Chris Avellone: The Final Frontier

[Orogun01]

I live in the midwest and in my state 99% of all businesses are small to mid-sized businesses.

I live in south Florida and currently we're having a development boom, which means that a bunch of liberals are going to develop the area and displace the indigents. Also every company seems very keen on paying way less than the national average. My advice for rednecks is: Hold on to your guns and be ready to use them if someone wants to "develop" your county.

[DragonWiz]

 

I live in the midwest and in my state 99% of all businesses are small to mid-sized businesses.

I live in south Florida and currently we're having a development boom, which means that a bunch of liberals are going to develop the area and displace the indigents. Also every company seems very keen on paying way less than the national average. My advice for rednecks is: Hold on to your guns and be ready to use them if someone wants to "develop" your county.

 

 

I live in sarasota, I heard there will be more jobs because of the tech companies. 

[Skazz]

 

 

 

 

@Karkarov - did you see Avellone's live-tweet of Feargus' interview on Matt Chat?

Got any links to that? I'm curious.

Unfortunately, it’s kinda tedious to link them all individually. If you scroll back to 2/1/17 in his feed you should be able to find the threads

 

 

It's still a start. Thanks!

 

EDIT: Okay, I checked all the hotspots outlined by Chris and... I don't see anything scandalous in the contents of the interview? What's so terrible about, say, the fact that Feargus doesn't lose sleep over what could have been (specifically, missing the infamous 85% Metacritic bonus)? Am I missing something?

 

EDIT 2: *doesn't lose sleep. I accidentally swallowed a word.

 

 

Regardless what Feargus actually thinks about that lost metacritic bonus, his nonplussed attitude about it always struck me as a "we are happy and willing to work with publishers." They don't want to go around burning bridges because other publisher's might take notice, and often publishers want to run things in their interest. So it's best not to scare them off by overly high standards. Tis the unfortunate reality of an industry built around luxury products. Yes, all you nerds are lucky to even get to play games.

 

 

But... how is that bad? I mean, unless I'm mistaking the tone of your post.

 

All I meant to say was that the interview seemed fairly normal and level-headed. Which makes Chris' insistence on pinpointing things that weren't really conveyed there very strange and confusing to me.

 

(For the record, I agree with you. Also, on an unrelated note, I had no idea that Obsidian was initially supposed to develop Human Revolution. Huh.)

[Orogun01]

 

 

I live in the midwest and in my state 99% of all businesses are small to mid-sized businesses.

I live in south Florida and currently we're having a development boom, which means that a bunch of liberals are going to develop the area and displace the indigents. Also every company seems very keen on paying way less than the national average. My advice for rednecks is: Hold on to your guns and be ready to use them if someone wants to "develop" your county.

 

 

I live in sarasota, I heard there will be more jobs because of the tech companies. 

 

Not for you and definitely not high paying jobs, why waste money on an entrance level job that could be easily outsourced to a 3d world country. The irony of it all is that ultimately they end up going with freelancers based on the States because they speak the language (shorter development times) and can do the job.  Still, get ready for your home to rise up in price because its on a desirable location and some rich **** needs a tenth home.

 

Honestly, I don't think it's going to hit you guys since most of the development centers around south florida, you might see me and a bunch of other hispanics soon if things keep going the way they are down here.

[DragonWiz]

 

 

 

I live in the midwest and in my state 99% of all businesses are small to mid-sized businesses.

I live in south Florida and currently we're having a development boom, which means that a bunch of liberals are going to develop the area and displace the indigents. Also every company seems very keen on paying way less than the national average. My advice for rednecks is: Hold on to your guns and be ready to use them if someone wants to "develop" your county.

 

 

I live in sarasota, I heard there will be more jobs because of the tech companies. 

 

Not for you and definitely not high paying jobs, why waste money on an entrance level job that could be easily outsourced to a 3d world country. The irony of it all is that ultimately they end up going with freelancers based on the States because they speak the language (shorter development times) and can do the job.  Still, get ready for your home to rise up in price because its on a desirable location and some rich **** needs a tenth home.

