Incline Chris Avellone Appreciation Station

[Ninjerk]

Who wouldn't?

 

[Sordid MCA/Prosper Hybryd]

Chris Avellone, tell us something new about your work on Divinity:OS 2! Do you enjoy it? What is the coolest thing about it? What is your favourite race?

 

[Jedi Exile]

That's just how kickstarters work, sometimes they keep promises, sometimes they hang you out to dry.

I think he promised to play Arcanum, not to finish it, but I might be wrong.

Face it, there will never be MCA Arcanum LP.

There already is, actually. Better not to watch though.

 

[Fairfax]

MCA already said he's going to make a YouTube channel soon. He said he plans to go back to Arcanum, but I doubt it.

 

[Roguey]

PS:T and the original Fallout are a living proof that the best games are created inside corporate structures, but without too much corporate oversight, when talented people are well-paid, have a lot of time and are given creative control over their work.

OTOH this can also give us games like Daikatana.

 

[Fairfax]

PS:T and the original Fallout are a living proof that the best games are created inside corporate structures, but without too much corporate oversight, when talented people are well-paid, have a lot of time and are given creative control over their work.

I belive it has to be something in between. I know it's not exactly a fan favourite in the Codex*, but Chrono Trigger is a good example. Sakaguchi said that was the first game where he had a very strict schedule and daily meetings, demanding progress reports from everyone. They didn't have "a lot of time" - just under 2 years - which was relatively short for a game like that at the time, and the average for Square's RPGs.
Without a certain pressure, you can get stuff like Daikatana, like Roguey said.

PS:T was a very odd case. I've been reading about development cycles of RPGs for a while, and I've never seen anything like it. MCA worked on it while working on FO2 at the same time. He had a year for himself before actual development began, and when it did, he actually tried to write the whole game on his own. He even mentions the part of the game where he realized it was impossible in an interview, but I don't remember it.
The game as a whole boils down to "What Chris Avellone Had To Say About RPGs", so it's not the kind of execution that can be replicated. No game can be like PS:T and be just as good, because the original is a strong reflection of the author's views on the genre. You could have others go through the same process and create what they have to say about RPGs, but the result would be very different. Sawyer's Torment, Todd Howard's Torment and so on. That's part of why I believe it's inherently impossible for TTON to be anywhere near as good as the original, but that's a different subject.

The lack of corporate oversight is what allowed it to happen, but it wasn't a laid back development cycle. That first year of notes and concepts cost Interplay nothing. MCA was already on the payroll and he was making another game at the same time. The ~2 years worth of actual production were not a lot, considering the game's scope. Had it been anyone other than Chris leading that game, it would've had a shitload of cut content. It had surprisingly little, considering similar titles. It only worked because the guy is a workhorse and he's a very prolific writer.
As Roguey said, 75% of his content is 300% of other developers, or something like that.

Well-paid is probably a given, but I don't know how much the people in the PS:T team were making. A Kickstarter budget (at least for the time being) wouldn't be enough for 40-50 people to earn above the industry's average, however. PoE had $5+ million for 20-25 and they ran out of money before it shipped.

*One of the best of all time if you ask MCA, however.

 

[Beastro]

MCA already said he's going to make a YouTube channel soon. He said he plans to go back to Arcanum, but I doubt it.

Just after he finishes all those PoE novels...

 

[Excidium II]

MCA already said he's going to make a YouTube channel soon. He said he plans to go back to Arcanum, but I doubt it.

Just after he finishes all those PoE novels...

We'll just wait.

...

 

[Fairfax]

MCA already said he's going to make a YouTube channel soon. He said he plans to go back to Arcanum, but I doubt it.

Just after he finishes all those PoE novels...

The PoE novella has been done for a while, Obsidian was the one at fault. They said it's coming out soon and they just needed the cover art IIRC.

 

[Barbarian]

Chris Avellone, tell us something new about your work on Divinity:OS 2! Do you enjoy it? What is the coolest thing about it? What is your favourite race?

Oh man, is that what he is working at now? It is a waste.

Chris Avellone please accept this wise(ok, maybe it is foolish) piece of advice: take it to kickstarter and do your own thing. Start your own company maybe. Otherwise I assume you will never be able to work as you did in Torment. There will always be some faggot like Sawyer cutting off your content and pushing you down.

 

[Ninjerk]

Shut up.

