The Decline of Obsidian?

[TorontoReign]

The past few days have been enlightening to say the least with what started as a Chris Avellone interview on Codex turning into a full reveal of shady business practices before he left Obsidian. It boiled over into Reddit but the mainstream gaming press has been silent thus far.

To give a little more detail on the financial issues raised shortly before (and then after) the departure:

Note the financial issues were only part of the discussion points, and we did continue to debate them after the departure. They amounted to:

- I asked about making the company’s finances more transparent, since those were often a mystery. This lack of clarity also interfered with the review process (in short, you can’t do reviews and give raises until finances are in order, and we always got held up on that as part of the process, sometimes for months, even if reviews had been written – this is apparently still the case).

- Feargus as CFO had total control over this part of the process. Unfortunately, it was hard to see behind the curtain, and that curtain was not only Feargus himself, but HR and also a number of long-time friends who worked offsite. I have never felt Feargus to be good with money and budgeting, and we had much different approaches on how to save, spend, and what amounted to raises and equal pay for employees. Our usual lack of funds ended up causing a lot of problems with publishers because we were very, very dependent on their payments, so we had little or no leverage or breathing room if disagreements arose - if we had funds in the bank, there's a number of things we could have handled differently.

- The problem is when we did have a lot of money in the bank, Feargus tended to spend it freely and rarely checked with other owners before doing so. Worse, when we had little in the bank, you learned to avoid him, as he’d interpret the depletion in funds as somehow a failing on your part (even if you weren’t being paid for months at a time, or worse, if you’d given the company loans to make payroll).

- Strangely, this particular point is likely one of the big triggers for the de-ownering: I asked why family members who didn’t work at the studio were doing on our payroll – notably, Feargus’s wife (other employees have spotted this as well and brought it up to me after I left since they saw her on spreadsheets, so either it didn’t get fixed or is still the norm). To be fair, I don’t know if she’s still on payroll or not as of today, but even for a while after my departure, she was still employed by the studio, and while she was, I had no idea what she was doing for us.

- I asked why the Fair Market Value of the company hadn’t been adjusted in 10 years (it was still sitting around what the company’s initial value was, which was almost nothing). It turned out none of the procedures for voting on this had ever taken place according to the company’s own bylaws. So I asked we resume our own procedure and vote on having it evaluated – which was ignored, then interrupted by being de-ownered before the shares could be re-evaluated (which was also good business, but again, poor ethics). I don’t know if not doing a FMV evaluation is legal or not, but guessing it is.

Any of these could have been a trigger for de-ownering, even the last one, but there were other issues brought up as well (non-financial) that continued to be discussed before or after I was no longer an employee. These weren’t resolved.

For the record, I would have been far more comfortable if the finances were managed by someone else, including any other owner (and despite my other feelings about the owners and their organization/communication, I would trust any of them more than Feargus with finances because at least they understood the basic principles of how to maintain a positive cashflow).

As an added benefit, you’d also remove a good deal of any potential defensiveness by having it managed by a neutral party when inquiring about it - hopefully. That may be naive, but I'd like to think so.

As another benefit, removing this aspect of his job would have been one less thing to distract Feargus, since he was already overseeing and doing too much that arguably he shouldn’t be doing, and he couldn’t keep track (or remember) the tasks he was asking for anyway. This was certainly the case in dealings after the departure, which made the problems more apparent. This may have changed since – any of this may have, but they were issues at the time.

Anyway, this wasn’t all the issues brought up, but it’s a good chunk of the financial issues that were causing problems overall.

I would occasionally read comments saying “you were upper management” and “he must have gotten a big payout” and “he signed an NDA, got severance, etc.” and it made me realize most people didn’t know how that all shook out, so I answered it. It wasn’t a great time in my life to deal with all that bullshit with everything else going on, so when I hear something to the contrary, I correct it.

I’m not management, I got nothing, but that was ultimately a good thing for the freedom it allowed, it just took a little time to get there.

As for collateral damage, I might have said this before, but I don’t think defending Obsidian’s upper management translates into helping Obsidian employees, either financially or job security wise. Even if an employee is kicking ass at their job, they can still be yelled at, blamed, or let go for something that’s not their fault – but is often more the responsibility of the upper management that caused the issue (fighting with publishers, money problems, etc.). Hell, an employee may not even been aware they’ve been earmarked for being let go months before it happens (that’s hardly something that happens solely in the games industry, though).