 

Honestly, I don't think it's going to hit you guys since most of the development centers around south florida, you might see me and a bunch of other hispanics soon if things keep going the way they are down here.

 

 

That's kinda scary, isn't our governor Scott supposed to do something regarding this issue? 

[injurai]

 

 

 

 

 

@Karkarov - did you see Avellone's live-tweet of Feargus' interview on Matt Chat?

Got any links to that? I'm curious.

Unfortunately, it’s kinda tedious to link them all individually. If you scroll back to 2/1/17 in his feed you should be able to find the threads

 

 

It's still a start. Thanks!

 

EDIT: Okay, I checked all the hotspots outlined by Chris and... I don't see anything scandalous in the contents of the interview? What's so terrible about, say, the fact that Feargus doesn't lose sleep over what could have been (specifically, missing the infamous 85% Metacritic bonus)? Am I missing something?

 

EDIT 2: *doesn't lose sleep. I accidentally swallowed a word.

 

 

Regardless what Feargus actually thinks about that lost metacritic bonus, his nonplussed attitude about it always struck me as a "we are happy and willing to work with publishers." They don't want to go around burning bridges because other publisher's might take notice, and often publishers want to run things in their interest. So it's best not to scare them off by overly high standards. Tis the unfortunate reality of an industry built around luxury products. Yes, all you nerds are lucky to even get to play games.

 

 

But... how is that bad? I mean, unless I'm mistaking the tone of your post.

 

All I meant to say was that the interview seemed fairly normal and level-headed. Which makes Chris' insistence on pinpointing things that weren't really conveyed there very strange and confusing to me.

 

(For the record, I agree with you. Also, on an unrelated note, I had no idea that Obsidian was initially supposed to develop Human Revolution. Huh.)

 

 

It's just a defense of Feargus not losing sleep over certain things, and digging into the metacritic example a bit more as it's a good example of the type of thing to best not be too bothered by.

[Yellow Rabbit]

Seeing as literally no one stands to gain anything from what Avellone is doing right now (himself least of all), it likely is just long overdue emotions venting. Codex seems to be an appropriate place for that. Don't know why people bother searching for bits of rationale in the drunken neighbor's rants in the low-end bar down the street.

 

That said, his Obs's mismanagement allegations sound believable as hell, lack of proof notwithstanding. I have a creeping suspicion that every mid-to-large gamedev studio is a hot boiling mess from legal and financial standpoints anyway, or haven't shell out a decent game ever. Creative chaos and all that.

[AlphaShard]

 

 

 

I live in the midwest and in my state 99% of all businesses are small to mid-sized businesses.

I live in south Florida and currently we're having a development boom, which means that a bunch of liberals are going to develop the area and displace the indigents. Also every company seems very keen on paying way less than the national average. My advice for rednecks is: Hold on to your guns and be ready to use them if someone wants to "develop" your county.

 

 

I live in sarasota, I heard there will be more jobs because of the tech companies. 

 

Not for you and definitely not high paying jobs, why waste money on an entrance level job that could be easily outsourced to a 3d world country. The irony of it all is that ultimately they end up going with freelancers based on the States because they speak the language (shorter development times) and can do the job.  Still, get ready for your home to rise up in price because its on a desirable location and some rich **** needs a tenth home.

 

Honestly, I don't think it's going to hit you guys since most of the development centers around south florida, you might see me and a bunch of other hispanics soon if things keep going the way they are down here.

 

 

What the **** are you talking about? I'm in south Florida and I'm having the most stable tech job I've had in years. South Florida has been backwards and behind the rest of the country for way too long now. It's about time we catch up. 

[kirottu]

From the codex:

Transition from Publisher to Developer, Reversal of Roles: Feargus went through what I feel may have been poor training as a studio lead at Black Isle. In that position, he had more control over the projects, the funding, and more importantly, outside developers – in his role at Interplay, he was very much the publisher, and he was the one who made calls on BG1, BG2, etc. He controlled the funding, could make demands, could withhold payments, and also force capitulations in features and schedules.

