to work and is probaly the reason this escalated to the point it did. I'm excited to see more of Chris' writing in games, but equally excited he's not filling senior roles. He's at his best as an idea man and a wordsmith. That said, it's sad that it's lead to bad blood and drama.

 

EDIT:

 

 

 

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.

 

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"?

Edited May 2, 2018 by TrueNeutral

[Urthor]

I'm not saying Obsidian are evil, just that Chris' allegations are not necessarily wrong and he isn't someone you can't trust to talk about Obsidian having issues that are related to the senior management.  

 

Him writing too much for Durance isn't Obsidian's fault, the issue is how Obsidian reacted to it  and is expounded on at length why they were unprofessional in their reaction in the Codex posts that seemingly are coming out every hour at this point from Chris.  Yes he's probably disorganised and probably not the perfect game director, but he has said repeatedly he doesn't think he's that good at game directing, there have been multiple quotes on that over the years.  The issue isn't the overwriting for Durance or his bad project management on Alpha etc, because he has absolutely confessed to that fact over the years.  The issue is how he was treated on leaving and how true his allegations that Fergus and co are not running the company particularly well are.

 

It's one thing to write too much for your characters and put your hand up, it's another to do a bad job then be treated unprofessionally by management about it then for the solution to be ballsed up.  

 

Also re your points about Chris being Obsidian and being responsible for all these issues, that's something he actually addressed in RPGCodex posts that aren't copied over.  Chris got no severance from Obsidian or stock, he apparently did not have an ownership stake and wasn't in any position to overrule Fergus. The picture of Chris as a founding shareholder who let things happen doesn't jar with him saying he left with nothing and how Fergus pretty much overruled the structure he set down for narrative design at Obsidian. 

 

You can't really say it's Chris screwing the business deals when he's never ever held a job title that involved signing said business deals, he's always been "lead creative director" or narrative lead or somesuch.  He's responsible for the games and product he made, not the jilted games he wasn't a part of because he's not Fergus signing the deals.

 

He also said Obsidian/Paradox offered him a role on Tyranny because apparently he "had" to be part of that game according to Paradox, but he said no and apparently was not involved after he left. 

 

The Kotor2 Lucasfilm story has pretty much never been gainsaid afaik and the idea that it wasn't a holiday deadline issue is interesting, I'd like to see Fergus talk about that because that story is widely believed.  But the fact you cite Fergus openly saying it was his ****up means that Chris is wrong about Fergus not being the sharpest pencil is a bit weird.

 

I also never said that bad management caused the Microsoft situation, I'm saying that the Tyranny situation and the Stick of Truth situation and the Glassdoor reviews mean that the burden of proof is not on Chris to prove that Obsidian are anything other than saints.  Which is fair enough.   

Edited May 2, 2018 by Urthor

[Amentep]

I didn't keep up with it really, but RE: Stick of Truth - I was under the impression (from press around the time when Fractured But Whole was announced) that Matt and Trey initially wanted Obsidian back.  Did subsequent interviews reveal differently?

 

I was also under the impression that despite Obsidian stating (again around the time FBW was announced) they didn't have time to work on it when asked, it was a forgone conclusion that Ubisoft would put development with one of its ~43(!) subsidiaries rather than using a 3rd party like Obsidian.  Ubi wasn't like THQ who'd started Stick of Truth in using 3rd parties (and with 43 subsidiaries, who can blame them?).

[Blarghagh]

I'm not saying Obsidian are evil, just that Chris' allegations are not necessarily wrong and he isn't someone you can't trust to talk about Obsidian having issues that are related to the senior management.  

 

Him writing too much for Durance isn't Obsidian's fault, the issue is how Obsidian reacted to it  and is expounded on at length why they were unprofessional in their reaction in the Codex posts that seemingly are coming out every hour at this point from Chris.  Yes he's probably disorganised and probably not the perfect game director, but he has said repeatedly he doesn't think he's that good at game directing, there have been multiple quotes on that over the years.  The issue isn't the overwriting for Durance or his bad project management on Alpha etc, because he has absolutely confessed to that fact over the years.  The issue is how he was treated on leaving and how true his allegations that Fergus and co are not running the company particularly well are.