It is symptomatic of some of these issues that Obsidian rarely can work with the same publisher twice, even if they’d like to – a number of publishers don’t want to deal with Obsidian’s upper management twice in a row. I do think this means that Obsidian’s increasing efforts to work to publishing things on their own is a good thing – it’s one of the only ways their process is going to work in the long-term.

And I’ve said this before: I like the Obsidian devs (although I don’t know many of the new ones, obviously), I still see many and talk with them, I work and help the ones who are still there when I can and the ones who left (even working with them again), and I like the games. If Obsidian does well, however, that often doesn’t trickle down to the employees. If I support bad management practices, I don’t think that helps anyone there.

I do think that if the issues are raised, there is a hope that management will course correct in the hopes to prove to everyone they aren’t like that in an effort to defend themselves – and by doing so, would be good for the employees overall.

That said, the performance and reception of a good game will help employees (esp. reputation and resume building), but that’s not the issue here – my issue is the management. I think they are disorganized and cause a lot of problems, and they are not responsible for what makes the company’s games good - in fact, they arguably do a number of things to damage the process (while I'm skeptical of Glassdoor reviews, I am less skeptical about the common points among all of them).

(Myself included, I’m not blameless – I’ve never claimed to be a good manager, and I wasn’t even a manager at Obsidian unless I took on a specific design role.)

Of course Codex being Codex it quickly devolved into discussions about Communism, but Chris has been popping in from time to time to answer questions on both Reddit and Codex.

Kyl Von Kull from Codex said:

This is feeling less and less like the basis for a nice revenge story and more like a pure tragedy. That one of the last great RPG studios has been so heinously mismanaged is such a fucking shame for the whole genre and all of us who love it. Presumably KOTOR 2 could’ve been released in a finished state if not for Parker, which means we wouldn’t have had to wait years for the restored content mod to transform it from a flawed gem into a masterpiece. Who knows, we might have gotten Stormlands or a truly completed Tyranny or, waaay back in the day, the very cool looking Torn.

Edit—mods, admins, oldfags: do Brian Mitsoda or George Zeits have accounts here? They might have a lot to add to the discussion.

@Chris Avellone I feel like you’re on a roll here with these Obsidian management failures, so how about the last two owners, Chris Jones and Darren? Were they particularly egregious or just too spineless to stand up for competence? Or, as some of have speculated, did FU and Parker have enough shares or board seats between them to dictate policy when they were in agreement? I imagine it would be very helpful to many of your former colleagues to know exactly where the rot is spreading from.

By the same token, if Feargus and Parker were somehow forced out, would you be willing to work with Obsidian again assuming they paid you standard human stretch goal rates? Like let’s say Strauss Zelnick loves Indiana, buys the studio, and forces these douchebags into retirement?
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 fuck'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 shit 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.

Read the Codex and Reddit threads for more detailed info. It's a dense read. Expect more in the days ahead.


More juicy MCA quotes:

Stepping up was dangerous and demoralizing, especially with Feargus. For all the games that got released, there were others on the never-got-made pile.

But dispensing with the vague answer, here's the specifics of one case, and why I became hesitant to be a lead at Obsidian again (not just South Park, but elsewhere).

After DS3, I did get asked to take on a Project Director role (for a potential sequel) not by Feargus - but because of Feargus.

The reason I was asked, however, was because of how Feargus was treating the team – for all the control he tried in DS3, it had upped in DS4, and the team came to me and asked if I would come on to be a buffer between them and Feargus, since they were finding a hard time getting approvals and getting work done. It ended up being a lesson that made me very hesitant to report to Feargus (even though I did in the last year at Obsidian).

Feargus, it turned out, sometimes had a tactic where if he disapproves of someone or is angry at someone, he micromanages them to an excruciating degree, calls out everything he objects to (not something that’s necessarily wrong, just something he objects to), and makes it very difficult to move forward on anything. I had seen hints of this indirectly, but never experienced it – it sometimes was employed as a way to get someone to resign without actually firing them. It mostly seemed like an extended form of punishment with no positive goal except to punish the person for some perceived failing.

So I agreed to take on the role, because the ones asking me genuinely seemed to need help, and I also foolishly thought that surely this couldn’t be the case. The project also seemed like it might be fun.

Within 2 weeks of the role, I realized the team was absolutely right, and the problem wasn’t limited to what was brought up to me – it was worse.