 

[Barbarian]

Look, Alpha Protocol and NWN 2 sucked, and Kotor2 had all those issues, but this is still the man responsible for Torment. And actually, KOTOR2 is a pretty great game after all the patching and restored content that went into it through the years. And Van Buren could have been great.

There is a chance he could do something good again if he had creative control again. Maybe even something as great as Torment was. He can try it or he can simply fade away writing sidequests and npcs for shit games like PoE and Divinity.

 

[Excidium II]

Alpha Protocol is good.

 

[Fairfax]

Speaking of which, lurkers and other users might want to catch up on what he's been doing.

[Finished but not released]

• PoE novella. Supposedly coming out soon.
• VR dialogue stuff with Digital Funk Studios.
• Feedback on Siege of Dragonspear.

[Ongoing]

• TTON companion.
• TTON graphic novel #1.
• TTON graphic novel #2.
• Wasteland 2 novella #1.
• Wasteland 2 novella #2. (Could be more than two, he said he split the original novel in "separate issues")
• D:OS2 origin story.
• Unannounced project.

[Recent finished work]

• "<endgame>", short story for the Press Start to Play anthology.
• "Acts of Creation", short story for the The End Has Come anthology.
• Prologue for Más allá del Tiempo, a book about the Chrono series. (Spanish only)
• "The Winter King", an Icewind Dale short story. Technically not recent, he wrote back in the Black Isle days, but it was only released last year.
• Overfall style guide.

[Other stuff coming up]

• YouTube Let's Play channel.
• Personal website.

 

[Trashos]

PS:T and the original Fallout are a living proof that the best games are created inside corporate structures, but without too much corporate oversight, when talented people are well-paid, have a lot of time and are given creative control over their work.

I think it is mostly that you are going to find a lot of people at the top of the game in corporations. This also means that you have a lot of great people right there to collaborate with. And the well-paid part is true too, of course, it lets you focus on what you want to do. Finally, working in a corporation means that you usually have a lot of handy resources at your disposal.

On the busy part, you know what the corporates say, "if you want to get something done, give it to someone busy".

I have worked in such environment for a while. I got burnt out after a few years, but still I got more shit done than any other point in my career. I do recommend corporate environments as a worthwhile experience.

 

[Barbarian]

snip

Yeah, I know he has been basically writing official fiction for games for a while.

But do fill me in on this ongoing "unannounced project" please. Is that actually a game? Any word on his level of involvement?

 

[Fairfax]

snip

Yeah, I know he has been basically writing official fiction for games for a while.

But do fill me in on this ongoing "unannounced project" please. Is that actually a game? Any word on his level of involvement?

He never said much about it. In one interview he said he had "a lot of joy coming up" or something like that, but that he couldn't talk about it yet. In another one, he said he was working on 7 projects. We counted them in this thread at the time and there was only 1 missing.
It might've been the Overfall style guide, but I doubt it. It may not be a game, for reasons I can't talk about. However, the way he talked about "lots of joy" makes me think it probably is.

 

[Roguey]

take it to kickstarter and do your own thing. Start your own company maybe. Otherwise I assume you will never be able to work as you did in Torment.

Earlier itt he said family issues keep him from devoting himself full-time to any one project.

 

[Apexeon]

MCA is responsible for the greatest game ever ->PST.
PST the first official game that prove games can be "art".

Get the man a dam statue already.

 

[Rivmusique]

art

Stop with this garbage.

I sometimes listen to the soundtracks on youtube and the comments are full of this nonsense, makes me sick.

 

[Roguey]

"If I ever spent more than a fraction of a second worrying about whether the games I make (or anyone makes) fit into someone’s definition of what high art is, it would be too long."--Josh Sawyer

 

[Athelas]

Don't worry, I don't think there's any danger of anyone on the Codex considering Sawyer's games art.

 

[Somberlain]

"If I ever spent more than a fraction of a second worrying about how to make games fun, it would be too long."--Josh Sawyer

 

[mindx2]

The turbo subscriber said "be nice" just before I said that, so I assumed he was the moderator.
At least when I was banned in the D:OS2 Codex vs. Watch stream the mod bothered to say something.

What happened? Since I was the one actually playing

Spoiler

(and destroying The Watch )

I didn't see any of the chats going on.

 

[Roguey]

"If I ever spent more than a fraction of a second worrying about how to make games fun, it would be too long."--Josh Sawyer

If this were true, he'd devote no time at all to balance.