 

It's one thing to write too much for your characters and put your hand up, it's another to do a bad job then be treated unprofessionally by management about it then for the solution to be ballsed up.  

 

Also re your points about Chris being Obsidian and being responsible for all these issues, that's something he actually addressed in RPGCodex posts that aren't copied over.  Chris got no severance from Obsidian or stock, he apparently did not have an ownership stake and wasn't in any position to overrule Fergus. The picture of Chris as a founding shareholder who let things happen doesn't jar with him saying he left with nothing and how Fergus pretty much overruled the structure he set down for narrative design at Obsidian. 

 

You can't really say it's Chris screwing the business deals when he's never ever held a job title that involved signing said business deals, he's always been "lead creative director" or narrative lead or somesuch.  He's responsible for the games and product he made, not the jilted games he wasn't a part of because he's not Fergus signing the deals.

 

He also said Obsidian/Paradox offered him a role on Tyranny because apparently he "had" to be part of that game according to Paradox, but he said no and apparently was not involved after he left. 

 

The Kotor2 Lucasfilm story has pretty much never been gainsaid afaik and the idea that it wasn't a holiday deadline issue is interesting, I'd like to see Fergus talk about that because that story is widely believed.  But the fact you cite Fergus openly saying it was his ****up means that Chris is wrong about Fergus not being the sharpest pencil is a bit weird.

 

I also never said that bad management caused the Microsoft situation, I'm saying that the Tyranny situation and the Stick of Truth situation and the Glassdoor reviews mean that the burden of proof is not on Chris to prove that Obsidian are anything other than saints.  Which is fair enough.   

 

I think the two of us are poorly matched in communication styles, we seem to both do a lot of "I didn't say that"

 

I didn't say he screwed the business deals, and like I said Feargus has been pretty open about his failures. Regarding KotOR II, I don't have the source on hand right now but Feargus admitted in an interview that he had gotten verbal confirmation for three more months of development time. His (massive) blunder came when he completely neglected to get the contract amended or get it in writing in any other way. Then LucasArts restructured, and the old contract was still in place, whereas Obsidian had been developing under the assumption their deadline was further away. I'd be the last to imply that Feargus can't be an idiot.

 

Where I consider Chris to have a major hand is generally in mismanagement of time and budget given to him as lead designer. Like I said, those three months are unlikely to have made a dent considering the scope and amount of content cut from KotOR II, at most it would have given them time to polish what they had up a bit more. It's not as simple as "he just wrote a bit too much for Durance", it's exemplary of a developer who consistently overestimates and overreaches. If we take Eric's statements about Durance and GM to be true, Chris' overreach on his two PoE companions alone cost them significant amounts of development time to implement a workable version. Apply this style to the lead of the entire design division of a game team and your game team and it's easy to see how KotOR II and Alpha Protocol ended up as the dictionary definitions of "feature creep".

 

Of course, that blame doesn't fall squarely on Chris' shoulders as game development is a team effort, and especially upper management should have caught this (and certainly never put Chris in that role again after KotOR II) but the consistent finger pointing on his part just serves to remind me of Peter Molyneux.

 

I'll take your word over his foundership and stakes, since I don't visit the Codex. It's odd since he's been widely credited as a founder of Obsidian, and it makes me wonder what kind of leverage they even had over him. But like I said, I'm sure Obsidian did screw this up. I'm just not buying Chris' version of events where he's the put upon underdog, especially after reading his answer to "how did you try to change from higher up the totem pole" was "I tried to have a conversation about it".

[Carados]

To be honest, my thoughts are mixed. Perhaps Obsidian leadership should take a hard look at the mirror and reflect this, since they obviously didn't handle this well, but at the same I can't say that I approve Avellone's actions. I just think his behaviour isn't professonal. First he keeps throwing mud at Obsdian with snarky myriad comments for months etc, then he fires the full salty load right before the launch of PoE 2. But maybe it all tells a lot about hurt feelings.