While being a buffer helped (slightly), the issue started coming up that Feargus would do sudden pivots on elements he had approved and the team had spent a lot of time on. He would also forget he approved them and would assume he hadn't when he saw a decision he (now) didn't like had been made.

I’m not sure I even classify these events as lies when they occurred because it involves memory and the old classic managerial “gut instinct,” but what I discovered is that elements I would fight for and the team wanted (starting with the story, which was being savaged just like DS3) would be given approval by Feargus when I asked, then he would forget he gave approval, and within a few days of me relaying the good news to the team, he would backpedal and say, “Why this story and not mine? I never approved that.” When confronted on the fact he had approved the change, it would then become, “well, it’s not how I feel today.”

When this occurred, I felt as if I had lied to the team and let them down – and the situation had been out of my control despite my best intentions.

Realizing I couldn’t manage if I didn’t get reliable approvals (it undermined anything I said or did), I stepped down.

The pitch died not long after, which was probably for the best. The core idea was sound, but the process was going to strangle the life out of it. More time and money wasted.

The “I don’t care what I approved, that’s not how I feel today” management retractions would happen a lot. It happened with Parker, too. I don’t care so much about managers changing their mind, but it was rarely communicated to the people who needed to know when they did – and you felt like you were about to walk into a trap you can’t even see coming every time you had a meeting. It would also be easier to take if it the dismisiveness of the decision didn’t also come with anger at the person relaying what had been asked for – and the messenger had no idea their manager no longer wanted it, because their manager had never communicated they had changed their minds and when they had changed their minds. It was like watching days, even weeks of work, spiral down the toilet.

Again, part of this is a manager’s right, but between Feargus and Parker, their management style would often be to ask for something, you’d plan it out, work on it, and then when they got exposed to what they’d asked for, they’d claim they never approved it.

When you took a risky move and said they had (and could prove it), their response would be, “well, it’s not what I want today.”

And I do say “risky move” in bringing up the facts of what they asked for because of what would happen when you did.

So, in an effort to fix this (my next mistake), I started relying more on email to track requests and get confirmation vs. face-to-face meetings (which I thought might be the problem, since no notes were taken so decisions could get clouded).

This tracking mechanism worked, but ended up being a mistake, since the facts ended up not being the issue.

The reason it was “risky” was because presenting facts and their actual request never went over well – they’d lose their temper because their change of mind was exposed, so the facts ended up being useless. (Parker once lost it when I asked when we were getting a designer on KOTOR2 that he had promised and was using exclusively for UI work, since it was past the date for the designer to move over to content assistance – and then told me despite what he had promised, this was simply the way it was now, and the designer I had planned for would simply not be available and I had best deal with it – and this blaming was for a plan I hadn’t even proposed, so I didn’t understand the rage.)

Managers can change their mind, that’s fine, but it’s rough when you plan ahead and your manager has changed their mind and doesn’t tell you. It’s more disempowering and chilling when you realize they don’t even know what they asked for or approved of - compounded with the feeling when you have to tell the team the bad news.

My opinion is “That’s not how I feel today” makes it impossible to plan for tomorrow.

@Chris Avellone Let me push back on this a bit. We could say that there's a glass half-empty or glass half-full way of looking at these things. You see Feargus roping in these big publishers and then alienating them, as with the Stormlands cancellation, and conclude that he's a fuck-up. And that's natural, because you have paid a large personal price for these cancellations.

But other people might say, hey, it's incredible that Feargus managed to get a deal to make an Xbox One exclusive in the first place, because that's something that the notorious "Bugsidian" probably wasn't really up to par for (as I'm sure you'd agree).

But here's my real question: Were you fired/forced to resign/"de-ownered"/etc from Obsidian because you refused to become a project lead?

That's a good question. A reason wasn't given at all beyond I could still work on Tyranny (which isn't firing, it's a shift of position, but obviously, still punishing).

I did get a vague comment about "no longer being a financial fit" but that was something Feargus told to other employees around the same time (this was shortly before the Pillars royalties came in, so for all I know, the studio may have been in financial trouble, but I wouldn't have known b/c it was too hard to extract the financials).

The Pillars royalties largely were coming to the owners, however, which put the move in a suspicious light.

As I said before, I don't think any owner deserved royalties for Pillars beyond maybe Darren for his Backer portal work, even as late as it was.