 

Unfortunately, I believe this set a bad precedent for Feargus dealing with publishers in the future because we became one of the same outside developers he had formerly overseen when he was a publisher - the roles were reversed, and so was the power.

 

Suddenly he had to experience it from the other side, and he didn’t take to it well – the control was gone, and suddenly his demands could be ignored and fought, rather than accepted. The leverage was gone.

 

Even more importantly, Feargus’s behavior no longer had to be ignored by the person on the other end of the phone or in discussions in the conference room: Where once if Feargus asked a developer or contractor to do something, they would largely have to swallow it or fight to be polite in order to get paid or keep their project going, the reverse was very hard for Feargus to deal with, and led to a lot of shouting matches (which you could hear down the hall), and even hanging up on publishers. We knew about this because he’d come brag to us about when he hung up on a studio head or producer, which made me even more depressed, since it meant we’d likely lose another contract with no back-up plans (he actually did the bragging rounds from owner office to owner office when he shouted at someone in the studio as well, as if he was showcasing the strength of his management style).

 

Worse, Feargus didn't learn from this - instead, he passed the behavior along. When Feargus was in charge of outsourcing and other remote contracts, he behaved much like the publishers he railed against, which was depressing as well.

 

Overall, the position of having to answer to someone else didn’t often go well, and it’s much the reason I think Obsidian would be better off finding a way to completely self-publish their games because I don’t think any other option is going to work in the long-term.

I can't see how someone could be this bad at business and still keep the company afloat. Especially since it's in an industry where most companies last only couple of games before going down.

 

Financial Matters and Ethics: I also don’t know where the training for handling and responsibility for finances came from, but we didn’t see eye to eye on that, either, as I've said.

 

It went beyond the transparency in finances - the biggest shock came when the matter arose about paying back employees (not the owners, but our employees) who had given up their paychecks to keep Obsidian from going bankrupt. When we did start getting money in the bank again after this bleak period, however, the company's spending began accelerating again.

 

This made me uncomfortable, so at that time where our finances became healthy again, I brought up that since we had the means to do so, we should pay back the employees who gave up their paychecks to keep us going.

 

My comment was met with silence by all the owners.

 

I repeated the concern, but when I brought it up again, Feargus simply said, "we never promised we'd pay the employees back," as if that excused things - but paying the employees back didn’t seem like a technicality to me, this was the right thing to do.

 

He then said he wanted the matter dropped.

 

Fortunately, another owner did finally admit he agreed with me some time later (mostly because one of the unpaid employees confronted the owner on what was going on with it), he was someone Feargus would listen to, and when he brought it up (this time he asked for my support, even though he had been silent before), we were able to push Feargus into establishing a payback plan and get restitution for the employees who sacrificed for us - and this was well before any owner paychecks resumed (by this point, the owners were resolved to not getting paid back, so it wasn't a huge shift).

 

Overall, it seemed a shameful way to treat our employees who had sacrificed for us, and I wasn’t happy we even had to discuss compensating them – it didn’t seem to be something we should discuss, we should simply do it because it was the right thing to do.

I would expect Obsidian having much bigger turn over of employees if this is true. Or is the gaming industry just so bad they thought it wouldn't be any better if they left Obsidian?

Edited May 6, 2018 by kirottu

[jf8350143]

If I had signed the first de-ownering contract, however, with the non-competes, the problem would be that Tyranny would actually be the only RPG option I would have to work on (and any other Obsidian-sponsored RPGs they chose to exclude from the de-ownering agreement).

 

Isn't that the whole purpose of non-competes clause in the first place? To prevent people from working for the companies' direct competitors?

 

Is Chris tries to hint that the clause will last forever if he signed it? Because I strongly feel like he is trying to make people believe that without actually saying it out loud because that's not the offer he gets.

Edited May 6, 2018 by jf8350143

[Zoraptor]

 

I can't see how someone could be this bad at business and still keep the company afloat. Especially since it's in an industry where most companies last only couple of games before going down.

