To our game dev listeners, are you wondering how to expand your game around the globe?
Well, wonder no longer.
Xsolla Payments is a solution built for global game commerce and monetization.
It boosts player engagement with localized checkout experiences using your players' preferred payment methods.
The simple user interface makes it easy for gamers everywhere to pay for your games and in-game content exactly how they want.
Even better, they can save their favorite payment methods for quick purchases to help them get back in the game faster.
And you'll love Ixola Payments because of its customizable checkout and integration options with everything from sidebars and iframes to fonts and images, making the buying process feel like an extension of your game experience for payers.
Ready to go global?
Visit xsolla.pro slash aiasp or click the link in our podcast description to learn more.
Secure your digital world in physical form with IM8Bit.
For 20 years, IM8Bit has been crafting premium expansions on the industry's best games.
They've pioneered community experiences like Day of the Devs and Summer Game Fest, and have brought over 200 award-winning physical games and soundtracks to life.
From breakout hits like Sea of Stars and Persona 5 to originally published titles like Escape, Academy and Simpler Times.
I Am 8-Bit's passion is fueled by artistry and games.
Whether interpreting beloved brands from a new point of view or extending the mythology of a game, perhaps one you're developing.
What's the I Am 8-Bit difference?
Their collectibles are premium, but for them, they're personal too.
See for yourself at I Am 8-Bit.
Hi, I'm Alexa Ray Correa and this is the Game Maker's Notebook podcast coming to you from Edinburgh at Dice Europe.
My next guest needs no introduction.
It is legendary designer Josh Sawyer.
I'm just going to roll you right into it.
Please enjoy.
Welcome to The Game Maker's Notebook, a podcast featuring a series of in-depth one-on-one conversations between game makers, providing a thoughtful, intimate perspective on the business and craft of interactive entertainment.
The Game Maker's Notebook is presented by the Academy of Interactive Arts and Sciences, a member-driven organization dedicated to the recognition and advancement of interactive entertainment.
Hello.
Hello.
How are you, Josh?
I'm doing fine.
How are you?
Good.
Coming to you from Edinburgh, Dice, Europe, which is cool.
I'm excited to talk shop with you.
Yeah.
So I think I know people have asked you this question before, but this is the question I like to open my episodes with.
I also don't think I've ever asked you this question, which is, how did you get here?
What was your...
What was your in?
By a plane and then a taxi.
No, silly.
I mean, like in the industry.
No.
So I played Atari when I was a kid.
I played a ton of D&D.
What was your class?
Oh, I usually actually played clerics, but I played a lot of different classes.
I played a ton of D&D.
I played a ton of different tabletop role playing games.
I played a bunch of computer role playing games.
And then I was in college and I played even more tabletop role playing games and computer role-playing games.
And I was pretty convinced that I was going to be a tabletop.
I was going to make tabletop games because tabletop role-playing games?
Specifically because I did it for my friends in college.
And I didn't kind of understand that it was a job, which is weird.
Like I, I did, but I, I didn't really.
And also in college, I taught myself web design and, I was not a very good student.
I started as a vocal performance major at the Lawrence Conservatory of Music.
Wait, really?
Yeah.
Do you still sing?
Not really.
I mean, like just for fun or whatever, but like not in any meaningful capacity.
But yeah, I was.
That's a very challenging program and I was lazy and I switched over to the college and got a degree in history, but I still wasn't a great student.
And I taught myself web design because this was the mid-90s and it was hot, hot, hot.
And I taught myself Flash animation, Flash 3.0.
Incredible.
And my friend Michael Donnelly was kind enough to inform me that Black Isle Studios was hiring a webmaster for an unannounced project.
Webmaster.
Yeah, webmaster.
And I applied for the job.
And it was because I knew flash.
I'd used flash to make a website for Steve's tattoo in Madison, Wisconsin in exchange for tattoos.
And that work was not good, but it showed that I knew how to do flash.
Right.
And I got the job and I came out to California and then I worked on the website for planescape torment.
I was the webmaster and, And then after that I redesigned the websites for Baldur's Gate 2 and Icewind Dale.
And then I, because I was working so closely with the devs at that time, I impressed upon them that I did know a lot about game design and about the Forgotten Realms and ADD like a ton.
And I convinced Fergus Urquhart, who is the head of Black Isle, who is now, you know, has been the head of Obsidian forever.
But I convinced him to let me do junior design work on Icewind Dale.
And yeah, so I worked on Icewind Dale with the team there.
And then after that, I worked on Icewind Dale 2.
I worked on a couple of canceled projects.
Things were not going great at Interplay.
And then Interplay shut down and a lot of people from Black Isle went to Obsidian, which was forming
And I went to Midway and Just to kind of try something different, work with a different group of people.