I didn't ask for the reason for the de-ownering, and I doubt I would have gotten one. I didn't take the position on Tyranny, as I've said, although with my finances and the family situation, it would be untrue of me to say I didn't at least think about it - but it wasn't because I wanted to continue to work there, the Tyranny offer was another leverage attempt for multiple reasons. I ultimately turned it down.

When asked why the gaming press has yet to comment on this Chris responded:

While press have reached out to me, I don't reach out to them for a number of reasons (I was answering a comment here for clarity, not firing off to every newssite I could think of).

When the press do reach out, I do answer, but sometimes just because they're curious about some things, which I try and answer.

I think TechRaptor will have another update, along with a few others, but overall, I don't post this on my FB, Twitter, because no one there asked about it, so forwarding the info and posting it there seems inappropriate.

I am happy to answer any questions from any source when asked, however, and I am happy to support claims that may come from other quarters.

I will say there's still a lot I haven't spoken of (we may still be in the 30% territory from before), but should Obsidian respond with something untrue (I don't think they will, I think the silence is indicative of this), then I may have to answer that untruth with some additional facts.

The discussions vary on different parts of the web. Some are like Arnust and think Chris is a dick for saying this stuff right before Obsidian launches their next game. Personally I say you treat somebody like a piece of shit they can say what they want when they want if asked about it and he was. I think a little transparency in a fucked up video game industry is needed personally. I'm sure if people still want to buy whatever generic fantasy crap Obsidian is putting out next they will.


The whole ordeal can be read (minus the shitposting) right here at this handy dandy Codex Google Doc.

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1CDN-5QjGGKnQa4Bycmtn3AVtb-c9UfSqPmYQhzHlaVI/edit

 

[Deleted member 93956]

Some of my thoughts:

- He has some nerve to have waited all three years since his departure just to drop the bomb just before their biggest project yet as an independent studio, yet pretend to wish the best for them and call Darren a selfish coward. If he really was sincere in his claims I don't see why he's not in his intentions.

- Kind of weird to be allegedly SO terrible with budgeting and time management in the last years despite those years also containing their most polished and round releases of all their collective career without significant overtime or crunch. All accompanied by the studio increasing in personnel, offices and general reputation, enough to have another AAA developer take interest in them again. Hmm...

- Pulling under the rug back to over a decade, previous studios and work dynamics? See the first point. More over, if the idea was to actually fuck them over on verge of a game, couldn't it have been for time of Tyranny's release? "Maybe" it had something to do with him having worked on it...

- All of this pretty much solidifies my idea on MCA's general attitude as of today. There's a reason why he how freelances into every bullshit he's asked if no matter how little he actually does, sometimes even "working" for free (that comment of "I've got more money than obsidian" rubbed me the wrong way), while also participating in pretty much any podcast (even ours), and why he doesn't commit to any meaningfully long projects. He's a rockstar writer. Office writing of thousands of fluff lines isn't gonna cut it. It's why you can tell from miles away what his contribution to the aforementioned games actually is just thanks to how obvious it'll be. Just you try thinking of another famous RPG (or just game) writer in a short time and you'll see it's a way less glamorous profession than he'd like. It only makes sense then for that attitude to cause significant friction with management and studio leads, all that drama only getting his name on people's mouths again. I definitively can see some claims having a foundation in truth but for the most of it it feels like a jealous girlfriend burning all your clothes.

- Also, even news outlets are keeping relatively quiet waiting for it to clear out. Furthermore, I feel something's up with acting out and opening Pandora's box on some Internet forum instead of having an official article or announcement, neither showing face for none of this. It's not like he has nothing to fear not having signed ANY NDA's and the self claimed little fortune.

Bonus: That must had been the easiest de-ownering ever. And I'm not even to go on the claim of sexual harassment. Again, even if this all is true it boils down to being them vs. him, not particularly spread employee abuse and bad practices. It's gonna be pretty annoying to have people really act on this while the CDPR drama was WAY more grave and founded yet it went pretty under the radar besides adding some worry about Cyberpunk.

 

[Black Angel]

- He has some nerve to have waited all three years since his departure just to drop the bomb just before their biggest project yet as an independent studio, yet pretend to wish the best for them and call Darren a selfish coward. If he really was sincere in his claims I don't see why he's not in his intentions.

That's because 3 years ago he's not ready and not prepared. He was at the lowest of low point of his life, with family issues (prominently his mother currently fighting cancer at the time) and literally left the company with no (!) dime or compensation at all.

