Incline Chris Avellone Appreciation Station

[Rake]

He already played it you know. His impressions of it were quite interesting.

Where can i read his impressions?

 

[Infinitron]

Where can i read his impressions?

http://www.rpgcodex.net/forums/index.php?threads/mca-was-checking-out-age-of-decadence.72519/

 

[Irenaeus II]

How are his oblique muscles?

 

[DwarvenFood]

No Name Pub, Florida Keys

 

[IHaveHugeNick]

Judging by recent interviews he doesn't want to be a project director right now.

He didn't want to be one ever since he nearly exhausted himself to death during PS:T.

 

[Chateaubryan]

The latest conference from everyone's favorite husbando :

 

[Infinitron]

The latest conference from everyone's favorite husbando :

Ooh, missed this.

Rare MCA Pillars reference at 40:50

EDIT: lol, Swedes

 

[Infinitron]

The Codex will totally like what Chris has to say at 23:00.

EDIT: Ooh, and at 29:30!

 

[Fairfax]

Only watched the Q&A so far, and it's interesting that he said he's working on 7 different projects right now. I remember: PoE novella, WL2 novella, TToN, D:OS2, Siege of Dragonspear. Am I missing anything or are the other two TBA?

 

[Irenaeus II]

He's revising AoD updates with VD and helping Cleve with the nano-issues

 

[Infinitron]

Only watched the Q&A so far, and it's interesting that he said he's working on 7 different projects right now. I remember: PoE novella, WL2 novella, TToN, D:OS2, Siege of Dragonspear. Am I missing anything or are the other two TBA?

T:ToN comic book?

 

[Fairfax]

T:ToN comic book?

Right, that's 6.

 

[AwesomeButton]

Hi there. http://www.samesame.com.au/news/12935/Gaymers-unite-for-Australias-first-queer-gaming-convention

Gaymers unite for Australia's first queer gaming convention

If a crowd-funding initiative goes well, Sydney’s Australian Technology Park will play host to Australia’s first-ever queer geek and gaming convention in February.

It’ll be the first time the highly successful US convention GaymerX has debuted outside of the United States, and special guests will include Chris Avellone (Planescape: Torment and Fallout 2), Tim Cain (Fallout, Pillars of Eternity), Rae Johnston (Aussie cosplayer and technology, video game, and social media expert) plus popular local YouTuberAussieGamerChick (pictured below).

 

[anus_pounder]

 

[Neanderthal]

Oh that's for gay gamers, I thought Gaymerx was for gay mercenaries, must have been pronouncing it wrong in me head.

 

[Shin]

Maybe some rabid fan will actually suck his dick 'for realz' now.

btw I'd support this fundraiser

 

[PeachPlumage]

Less dick sucking more anus_pounding!

 

[Roguey]

Today's episode of That's So Chris:

wasnt ulysses supposed to be included in base fallout NV from the start?

ulysses was going to be a base game companion but we weren't able to include him because his final line count was extraordinarily high. it wasn't logistically possible to record and include all of his lines.

Some people never learn. It keeps happening.

 

[Crooked Bee]

Please never learn, Chris

 

[Ninjerk]

 

[pippin]

I think many stuff from Lonesome Road was indeed going to be on the base game at first. I don't know if that would confuse gamers not used to Obsidian's writing and storytelling or keep them from saying the world felt "empty".

 

[Azrael the cat]

Yeah. Well, he's young still, but it's the only way to actually guarantee for himself the freedom to create, for all his career.

Yes and no. He may be free from formal interference, but the higher up you go into management, the more time you've got to spend managing instead of creating.

It's great for someone with the interests and skill-set of Sawyer. If you're a balance/systems-fag, then it doesn't really matter whether you're writing/designing an area v whether someone else is, because you can implement a set of rules and system mandates, and have minions do all the basic design. Rising higher means expanding the reach of your vision and style.

If you're a creative/story/design-fag, then greater reliance on minions will dilute your work. That's not to say that you're best being at the absolute coal-face, writing text for minor NPCs and choosing what colour clothing the random mooks wear. But once you're at a project management role, you're probably having very little direct writing/art/area-design entering the game. Perhaps you'll get to do a few areas yourself, but that isn't 'project management', that's you doubling up as both the project manager and doing a design role on top of it.

My main concern, though, is that MCA has repeatedly shown that he's poorly suited to the thing that he often likes to do - jumping in to write 1-2 NPCs and a single small quest hub. They are always interesting, really well written....and feel like they're transplanted in from a completely different game. New Reno is more glaring than most, but it's strongly typical of his output in that scenario - some really awesome quest design, interesting larger-than-life characters, the most entertaining party member in the game...and it is all so woefully out of place in the setting that it actively detracts from the game.

Everyone has assumed that Sawyer is the bad guy in forcing MCA to cut the heart of his 2 NPCs in PoE. And MCA's ideas for those NPCs does sound really neat, and you can see how they might combine with what's already there (which is pretty good) to make a far more interesting pair of intertwined NPCs than anything else in the game. But fuck, look at his track record. I'm more than willing to believe that they simply didn't fit the setting, the mood and the game's broader writing style, and that Sawyer was just the first project manager to have the balls to call MCA out on this crap.

