Fallout 2 designer Chris Avellone recalls his first forays into game development

Avellone recaps his journey from learning on a TRS-80 to today.

See full article...

 

[Nawrocki]

I really should dust off my copies of classic Fallout and relive the good memories I had in my youth. I'm glad Chris has been vindicated of the allegations he suffered under a few years ago.

 

[PurpleBadger]

“Don’t give, then take away,” Avellone warns. “One of the worst mistakes I made was after an excruciatingly long treasure hunt for one of the biggest hordes in the world, I took away all the unique items the characters had struggled to win at the start of the very next adventure. While I knew they would get the items back, the players didn’t, and that almost caused a mutiny.”

This. Crikey how I hate that sort of thing. Maybe somewhere out there is a good implementation of this that advances the story well without feeling like I'm getting punished for no reason while doing everything right, but I've yet to see it.

When I used to run D&D type games, this was a cardinal rule. Don't screw the players. If bad things happen, let it come about through player choices and actions. Players need to trust that their time investment will be respected.

 

[ChrmnMa0]

The genius of Planescape was how it treated death. I can't think of another game that has done this.

 

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

“Players are selfish,” Avellone said, reflecting on his time designing the seminal computer roleplaying game Planescape: Torment. “The more you can make the experience all about them, the better. So Torment became that. Almost every single thing in the game is about you, the player.”

What seems like a really tricky aspect of this is that there's something really bad for immersion/suspension of disbelief about too crudely protagonist-centric/designated-hero settings; and there's always something kind of goofy about situations where apparently everyone is just standing there waiting for the chosen one to solve their problem(especially when it's everyone, from the mud farmer who needs three tubers to averting the end of the world that is equally waiting on you); and being too overtly constructed to be your designated fans and/or foils tends to flatten NPC characters out.

That's not to say that I disagree with him on players wanting it to be about them; just that it appears that the most effective pandering demands that you manage to conceal just how much pandering you are actually doing; which seems to make being all about the player a much trickier task than it would be if players were less discerning about being pandered to.

You see how people gush over 'living worlds', 'emergent behavior', and immersive sims(which are basically just RPGs; but with worlds that have a certain special 'something' in terms of mechanical plausibility); because those things succeed in especially artfully pretending that you are just being awesome in a world that actually plays by consistent rules; rather than a series of setpieces populated by sycophants and stuntmen.

 

[ChickenHawk]

Good to see he’s out there working on stuff after he got shut out with those false accusations. Can’t wait to see what he comes up with.

 

[Greever]

“Players are selfish,” Avellone said, reflecting on his time designing the seminal computer roleplaying game Planescape: Torment.

While I understand what Avellone was trying to convey, this was a weird way to state it. Games are played for entertainment, which is inherently a self-centered act. That doesn't necessarily make players "selfish."

Torment was an amazing game and it has been fun to see related references and influences in another amazing D&D game: Baldur's Gate 3.

 

[dsch]

“Players are selfish,” Avellone said, reflecting on his time designing the seminal computer roleplaying game Planescape: Torment. “The more you can make the experience all about them, the better. So Torment became that. Almost every single thing in the game is about you, the player.”

This seems really quite limiting, and we've already seen games as a medium grow out of that.

 

[aleph_nought]

The genius of Planescape was how it treated death. I can't think of another game that has done this.

Death at the game level and also at a meta level, getting the monkey behind the keyboard to ponder on its own mortality. Planescape was a genuinely moving game - the only time I felt something similar was after choosing the Synthesis ending in Mass Effect 3, seeing that sometimes the hardships in life are unavoidable.

 

[TekaroBB]

I think every GM eventually learns that their epic fantasy plot needs to take a backseat to the players. If you want a properly structured fantasy narrative, write a novel. But if you are running an TTRPG, you really need to learn humility and let the players have their fun.

Obviously, a video game plot will need to be more structured, but if your goal is to create an RPG in the style of a TTRPG, a lot of the same advice applies.

 

[tgx]

Planescape was a lot of fun. If you haven't played it, try it out.

 

[Terminalmancer]

This seems really quite limiting, and we've already seen games as a medium grow out of that.

It reads to me like a lesson born out of gamemastering tabletop and a reminder to avoid a common rookie mistake where a GM's Mary or Marty Sue is the awesome one doing all the work and the player characters are just along for the ride.

Maybe think of it as a truncated version of, "video games are an interactive medium, so make sure the experience is about how the PCs, not NPCs, interact with the story" ?

 

[Fred Duck]

If players want to skip dialogue and story points, that’s how they choose to play the game, and they shouldn’t be crushingly penalized for their play style.