Having said that, he's dropping these bombs with no malicious intent toward the devs at all, he wasn't even doing this to ruin the developers at all but the upper management, for obvious reasons:
1. If he really wanted to fuck with Obsidian Upper Management™ (and he's made it clear that he DO want to fuck with them), now of all time, he could have did it by not posting on a niche forum that discuss a niche genre, and instead, making the right phone calls to the right people (or get interviewed by game journalists of mainstream gaming media outlets, like IGN for example).
2. I don't know how big Versus Evil is compared to Paradox, but I think we can safely assume they've shelled out bucks big enough to buy positive review from mainstream gaming media outlets, so I doubt any of them would publish or even make articles based on some allegations made in a niche forum considering the timing.
3. Based on the reputations they've build and the new audiences they gained by way of PoE1 + DLCs and Tyranny, it's safe to say PoE2's launch condition would be mostly secure for a company as big as Obsidian Entertainment of this present time.

So, based on 3 points above, aside from the lost of potential sales and/or cancelled preorders from people who's well aware of Obsidian's track record and/or Avellones fanboys (that is, if this whole thing get to them at all)... yeah, PoE2's launch would most probably secure for the moment.

- Kind of weird to be allegedly SO terrible with budgeting and time management in the last years despite those years also containing their most polished and round releases of all their collective career without significant overtime or crunch. All accompanied by the studio increasing in personnel, offices and general reputation, enough to have another AAA developer take interest in them again. Hmm...

"without significant overtime or crunch."? Source?

Also, all those new personnel, at the cost of talented personnel like George Ziets, Travis Scout, John Gonzales, obviously Avellone himself, with the most recent departure being Eric Fernstermaker (and it's hinted by Avellone there would be someone new who's gonna leave after PoE2's launch), and who knows who else have been driven away because of all the mismanagement.

- All of this pretty much solidifies my idea on MCA's general attitude as of today. There's a reason why he how freelances into every bullshit he's asked if no matter how little he actually does, sometimes even "working" for free (that comment of "I've got more money than obsidian" rubbed me the wrong way), while also participating in pretty much any podcast (even ours), and why he doesn't commit to any meaningfully long projects. He's a rockstar writer. Office writing of thousands of fluff lines isn't gonna cut it. It's why you can tell from miles away what his contribution to the aforementioned games actually is just thanks to how obvious it'll be.

I haven't played any of the new games that have MCA involved in it, but I will ask: How's Prey to you? I remember you liking it. How's MCA's work in it, at least for you?

Also, if you've been following his updates on the whole subject, you will know he have many new projects where he's much more involved but can't comment on for the time being. One of the more prominent from the look of it is he's working with Ken Levine and the folks at Ghost Story Games (formerly Irrational Games) on a project and that's the only thing he can say about it for now. He also mentioned how, after his departure, he's got calls from many other companies and how from the projects that he's done working on after his departure from Obsidian, he got offered another work opportunity by the exact same companies (which probably falls under the category of 'can't comment for the time being' because of lack of elaboration).

Just you try thinking of another famous RPG (or just game) writer in a short time and you'll see it's a way less glamorous profession than he'd like. It only makes sense then for that attitude to cause significant friction with management and studio leads, all that drama only getting his name on people's mouths again. I definitively can see some claims having a foundation in truth but for the most of it it feels like a jealous girlfriend burning all your clothes.

Dude, did you even pay attention to what he's been saying so far about the upper management? So far, any counter commentary from Eric Fernstermaker and Anthony Davis didn't actually address any of MCA's statement, and instead came out as an attempt at preventing bridge-burning and damage control. Read up MCA's posts about his contribution to the company; how he wanted to set clear expectations from people who's placed at certain position, clear hierarchies, clear communications, etc etc. and how Feargus just throw it all out of the window, after having that process going on after 8 years. Not to mention the upper management trying to use MCA's mother currently fighting cancer to force him signing an agreement where he might not get to work on RPGs ever again...

Of course, we can't really point fingers here, and we can only wait until probably after Deadfire's launch to see Obsidian's reaction to the whole thing (or if when MCA bring this matter to the court), but to dismiss that, "It only makes sense then for that attitude to cause significant friction with management and studio leads," means you haven't really paying attention to Obsidian's track record from ever since the company was established all the way to MCA's last moment in the company.

- Also, even news outlets are keeping relatively quiet waiting for it to clear out. Furthermore, I feel something's up with acting out and opening Pandora's box on some Internet forum instead of having an official article or announcement, neither showing face for none of this. It's not like he has nothing to fear not having signed ANY NDA's and the self claimed little fortune.