I really like MCA's work. Even Alpha Protocol was a really interesting failure, of a kind that could be used as a productive learning foundation for a genuinely great game. And it had some of the best writing and C+C the genre has seen. But it's not a style that can just slot into any project. MCA has never been good at writing 'realistic' characters...in fact, he's never even tried to write 'realistic' characters, from what I can see. 'Kill Bill' is his usual approach - he writes comic book characters, but in the very best sense of the word. Operating at his best, he writes comic book characters of the kind you'd find in one of the better Alan Moore works, grand and colourful stand-ins for philosophical themes, different aspects of humanity, and tragedy writ large and entertainingly colourful among the angst and despair. Rainbow-bright and gritty, instead of dark and gritty.

And that only works when he's the guy in charge of the writing and the setting.

Ideally, I'd like to see MCA working below Project Manager - fuck dealing with milestones, employee management, etc. But at a much higher level of responsibility than what he's been doing. Having the guy write an NPC or two as a stretch goal is actively harmful to a project. Better to have him as 'lead designer', or even 'lead writer', while giving the project management responsibilities to someone who can sperg about systems and can get the project running on time and under budget (and whatever Sawyer's flaws, he instantly improved Obsidian's performance in those aspects).

 

[Infinitron]

My main concern, though, is that MCA has repeatedly shown that he's poorly suited to the thing that he often likes to do - jumping in to write 1-2 NPCs and a single small quest hub. They are always interesting, really well written....and feel like they're transplanted in from a completely different game. New Reno is more glaring than most, but it's strongly typical of his output in that scenario - some really awesome quest design, interesting larger-than-life characters, the most entertaining party member in the game...and it is all so woefully out of place in the setting that it actively detracts from the game.

Everyone has assumed that Sawyer is the bad guy in forcing MCA to cut the heart of his 2 NPCs in PoE. And MCA's ideas for those NPCs does sound really neat, and you can see how they might combine with what's already there (which is pretty good) to make a far more interesting pair of intertwined NPCs than anything else in the game. But fuck, look at his track record. I'm more than willing to believe that they simply didn't fit the setting, the mood and the game's broader writing style, and that Sawyer was just the first project manager to have the balls to call MCA out on this crap.

I don't know if you're right about the details, but viewed from a certain angle it does seem like MCA was actually becoming a burden on Obsidian's developers. The higher-up who isn't really connected to the day-to-day work, but comes out of nowhere with a huge wall of text and asks you to put it in the game.

Maybe I'm being unfair but I don't see how this situation makes sense, where a person just goes off on his own and does a ton of work on companions in a game where the companions clearly aren't meant to have that big of a role. What, nobody told him that? Did all the other writers get their companions cut too and they're just not talking about it? Because if not, it seems like he was stuck in some kind of weird lack of oversight/mismanagement loophole.

 

[IHaveHugeNick]

My theory was always that OE has just become toxic because of Chris' celebrity status.

Creative people are always self-conscious about getting due credit for their work - its an ego thing . We may pretend we don't have it, but we do. Now imagine a work environment where there's a guy who sometimes writes as little as two and the half obscure item descriptions, or barges late into the project with one NPC that barely even fits the theme, but still ends up getting all the recognition for every single good line that the fanbase liked. Does that sound healthy to you?

And I agree that the very thing that made Chris famous - his penchant for reversing tropes and genre-bending, also makes it pretty hard to use his talents in someone elses project. He needs to be a main creative lead, or not write at all. But of course he was their hottest name, so they did try to spread him out as thinly as possible, and him being in the top brass he definitely also felt he needs to do that to keep the company healthy.

Its ironic really, because from the looks of it, he was struck down by the very thing people considered his greatest weapon. And lets not shit ourselves here, he was struck down. The way his career is going after ditching OE, is just painful to watch. He can put up a good face, give talks at conferences about his glory days, and flex on Twitter about how he's enjoying himself. But I will not believe for a second, that someone with such extraordinary talent will stay satisfied for very long about being a hired gun, making side content for C-grade developers. And that's what he's been reduced to.

Also, i don't blame Sawyer for any of this. Nor do I blame Chris. I blame Feargus, because he's the one ultimately responsible for how his biggest creative talent is being utilized. Chris and Josh working together on the same project, where their specific talents are used best, is just about the best RPG dream team you can come up with. Not a perfect team by any means, but just about the best that can actually, realistically exist. Chris driving narrative design, and Josh driving gameplay, system design and getting shit done. Tim Cain can bake them cookies, as that's seems to be his current focus.

The fact that they had talents like that on house, and let it fall apart, is really just depressing.

 

[Athelas]

The way his career is going after ditching OE, is just painful to watch. He can put up a good face, give talks at conferences about his glory days, and flex on Twitter about how he's enjoying himself. But I will not believe for a second, that someone with such extraordinary talent will stay satisfied for very long about being a hired gun, making side content for C-grade developers. And that's what he's been reduced to.

You mean that thing he's been doing for years...while he was still employed at OE?