Chris Avellone: The Final Frontier

[aluminiumtrioxid]

Is it possible to learn this power?

 

Do not do the hopeless situation elder can

[Malcador]

 

 

 

"Proof you shouldn’t ask an owner to do content work, it slows everything down – that’s not even a criticism, just the truth."

 

Ironic.

Did you ever hear the tragedy of Chris Avellone, the Obsidian owner?

 

He could even stop his own projects from getting finished.

 

Is it possible to learn this power?

 

Only from Chris Roberts

[Lexx]

So this is what I imagine an Obsidian owner meeting looks like:

 

 

 

Is that a picture for ants? :>

[Flouride]

 

 

 

Would you employ that friend even if that friend is charging much more than another business which also has a good reputation on the market, but doing the work for e.g. 70% of the price? Because that would be pretty bad management.

 

 

I assume most people would rather pay someone they know and consider a friend rather than giving the business to someone they don't know at all. Not every decision is made based on cost alone even at well ran companies.

 

LOL no, if you run a business you don't just choose a friend, not considering the cost. Sure, if your friend does a great job AND he/she asks a fair price, you employ him/her. But if there are competition out there who also do a good job with a more competitive price, you would be foolish to not choose them. Of course you can do that if you don't care about the money, but you have to have a really well running studio to do that. And Obsidian is not a very well running studio.

 

 

Well, your whole question is pointless when we don't know the price for their accounting firms nor what others would charge.  Usually friends and relatives get a discount when doing business together. That's at least how things work around here.

 

I doubt paying little extra for accounting would make a dent on the budget Obsidian is running with.

 

[kirottu]

From the codex. Avellone posted lot of stuff during my sleepy-go-bye-bye time and this is just one of his posts.

 

 

Mmmm hmmm, and yet, I think Chris' earlier response to me suggests that he was in fact willing to put up with all sorts of management failures if he thought it was for a worthwhile cause - an inspiring cause.

That wasn't it (although it would have helped). The issue was I felt loyalty and indebted to Feargus.

 

To explain, for a long time, I thought Feargus had protected me from my early management failures back at Interplay (I definitely made some as a first lead on Torment) and watched out for me when I was under stress and working double-time on Fallout 2/Torment - and he told me as much, which I thought was a noble thing for a manager to do, so I resolved to support him as best I could because he clearly had my back.

 

During the last year at Obsidian, however, one of the breaking points (and I think he didn't realize how much his Interplay protection had meant to me personally) was he then told me he had actually done the exact opposite of what he said he'd done and that he hadn't done anything at all, and in fact, encouraged some of the troubles I had experienced. Other Obsidian employees have experienced similar revelations of past actions that turned out not to be true by Feargus's own admission.

 

Again I have hard time of believing what Avellone says, not because he makes Urquhart seem really evil, but because he makes him seem unbelievably stupid. Why would Urquhart try to sabotage his lead designer and deliberately make Avellone's work harder? And then admit about it? I can't even wrap my head around how would this conversation go.

 

FU: Remember those times you were the lead on both Fallout 2 and Torment?

MCA: I do. Thanks for having my back back then.

FU: Oh, I wasn't having your back. I was backstabbing you. Fun times.

MCA: What?!

FU: I was backstabbing you. Now about this Pillars of Eternity stuff...

 

Only way that could make even little bit of sense if Urquhart was trying apologize his past behavior.

 

It was a big shock to me, but I made sure to double-check with him to make sure I'd heard him right, then went back to my office and thought for a while. One big problem with this revelation was it was one of the reasons I'd defended him at Interplay, gone with him to Obsidian, and then defended all he'd done for there for the past 9 years... because I thought he'd stood up for me and made sacrifices for me as an employee. But he hadn't. It was like a chunk of my life had been derailed, and I felt sick about it. After this, I stopped defending him to others (although I didn't attack him) and I became more aware of other things he did that were causing problems. It didn't cause anger, it was just like having a veil pulled from your face and you started seeing things around you more clearly. I also started being a bit more blunt when I saw things going wrong (reviews, feedback, lack of clarity in decisions, pipeline wastes in time, resources, and money), which I imagine went over less well when compared to my previous behavior of being careful bringing these things up.

