Chris Avellone: The Final Frontier

[Yonjuro]

 

This really isn't a good look for Avellone.

 

To all of the younger readers, those without a lot of real world job experience,  Avellone is giving you a tutorial on what not to do when you leave a job (unless you aren't planning on ever getting another one).

 

Unless your former employer is breaking a law, when you leave, SHUT UP.  

 

(In case anyone was wondering, non-compete clauses are not enforceable in California.)

 

The man doesn't seem to be having any trouble finding work, though.

 

 

 Note that my comment was addressed to younger people. If you have a reputation of producing solid work, a company might take a risk in hiring you. It is a risk though. If you publicly trashed your previous company, a new company has to weigh the risk that you may later trash them.

 

 I stand by the comment, if a younger person mistakes Avellone's sour grapes for heroism,  that person will have a very short career.

[Yonjuro]

 

99.9% of the writers in gaming aren't MCA. They would have much less success than he has finding new work if they did something like this. He is one of the most revered in the business.

Yup. But by the same token, 99.9% of people aren't public figures and won't get the kind of exposure he does, so it's not going to matter whether they publicize their grievances. Nobody cares if Joe the Janitor tweets that he's owed overtime... probably not even prospective employers. Moot point.

 

 

 

 It's really more the reverse. Check the news. Several previously unknown people have gotten fired when they inadvertently wrote a famous tweet.

 

 Employers now check social media because they now need to. If Joe the Janitor makes a habit of writing bad things about his former employers, he will have trouble finding work, unless there is a major shortage of janitors who can do the work as well as he can.

 

 Avellone is having less trouble because there IS a major shortage of people who authored Planescape:Torment. 

[Yonjuro]

 

Yeah, probably not a good idea to air your employer's dirty laundry in an industry-related public venue for a comparatively small professional sector under your real name, if you are doing online interviews and can't claim to be a household name. But that's a far cry from the original general warning to SHUT UP about your former employer's chitty practices if you intend to have a job ever again.

 

 First off, all we know is that Avellone resents Obsidian. We don't know whether they have actually done anything wrong or whether Avellone is just being a jerk. The reason we may suspect the latter is that real grievances are redressed in court or by the relevant government agencies, not on social media. So, I'm going with that explanation. Reasonable people may disagree - we don't really have all of the information. 

 

...

 

So, to recap: the original "advice" as worded probably doesn't apply to 99% of people (because nobody cares and/or because they don't work in game development) and it obviously doesn't apply to Chris Avellone, because his rep (so far) can take the hit. As a recommendation to up-and-coming nobodies in the game biz? Sure. How many of them would read it and go "gee, who would'a thunk it", though?

 

 

 My advice applies to 99% of people, not to Avellone.

 

 Avellone may get away with it because of his previous reputation. A less established person will not. Companies read social media posts before making an offer because they now have to. It isn't necessary to be famous or to work in an insular industry for people to hear your publicly stated opinions. 

[Zoraptor]

Whatever else, Chris should not be dragging other people into this. If John Gonzalez is highly successful let him be successful and don't drag him into your personal feud to make a point (worse, to make someone else not involved until you criticised them look bad), that's extraordinarily uncool. Also, hating management roles and not being good at them means your management ideas are highly unlikely to be valued because, well, your management roles have been a mess which strongly implies your management ideas result in said messes. Say what you like about Feargus but he's kept Obsidian going for 14 years, one suspects that for all his expectation setting processes Chris would not have managed 14 months. They'd no doubt have been an extremely aspirational 14 months to be fair, but...

 

I don't know, looks to me like another half a year could have made for a pretty different game, while still remaining way under the original's development time. At the time there was a lot of rage directed at LucasArts over that.

 

 

It would have been an extra 3 months though, not 6. Given release state I very much doubt they could- or should have even tried, really- have got the droid planet in, though the droid factory must have been close to inclusion even with the short deadline. Given Chris's tendency toward being over enthusiastic in content production we may simply have got a larger, but equally 'broken' release if he was not reined in. Unfortunately, given his recent behaviour and despite admitting that he doesn't like/ isn't good at management he'd likely be using that as another stick against Obsidian as well. Ultimately, Chris's problems as a designer/ manager/ writer all seem to stem from the same base issue, he just plain overproduces content. That's a better flaw in theory than underproducing, but it's still a flaw since it gums up the production pipeline and that stuff has to be implemented/ cut/ proofed/ edited etc etc. For that reason it's worse, practically, than underproducing if you're producing far too much.