 

 

Yeah, and again it doesn't quite fit narratively with what we've seen as provable actions. Who publicly complained here about LucasArts re K2? Chris Avellone, not Feargus. Who publicly complained about the metacritic issue re FNV/ Bethesda? Chris Avellone, not Feargus. Who tried to clean up both issues? Probably not Chris, one suspects.

 

It's one thing to (allegedly) yell at someone in private, it's another to do so publicly. Whether LA or Beth had problems with Feargus or not we don't know because if it happened it was kept private by both sides, but an owner airing dirty laundry publicly is a whole level worse than doing so privately. And, once again, it illustrates why people might think Chris needed an NDA and is inconsistent with Chris complaining about Feargus not getting upset enough over the metacritic issue when it was brought up. And again again, he needs to pick one consistent position. If Feargus were yelling at, say, Beth in private about the metacritic situation but was too sanguine about it in public for Chris's tastes then that's far far better in terms of getting repeat business than the reverse position Chris seemingly wanted and adopted of yelling publicly, but being sanguine in private.

 

Practically, LA were out of 3rd party developed games anyway and Beth were intent on insourcing* titles as well, so it's likely neither outburst had real effect- then again, under those circumstances it was also impossible for Feargus to get repeat projects whether he was managerial Timur or managerial Gandhi.

 

*Hmm, someone should ask Chris on the Codex if the rumours of Beth putting in an offer for Obsidian is true.

Edited May 6, 2018 by Zoraptor

[Urthor]

 

 

Feargus kept BIS and Obsidian alive. This does not mean they were always healthy, but they were a place where RPGs could be made, that is true, and that's a good thing. My argument is that there were many things that could be done that would make both our company and our games better. There were reasons we couldn't build internal engines, why our developers (at BIS) didn't get support, and why without BioWare's Infinity Engine, BIS wouldn't have done much successfully (we had many, many failed projects - Torn, Stonekeep 2, etc. and those projects were incredibly expensive).

I did say a lot of positive things about Feargus in the ten years before and in an effort to be a good supporting owner, I did so in public even when he wasn't doing a great job - you had to start making excuses for why he skipped meetings, why he never got back to you or anyone else, why he would suddenly back out of conferences at the last minute, and explain to everyone who tried to get a hold of him that "he's busy at the moment, but I'm sure he'll get back to you." It was even worse when he'd asked you to set up the introduction, then left the person (usually a colleague of mine, or another figure in the industry) hanging. Giving excuses I felt was part of my job to help protect my boss, since at the time, I believe he had protected me as far back at Black Isle and it was one of the reasons I joined up with Obsidian.

I did have to quietly warn people I know not to count on Feargus to show up to conventions he agrees to go to, as he would often develop a sudden emergency shortly before the event (or sometimes, miss the flight entirely). It became especially ****ty when they'd advertised his presence well in advance.

But yes, I admit my public-facing message with Feargus was not negative - it couldn't be. At Obsidian, however, it was a different communication process and observations that got worse the more closely you worked with him and saw how decisions were made. The last year at Obsidian I worked especially closely with Feargus, and I got to see much more of his management style than I ever had - especially how he treated other employees.

 

It just never ends.  
 

[Urthor]

This is a very long answer, so I’ll condense it: nepotism (family and friends), works hard but often ineffectively, has poor designer skills but actively gets involved in design (Josh simply started ignoring him after a while, which became a pattern Parker didn’t even have time to notice), and in many ways, Parker is like a little Feargus except he works harder and gets more involved, which causes problems.

 

Parker’s behavior with Feargus during the PoE KS drive final hours was soul-crushing. While usually these fights were brief, they became longer and longer between the two.

 

He repeats a lot of the same mistakes and never seems to learn from them – and it’s embarrassing to have to remind him of them when he brings them up in front of others and asks your opinion.

 

One very specific thing: Both Chris Parker and Feargus have a wonderful habit of giving you room to come to a solution, and then when you when you present the solution, they tell you “it wasn’t the solution they hoped you would choose” (they already had one in mind), and then tell you to go with their decision. Here’s the thing – I don’t even care about that, but in a company where there’s never enough time and never enough money, you can’t waste so much as a day on dithering bull**** – just tell me what you want, if I have a problem with it, I’ll tell you, but chances are, I’ll agree and find a way to make it work and we won’t spend even more time arguing about how we got to this in the first place.

