Chris Avellone - Interview @ RPGamer

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RPGamer interviews Chris Avellone with a few questions about his career as a game designer, past projects, and what games he would love to make.

Johnathan Stringer: Why did Obsidian decide to use Kickstarter to fund Project Eternity?

Chris Avellone: Pitching an isometric, old-school RPG has two adjectives, no three adjectives associated with it when you add PC only, or Windows-focused, to the front of RPG that publishers don't want to hear. They don't see a lot of profit to be made in a game like that, nor is it worth investing the resources to create a game like that. So, we recognized there was probably an audience for a game like that out there, and Kickstarter just provided the means to contact that audience, and ask them directly for support. The backers came back with an insane level of support, which made us all very, very happy.

Johnathan Stringer: Would you say this is the future for these old-school style, PC RPGs, and the only way to get them developed?


Chris Avellone: I used to think yes, but, recently I think publishers have seen how well these games are attracting an audience on Kickstarter and how much financial support they are getting. Now, I think publishers in the future would be more willing on having a conversation about making these types of games.

Johnathan Stringer: In your opinion, why has the Western RPG been gaining in popularity while that of the Japanese RPG has seemingly been descending?

Chris Avellone: You know, I have thought about this, and have no idea. I have a bunch of guesses. I think maybe, there are some elements about western RPGs that offer more freedom, in terms of how you build your character, and in terms of how you experience the storyline, as that is true in a lot of Bethesda's games. But, then there are some other games that seem to be mimicking more of the Japanese RPG model, that are some ways more constrained than a Bethesda game, and those seem to be doing well. So, maybe just the super linear path, without much deviation, gamers are having a backlash against that. And ultimately, they just want to play their own hero that they have customized, they have developed, and they don't have to worry about seeing in a cutscene necessarily. They just want to be the fantasy character they imagined, and I just think Western RPGs allow for that a lot more than Japanese RPGs.
Read the full interview for more good questions as I can' list them all.
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Johnathan Stringer: In your opinion, why has the Western RPG been gaining in popularity while that of the Japanese RPG has seemingly been descending?
CA has no idea?

It's filler. Japanese entertainment products must have a filler content. The more the marrier.
If it's true western RPGs are gaining in popularity, that means ppl got sick of the filler crap.
 
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CA has no idea?

It's filler. Japanese entertainment products must have a filler content. The more the marrier.
If it's true western RPGs are gaining in popularity, that means ppl got sick of the filler crap.

I think it depends on how broad a definition one uses for WRPG. If they're talking about Action RPG stuff like Fable, Skyrim, Deus Ex: Human Revolution, then yeah, WRPGs are gaining in popularity. But it seems that the more classic-style / party WRPGs are still pretty niche (the Kickstarter craze has shown there is an audience for these games but it's probably a relatively small, passionate group of old geezers).

As for the JRPGs, they've always been niche in the West. Over the past decade, I think the problem is the stuff that gets localized in English is very often not the best quality JRPG (just what is deemed marketable in the West). I've read about so many JRPGs that looked very promising, but were never brought here (probably in many cases because they were PSP games and the system was never really popular outside of Japan). And since translation takes so long we miss out on all the good JRPGs at the end of a system's lifespan. The JRPGs we get are often part of long-running series w/ existing fanbases because companies don't want to take risks localizing unknown IPs. Final Fantasy remains insanely popular in the US for reasons I don't understand. I think even a lot of diehard FF fans think the latest installments were crap, but they still buy them, because… beggars can't be choosers.
 
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Saw him doing the same "they don't make enough money" whine back when Fallout 2 was a new release. Not sure what to make of that, other than he's full of sh**.
 
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