Obsidian General Discussion Thread

[Roguey]

170 employees? Awful lot of people for a studio that doesn't make much of anything.

Armored Warfare (Which has become quite big. They (Obsidian) hired a guy recently specifically to amass and analyze player related data)
Skyforge
Pathfinder
Pillars of Eternity
Unannounced Brian Heins Project
Unannounced MCA project (Might be the same thing)

Not sure if I forgot something here

When I said "much of anything" I meant "anything that appeals specifically to me" and other than Pillerz, they aren't.

 

[Abelian]

If they end up doing a RtwP Pathfinder RPG I'll fucking kill them.

Maybe you're prejudiced due to BG's horrendous RtwP pathfinding.

 

[ikarinokami]

does anyone know if tim cain is working on anything besides pillars of eternity? I have a sense that if anyone is prepping the turned based pathfinder game, it would be him.

 

[Rostere]

Tim Cain + turn-based Pathfinder = OMG ITZ HEAVAN

 

[Jaesun]

Tim Cain + turn-based Pathfinder = OMG ITZ HEAVAN

 

[<3sRichardSimmons]

Lolling at that Fergus quote implying anyone wants anything like the NWN2 launch product.

I also pretty much guarantee that a TB PF game was the 'endgame' OE envisioned in acquiring the PF license.

They might be moderately incompetent at delivering on their vision(s), but it's pretty clear to me that, for most of the dudes working at the higher tier of OE, PnP is their first love. The amount of discussion and debate over PoE's systems design that has been facilitated by OE (and, to be fair, KS) is unprecedented, and makes me very excited to see where OE's 'hardcore' contingent will go on the next decade.

 

[Apexeon]

Tim Cain + turn-based Pathfinder = OMG ITZ HEAVAN

Yes please more Turn based love.

 

[dukeofwhales]

Anthony Davis appears to be going for trick shots at the last possible moment, not slam dunks. I hope no one tells Feargus.

 

[Sensuki]

 

[Infinitron]

Brian Crecente continuing to publish snippets from his talk with Feargus: http://www.polygon.com/2015/2/9/800...video-game-devs-thinks-that-tabletop-game-has

Why one of D&D's biggest video game devs thinks that tabletop game has lost its way
By Brian Crecente on Feb 09, 2015 at 12:00p @crecenteb

Dungeons and Dragons is dear to Feargus Urquhart's heart.

But ask the man behind so many adaptations of D&D video games to ignore his emotions and he'll tell you that the '70s fantasy tabletop role-playing game may have lost its way.

In part, that's why Obsidian Entertainment recently cut a deal with Paizo to create games based not on D&D, but tabletop RPG competitor Pathfinder.

"I think for Pathfinder as a whole it's going to be very interesting over the next 12 months to see what happens," the head of Obsidian told Polygon in a recent interview.

The tumult in the tabletop Dungeons and Dragons space can be traced back to the 2007 release of the 4th edition of the game by Wizards of the Coast. The release, its rules and how the release was handled, fractured the audience and led to previous supports, like Pathfinder, creating direct competitors.

But it was last year's final release of the 5th edition that led some, including Urquhart, to question the tabletop's future.

"The new version of D&D came out last year and people are thinking about what is ultimately going to happen with D&D," he said. "One of the reasons we actually went with Pathfinder was ... how do you say it? I'll just say it: We were having a hard time figuring out how to move forward with Dungeons and Dragons."

And that seems to really bother Urquhart, a long-time fan of the game.

"I love Dungeons and Dragons — this isn't an arrogant thing — but I'm probably one of the people who has one of the most electronic D&D games that they've worked on," he said.

That said, when asked directly if the shift to Pathfinder is permanent, Urquhart says:

"It's hard to say, if you ask my lizard brain, I would say yes," he said. "If you ask my emotional brain, I would say I don't know.

"It's hard to move away from something you love and I love D&D. Pathfinder is an important part of the pen-and-paper role-playing world and I love working with them. They want it to succeed and it's theirs. With D&D it's a little more complicated because they have Hasbro and others involved."

And that's the chief issue, Urquhart says.

"So, I think that this is the difficulty: D&D is a part of Wizards of the Coast and WotC is a part of Hasbro," he said. "Hasbro is a very big company that, let's say makes a billion dollars off of Monopoly each year, I don't know what the number is, but let's just say.

"I think whenever you have that, when you have this company which has this brand which in some weird way is comparable to this evergreen thing like Monopoly, in that it's a board game and it's sold in certain of the same places, it can be difficult.