 

And, critically, he did it in PST and was still doing exactly the same thing 15 years later when it came to PoE time. It's all very well to be self critical but it's another to act on the self criticism, and even if Chris's word were gospel it certainly would not be only Obsidian not learning from their mistakes.

 

 

 

Any source for that Matt&Trey comment? I've missed that.

Ubisoft own the rights though, why would they outsource the game somewhere when they have about 50 studios of their own who can create the game.

 

 

Ubisoft owning the rights was the critical thing, if Derp Silver or Nordic had picked up the rights things may well have been different. IIRC they implied they were more or less happy with Obsidz and said that the main reason for the delays in SoT was their continual tinkering with the script. Having said that, the Ubi San Fran (which still amuses me, given the Smug episode of SP) sequel did not seem to have the same problems.

[The Sharmat]

 

 

(In case anyone was wondering, non-compete clauses are not enforceable in California.)

 

.....

 

It's a lot of dumb drama going back and forth, but Chris is totally right on one aspect: It never hurts to run paperwork by a lawyer and get their take on it.

 

 

Agreed. Where he went wrong was in trying to trash his former employer in the public sphere. He is famous and may get away it if he doesn't make a habit of trashing former employers, but it is not a good idea for anyone who plans to get another job.

 

Avellone will never work on a major project again. That might have been the case anyway, but this has basically guaranteed any future work in this industry will be as a stretch goal to random kickstarters.

[Blarghagh]

 

 

 

 

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...

Or maybe that 1 person is just one person. Or maybe that one person represents 10 percent, which is still just a handful of people.

 

Honestly the idea that 1000 people are going to cancel over this is fairly absurd. Single digits seems a better bet.

Yeah, not to mention then maybe I, as someone totally in Obsidian's corner and who can't stand CA's whiny, passive-aggressive narcissism, should pull my support of 'Pathfinder: Kingmaker' because he is involved with that project? It would never even occur to me to do something like that.

 

The only think about this whole thread that blows my mind is that there actually exist people for whom something as utterly stupid and meaningless and laughable as this story evokes such a passionate emotional response in them. I choose to reserve my passionate emotional responses to stories about children being gassed to death in Syria.

Completely off-topic, but when I did 'community engagement' for a terrible local mobile game company I'd often see those public social media "I DEMAND A REFUND" posts but at the time I also ran the customer service mail account and I'd rarely see a refund request. Two things confused me:

 

1) I don't know why they didn't follow through, our games were completely awful.

 

2) About a fourth of those social media tantrums came from territories the game wasn't even available in, so they could never have purchased it in the first place.

 

[Ganrich]

@The Sharmat - Let's be fair, though. MCA wasnt going to work on anything major the moment he stated he was going to contract out his talents piecemeal. He did some minor writing on Prey, but as long as he is a free agent he will likely just do small things here and there. While he may play a small part on bigger titles.

 

As to Trey and Matt and South Park... The big publishers have been "almost" exclusively producing their products in house for years. The moment Ubisoft bought South Park they were likely to start producing titles in house. The only titles I can think of in recent memory that a AAA publisher made with an outside developer has been Titanfall 1 and 2. Now EA owns Respawn. However, maybe I am unaware of something else that has been produced by outside studios.

[Orogun01]

 

 

This really isn't a good look for Avellone.

 

To all of the younger readers, those without a lot of real world job experience,  Avellone is giving you a tutorial on what not to do when you leave a job (unless you aren't planning on ever getting another one).

 

Unless your former employer is breaking a law, when you leave, SHUT UP.  

 

...

IDK, I feel like with things GlassDoor and Indeed that might be changing. Granted, reviews in those places are anonymous but companies will definitely loot at their culture and management if it starts to impact their image.

 

 

Sure. The important word here is anonymous. If there is a systemic problem at a company and the GlassDoor ratings consistently say that the same thing is wrong, a company will try to fix it.