Well, if an RPG is about playing a role, and if the players don't know what role they're playing because they're skipping the world building, that's on them. I don't see how you can have an RPG if the story is wholly optional and all the player is doing is engaging with scenery and enemies.

Players are selfish. The more you can make the experience all about them, the better. So Torment became that. Almost every single thing in the game is about you, the player.

I don't really understand what this means.

If I read a book or watch a motion picture extravaganza, I am a passive observer. If I PLAY a computer (or video) experience with a strong story, I don't need to have the world bend to my will. Everyone always mentions the hit title Spec Ops: The Line as having a well-done story. As one Reddit poster put it:

Spec Ops [sic] story and narrative is [sic] great, but the gameplay is generic as hell and very repetitive. And I don't really thing [sic] it was done on purpose to make the argument about glorification of war, as a [sic] great gameplay would [sic] even [sic] further amplify [sic] that message.

As far as I can tell, the specific Bad Thing that the story forces you to do cannot be avoided, so in this case, it's not at all about the player. You'll also note this fellow says that it's generic and repetitive, but there are so very many people always talking about The Story, which demonstrates that as with films or novels, when you have a great story, that's enough.

Sidetrack for a moment: You know how modern Final Fantasies are all polygonal graphics with voice acting and motion capture? We didn't need that back in the Good Old Days. Final Fantasy VI has plenty of emotional parts and all the sprites could do was bounce and lift their arms! As with a novel, sketch the scene and let the player's imagination take over. That's enough.

Now, with something such as the hit title The Sims 3, that really is all about the player and even though it's make believe with rules, players will actively mod around the rules given. Albert Camus would be the first to tell you that's a special case but he's dead.

The Mass Effect 3 Problem has appeared!

Players were quite taken with Mass Effects 1-2 when it seemed that the experience was all about them. Then because of the fact that modern AAAA experiences "require" voice acting, then instead of being able to simply write hundreds of endings...well...

It's not even in any way like the traditional game endings, where you can say how many endings there are or whether you got ending A, B, or C.

Which was technically true as it was ending red, green, or blue.

People were pleased with Chrono Trigger's multiple endings but that was when we didn't expect much in the way of endings. We were lucky if there was one at all.

In the end, it pains me to hear someone say that story can be entirely optional. I write stories. That's NOT what I want to hear someone say. However, he is A Famous Designer and I am A Not-Very-Famous Ars Technica Commenter, so people are more likely to listen to him.




...Wasn't the storyteller in Dungeons & Dragons called a Dungeon Master?

 

[fe3a8b63]

What I'd give for the next Fallout...

Brian Fargo, presents
A Tim Cain, Chris Avellone, Chris Taylor game

Fallout 5...


View: https://www.youtube.com/embed/Wd_fO_SUgPs?si=pzzERnTxgZbUIURt



(yeah i know theres been tension, fights and collaboration FO:NV, but man, I'd be one hell of a game)

 

[norristravis]

He got a public retraction but AFAIK he mostly moved to another state, and filed a lawsuit there

He didn't move to another state. He filed a lawsuit in California, where he has lived in 1995, but couldn't demonstrate that the accusers had enough links to it, so it was dismissed for jurisdictional reasons. Then he refiled in Illinois and Oklahoma, where the accusers lived, and those lawsuits reached the discovery phase.

some young women that couldn't afford to battle him in court.

This isn't true either. Both accusers were past their mid-30s, but, more importantly. they were represented pro bono and didn't have to "afford to battle him in court". Their real problem was that none of the witnesses made statements in their favor, but did make statements in Chris' favor.

I don't comment here frequently but it's very disappointing to see Ars putting out a puff piece on an alleged abuser who bullied his victims into submission through the legal system.

Again, not what happened. You should read the witness statements instead of relying on your imagination.

 

[nzeid]

TRS-80

*Trash-80

 

[macosandlinux]

Great to see this and the recent Gilbert article. More of these (game dev, historical) and less game reviews, as they can be had everywhere (although Ars always has an eclectic mix).

 

[Amiga4000T]

Great interview!

Planescape Torment was an amazing game!

 

[Boskone]

He's not wrong, but I wonder if he didn't oversimplify for brevity.

Yes, players need agency. People play most games to be the star of a show, so to speak.

But the storyline (if it's a game that has a significant one) does have to trump player agency. Sometimes you have to let Little Timmy drown in the well to save the world from Alduin.

 

[MattGertz]

The genius of Planescape was how it treated death. I can't think of another game that has done this.