 

We had this happen on KOTOR2 (I finally had to give up and give Chris the interface, which he wasted months of developer time on – and the programmers we needed - for almost no result). Feargus did something similar when Feargus asked us to decide who should be narrative lead on Eternity – and then when we said, “we should offer the job to George Ziets,” Feargus just said, “no, you should have chosen Eric.” There were tons of things like this where I wish they’d just cut to the chase, because it made you hesitant to make a call because there was always that lurking feeling it had already been decided. And it’s time you don’t get back in a company where again, there’s never enough time.

 

Part of my extensive post-mortem of Chris Parker (I had pages, since I was trying to learn how to be a better manager by what not to do) was at his best, he would only waste two people's time - yours and his. At worst, he would waste entire department's time or even the whole team's time with feature shifts. Worse, he'd throw tantrums about his own schedules – often trashing them and throwing away promises of personnel and resources in defense of something he was doing. I don’t care about someone wanting to change the schedule, but again, that time was never given back, and the sudden nature of these changes would waste even more time and more planning that had been done with the expectation of promises to be fulfilled.

 

Another issue was not stopping to think before launching an action. As an example, Parker and other employees spent months trying to help someone get their immigration settled. It cost a lot of time, was distracting, and was a time sensitive matter. But as we were nearing the finish line of a months-long process, Chris Parker suddenly asked, “do we even want to keep her?” I couldn’t believe what I was hearing – you’re saying this now? Didn't you think this through?

 

This was typical, but it’s worse when you’re playing with people’s futures here, and carelessly.

 

On the plus side (but also echoes “repeating mistakes”) is when one of our games has gone to ****, Chris Parker is often sent in to rescue it, and it is in better shape after, even if it's not going to be destined for the quality bin. However, it would be nice if the games hadn’t been bleeding internally in the first place (usually management-wise and staffing-wise). And it would be nice if we had someone consistent to be there who wasn’t Parker, since Parker has owner duties as well.

 

There was one telling meeting where Chris Parker told the company they were hiring someone to replace him for his position "to do what he did", and someone raised their hand and said, “but Chris, we don’t know what it is you do.”

[Infinitron]

No Obsidan owner left behind: http://www.rpgcodex.net/forums/index.php?threads/rpg-codex-interview-chris-avellone-on-pillars-cut-content-game-development-hierarchies-and-more.121588/page-126#post-5599622

 

Quick response: Darren and Jones are waiting for their payouts. Darren has said as much to me. Jones has said as much to me with his lack of action on anything.

 

Longer response: While Darren at least cares about games on some level, Jones doesn’t at all and has mastered the art of saying “no” to just about everything – he’d make a great technical director at a company that doesn’t make games, because he could find a way to say “no” to everything and dismiss it out of hand.

 

I was very surprised to see him as a lead programmer on Indiana, but not surprised to see that vanish, as Jones doesn’t tend to last long when there’s actual work to be done – he often can’t be bothered. (This was a problem as far back as KOTOR2, which I did confront him on – he also did it on Alpha Protocol before he lost interest in a few months because it was too much work.)

 

Jones is also one of the ones I point to in Fallout 2’s trouble development = Feargus kept trying to cater to to make sure he was all right, to make sure he was happy, to make sure he was pampered – but Jones was only biding his time so he could ditch Black Isle and switch over to Troika for more money and get a bigger payout. Meanwhile, his officemate (doing actual programming) was suffering like hell with no programming relief despite an experienced programmer sitting 5 feet away who could have helped with the Studio's workload at a time where many people were in danger of getting laid off. Jones first is the Jones' rule. He was also threatened with being de-ownered, but the difficult issue here is that I think Feargus was right to do so - he just consumes resources with no benefit to a project (at least he was for ALL the years I was working there).