Exactly. MCA knows what he's doing, hence why he's bringing it up in the Codex and Reddit, not just because it's only the Codex who's been asking question, but also because no one would really take some forum posts seriously. This is also the obvious signs that he's, indeed, cared and wished all the best for the developers at Obsidian Entertainment, but not the Upper Management™.

Bonus: That must had been the easiest de-ownering ever. And I'm not even to go on the claim of sexual harassment. Again, even if this all is true it boils down to being them vs. him, not particularly spread employee abuse and bad practices. It's gonna be pretty annoying to have people really act on this while the CDPR drama was WAY more grave and founded yet it went pretty under the radar besides adding some worry about Cyberpunk.

Because it was a really shitty deal, and MCA was still a relatively young man back then making contract with a guy who already have an experience of running (from what I remember) one company (Black Isle Studio). I wouldn't dismiss it as 'easiest de-ownering ever' however, since from what MCA said it's actually pretty elaborate process (from not updating the Fair Market Value, to other owners increasing the amount of shares to the point where MCA's own are literally worthless and can be bought out by the other owners).

Also, MCA haven't made any claim of sexual harassment. It was actually a jape made by one of the Codexers because MCA talked about his horrible experience with HR, and the only one experience that's known to the public is that of Obsidian's, and Obsidian's HR is a female who happened to be Chris Parker's (one of Obsidian's founder and owner) wife, Tina Parker. The whole thing is taken as an actual claim of sexual harassment by some people, however, because Infinitron responded to a question on Obsidian forum asking about who Obsidian's HR with a link to Tina Parker's bio 'as if it is a fact'.

As for my own personal thought to the whole subject: if even half of what MCA said is true, then I'm utterly disgusted at Obsidian's upper management, especially Feargus Urquhart. The whole thing has been an eye-opener for me, too, because I was thinking about beginning a start-up business with some of my closest friends, and we even had few meetings to discuss it, but now I think I want to back down from the joint start-up and try to do it myself, because I don't want to ruin my friendship if I happen to be a shitty business partner.

 

[Risewild]

I don't doubt these things are true at all. I have been bashing Obsidian's leadership for years now (I am pretty sure I have several posts here where I say that I believe Obsidian's leadership sucks at managing their business contracts, managing their finances and managing their relationship with publishers). I like many Obsidian's games, but I have noticed all of these problems quite a while ago.

All the signs that made me think this for many years now seem to confirm what MCA is saying. Obsidian's almost went bankrupt several times, Obsidian changes publishers with each new game (once and I would think it might have been the publisher, but the last games have almost all being released by different publishers, and no publisher that worked with Obsidian once have ever worked with them again after they left the partnership), the way Obsidian's head signs stupid contracts with no regard of the consequences (FNV Metacritic score bonus, anyone?).

I thought they were just incompetent, what I had no idea was that it seems the leadership is not only incompetent but also rotten. That is the only surprise I got from Avellone's words.

 

[Big No]

All the signs that made me think this for many years now seem to confirm what MCA is saying. Obsidian's almost went bankrupt several times, Obsidian changes publishers with each new game (once and I would think it might have been the publisher, but the last games have almost all being released by different publishers, and no publisher that worked with Obsidian once have ever worked with them again after they left the partnership), the way Obsidian's head signs stupid contracts with no regard of the consequences (FNV Metacritic score bonus, anyone?).

Chris actually brought up the New Vegas situation in one post.

So Chris Avellone , what is the true story behind FNV? I keep hearing how bathesda farked o*sidian with the metacritic score?

I don't believe they did at all - it was our responsibility to do more to make the game better, but the people making the decisions on game quality kept getting distracted by shiny objects.

It was Obsidian's fault, and as Ferg said, Bethesda didn't even have to offer that in the contract at all - it was up to us to manage it to a successful quality completion, and we didn't succeed at that. Good people lost their jobs because of that.

I'm not going to say Bethesda is innocent, they've been either too clumsy or devilish in their antics for that, but judging by this it at least seems like Obsidian had their own issues during the development cycle which helped lose them the MC score.