 

In any case as a fan, I can't say this or that since i'm not privy to all the details. I just hope that Chris realizes that he is not coming clean out of this mess either.

Edited May 2, 2018 by Carados

[Malcador]

Wherever the truth lies, is not for me to judge, but pulling this type of stunt, just before the flagship of the company is released is a pretty big **** move on part of Avellone, which could mean that some people might lose jobs, if this impacts the sales of the game in a meaningful way.

 

And for that very reason, I am more inclined to believe, that Obsidian, is in this case the lesser kind of evil...

 

Eh, I doubt anyone is going to be losing their job as a result of Avellone's comments on the Codex of all places.

[213374U]

You're totally correct that Obsidian has a record of poor business decisions but for a lot of that time, Chris was Obsidian. And he has a similar history even before that. There's a reason all this freelance work he does is as a writer. In fact, by his own admission he was invited back to write on Tyranny (supposed contractual nonsense notwithstanding). Chris' portfolio coincides with the most egregious examples of Obsidian's "troubled history" with finished and complete products, and for such a big name in the industry a disproportionally huge number of projects he worked on, before and while at Obisidian, got cancelled. It's a testament to the power of his writing that he still got senior roles after serving as a lead designer on KotOR II, whose very public development failure and unfinished nature are all but legendary and would have buried the career of most other game designers.

Most of this whole thing is he-said-she-said so not gonna bother commenting, but I think that's a seriously skewed perspective. Since when is specific QA work a designer's responsibility? If anything, it would have been the project lead's problem. And remember that KotORII was developed in little over a year, and had to be out the door for the holiday season. Suggesting that that's somehow Chris's fault in order to somewhat justify management's alleged "mistakes" in their later treatment of him is kind of a **** move, dude.

 

I think you (not you in particular) are generally overestimating how much influence someone can have on a company's decision making and operational processes just because they own a stake in the business. I've seen several owners forced out in the context of a startup because of disagreements over management practices and personal issues with the little cliques that inevitably form over time that came to a breaking point, usually over something trivial. In the end nothing substantial changes, and people get pushed out, "owner" or not. The question is just how much you actually own. In this case, the answer was clearly "not enough".

 

I can maybe believe the story that the guy couldn't organize a piss-up in a brewery, but that's neither here nor there, because he wasn't project lead or producer. And we know it wasn't Chris negotiating the contracts with publishers. Maybe the reason he's a freelance writer is simply because that's what he wants to do and prefers to leave the organizational stuff (and the interpersonal bull**** that comes associated) to people who handle it better?

 

What bothers me the most here is the timing of the comments. The interview was years in the making and he didn't have a say on when it was to be released—that was up to the fine folks of the prestigious KKKodex. But he did make the decision to comment in the thread just a few days before Deadfire is released, which I find hard to reconcile with his other remarks about his feelings towards the people at Obsidian, barring management. Not that I think this will substantially affect the game's performance, but if there was a time window when this **** could hit for 9999 damage, this is it.

Edited May 2, 2018 by 213374U

[Mamoulian War]

 

Wherever the truth lies, is not for me to judge, but pulling this type of stunt, just before the flagship of the company is released is a pretty big **** move on part of Avellone, which could mean that some people might lose jobs, if this impacts the sales of the game in a meaningful way.

 

And for that very reason, I am more inclined to believe, that Obsidian, is in this case the lesser kind of evil...

Eh, I doubt anyone is going to be losing their job as a result of Avellone's comments on the Codex of all places.

I meant his comments might be reason for lost sales. We had already one person in this thread to cancel his pledge. I am wondering how many more people could do the same...

 

Even 1000 people cancelling, means about 50000 USD to be paid back. And that is basically money for 1 person contracted for 1 year...

[Blarghagh]

Since when is specific QA work a designer's responsibility?

 

In my personal experience, QA can't test my stuff if I haven't had time to put it in.