 

Darren’s a frustrating case b/c he’s very smart, he’s more knowledgable about game best practices than most of the owners, and has empathy, but he’s so focused on getting his cash and such an abject coward and afraid of rocking the boat, that his opinions are useless because there’s no strength behind them – he caves at the first sign of resistance. He used to try and tell me what a valiant employee fighter he was. Through email. How tough he was for employee rights. Through email. I told him to his face I thought he was too afraid to raise anything that might get him in trouble.

 

He was at least as bad at communication and follow-up as both Feargus and Parker (probably moreso on the communication side), the biggest problem is he just seemed distracted all the time.

 

He was, however, approachable by a lot of employees because he came across as friendly, but he often couldn’t do anything to help things except “hey, buddy, how are you?” “Buddy, tell me more.” vs. actually, really helping someone.

 

Darren also spent forever on the PoE1 Backer Portal, providing further proof you shouldn’t ask an owner to do content work, it slows everything down – that’s not even a criticism, just the truth. No one seemed to absorb this.

 

Darren also had an amazing talent of both agreeing to Feargus’s requests (sort of) then not following them once he was out of Feargus’s radius… oftentimes when we had decided something at an owner meeting and agreed on a procedure, I noticed Darren would simply ignore it and not follow the procedure - even when someone needed it to be done.

 

I asked him about it (as a precursor to a larger question as to why he hadn't done something according to procedure).

 

And when I asked him why, he would simply say, “well, yeah, I haven’t talked to Feargus about that yet.” But we had talked. All of us. And we had agreed. In my mind, all I could think of was this person was being a blocker for no reason that made sense. And now he wasn't doing what we all agreed to until you talk... to Feargus... again?

 

As he was being "buddy" with me all I could think of (and then said) was: You won’t follow the procedure until you talk to him? After we talked? When is that? And that also means you won’t actually do what was decided until that vague future date? My dinosaur brain would simply say: Do it now, Darren, for ****'s sake, because you're making a mess where we already decided there wasn't one.

 

It was frustrating, but it was also one of those situations that because Darren was one of those who nodded and said the right things and even though he completely disregarded what Feargus told him to do, he got a pass because he acted like he was falling in line. Frankly, it was garbage. Parker did the same thing - and even said as much to our publishers as early on as KOTOR2 when diminishing Feargus's thoughts on production issues because Feargus was "out of touch and didn't understand producers or production anymore."

 

Jones at least had the balls to tell Feargus he was full of **** and we shouldn't do what he was saying (which quickly made him one of the most unpopular owners, because he could often argue with facts). It also made him the target of "well, you don't sound like you want to be an owner anymore" discussions, which weren't really discussions.

 

I will also say because Darren agrees with Feargus when pressured or frightened, that does make him very valuable when voting needs to be done, and it was good of Feargus to choose him to be one of the production triad of owners and give him a large % of shares to make that vote worthwhile.

 

Darren rarely, if ever, spoke to me (he was afraid to). However, while we didn’t have a good working relationship on Dark Alliance 1 back at Black Isle, I realized later on it was because Feargus never told Darren that he (Feargus) was coming into my office every other day to give advice and continual dumb changes on the story, so it required a lot of iteration, which (to my error) I didn't realize Darren couldn't be aware of because Feargus would tell him (right?), and I'm sure it surprised Darren to find me in a frustrated mood (Feargus' story iterations ranged from a wide variety of crap ideas, where you had to dig deep and wide to find the good in them - his craptastic story skills also caused a lot of problems on Dungeon Siege 3).

 

This overall lack of communication continued at Obsidian.

 

You don’t hear much about Darren, and that’s Darren's desire – he wants to stay "off the grid," he doesn’t want to run projects anymore (it's too much pressure), and he wants to be everyone’s friend while helping (almost) no one until he gets his payout, serves his time for a new master for a few years, then vanishes with his gold. I respect him for his insights, but not his character, which is weak and cowardly.

 

 

[IndiraLightfoot]

Chris burning all the bridges and entire communities! Nice judgment!