Avallone was being slightly disengenuous here, but not egregiously so. Indeed, death generally doesn't interrupt the story and in fact moves it along at some points -- but there is one battle towards the end where the number of deaths you've accumulated will impede you, potentially in a very frustrating and time-consuming way -- and save-scumming is very hard at that point as well. It even makes sense story-wise, but in replays of PS:T, it is annoying enough that I do try to avoid unnecessary deaths early on (shame on me).

 

[Jeff S]

I think there is a typo:

The true mark of a successful game is when players really enjoy themselves, and serving that essential egotism is one of the fundamental flaws of game design.

There, I fixed it for you.

 

[eukiwi]

The genius of Planescape was how it treated death. I can't think of another game that has done this.

The genius of Planescape was how it treated everything...

Fixed it for you.

What a masterpiece of a game.

 

[Mentil]

What seems like a really tricky aspect of this is that there's something really bad for immersion/suspension of disbelief about too crudely protagonist-centric/designated-hero settings; and there's always something kind of goofy about situations where apparently everyone is just standing there waiting for the chosen one to solve their problem(especially when it's everyone, from the mud farmer who needs three tubers to averting the end of the world that is equally waiting on you); and being too overtly constructed to be your designated fans and/or foils tends to flatten NPC characters out.

This idea is deconstructed in the spiritual sequel 'Torment: Tides of Numenera':

Spoiler

The protagonist has some magical condition that makes them the center of the universe's fate or somesuch, so that everything impactful becomes connected to you. IIRC.

 

[eukiwi]

He got a public retraction but AFAIK he mostly moved to another state, and filed a lawsuit there on some young women that couldn't afford to battle him in court.

Which sucks, because I'm a fan of his work.

You need to look into this in more detail. That's not what happened at all, and "AFAIK" should never, ever be seen in a sentence dealing with such a topic.

 

[Aurich]

In the end, it pains me to hear someone say that story can be entirely optional. I write stories. That's NOT what I want to hear someone say. However, he is A Famous Designer and I am A Not-Very-Famous Ars Technica Commenter, so people are more likely to listen to him.

I like to think about this in the context of the annual discussions we have (if not more often lol) about game difficulty.

You, as the game designer, make choices. And players can respect them or bounce off them.

If you make a Dark Souls, and it's "hard", and your answer to the player is "just keep trying until you figure out the pattern, that's the game" that's I think fine.

And clearly some people hate it. And some love it. It's a choice.

If you as the designer want to say "the story matters, and if you skip it you're going to have a bad time" that's a choice too. And some will love and respect it.

And many will bounce off it.

You always have the choice to make what you want, but you can't control how people interact with it. That's the nature of the medium. And the more you stick to your own guns, and what you think matters, the more pure you are, the less mass appeal you're going to have.

Which is I think a choice that's easy to respect, but also one that may not lead to success. And that's always a balance.

 

[Lone-Lizard-9144]

I wonder if this interview has anything to do with the side-eye criticisms PT's been getting lately.

If nothing else, I found this essay on the state of dialog trees a good read.

This isn't true either. Both accusers were past their mid-30s, but, more importantly. they were represented pro bono and didn't have to "afford to battle him in court". Their real problem was that none of the witnesses made statements in their favor, but did make statements in Chris' favor.

I think ultimately the witnesses did not collaborate on the accusers stories, but I could be giving the benefit of the doubt.

 

[odikweos]

I really should dust off my copies of classic Fallout and relive the good memories I had in my youth. I'm glad Chris has been vindicated of the allegations he suffered under a few years ago.

I blame him for terrible, terrible things I did to one of the majors' display drivers. KOTOR 2 (probably not intentionally) exploited a driver bug that ended up becoming crystallized in the driver due to inability to just break a legacy game. An entire horrible state mechanism had to be duplicated, permanently, in the code (biz decision).

It was still unambiguously the worst code I've ever shipped.

 

[w8bencert]

The genius of Planescape was how it treated death. I can't think of another game that has done this.

Have you played Hades? Dying is part of the experience and the game cured me of being worried about occasionally failing when playing a game.

I can't compare the two because I just remember buying Planescape ages ago but not much about playing it. Have to look for a copy on Gog....

Edited: it's on sale for the next 12 hours!

 

[TekaroBB]

I like to think about this in the context of the annual discussions we have (if not more often lol) about game difficulty.

You, as the game designer, make choices. And players can respect them or bounce off them.

If you make a Dark Souls, and it's "hard", and your answer to the player is "just keep trying until you figure out the pattern, that's the game" that's I think fine.