 

 Also note that companies perform exit interviews. If they consistently hear from departing employees that  X is an issue, they will fix X because having a high turnover rate is expensive. Every company cares about turnover rate. 

 

I can say that the company I'm currently working for doesn't, they only care when it affects their bottom line. They're more than willing to put people through a perpetual crunch rather than to hire the number of persons necessary in order to properly manage the workload. It has affected different departments and led to many firings and quitting from people that were burn out. It was only when they actually saw the magnitude of the mess they made that they began to amend things a little, and now it seems like they might be going back to what it was before.

 

TL;DR: exit interviews mean squat when the problem is the boss.

[Blarghagh]

Sorry to hear that Oro. Game dev is rough.

[Orogun01]

Sorry to hear that Oro. Game dev is rough.

Don't worry I'm far removed from the actual development and I have managed to keep the worst of it away. Also, i'm now working for a toy company and I can assure you that product development in general is hell. Games actually might have the benefit of die hard fans that will rail against corporate evils, no such thing for the people that make the Peppa toys.

[Mebrilia]

So i wonder why Chris Avellone is not allowed to post here? 

 

Sorry Obsidian i supported you in past.. Pillars of Eternity, Fallout New Vegas,Neverwinter nights 2 and so on... But this is sad and is even petty i am sorry for Chris but more important i am sorry for you.

 

Chris Avellone is a rare quality writer and is sad when a company he used to trust was unable to see this and managed to damage him in this level. Is also interesting how Obsidian is in total damage control and avoid to public details that could shread light on this pityful situation.

 

I am not supporting this... I won't buy Pillars of Eternity dead fire or future Obsidian product since i don't feel Obsidian is ethic anymore.

 

Good luck out there.

[The Sharmat]

RPG Codex was one of the communities basically 100% guaranteed to want to believe every part of this. That's why it's there.

Edited May 3, 2018 by The Sharmat

[injurai]

RPG Codex was one of the communities basically 100% guaranteed to want to believe every part of this. That's why it's there.

 

Aren't they saying we'd be the ones to disbelieve it

[Urthor]

RPG Codex also actually organised and set up the interview with Avellone that Avellone then volunteered the answers for which started this whole mess so :shrug: when you actually organise game journalism things happen on your site

Edited May 3, 2018 by Urthor

[The Sharmat]

RPG Codex also actually organised and set up the interview with Avellone that Avellone then volunteered the answers for which started this whole mess so :shrug: when you actually organise game journalism things happen on your site

Didn't they also do a much earlier interview with him where he pissed them all off because he said the main thing he'd change about Planescape: Torment was add more voice acting?

Edited May 3, 2018 by The Sharmat

[Mebrilia]

And so what is your point?.. The fact somebody likes someone else job doesn't mean some idea can't be disliked....

Edited May 3, 2018 by Mebrilia

[213374U]

It's really more the reverse. Check the news. Several previously unknown people have gotten fired when they inadvertently wrote a famous tweet.

 

 Employers now check social media because they now need to. If Joe the Janitor makes a habit of writing bad things about his former employers, he will have trouble finding work, unless there is a major shortage of janitors who can do the work as well as he can.

 

 Avellone is having less trouble because there IS a major shortage of people who authored Planescape:Torment.

I checked. The only cases of nobodies being fired over tweets that I've been able to find are over racism/sexism, or stupid **** like burger flippers taking pictures of themselves urinating on the food they prepare. The latter most likely simply goes viral and someone forwards it to HR. The former is kind of a huge no-no in the current political climate and everyone must be seen enforcing a zero-tolerance policy. In either case, the company would be left looking bad if they didn't fire the person in question. Not quite what we're discussing here.

 

In any case, the odds seem astronomically small. I'm just not big on fearmongering to keep people in line over what they feel may be crappy workplace conditions or practices, and I'm still not convinced that HR/marketing people have nothing better to do than scour social media all day for employees running their mouths. Maybe it's an American thing.

 

As an aside, I badmouthed my previous employer plenty in my current job interview. They dgaf and I still got the job. Anecdotal evidence is anecdotal, etc.