I remember that the first day I came into work at Midway I saw on a whiteboard someone had written Midway, we'll get you halfway there.
And I was like, I don't think that's a good sign.
And in fact, it was not a good sign.
I was there for about a year and a half.
And then I talked to some of the Obsidian folks and I went back to Obsidian.
And I've been there for 20 years.
Oof.
When I first went back, I worked on Neverwinter Nights 2.
I worked on a couple of canceled projects.
I directed Fall at New Vegas, Pillars of Eternity 1 and 2, and Pentament.
And then I work a little bit on most of the projects.
Not all of them, but most of them.
That is quite a pedigree.
Thanks.
Which one's your favorite?
Who's your favorite child?
Pentament.
Um, that one was made basically completely the way.
Like I'm not going to say that there were zero compromises, because there are compromises in making anything
Of course.
Um, and that's, that's part of what is good about making things.
Um, but it wasn't made to fit anyone else's ideas.
Like everyone on the team contributed to it, but I had a pretty clear vision of what I wanted to do.
Um, I brought people on board.
They changed that.
They changed that vision in healthy ways that made sense and that allowed us to work better together.
And I'm just super happy with it.
And it was made.
I mean, even at the Xbox level.
They weren't really.
It was a pretty.
You know, for Xbox it's a pretty small budget game.
Um, and so they weren't really concerned with how it sold, which is always great to hear.
Um, you know, I mean, we, we have a lot of devs at obsidian and it was a 13 person team.
Lovely.
And not all those people are even internal.
So basically it didn't need to make money.
It, it needed to be a good game.
And I think it was a very good game.
It was very happy with it.
Thank you.
One awards.
I did win awards.
Um, so yeah, it's a, it's pentagon and we had that.
It's the longest I've ever worked on a shipped game.
Really?
Which is yeah.
Three years, three years from beginning to end.
I mean, the first Icewind Dale was a 10 month project.
Icewind Dale two.
I'm sorry.
That's wrong.
Icewind Dale one is a 14 month project.
Icewind Dale two was a 10 month project.
Um, yeah.
And then almost everything else, you know, famously fall into Vegas was 18 months.
So, and then the, the pillars games were under three years.
Each one was, one was two and a half years.
One was two years and three months.
So usually I've worked on games that ship real quickly.
I mean, I've worked on projects that have been long-term projects.
Like avowed was a very long-term project, but I only worked on it for about the last year.
Right.
So Pentament though, had nine months of pre-production, and then it had two years and three months of production, and we shipped it.
And yeah, it was good.
How do you make a game in 18 months?
Very carefully.
No, I mean.
So I think this actually has been very helpful to me.
Is that you know Obsidian Black Isle less so, but certainly Obsidian.
We had a reputation for making games, sequels and spinoffs to other people's properties with their tech.
And so very often we would get, you know, handed here is code.
Here are assets.
You have this much time and these people go.
And very often we were not familiar with the, the engine.
So, okay.
Yeah.
So like with the infinity engine, thankfully it was tricky.
Icewind Dale was, was weird because the, Um, we had used BioWare's Infinity Engine.
I say we, I shouldn't, um, really the Planescape Torment team of which I was just the webmaster.
I was not a developer on it.
No stolen glory there.
Um, but they used a version of the Infinity Engine that branched off from BioWare as much earlier.
Okay.
And the, that team changed it a lot.
And then when we worked on Icewind Dale, we were using like kind of an updated but unfamiliar code base.
So a lot of the stuff that the Torment team could do, we couldn't do.
So we had to, we had to figure that stuff out and make it in like 14 months.
And so a lot of it was, you know, doing what Bioware had done, but in our own, with just a spin uh, in our own sort of way.
And then you know the same thing with Neverwinter Nights 2, where I think that the team tried to bite off more than they could chew in terms of reworking terrain and pathfinding and the renderer and the entire GUI system.
And it was like a lot, but. you know, beneath it all.
And that caused a lot of problems beneath it all.
It was Bioware's engine and was making a sequel to their game.
And then, you know, new Vegas, we got, well, initially we didn't get code.
We just got, we just got like the game and like drops of assets.
And we didn't, we didn't have dev kits to work on right away.
So we were only using PC builds.
We were really just modding it to begin with.
But because of that and because we knew we were only going to have three programmers on the project and we're going to have a lot of designers and a fair number of environment artists and a couple of animators, you know it was like okay so given, given everything that Bethesda has made and I've said this a lot, but they're the garden of Eden creation kit is very powerful.
You can make so much content so quickly and, if you make content like Bethesda makes content.
And so we did, and we just tried to make it to our sort of design sensibility, not fundamentally change how the engine technology worked.
Every time we tried to do that, it bit us in the ass like looping reloads.
That was the thing that was bugged for like a year after the game shipped.