 

[PlanHex]

stuff

gief link to reddit, I want moar juicy drama

edit: nvm, found them:
https://www.reddit.com/r/Games/comments/8h57zx/chris_avellone_criticizes_obsidians_upper/
https://www.reddit.com/r/Games/comments/8h4h3i/chris_avellone_alledges_obsidian_almost_silenced/

Also, protip:
MCA's codex account is set to private so you can't view his posts directly from his profile page, but you can use the XenForo search to search all his posts in the thread if you click the search bar, pick him as the user you want to find posts for and mark the checkbox for searching only in that specific thread. Enlightening read.

 

[TorontoReign]

http://grimuar.pl/news/chris-o-obsidian-entertainment

The Polish are onto it. I wager IGN and Kotaku in a day or two. Also, Arnust you are a piece of work.

And more:

https://www.gamestar.de/artikel/obs...vellone-erhebt-schwere-vorwuerfe,3329320.html


One Codexer pointed out drama from long ago that leads me to believe much of what Chris said is true and not just jealousy due to9 Obsidian's latest shitty game.

It's consistent with what he did at BIS as well:

Ramsay: Tell me about the day you left Interplay. Why did you leave? What were you thinking?

Cain: While Fallout was in production, I was unhappy at how development worked at Interplay. People who didn’t play games, or didn’t even seem to like games, were making decisions about how to market the game, what features it should have, and when it should ship.

Worse, decisions were being made that changed the game and required us to do substantial changes, and these decisions could and should have been made months earlier. For example, the UK office said no children could be harmed in the game, but children had been in the design for years. Another example: Interplay spent a lot of money for an external marketing agency to develop treatments for the box and ad, and they were terrible.

My artists produced better work on their own time, but marketing did not want to use them. However, when Interplay’s president, Brian Fargo, saw their work, he liked what he saw, so the art was used. My role as producer appeared to consist of arguing with people and trying to defend the game from devolving into a lesser product.

In July 1997—Fallout would ship three months later in October—I had decided that I did not want to work on Fallout 2. I submitted to my boss, Feargus Urquhart, a review for my line producer Fred Hatch that recommended he should be promoted to associate producer and assigned Fallout 2. Although the review was not processed, Feargus gave Fred the game to see how he would perform. When the first designs were submitted, I really didn’t like them. Neither did Feargus, nor did Brian Fargo.

Leonard Boyarsky and Jason Anderson, who were the two artists and designers on Fallout with whom I would later start Troika, didn’t feel any different either. So, Leonard and Jason wrote a different storyline for the game, which Brian liked more, but he told me he’d like to see what I could do. When I asked Feargus about Fred’s promotion—his review was now long overdue—he told me that while he wouldn’t make me do Fallout 2, the promotion wasn’t going to happen, and Fred wouldn’t get the sequel.

Feargus planned to give Fallout 2 to the producer of Descent to Undermountain if I didn’t take it. While I personally liked that producer, I hated Descent. I thought the sequel would suffer under similar direction. I told Feargus that I would do the sequel and began working on a design.

Before leaving for Thanksgiving, I informed Feargus that I was thinking of quitting. I wanted him to know how I was feeling about development and how deeply I had been affected. I was worried that the same problems I had experienced during the development of Fallout would persist during the making of Fallout 2. Feargus said he understood.

When I returned, he asked if I had made a decision. I had not, and so I began work on Fallout 2. I worked out a new design and made an aggressive schedule to get the game out by the end of October 1998. I then started working on the game as lead designer and producer.

But the same problems resurfaced. For example, to save time and money, I had decided to have the same internal artists make the box for Fallout 2. Feargus was upset that I had made such a decision without consulting him, but when I talked to Marketing, they were fine with the idea. But then Sales decided to change the box size and style, which would create problems for making the second box look similar to the first. In a meeting with Sales where Feargus was present, I was told that the decision was made and “there will be no further discussion on it.”

I decided I had enough. Leonard and Jason, who could tell I was unhappy, had told me weeks earlier that they were unwilling to work on the sequel without me. Rather than simply quit, I remembered that Brian had told me years ago, after a programmer had quit under bad circumstances, that he wished people would come and talk to him rather than quit.

I went to Brian in December and told him that I was unhappy and wanted to quit. I decided to be frank and honest, and told him that other people also weren’t happy and might resign with me. He wanted names. I told him about Leonard and Jason. Other people declined to be mentioned.

Throughout December and January, the three of us met with Brian to discuss the problems and see what solutions might be found. We wanted to meet with Brian as a group to prevent any misunderstandings that might arise from separate meetings. In fact, I wanted Feargus there, too, but Brian only included him once toward the end. Brian seemed surprised that I was getting resistance to doing Fallout 2 my way. His attitude was, “You did well on the first game, so just do it again on the second.”