"D&D is different, it needs a lot more support, it's community driven, it needs conventions and all of this stuff, and it's not going to make a billion dollars."

Urquhart says he thinks that under this system the tabletop game has lost its identity. He also likens it to similar challenges in the video game space.

"Take Activision, they make games like Call of Duty and Destiny," he said. "They have these big tentpole things, it is very hard to then have another thing that is one one-hundredth of the magnitude of those."

And that is what he says Hasbro struggles with.

"A part of me would love to see D&D be bought by someone and become what it was before," he said. "Become TSR again. TSR did other games, but D&D was their thing, their main focus.

"I think it's different now."

 

[nikolokolus]

Feargus is right. The only way D&D as a brand gets reinvigorated (creatively) is if it gets treated like a hobby product again. Unfortunately, there's no fucking way Hasbro/WotC lets the IP go.

 

[Duraframe300]

Nobody seen this yet?

Level Design Intern
We are searching for an enthusiastic intern designer to do level design for a new role-playing game.

For this project, level design refers primarily to blocking out environments, setting up encounters and player interactions and scripting events in the Unity editor. Your responsibilities will fluctuate with the demands of the project, so we are looking for adaptable candidates that can work on multiple aspects of level creation. Additional responsibilities may include secondary area documentation, basic dialogue creation and design tool testing.

Applicants should be ready to provide samples of their level design and/or 3D modeling work as needed.

Requirements

• Level design experience: Unity engine preferred
• Exceptional attention to detail
• Basic 3D modeling ability
• Basic scripting familiarity
• Team player
• Excellent communication skills
• Able to adhere to tight schedules
• Creativity
• Love of computer and console party-based role-playing games
• Skilled with Microsoft Office, bug tracking software, source control software, and game development toolsets
• MUST be local. Non-local applicants will not be considered.

Simply apply via e-mail: jobs@obsidian.net

Please put the job you are applying to in the subject line please.

Please no phone calls or drop ins. We only accept emailed applications.

What do you think? Is this already for POE2 or the expansion?

 

[Athelas]

Well, it says 'new role-playing game'. Of course, it's likely they could just be referring in general to a new RPG project, which could mean an expansion.

MUST be local. Non-local applicants will not be considered.

It's like that thing Bester was talking about.

 

[Sensuki]

Externalize your scenes motherfuckers, you're holding me back!

 

[Nihiliste]

I would love to see Obsidian - Paizo - Paradox churn out a series of Pathfinder games IE style

 

[Jaesun]

I would love to see Obsidian - Paizo - Paradox churn out a series of Turn-Based Pathfinder games

Fixed that for you. That would be awesome.

 

[Ninjerk]

We'd love to see Obsidian do a lot of things

 

[Duraframe300]

Technical Advisor/Researcher
Obsidian Entertainment is seeking a Technical Advisor/Research for Armored Warfare - A free-to-play PC game featuring fighting vehicles and weapon systems of numerous countries from post-World War II into the modern era.

The ideal candidate will provide technical and visual design reviews for armored vehicles and their weapons system as well as conduct and provide research and visual reference to maintain the accuracy of game models and content.

Requirements

• A deep knowledge of military technology and equipment used by various military forces all over the world.
• A background in research, military science, or equivalent experience.
• Experience or understanding of the inner workings of fighting vehicles.
• Ability to provide accurate and helpful feedback in a timely manner.
• A passion for military design with a desire to share that knowledge with others.
• An attention to visual detail.
• Familiarity with Microsoft Office.
• Excellent communication and team skills.

Responsibilities

• Review design documents and provide clear feedback.
• Review and mark up images of 3D models to provide accurate feedback.
• Work with design to provide technical specifications for vehicle armament, armor and other components.
• Participate in the vehicle selection process for future additions to our title.

Pluses

• A history of published articles in accredited journals or online research databases.
• Familiarity with World of Tanks, War Thunder and other tank combat games.
• Bachelor's degree or higher in Military Science, Archival Science or similar field related to research is highly recommended.
• Game industry experience.
• Experience working in project tracking systems.
• Public speaking experience.
• A passion for gaming.

This position is for a consultant and remote applicants will be considered.

As I mentioned before they already hired a guy whose sole concern is data analysis for AW. And now this.

Obsidian goes all the way with this game.

 

[agris]

I imagine it's because their funding source is demanding it.

For those 7 military historian gaming nerds with a PhD, this is probably a dream job.

