Chris Avellone Interview

The folks at Script and Scribes have recently chatted with Obsidian Entertainment’s co-founder and chief creative officer Chris Avellone and published both a full interview and a short “20 questions” article. The former is more up our alley, so I’ll quote a snippet concerning Avellone’s current work:

Kevin Fukunaga (Scripts & Scribes): You are the CCO (Chief Creative Officer) and one of the original founders of Obsidian Entertainment. Can you describe what your role is at Obsidian and how the company was created?

Chris Avellone: Obsidian was formed when five developers from Black Isle Studios (including the division director at the time, Feargus Urquhart) left Interplay and went out, blasters firing and lightsabers vshhhhking to life, to create RPGs on our own. As Chief Creative Officer, my role has mutated over the years; I don’t think I’ve ever had anything as an (average day,) which certainly keeps me on my toes and makes life more interesting (in the best possible way).

For example, in the past month, I was doing core writing work on one of our internal projects, now I’m illustrating cartoon Kickstarter backer rewards, and also doing creative lead duties on another of our unannounced internal projects scripting lore and world sourcebook material. It’s a lot to juggle, and it hasn’t left a lot of time for much else although it’s one interesting aspect of our studio that the owners themselves don’t hesitate to pitch in to help with a product’s success, whether interface, optimization, writing installers, setting up the website and backer portals, or even doing what I am usually enlisted to do: design, usually narrative.

Over the years, I’ve served as a Project Director, a Lead Designer, a Creative Lead, an Area Designer, a Narrative Designer, and a Cut Scene Producer assisting with production support on South Park: The Stick of Truth, for example, but when not assigned to a specific role on a project, I do design critiques in tandem with a Project Director or other owner, do pitches for future Obsidian projects (and presentations of the same game pitches), deal with publishers, assist with designer hiring and recruitment, examine narrative scheduling and tasking, and also carry the torch for design principles and practices at the studio with approval and support of the other owners and Project Directors.

It’s interesting to me that Obsidian’s chief creative officer specifically mentions writing lore and world sourcebook material for the new project, because that makes a game based on a license (like, for example, a Pathfinder-based CRPG) much less likely.