 

 

We don't know whether they have actually done anything wrong or whether Avellone is just being a jerk. The reason we may suspect the latter is that real grievances are redressed in court or by the relevant government agencies

Heh, if you say so. At least you acknowledge the possibility that it may not be so. That statement implies that so long as something is legal it cannot be unethical, and I'm sure you understand that's not always the case.

[Daled]

I don't understand why some people are so quick to completely believe to one source (being it one or the other) even to the point of asking for a refund and damage the company (and the people that work there).

 

Don't you think that's not really fair? If you invert the situation around, would be fair to hurt CA and the company whose working with based on speculations? 

Edited May 3, 2018 by Daled

[Zoraptor]

So i wonder why Chris Avellone is not allowed to post here?

 

No ex Obsidian dev has used their work accounts to post after leaving so far as I am aware. The only ex Obsidian staff I'm aware of posting after leaving are Cant/ Eldar who already had a forum account and Matt Rorie who was marketing (and that's iirc, and only one post after leaving). If Roguey is to be believed dev forum accounts can only be used on site anyway.

 

He has a better argument for having his account deleted. Even then iirc it's a non trivial task to actually delete an account/ posts instead of locking them and hiding the posts, and there's no obligation to do so unless it's legally required.

 

Indeed, there's no obligation to allow anyone to say anything here or on any other company forum, let alone allowing a disgruntled former employee to vent their spleen using an 'official' account.

Edited May 3, 2018 by Zoraptor

[Urthor]

Deleting accounts is bad practice because suddenly their email/IP address information disappears from your system, which means no email/IP information for spam filter or for picking up multi-accounts.  Database dependencies etc.  If you delete Avellone's account, then Avellone makes a multiaccount to post racist abuse for example, if you deleted Avellone's account you'd have zero chance of catching him (you'd also have zero chance if he VPN'd up but hey that's the internet.  Afaik IPB 3.0 doesn't allow you to sniff user packets for MAC address in the Admin panel but you can do that manually if you are so inclined).  

 

Nobody ever deletes accounts on IPB on almost all forums, even though that is technically a feature that leaves all the old posts up under a "deleted user" with a blank avatar, it's just bad practice.  Probably should just make sure the usergroup says he's left the company and leave it at that. 

 

But "why isn't my account deleted" is a conversation users have with mods super commonly, and that's the answer.  Weirdo new European data laws excepted, no you don't have a right to have your IP address data deleted off the system because that's how you filter out trolls.  

Edited May 3, 2018 by Urthor

[Armanz]

I don't understand why some people are so quick to completely believe to one source (being it one or the other) even to the point of asking for a refund and damage the company (and the people that work there).

 

Don't think that's not really fair? If you invert the situation around, would be fair to hurt CA and the company whose working with based on speculations? 

 

There's always gonna be flocks of sheep mindlessly trudging along.

 

Or trolls.

 

Or maybe people that can only live in extremes.

 

None of it I could fathom to understand or even relate to.

Come to think of it my comment seems harsher than I intended to but it makes me sad and angry to read about people doing a 360 because of 1 comment on Codex of all sites and not wanting to support a game (anymore) that they seemed to like. I think it's a phenomenon of our current culture or maybe I'm just overinterpreting but it really seems to me that these days there's only extremes anymore and no grey.

[The Sharmat]

I don't understand why some people are so quick to completely believe to one source (being it one or the other) even to the point of asking for a refund and damage the company (and the people that work there).

 

Don't think that's not really fair? If you invert the situation around, would be fair to hurt CA and the company whose working with based on speculations? 

Gamers talk about demanding refunds and boycotts all the time. They almost never actually do it in any numbers.

Edited May 3, 2018 by The Sharmat

[Urthor]

All the talk of refunds and boycotts are actually super effective because overall brand sentiment actually translates extremely well into impacting your product.  It doesn't impact the bottom line on THIS product because most people are too lazy to cancel pre-orders, but on the sequel and DLC it sure as hell does impact sales and DLC attachment rates.

 

Like the honest to god actual reason that most of corporate America actually just isn't as unethical as Comcast because it's actually unprofitable to be unethical.  EA has actually made a significant effort in this area because they've realized this which is why they canned ME:A so fast and basically were willing to write off micro transactions in Star Wars.   