And clearly some people hate it. And some love it. It's a choice.

If you as the designer want to say "the story matters, and if you skip it you're going to have a bad time" that's a choice too. And some will love and respect it.

And many will bounce off it.

You always have the choice to make what you want, but you can't control how people interact with it. That's the nature of the medium. And the more you stick to your own guns, and what you think matters, the more pure you are, the less mass appeal you're going to have.

Which is I think a choice that's easy to respect, but also one that may not lead to success. And that's always a balance.

In my mind, I just want my time respected. If there's a lot of story in your game, it needs to be good. If your story is mediocre but short, that's fine. But if you spend a lot of time on a bad story I am just going to start skipping, or I'll drop your game altogether.

Sometimes a game can have a really good story but told in a really bad way, too. FF14 has a truly awful structure for it's base game (A Realm Reborn) that results in a lot of players skipping cutscenes to just enjoy the game. But expansions overall are quite good, they just demand you to have been paying attention back when the game was actively wasting your time. The story is still quite poorly paced even when it's good (lot's of characters standing around for 15 seconds tapping their chins, or otherwise wasting your time with mundane BS) but the plot is quite good. Shame so many players missed out on it because they were trained to skip the very long very boring stuff early.

 

[Aurich]

In my mind, I just want my time respected. If there's a lot of story in your game, it needs to be good. If your story is mediocre but short, that's fine. But if you spend a lot of time on a bad story I am just going to start skipping, or I'll drop your game altogether.

Sometimes a game can have a really good story but told in a really bad way, too. FF14 has a truly awful structure for it's base game (A Realm Reborn) that results in a lot of players skipping cutscenes to just enjoy the game. But expansions overall are quite good, they just demand you to have been paying attention back when the game was actively wasting your time. The story is still quite poorly paced even when it's good (lot's of characters standing around for 15 seconds tapping their chins, or otherwise wasting your time with mundane BS) but the plot is quite good. Shame so many players missed out on it because they were trained to skip the very long very boring stuff early.

I also ultimately feel like when I want to game I'm gaming, and if I'm in the mood for a long story and a lot of reading or sitting watching cut scenes etc then I'm gonna prefer engaging with a book or a movie or a show.

I appreciate that gaming can be a very cool way to tell stories, but the less it's a game and the more you're taking away my agency and making me a passive observer the less engaged I am with it.

As with everything it's a balance. But if you're a writer and you want to write then books or scripted shows are there.

Obviously the better done it is and more part of the experience the easier it is to be into it. If you're making say Uncharted I'm down.

If it's about "pick up item and read the multipage lore that you need to know to solve the puzzle" then I'm decidedly less so.

 

[TekaroBB]

I also ultimately feel like when I want to game I'm gaming, and if I'm in the mood for a long story and a lot of reading or sitting watching cut scenes etc then I'm gonna prefer engaging with a book or a movie or a show.

I appreciate that gaming can be a very cool way to tell stories, but the less it's a game and the more you're taking away my agency and making me a passive observer the less engaged I am with it.

As with everything it's a balance. But if you're a writer and you want to write then books or scripted shows are there.

Obviously the better done it is and more part of the experience the easier it is to be into it. If you're making say Uncharted I'm down.

If it's about "pick up item and read the multipage lore that you need to know to solve the puzzle" then I'm decidedly less so.

That's generally my sentiment, until the occasional game with a great plot comes along to make an exception. Having just finished Clair Obscure, there was no way I was skipping any part of that games story (except for repeat cutscenes, but that game makes the baffling decision of putting the checkpoints at the start of the cutscenes before bosses, rather than just dropping you back into the start of the fight after a continue). But this is an obvious exception that proves the rule. Most of the games I am playing more than once are the ones with skippable story bits so I can get back to the fun.

One of the reasons I appreciate the Souls games so much is the story is largely told through optional reading and environmental storytelling. I replay all those games several times because I can just get back to enjoying the game parts more easily. Which probably also accounts for my love of Roguelikes.

 

[Xyler]

This. Crikey how I hate that sort of thing. Maybe somewhere out there is a good implementation of this that advances the story well without feeling like I'm getting punished for no reason while doing everything right, but I've yet to see it.

When I used to run D&D type games, this was a cardinal rule. Don't screw the players. If bad things happen, let it come about through player choices and actions. Players need to trust that their time investment will be respected.

You sound like a good DM. I've too often read or heard of DMs who took it upon them as a personal challenge to kill off player characters.

