Infinitron said: ↑
Mmmm hmmm, and yet, I think Chris' earlier response to me suggests that he was in fact willing to put up with all sorts of management failures if he thought it was for a worthwhile cause - an inspiring cause.
Chris Avellone said:
That wasn't it (although it would have helped). The issue was I felt loyalty and indebted to Feargus.
To explain, for a long time, I thought Feargus had protected me from my early management failures back at Interplay (I definitely made some as a first lead on Torment) and watched out for me when I was under stress and working double-time on Fallout 2/Torment - and he told me as much, which I thought was a noble thing for a manager to do, so I resolved to support him as best I could because he clearly had my back.
During the last year at Obsidian, however, one of the breaking points (and I think he didn't realize how much his Interplay protection had meant to me personally) was he then told me he had actually done the exact opposite of what he said he'd done and that he hadn't done anything at all, and in fact, encouraged some of the troubles I had experienced. Other Obsidian employees have experienced similar revelations of past actions that turned out not to be true by Feargus's own admission.
It was a big shock to me, but I made sure to double-check with him to make sure I'd heard him right, then went back to my office and thought for a while. One big problem with this revelation was it was one of the reasons I'd defended him at Interplay, gone with him to Obsidian, and then defended all he'd done for there for the past 9 years… because I thought he'd stood up for me and made sacrifices for me as an employee. But he hadn't. It was like a chunk of my life had been derailed, and I felt sick about it. After this, I stopped defending him to others (although I didn't attack him) and I became more aware of other things he did that were causing problems. It didn't cause anger, it was just like having a veil pulled from your face and you started seeing things around you more clearly. I also started being a bit more blunt when I saw things going wrong (reviews, feedback, lack of clarity in decisions, pipeline wastes in time, resources, and money), which I imagine went over less well when compared to my previous behavior of being careful bringing these things up.
Overall, I just wanted (and still want) Feargus to be a good manager, treat people fairly, take a breath before doing something to alienate publishers until he doesn't need publishers anymore, and show some empathy for the states of his employees - and realize how his behavior can hurt them, either directly, or by example. Even if he may do other things to help them, it can't be hit or miss or be carelessly affect their lives (repeated sudden layoffs, favoritism, not dealing with immigration problems properly, not paying employees back, not trying harder to prevent project collapses without working hard on a back-up plan, and more). A lot of the problems we had (ex: Stormlands) could have been avoided, or we could have made a better plan - before doing another round of layoffs. And each problem made our situation more and more desperate (until PoE1, although PoE1 didn't save the company, it just helped our image and company morale - Armored Warfare actually kept things afloat for a long time, although the team wasn't given much thanks for that, imo).
That said, the only other thing I wanted from Feargus? Was a plan. Where in the hell was the company going or supposed to go?
Fargo had a plan when I talked to him when I started working on WL2 part-time at inXile… he had a five-year plan that was very clear, made a lot of sense, and clicked. In all the years at Obsidian (no shit), there wasn't a sense of where the company should go, would go, or how it would get through the next few months.
Part of this can be explained by the financial desperation, but not all of it, and the frustration wasn't mine alone - the other owners (esp. Jones) would get extremely frustrated there wasn't some sort of compass guiding our efforts, and it showed. We just kind of reacted to things vs. planning them, which didn't help our stability.
It could be crowdsourcing may be the plan now, or making similar games to PoE and Indiana but it wasn't the 5-year plan at the time of my departur - and doing the same thing repeatedly may not help Obsidian in the long run without other changes. Also, I've noticed Feargus is taking more and more non-Obsidian roles (Fig, Zero Radius), and I'm worried those might be stepping stones for a future, final step from selling the company - which is good for him, but I don't know about everyone else.