 

For a mid-size game dev firm, having landed deals and rights to work with Star Wars, D&D, Fallout, DS and South Park, and then making sure that most of these games have been very successful, it's nothing short of a miracle. Surviving all this time. Whatever the leadership output is, the word "bad" isn't what comes to mind as far as looking at results and products goes.

Edited May 6, 2018 by IndiraLightfoot

[DragonWiz]

Chris just keeping dropping bombs after bombs. Wonder what Obsidian employees are thinking right now. 

[Infinitron]

http://www.rpgcodex.net/forums/index.php?threads/rpg-codex-interview-chris-avellone-on-pillars-cut-content-game-development-hierarchies-and-more.121588/page-127#post-5599658

 

Jones has kept himself off the radar - and off of actual work - for many, many years.

 

As much as it was frustrating, I have to respect that kind of dodgy talent - and plus, he's got the privilege of remaining an owner despite threats from the CEO, so he knows how to go with the flow. "No worries, Gus, I'll keep my mouth shut - I need my payout. Whatever you say - forget what I was saying 5 minutes ago about all the facts about how things are off the rails - if you are threatening to un-owner me, I'll stay the course because I need that money."

 

What equally amazed me, however, was how quickly he would turn on programmers doing actual work and condemn them (one of our best project directors - who was a programmer, and an excellent one - was frequently hammered by him to the point where I wondered if it was because the PD was a programmer who was proving he could do far more than the baseline Jones had set, which is immediately threatening to a superior).

 

Jones also used the word "impossible" more liberally than he should in terms of what programming could do - and would never contradict it even when he realized it wasn't true, which was equally amazing. If you ever wonder why KOTOR2 couldn't auto-read save files (like every other RPG on console and PC could once BioWare decided to make it so), you can thank Jones for evaluating it as "impossible." Again, please note that he realized he was wrong, but he chose never to say anything about that. I have no idea why.

 

The only joy I had was when Jones and Parker would go at each other's throats (they hated each other for the simple reason that even if Parker was flawed, at least he did something - and Jones was all about not doing anything). Overall, as little as I respect Parker, at least he saw Jones for the production "oh, there's no way to do this" blocker that he was.

Edited May 6, 2018 by Infinitron

[DragonWiz]

http://www.rpgcodex.net/forums/index.php?threads/rpg-codex-interview-chris-avellone-on-pillars-cut-content-game-development-hierarchies-and-more.121588/page-127#post-5599658

 

Jones has kept himself off the radar - and off of actual work - for many, many years.

 

As much as it was frustrating, I have to respect that kind of dodgy talent - and plus, he's got the privilege of remaining an owner despite threats from the CEO, so he knows how to go with the flow. "No worries, Gus, I'll keep my mouth shut - I need my payout. Whatever you say - forget what I was saying 5 minutes ago about all the facts about how things are off the rails - if you are threatening to un-owner me, I'll stay the course because I need that money."

 

What equally amazed me, however, was how quickly he would turn on programmers doing actual work and condemn them (one of our best project directors - who was a programmer, and an excellent one - was frequently hammered by him to the point where I wondered if it was because the PD was a programmer who was proving he could do far more than the baseline Jones had set, which is immediately threatening to a superior).

 

Jones also used the word "impossible" more liberally than he should in terms of what programming could do - and would never contradict it even when he realized it wasn't true, which was equally amazing. If you ever wonder why KOTOR2 couldn't auto-read save files (like every other RPG on console and PC could once BioWare decided to make it so), you can thank Jones for evaluating it as "impossible." Again, please note that he realized he was wrong, but he chose never to say anything about that. I have no idea why.

 

The only joy I had was when Jones and Parker would go at each other's throats (they hated each other for the simple reason that even if Parker was flawed, at least he did something - and Jones was all about not doing anything). Overall, as little as I respect Parker, at least he saw Jones for the production "oh, there's no way to do this" blocker that he was.

 

 

Stop rating my posts as "retardred" you stooge. 

[Skazz]

 

 

Stop rating my posts as "retardred" you stooge.

 

Huh?