 

[cosmotose]

This. Crikey how I hate that sort of thing. Maybe somewhere out there is a good implementation of this that advances the story well without feeling like I'm getting punished for no reason while doing everything right, but I've yet to see it.

When I used to run D&D type games, this was a cardinal rule. Don't screw the players. If bad things happen, let it come about through player choices and actions. Players need to trust that their time investment will be respected.

Wait a second.. isn't this advice exactly backwards from the Bible's canonical teachings where God intentionally ruins everything fun about the World just to demand MORE RESPECT??? Did Chris Avellon not read the Bible or his Godlike job description..?? What ever has happened to make the children seek out such SOFT entertainment!?! If you're NOT Suffering, are you even alive..??

/s

 

[internetomancer]

Have you played Hades? Dying is part of the experience and the game cured me of being worried about occasionally failing when playing a game.

I can't compare the two because I just remember buying Planescape ages ago but not much about playing it. Have to look for a copy on Gog....

Edited: it's on sale for the next 12 hours!

Unfortunately, gameplay-wise, Planescape is kind of lame. The rule system is overcomplicated and unbalanced. The dialogue trees often just test if you put points into a dump stat--cha, wis, or int (hint: do so.). Many of the quests are fetch quests-- find person a, then person b, then person a again. It's okkkkkay, but you'll probably enjoy BG3 much more in terms of gameplay.

And imo, it's not the death that makes it special either. Usually, when you die, the game just autoloads, which is what other games do without the notion that you are "immortal".

However, Planescape has a really good setting, and really good characters, and a really good story, and really good short stories. So much so that some of the interactions stick with me decades later, which is rare for novels and almost non-existent for video games.

 

[cosmotose]

What seems like a really tricky aspect of this is that there's something really bad for immersion/suspension of disbelief about too crudely protagonist-centric/designated-hero settings; and there's always something kind of goofy about situations where apparently everyone is just standing there waiting for the chosen one to solve their problem(especially when it's everyone, from the mud farmer who needs three tubers to averting the end of the world that is equally waiting on you); and being too overtly constructed to be your designated fans and/or foils tends to flatten NPC characters out.

That's not to say that I disagree with him on players wanting it to be about them; just that it appears that the most effective pandering demands that you manage to conceal just how much pandering you are actually doing; which seems to make being all about the player a much trickier task than it would be if players were less discerning about being pandered to.

You see how people gush over 'living worlds', 'emergent behavior', and immersive sims(which are basically just RPGs; but with worlds that have a certain special 'something' in terms of mechanical plausibility); because those things succeed in especially artfully pretending that you are just being awesome in a world that actually plays by consistent rules; rather than a series of setpieces populated by sycophants and stuntmen.

YESSS I love what you've Hit on here. Besides sports games I still play on occasion, you have exactly described one of the biggest reasons why my (wholeheartedly addicted) Video game hobby DIED COMPLETELY after 2007 Runescape - and eventually console games starting around 2011. Being a creative, I tend not to care whatsoever about someone else's Storyline in favor of enjoying simple mechanics but MY GOD nothing drives a nail into my entertainment coffin harder than feeling uninspired like im on a profitable railroad to somebody's Canned Art factory.


I think its the same thing in the Music world in which I now find myself. There's a similar balance of audience expectation & surprise that requires the creator to know the rules & implications robustly enough that they themselves are able to get away with breaking them

I absolutely LOVEEE this article comment section!! ^_^ Thanks everyone

 

[ScifiGeek]

What seems like a really tricky aspect of this is that there's something really bad for immersion/suspension of disbelief about too crudely protagonist-centric/designated-hero settings; and there's always something kind of goofy about situations where apparently everyone is just standing there waiting for the chosen one to solve their problem(especially when it's everyone, from the mud farmer who needs three tubers to averting the end of the world that is equally waiting on you); and being too overtly constructed to be your designated fans and/or foils tends to flatten NPC characters out.

I found this was pretty bad in Fallout 4 (nothing to do with Avellone). Fresh out of the deep freeze and almost all the factions want you to be their leader in no time. It's far too easy.

 

[DCStone]

I found this was pretty bad in Fallout 4 (nothing to do with Avellone). Fresh out of the deep freeze and almost all the factions want you to be their leader in no time. It's far too easy.

Want you to side with them? Yes, many times.

Want you to be their leader almost immediately? Really, only the Minutemen - and that only because they're absolutely desperate and almost extinct.

I will agree that it's a bit too easy to get on the good side of the Brotherhood and Railroad; the Institute is a bit more complicated, but you do have an obvious "in" there. At least the game made it so you hit a point of no return with at least some of them at some point.