Chris Avellone - Interview @ Scripts And Scribes
A site by the name of Scripts And Scribes had the chance to interview Chris Avellone of Obsidian Entertainment, and ask a few questions about his various games.
Kevin: You’ve worked on, writing and designing, games from some of the most iconic video game franchises in the past decade, including series such as STAR WARS: KNIGHTS OF THE OLD REPUBLIC, NEVERWINTER NIGHTS, BALDUR’S GATE and one of my all-time personal favorites, FALLOUT. Which game that you worked on are you happiest with the end result and why?
Chris: I was proud to work each of the titles for various reasons, but the one I’m most happy with the end result was Planescape: Torment, I felt the title had enough time to “cook” and let the themes come out strongly. Although had I worked on Fallout 1, that would likely have trumped Planescape pretty easily – I felt Fallout 1 had one of the best endings of any games Black Isle Studios turned out, especially for a speech character. I also enjoyed Icewind Dale 2 and FNV: DLC: Old World Blues as well, both of those were just… fun to work on.
As a quick note, while I wish I could claim credit for having worked on Baldur’s Gate, let me say for the record that I didn’t work on the Infinity Engine ones (just Dark Alliance, the 1st action RPG using the Baldur’s Gate name). Wanted to clarify because sometimes people thank me for working on the title, and all the heavy lifting was done by BioWare, and they definitely deserve the applause.
Kevin: Three games you’re involved in (including WASTELAND 2 and TORMENT: TIDES OF NUMENERA) all used crowd funding to cover development costs, as sort of a pre-sale system. Can you talk of what the advantage of collecting payment up front does for you as a game developer in terms of both financial and creative freedom? Do you see this being the way video games and possibly other entertainment mediums – such as movies, television, novels and comics – are funded and produced as standard practice in the future?
Chris: It’s worked well for us and allows us to establish reasonable expectations of how much content we can deliver for the title and the time frame as well. Rather than having the money rationed out month by month in the publisher system by meeting milestones (which can shift), you know the amount up front that you have to complete the game… if you are aware of the pipelines to create levels and have an awareness of your resource budget to generate content, this is a god-send.
In terms of creative freedom, it’s been great – in these projects, we answer to the fans and backers (who we would have to answer to anyway) and remove the filter of the publisher. Note that when I say “filter,” I don’t mean this as a bad thing – there are simply projects that developers would like to pitch that wouldn’t have traction with a large publisher seeking to maximize profits across several ports to several different platforms. But Kickstarter still gives the players the voice to ask for games outside of those parameters, which is empowering for both the players and the developer.
Kickstarter is a viable platform for game funding, and the convergence of several technologies (digital distribution among them, plus affordable game building engines such as Unity) has really allowed for a surge of game ideas from corners of game development that were formerly unable to be given a voice due to the standard game development and distribution model.
It’s an exciting time, and I’m glad to be here, now, and part of it.