 

Overall, I just wanted (and still want) Feargus to be a good manager, treat people fairly, take a breath before doing something to alienate publishers until he doesn't need publishers anymore, and show some empathy for the states of his employees - and realize how his behavior can hurt them, either directly, or by example. Even if he may do other things to help them, it can't be hit or miss or be carelessly affect their lives (repeated sudden layoffs, favoritism, not dealing with immigration problems properly, not paying employees back, not trying harder to prevent project collapses without working hard on a back-up plan, and more). A lot of the problems we had (ex: Stormlands) could have been avoided, or we could have made a better plan - before doing another round of layoffs. And each problem made our situation more and more desperate (until PoE1, although PoE1 didn't save the company, it just helped our image and company morale - Armored Warfare actually kept things afloat for a long time, although the team wasn't given much thanks for that, imo).

I'm nitpicking here, but previously Avellone said employees got paid back, but they had do pester Urquhart to do so. Now he's saying they weren't paid back at all? Was there more than one situation where some employees gave their wages to Obsidian?

 

That said, the only other thing I wanted from Feargus? Was a plan. Where in the hell was the company going or supposed to go?

 

Fargo had a plan when I talked to him when I started working on WL2 part-time at inXile... he had a five-year plan that was very clear, made a lot of sense, and clicked. In all the years at Obsidian (no ****), there wasn't a sense of where the company should go, would go, or how it would get through the next few months.

 

Part of this can be explained by the financial desperation, but not all of it, and the frustration wasn't mine alone - the other owners (esp. Jones) would get extremely frustrated there wasn't some sort of compass guiding our efforts, and it showed. We just kind of reacted to things vs. planning them, which didn't help our stability.

I know people don't always act in the most logical fashion, but why would the owner who doesn't want to do anything be the most frustrated when there isn't a plan what to do next?

 

This kinda reminds me of some story I read or saw in TV or something. In it were this group of horrible people who lived or worked together. Everyone of them thought they were the good guy and all the others were horrible people. They always blamed others for their misery and didn't see how they themselves caused their own misery. Like, Jones doesn't want to anything, because Urquhart either micromanages or changes his mind on they fly making all the work Jones does null. And Urquhart does what he does, because if he isn't constantly on top of Jones Jones stops working.

 

It could be crowdsourcing may be the plan now, or making similar games to PoE and Indiana but it wasn't the 5-year plan at the time of my departur - and doing the same thing repeatedly may not help Obsidian in the long run without other changes. Also, I've noticed Feargus is taking more and more non-Obsidian roles (Fig, Zero Radius), and I'm worried those might be stepping stones for a future, final step from selling the company - which is good for him, but I don't know about everyone else.

Maybe this is Avellone's plan. He makes Obsidian into a rotting corpse no publisher wants. So no owner gets away from the personal hell they have created for themselves.

 

Sorry for going dark. You should never meet your heroes or read their posts at codex.

[Skazz]

You should never meet your heroes

 

I find myself in complete and utter agreement with this conclusion.

[Achilles]

Re: 5 year plans and Fargo - Fargo’s 5 year plan appears to be lots of crowdfunded sequels to games that are 20 years old.

 

Really hard to have a 5 year plan when your business model is pitching *new* ideas to publishers and making the ones that stick (usually without rights to the IP).

 

Between the WL2 Director’s Cut and TTON, I determined that Fargo has no idea what he’s doing and that the “in exile” routine was a sign of his narcissism. Endlessly fascinating to me that this is the horse Avellone is backing now.

 

Best of luck to him.

[Murp]

I've been wanting to get this off my chest since Lonesome Road.

 

Avellone's writing is like if a rock band like ACDC or something is at a concert playing their usual hits and out of nowhere the lead drummer pulls out like a harp or a clarinet and just starts playing in the middle of a song.

 

The drummer might be really REALLY good at playing that clarinet but no matter what it clashes with everything else that's going on and sticks out like a sore thumb, making it a mess. The rest of the band may try to go along with it at first, then try to play around it, but eventually they just give up and go backstage.

 

Then it's just some jackass playing a three hour clarinet solo at a rock concert you payed like 40-60ish dollars to go see.

 

What a pain in the neck it must be to work with that drummer..

[aluminiumtrioxid]

 

It could be crowdsourcing may be the plan now, or making similar games to PoE and Indiana but it wasn't the 5-year plan at the time of my departur - and doing the same thing repeatedly may not help Obsidian in the long run without other changes. Also, I've noticed Feargus is taking more and more non-Obsidian roles (Fig, Zero Radius), and I'm worried those might be stepping stones for a future, final step from selling the company - which is good for him, but I don't know about everyone else.