Edited May 6, 2018 by Skazz

[DragonWiz]

 

Stop rating my posts as "retardred" you stooge.

 

Huh?

 

 

Indeed. 

[Yenkaz]

So... Either every single manager and most co-workers Avellon has ever dealt with were incompetent or malignant and have held him back and it's a miracle Obsidian is even remotely operational...

 

-or-

 

He's often the problem himself and Obsidian has a better track record of games than most competitors.

 

I'm sliding from "I don't know, maybe he's justified and really have have had some bad experiences, or maybe he's just venting" to "He's attacking everyone at this point. I think the problem might be mostly himself?"

Edited May 6, 2018 by Yenkaz

[DragonWiz]

So... Either every single manager and most co-workers Avellon has ever dealt with were incompetent or malignant and have held him back and it's a miracle Obsidian is even remotely operational...

 

-or-

 

He's often the problem himself and Obsidian has a better track record of games than most competitors.

 

I'm sliding from "I don't know, maybe he's justified and really have have had some bad experiences, or maybe he's just venting" to "He's attacking everyone at this point. I think the problem might be mostly himself?"

 

But, which came first, the egg or the chicken? 

[Yenkaz]

 

So... Either every single manager and most co-workers Avellon has ever dealt with were incompetent or malignant and have held him back and it's a miracle Obsidian is even remotely operational...

 

-or-

 

He's often the problem himself and Obsidian has a better track record of games than most competitors.

 

I'm sliding from "I don't know, maybe he's justified and really have have had some bad experiences, or maybe he's just venting" to "He's attacking everyone at this point. I think the problem might be mostly himself?"

 

But, which came first, the egg or the chicken? 

 

 

The egg. At some point an animal we would agree on is a "chicken" and not its direct evolutionary ancestor would be born. Defining a single creature that fulfills this criteria is obviously near impossible, but it would exist at some specific point though we could argue as to where. This first chicken started out as an egg.

[DragonWiz]

 

 

So... Either every single manager and most co-workers Avellon has ever dealt with were incompetent or malignant and have held him back and it's a miracle Obsidian is even remotely operational...

 

-or-

 

He's often the problem himself and Obsidian has a better track record of games than most competitors.

 

I'm sliding from "I don't know, maybe he's justified and really have have had some bad experiences, or maybe he's just venting" to "He's attacking everyone at this point. I think the problem might be mostly himself?"

 

But, which came first, the egg or the chicken? 

 

 

The egg. At some point an animal we would agree on is a "chicken" and not its direct evolutionary ancestor would be born. Defining a single creature that fulfills this criteria is obviously near impossible, but it would exist at some specific point though we could argue as to where. This first chicken started out as an egg.

 

 

Blasphemy! 

 

I'm going to tell my high commander of your heresy. 

[Flouride]

 

i do not see that as a problem. You know, if someone owns a company, he most of the time hopes, that at least one of his children wil take over. And what is the best way how to give your children some taste of what might his future looks like, and get some more experience? Give them the opportunity to work at your company...

 

I was helping out in my parents business from the age of 16, and after few years, I have decided to follow different path, but my sister, which started at 24, is still following in their footsteps...

Please, don't excuse nepotism. IDK how things are run at Obsidian but I seen enough daddy's babies enough to know they will never get the real  work experience. There might the odd exception where the kid is actually hard working and putting in the effort but no worker is going to risk pressuring them.

 

There's a world of difference between working for your family and working in your family's company.

 

 

If there's an actual position for his kids, then I don't see it as a problem. Naturally when the kids are still kids, not even teenagers there's it's plain retarded to hire them. What is a 10 year old supposed to do? Ruin launch parties by taking the spotlight from the actual developers?

 

Hiring them as part time Q&A or something similar to give them a look at the industry isn't a bad idea (when they are of age to work). Most privately owned companies do hire relatives to smallish roles in the company to give them job experience and some money to spend which is totally fine.

If however you start creating job titles for your kids and hiring them when they are clearly not adept of doing the job, then yea.. you do have a problem and it will create problems with the actual workforce.