 

It's just super hard to sell something new when you are going uphill in terms of brand sentiment.  The original product probably has a lot of sunk cost in terms of marketing and users already making their judgments on it even if a scandal pops up halfway through.  They've already made the decision to purchase months before and have a significant sunk cost in terms of time spent watching marketing and their own anticipation.

 

But they are noticeably less accepting of your new stuff when the brand sentiment goes down because they don't have any sunk cost spent paying attention to the product.  

 

Even if the boycott doesn't impact sales all the people selling stuff cringe hard when anything negative stuff hits the wall, but at the same time they need to be held accountable for unethical behavior otherwise bad stuff keeps happening.  

Edited May 3, 2018 by Urthor

[LittleRose]

Okay, one word to the ones believing Chris to be a totally innocent victim:

All those years, he's been just dropping hints about feeling treated badly. Now he suddenly puts this on the table, just days before the release of Deadfire. Now, what other game with a similare gameplay is scheduled for late summer? Pathfinder: Kingmaker. Who did a major part of the writing for it? Chris Avellone!

 

Basically, he's making these accusations now, years(!) after he quit, because he wants to make sure that people buy Kingmaker instead of Pathfinder. He could have told us years ago, but he's doing it right now. Right now that his new RPG is about to compete with the first major Obsidian RPG he hasn't been working on.

He's doing something that could keep so many people from buying this game for ethical reasons, it could destroy the company. It could put how many employees on the streets? Just for his petty revenge on the management and his business benefits, he's putting the jobs of secretaries, game designers, programmers, janitors and others at stake. Many of those have families and would lose their health insurance, too. And in my opinion, that's just as bad as what obsidian ist supposed to have done to him. So, you boycot Deathfire, you should boycot Kingmaker, too. Otherwise you'd be a hypocrate to me. (I know you don't care at all, but I'm saying it anyway.)

 

I don't want to have anything to do with their dirty games, I'm just an innocent customer. So I'm going to buy both games anyway, but later, when they get cheaper. I don't have much money myself right now, else I'd gladly spend the full price on both, because even Chris didn't do all the work on his own, and his current colleagues are as innocent as Obsidian's employees.

But most of all I'm going to buy them because I'm a selfish jerk, and I don't want my fun spoiled because of other people's lack of business ethics. If you want to be the one being punished for their mean and unethical behaviour towards each other, be my guest. As long as they don't commit any capital crime, I don't see any reason why I should be the one suffering from this.

Edited May 3, 2018 by LittleRose

[ArenCordial]

Okay, one word to the ones believing Chris to be a totally innocent victim:

All those years, he's been just dropping hints about feeling treated badly. Now he suddenly puts this on the table, just days before the release of Deadfire. Now, what other game with a similare gameplay is scheduled for late summer? Pathfinder: Kingmaker. Who did a major part of the writing for it? Chris Avellone!

 

Basically, he's making these accusations now, years(!) after he quit, because he wants to make sure that people buy Kingmaker instead of Pathfinder. He could have told us years ago, but he's doing it right now. Right now that his new RPG is about to compete with the first major Obsidian RPG he hasn't been working on.

Chris is doing contractual work on Pathfinder:  Kingmaker.  I highly doubt Chris is getting anything like a percent of profits to give him any real motivation to try and divert people to Kingmaker.   Now sure the timing on this makes it pretty obvious that this was done to put a black eye on Obsidian's management right before a major release, but honestly do you think Chris is trying to get people to make a boycott?  I don't think Chris would believe that would succeed or have anything other than a very minor impact.

 

Frankly I think its because of the timing of Deadfire this is more likely to get posted in the larger game media sites and layoffs might be coming as Deadfire wraps up (its a serial problem at Obsidian) and there might be unlucky employees who can add some fuel to fire and verify parts of the story. 

 

In my eyes the most damaging thing in there is Tyranny's team was gutted to get out PoE, something Paradox wouldn't be thrilled to hear (though I doubt its all that rare an occurance).  Most publishers probably wouldn't be bothered by poor treatment of an employee but paying for a product that's only getting minimal work though....If other publishers see that on a major site, I could see more reservations with them giving Obsidian a contract.   That'd be a far bigger black eye in the long run than a few cancelled preorders.

Edited May 3, 2018 by ArenCordial