Obsidian Fridays
Knights of the Old Republic 2
Chris Avellone’s conference plans.
Obsidian game designer and project director Chris Avellone will be at PAX East and WonderCon this year.
J.E. Sawyer: Choice Architecture and Narrative Design.
Josh Sawyer has posted a PDF copy of his GDC presentation: Do (Say) The Right Thing: Choice Architecture, Player Expression and Narrative Design in Fallout: New Vegas. It makes for some fascinating reading, and gives some insight into how Sawyer — and Obsidian in general — implement and reward (if that’s the right word) choice in their game narratives.
All is not roses at Obsidian, however…
This is some sad news:
Obsidian Entertainment has just cancelled “a future next gen project” (most likely Project North Carolina), resulting in the layoff of approximately 20-30 employees from both that team and the South Park: The Game team. Adding credence to the tip is a tweet by Obsidian Entertainment animator Andre Nguyen wishing those laid off a speedy recovery at another position elsewhere in the industry:
Fellow Obsidianites who were laid off today…I was lucky, but I’ve been on the other end of that. Your talents will take you far! #keepgoin
This is worse news:
Project North Carolina that was cancelled, and that the devastating news comes after “the owners weren’t paid for 6-7 months” and “401k matching was halted” for employees. Hopefully Obsidian lets us throw our money at a Kickstarter project soon, or I’m going to really start to worry.
And in even worse news (though I can’t find the source for where I read this), it was apparently the case that this Project North Carolina was considered…quite important to the financial viability of the company, so much so that Feargus Urquhart evidently choked up when making the announcement of its cancellation.
Bad news bears, my Dragons and Dragonettes.
This might have had something to do with the above…
…Fallout: New Vegas currently has a Metacritic average of 84, a single point below the average that would’ve earned the company royalties on its product. “[Fallout: New Vegas] was a straight payment, no royalties, only a bonus if we got an 85+ on Metacritic, which we didn’t,” Obsidian creative director and co-owner Chris Avellone told one Twitter user.
I notice that Avellone has since deleted the tweet that revealed this information (or, at least, I can’t find it anymore), but the cat’s out of the bag regardless, and the Internet has made its opinions on the matter known. As far as things that suck go, this ranks up there, to be sure.
The First Age of Update: As it would happen, the source for that whole Feargus Urquhart choking up bit was…the Joystiq article linked immediately above.
Have you seen Adam Sessler’s rant regarding Metacritic?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0QsXrswJ-yM
caution, language
Sounds about right. We’ve debated the…utility, and the flaws, of Metacritic here before. To me, it seems a silly metric to use, because of the ease with which its scores can be skewed.
One can understand Bethesda’s desire to tie bonuses and royalties to results, of course…that’s not insensible on their part. At the same time, does a good metric exist to gauge that? Apart from raw sales numbers, I mean?
And that’s what Metacritic missed. They decided they wanted to be Rotten Tomatoes instead of Nielson. I’m sure there’s ways. Shoot you’ve probably got lots of metrics/analytics aside from revenue available through XBOX, Steam, PSN including how many finished/got what achievements/etc. There’s so much data you can tie performance to besides Metacritic. Not to further pummel the deceased equine, but all M is good for is at-a-glance did it outright suck?
I’ve just gone back to New Vegas to finish the DLC and continue to have the time of my life. I think the material’s better written than F3, has more of the old school Fallout vibe, and the hardcore mode is a hoot. Chris A. is a master storyteller and DM; I was just thinking of sending him and the Obsidian crew a written letter thanking them for their great work. It’s not something you can cash at the bank, but a bit of old-fashioned encouragement can’t hurt.
The whole Metacritic bonus suck, but as crazy as the “Upfront payment, no royalties, Metacritic bonus” sounds, my understanding is that it is standard practice nowadays, so Obsidian is no exception.
That being said, Obsidian seems in such financial troubles, I’m not even sure the FNV bonus would make that much of a difference. It’s important to remember FNV really came as a blessing for the company – when the deal happened Aliens Crucible had just been cancelled by Sega, if they didn’t had this chance of having a new project to move J.E Sawyer’s team immediately, there would likely have been lots of layoffs then as well.
But all this do not bodes well for Obsidian at all – it doesn’t sounds they have much going besides South Park (which also suffered from some layoffs), and even the XBLA RPG they mentionend last year has been put on hold.
If Obsidian goes down that would be the worst thing ot happens to RPG since the death of Troika 🙁
It’s kind of auspicious how this series of events was perfectly timed with the launch of their old boss Brian Fargo’s Wasteland 2 project.
Chris Avellone is the Joss Whedon of video games.
Hey! No insulting Chris Avellone!
He said, in jest. Or mostly so.
I hope Avellone gets this Obsidian Kickstarter thing running.
Hey! No insulting Firefly!
He said, in jest.
What about Buffy? Is that fair game?
Nope. Buffy is also awesome. As is Angel and Dr Horrible. And Dollhouse. And the Frighteners. And I’m sure the Avengers will be too.
The original Buffy movie however… You can insult that.
Have I ever mentioned that the French-language teacher (because we have those in Canada) at my high school was a Mrs. (or Mme.) Fillion?
Oh yeah.