Unfortunately, this meant running to Brian whenever anyone tried to force their own ideas into the game, which didn’t seem like a good working environment. We discussed this problem and raised other issues at these meetings, such as converting our bonus plan to a royalty-based plan. Brian did not like the idea of royalties. As for how to handle creative control, Brian said I could divide the responsibilities with Feargus, so I could handle Marketing and other departments directly, and they would have to effectively treat me as a division director. This seemed unsatisfactory to me, but Feargus seemed very unhappy that his own authority and responsibilities concerning Fallout 2 would be greatly reduced in this plan.

It was unclear how some issues would get resolved, such as budgeting for equipment and maintenance, since I didn’t have a division director’s budget. Brian handwaved these issues, saying that we’d work them out.

At that point, I regretted not abiding my original instinct to walk out and trying to work things out with Brian. In mid-January, I decided to leave the com-pany. I told Feargus, who accepted my resignation and asked me to work until the end of the month. We went to talk to Trish Wright, the executive producer, who was unhappy to see me leave but accepted it. She warned me that Brian might be very upset, but I wanted to tell him that day. I returned to my office and told Leonard and Jason that I had quit, effective at the end of the month. Then I went and told Brian.

As expected, he was not happy. We talked for an hour, but the meeting was cut short because I had a dental appointment. While I was at the dentist, Leonard and Jason also decided to tender their resignations. I didn’t speak to Brian after that day, and I finished out the month with my team.

My team was surprised and unhappy, having heard nothing of my months of meetings with Brian. I met with them to make sure the design for Fallout 2 was up-to-date. And I met with Feargus; my replacement, Eric Demilt, who would produce Fallout 2; and other designers, such as Chris Avellone and Zeb Cook, who would assume my design responsibilities.

I made sure that everyone understood the new design and where all of my documents were located on the local network. Phil Adam, the head of human resources, met with me once, to get my view on why I was leaving, but I otherwise did not interact with Brian or the administration.

On my last day, I packed my personal effects and went to Human Resources to process out. I was redirected to Legal, where I was asked to sign a letter that reminded me of my confidentiality agreement. I learned later that Leonard and Jason were not asked to sign such a letter. And then I went home, wondering what to do, now that I had a good title under my belt but had effectively cut ties with my last company.

 

[Jabberwok]

The part mentioning VO cuts and standards just reconfirms to me why voice acting is a bad idea for RPGs. I still find it weird that even the 'classic' RPG studios like Obsidian and Larian are insisting on it.

And Chris wasn't the only one who found it jarring. I did not like the voice acting in PoA.

 

[ironmask]

This disappoints me, I'm a obsidian fan and I love some of their games and I was looking for Pillars of Eternity 2. But to hear how rotten their upper management is saddens me, I don't think I will buy their new game now if what Chris say is true.

 

[Cobra Commander]

this is sad.

 

[0wing]

PoA

Pillars of Autism?

 

[TorontoReign]

MCA is really riled up over there. Hard to see from all the felatio going on.

 

[Kohno]

Wow, he seems to be letting it all out once and for all now.

He's been posting there for hours on end.

 

[Atomkilla]

User TT1 has compiled all questions and answers MCA provided in that thread.

 

[PlanHex]

lol 80 pages

 

[Mr Fish]

Christ that's gonna take a long time to read...

 

[JDogindy]

It's not his call anymore, but I still consider Chris as the Godfather of Fallout, but taking that away from the current context, it sucks about how terrible management is and why Obsidian can't keep a consistent record for games.

I mean, lesser studios like South Peak Games manage to survive due to deals with Deep Silver, but that requires meeting demands by the publisher, and the bosses at Obsidian rarely do this.

 

[Jabberwok]

Pillars of Autism?

Haha, not sure where I got that from...

 

[Eumesmopo]

And it goes all the way back to Black Isle too... I guess we now know who the culprits are for the Fallout franchise being butchered with all of those shitty spinoffs and then sold over to Bethesda, all of that as Interplay crashed and burned from all the poor management and lack of good games to sell. To think that we could have had some actually good sequels for Planescape Torment if only there weren't so many assclowns at management positions.

 

[Gizmojunk]

... if only there weren't so many assclowns at management positions.

That should be a bumper sticker; it applies to the whole of civilization.