 

[mediocrepoet]

Man, I hope I finally see the Pathfinder Kart Racer I've been dreaming of.

 

[DeepOcean]

We'd love to see Obsidian do a lot of things

And the fuckers drive tanks over our dreams.

 

[LESS T_T]

This is from February. (Was this posted?) Chris Avellone on crunch from The Guardian's piece: http://www.theguardian.com/technolo...ustry-exploiting-workforce-ea-spouse-software

Veteran game designer Chris Avellone, now co-owner of Obsidian Entertainment, focuses on downscaling. He believes that, at many companies, there’s a tendency to create more content than teams can digest. “Developers and managers should never have to work more than 40 hours a week,” he says. “It’s a fun job, but it shouldn’t be an exploitative one. Everyone has a life. Let them live it, it’s short enough as it is.

“And for developers that do want to work more than 40 hours a week, be responsible with your passions. If you develop more content than the pipeline can support, you’re causing others to have to pick up the baton and devote additional hours for polish, testing, balance, VO and any number of tasks that your additional work has generated. Managers and developers both should be receptive to downscaling work; in many cases, that can help create a superior product that’s more fun and more focused.”

 

[nikolokolus]

Fucking slackers

 

[Sensuki]

Chris Avellone's content was crunched.

 

[Infinitron]

MCA gets Gatey: http://blogjob.com/oneangrygamer/20...-kickstarter-metacritic-and-creative-freedom/

OBSIDIAN’S CHRIS AVELLONE TALKS KICKSTARTER, METACRITIC AND CREATIVE FREEDOM

Chris Avellone is a name well recognized within the hardcore circles of RPG fandom. He’s the mind that helped shape the Baldur’s Gate series from way back in the day, as well as a key creative designer during the Interplay days when Fallout 2 was all the rage. He’s also a co-founder of Obsidian Entertainment, the studio behind fan-favorite titles such as the Knights of the Old Republic sequel, Alpha Protocol and Fallout: New Vegas.

I had an opportunity to toss a few questions Avellone’s way as Obsidian preps for the release of Pillars of Eternity, a game where Avellone served as the game designer. The discussion included Kickstarter, Metacritic and the current landscape of gaming where creative freedom has become a battleground between gamers, the media and the developers. As an aside, Avellone is answering these questions on his own behalf and it does not reflect the views and opinions of the entire staff at Obsidian Entertainment. Check it out below.

Billy: The first thing I have to ask about is something mentioned back in September of 2012: that publishers came to Obsidian asking for the studio to host a Kickstarter while they retain the rights of the project and work as distributors. Have publishers continued to ask Obsidian to host a Kickstarter while they request to retain the rights to the IP and take a cut of the profits from distribution, or was that just a one time deal?

​

Chris: If I recall correctly (I wasn’t part of that discussion), that was a one-time thing, and it hasn’t been repeated. Our KS’s were our KS’s first, and if we do work with a publisher down the road on that KS, it doesn’t affect the content, it just assists in distributing it. Often doing a KS first guarantees easier means to own your IP even with publisher help: writers do it all the time by releasing graphic novels first to stake their claim on the idea.

Billy: Regarding Metacritic… most gamers know the story behind Obsidian and Fallout: New Vegas being one point off from the Metacritic bonus. To your knowledge, excluding the bugs and glitches, were any parts of the game purposefully altered or modified based on feedback from mock reviews, if a mock review was used?

Chris: I don’t recall any mock reviews from FNV, although we did get some for Alpha Protocol (many of the problems we knew) and even one for Pillars of Eternity (which we did take action on – see below). When getting a mock review, we do treat it as feedback, and assess if we feel the review is making a good point, just as we would with any Backer or Beta tester. I don’t recall the review score in either of the mock reviews above, unfortunately, I mostly focused on the pros and cons. Mock reviews, like most feedback, are generally best when you can actually implement fixes based on the feedback, otherwise they’re just noise.

[Note: For reference, you can read up on what a mock review is and how it can affect the design course of a game’s development courtesy of a brief breakdown offered by the EEDAR]

Billy: Regarding reviews and Metacritic… to your knowledge, do you know if positive coverage leading up to review scores ever became strenuous enough between media outlets and publishers that a “boycott” or “blacklist” was established by publishers for sites or outlets that didn’t play ball?