 

 

 

...Wait, so Feargus horribly mismanages Obsidian, which is a bad thing, but he may also be preparing to sell off the company, which would then come under new management, but that is also a bad thing?

 

I'm confused.

[Raygereio]

Between the WL2 Director’s Cut and TTON, I determined that Fargo has no idea what he’s doing and that the “in exile” routine was a sign of his narcissism. Endlessly fascinating to me that this is the horse Avellone is backing now.

 

Birds of a feather flock together?

[Infinitron]

This is one for the history books: http://www.rpgcodex.net/forums/index.php?threads/rpg-codex-interview-chris-avellone-on-pillars-cut-content-game-development-hierarchies-and-more.121588/page-156#post-5601779

 

Edited May 7, 2018 by Infinitron

[Undecaf]

Hah. He sounds a bit tipsy, he's been posting all night out there.

Edited May 7, 2018 by Undecaf

[Malcador]

Why does that come across as tipsy ? Seems just ticked off, at least in that post. 

 

Well, I guess it could be worse and the theory could be Avellone's a coke head

[Undecaf]

Why does that come across as tipsy ? Seems just ticked off, at least in that post. 

 

Dunno, it just seemed like a bit too sudden eruption. Not too long ago he seemed to try and be a lot more careful with words.

[IndiraLightfoot]

This is one for the history books: http://www.rpgcodex.net/forums/index.php?threads/rpg-codex-interview-chris-avellone-on-pillars-cut-content-game-development-hierarchies-and-more.121588/page-156#post-5601779

 

Wow, Chris needs help, and here we see some of his true colours, I'm afraid. Filled with wrath and entitlement. At least his lingo fits right in with his fanboi choir.

[Malcador]

 

Why does that come across as tipsy ? Seems just ticked off, at least in that post. 

 

Dunno, it just seemed like a bit too sudden eruption. Not too long ago he seemed to try and be a lot more careful with words.

 

 

Even if true, that's a curious leap to link it to alcohol.   Seems like a case of the Mondays.

[Undecaf]

 

 Seems like a case of the Mondays.

 

 

Must be something like that.

[Malcador]

Ah well, much ado about nothing in any case. 

[IndiraLightfoot]

A new, bold, and most likely totally wrong theory:

Some hacker has hijacked Chris' Codex account and has been playing us for fools for several days now. Meanwhile, Chris tries desperately to repair the damage of all the stuff his Codex alter ego blurt out. 

Edited May 7, 2018 by IndiraLightfoot

[Messier-31]

Love the drama, but could someone please summarize the whole thing, as I kinda got lost on page 3.

[Achilles]

This is one for the history books: http://www.rpgcodex.net/forums/index.php?threads/rpg-codex-interview-chris-avellone-on-pillars-cut-content-game-development-hierarchies-and-more.121588/page-156#post-5601779

 

Definitely staking out the high ground here.

[Undecaf]

Ah well, much ado about nothing in any case.

Yeah, so it seems.

 

And even if there was ”something”, I don’t really have a stance either for Urquhart’n co’s alleged satanic tendencies nor MCA’s proposed betrayed, angelic honesty.

 

A fun read, though.

Edited May 7, 2018 by Undecaf

[IndiraLightfoot]

@Messier-31:

Chris is dissatisfied with the upper management at Obsidian and with the circumstances and conditions of him leaving the company. First, he focussed on Feargus, but soon he went for the others as well, Parker et al.

According to him, they are for the most part incompetent as far as finances, leadership, and organisational skills go. He mentions nepotism and bad planning.

Chris mentions a few other devs and writers, and stuff he's not happy with (some rare praise here and there), and some fake praise (like Josh is a good project manager (but not a good game dev?)). 

Add a few tantrums to this, and you get the picture.

Edited May 7, 2018 by IndiraLightfoot

[Skazz]

This is one for the history books: http://www.rpgcodex.net/forums/index.php?threads/rpg-codex-interview-chris-avellone-on-pillars-cut-content-game-development-hierarchies-and-more.121588/page-156#post-5601779

 

 

This is... heartbreaking.

 

The man whose magnum opus is a goddamn virtual novel about the subjective nature of truth and reality should never have to resort to words like "shill", "colossal ****" or even childish name calling.

 

Stop this madness, Chris. You're still my personal hero, but however justified you feel in your crusade, this is not the way to do it. The internet will not let you forget this one.

[IndiraLightfoot]

@Skazz: I agree. This last post makes me willing forth a copy cat, since I have a hard time accepting this is who he's become.