Chris: Not to my knowledge. Cutting off contact, [in my opinion], can prove to be a bad thing, regardless. We’ve found in the past that seemingly hostile sites, one in particular, was very negative on Torment before they played it, and as far as I’m concerned, their negativity actually helped us on release because the game seemed to defy expectations even more. To be fair, I actually thought that (considering he hadn’t played the game), the reviewer’s comment that it was just a Baldur’s Gate knock-off was probably an impression many people had, considering the engine the two games shared.

Billy: There was quite a bit of commotion over Irrational Games wanting to hire in someone who worked on or shipped a title with an 85+ rating on Metacritic. Do some development studios, to your knowledge, actually use Metacritic ratings as a measuring tool for talent or is that something usually relegated to hiring practices influenced by publishers or investors?

Chris: We don’t, although we have paid attention to player review scores for mods some designers developed (along with other metrics for mods – downloads, number of patches, etc.). In one instance, the player review score, total downloads, patches, and then re-releases almost guaranteed the hire – the last step was just to see if the modder was a dick who didn’t play well with others. He wasn’t.

Usually, my issue with Metacritic is that the review scores across sites can be wildly inconsistent (50% being average for X publication, for example, which can certainly torpedo a score).

Billy: There have been various outlets caught extorting developers for positive review scores, opting to give good word of mouth in exchange for a fee. For as far as you know, was there ever a point where media outlets ever reached out to Obsidian offering positive coverage in exchange for compensation?

Chris: No, nor am I aware of such a service being offered. To be fair, however, we usually haven’t had a problem with press coverage, so if those outlets exist, I don’t know if they’d see a market in us.

Billy: I just read about Obsidian already planning for a sequel to Pillars of Eternity; has the studio mentioned at any point if they plan on getting back under the publisher umbrella or will Obsidian continue to maintain independence for the sequel?

Chris: I’m not involved with the expansions or sequel except as a Creative Director for the studio (not for lack of interest, I’ve just got other projects to juggle), but I imagine it’ll have the same freedoms we did during the first game. We do continue to work with publishers on other titles, obviously, and I don’t think that business model is going away – we were a publisher once as well back at Interplay, so we’ve been on both sides of the fence.

Billy: With all the controversy happening in the industry at the moment, how has it affected the atmosphere at Obsidian, if at all?

Chris: It hasn’t affected anything we develop. We’ve developed very soap opera-y games, we’ve developed mature ones all the way since the Black Isle days, even delved into religion, which is usually taboo, if we felt it served the game world – I feel strongly that if you truly respect the story and subject matter you’re trying to tell and you can tie it into the game, it’ll reach the audience regardless of how taboo a subject seems to be, even if the material is seemingly flying in the face of the subject matter (which some folks have leveled against KOTOR2, although I’d argue questioning the Force made the game stronger, not weaker).

Billy: There’s a lot of talk from some critics about games needing to take on more progressive ideas, characters and content. Has this changed the way Obsidian approached writing or approaching design elements for recent titles?

Chris: I’ve said this before: Games don’t need a theme. They can sometimes become stronger for having one since I think it gives them more of a soul (although I’ve even seen it weaken some games), but games, by definition, should be games first. Our jobs are to entertain. So we’re going to keep making entertainment, because that’s what we love to do. We like making role-playing games. We hope people like playing them.

From the owners down to QA, we make decisions every day that we think will make our games better. We don’t always succeed. There have been times we have requested the opportunity to generate “mature” content for a title and had ideas rejected both externally and internally, but those discussions always centered on the franchise (which you are beholden to respect) and whether it would make the game more fun.

Billy: Mark Kern’s recent petition sought to mend the rift between games media, game developers and gamers. Where do you stand on the division plaguing the industry at the moment and what do you think needs to happen to help bridge trust between the disparate parties?

Chris: We’ve had high roads, low roads, and even at one of the lowest points, when one editor told our studio to “fuck off,” he later explained it was because he cared so much and that was why his reaction was so strong. I can see that. It doesn’t mean I’m going to cut off contact or cut off discussion as to why, that’s like being willfully ignorant. I don’t get offended, I just want to fix the problem, whatever it is. I was raised generating content and having it torn apart by some of the most rabid forum goers and fans – everything from themes, to names, all the way down to spaceship design, so I have a callus around my soul.

In the end, you just want to dig down and see where the unhappiness is stemming from. Maybe you can’t fix it. Maybe you can. Sure, maybe the player doesn’t even know the real reason they’re mad because they don’t understand how energy weapons in the game work, but that again falls on how apparent you’ve made it as a designer. The only thing that eats me is if somehow there was something more I could have done to bring a design element to the finish line, and I’ve certainly made plenty of mistakes.