But yeah, it was about basically saying you know, I said to the team like look we, we have a clear vision of the type of game we want to make and we understand what Bethesda's tech does.
We are going to change very little about that.
And we are going to make great content.
We're going to make great content the way that we want to make it.
And as long as we focus on that and do not get distracted by trying to do nonsense like I mean.
This is not to like pick on anyone.
I'm not going to name names, but there was a designer who very early on said Hey, I really want to be able to have companions interject into conversations.
This is something that was done in Neverwinter Nights 2.
It's been done in a lot of our games.
And I said, no, like, no fucking way.
Like when did when have you, have you ever seen a character interject in a conversation in Fallout 3?
He's like, no.
And I'm like, no, we're not doing it.
Like, there's no there's no mechanism for it.
There's no camera tech.
Like, we're just not going to do that.
It's a mess.
Yeah.
And he was understandably annoyed by that.
And, you know, I think companion interjections are good.
That's why we have them in most of our games.
But I just said, look, man, we do not we literally do not have time to figure this out.
So, yeah, right.
Good conversations have great characters.
And so the way we'd get around it, you know because I had, I wrote one of the companions, arcade and arcade.
You would go talk to like old family friends of his father's.
And then he wouldn't interject.
But as soon as the conversation would end, then Arcade would start a conversation with you.
And then you would have a one-on-one with him.
That probably would have worked smoother if he had been involved in the NPC's conversation.
But we couldn't.
So I was just like, just work around it.
And I think people still found all those conversations very compelling because I think the designers just focused on write good
Write good.
Write good, make good quests and content will it be?
This is a.
This is a little bit of a segue, and then I want to jump back.
Will it be weird for you to see the new fallout season go to new Vegas?
Um, uh, like, yes, I know.
I mean, talking about the TV show, by the way.
Yeah.
The, the, the show.
Yeah.
I mean it's um the trailer.
I mean they're really using it a lot.
You know cause?
I knew at the, I knew at the end of um, I knew at the end of season one that they were going to new Vegas.
Yeah.
Like he's clearly there in the lucky 38th there.
Um, but I wasn't sure like Oh, is this just like a ref and they're going to stop and they're going to leave?
But it looks like.
It's kind of like there.
Um, and, uh, yeah, it's, it's, uh, it's fine.
I think, um, I don't know.
I, I have uh, maybe a different attitude towards a lot of this stuff than some people I know who, uh who've been involved in making either IPs or entries into IPs.
So when I came to Black Isle, I wanted to work on a Fallout game.
But I played Fallout 1 and 2 as just a college kid.
I was not in the game industry.
And I wanted to work on Fallout 3 at Black Isle at Van Buren, which we started, and then Black Isle collapsed.
So I didn't think I was ever going to be able to work on Fallout again.
And then, when we had the chance to make New Vegas, we got to bring back a lot of those ideas, ideas that a lot of us had had for Van Buren, and then new ideas.
And I considered it like this is a second chance that I never would have.
I never thought I would have had.
I mean, I consider myself lucky to even work on a canceled Fallout game just because it's a cool IP.
Yeah.
And it was never mine.
Like, like it's not.
And some people have talked to me about this for, like Pillars of Eternity which, you know, many designers have contributed to.
But I will say that you know, the overall tone and, and style of pillars.
I defined a lot of that stuff, but it is also not mine.
It does not belong to me.
And, um, I don't feel ownership over it.
I will give my opinion.
Like, I think this is probably a good direction to take the IP or not great direction.
And I feel the same way about fallout, but also it was never mine.
So who cares what my opinion is?
So, you know, it's, it's interesting.
Um, it's cool, but I don't um, you know, it's not like I have Jacob wrestling with the angel inside of me about it.
You know, like I'm not torn up.
It's kind of like, Oh, cool.
Like hope, hope people like it.
Yeah.
Great.
You're not, you're not, it sounds like you are, you are not precious about the, not the work you do.
That's not what I'm trying to say.
But when, if you're working on someone else's IP, if you're making something you're not like no, this is, this was my.
You're not doing it right.
You're not doing it right.
I mean and and to be to be honest, like you know, there are times at obsidian where if I think something in pillars is really kind of off and it's not a matter of taste sometimes, I'll just say like Hey, in the first two games, you know, this is like avowed related
I'll say like, Hey, in the first two games, we, did this thing this way for these reasons.
Um, can you explain why you don't want to do that that way?
And cause maybe the way that we did it wasn't even good in the first place.
But usually I just kind of dig and say, like you know, especially if it's something really distinctive about the setting, it's a characteristic of it.
If you're using the IP, I do feel like you should, at least to yourself, justify why you're not using an element of the IP.
Because Or you should question, why am I using the IP?
And it's not my call, but sometimes I'll say I don't really think this is why people like this IP or don't like it.
But it's not from a me perspective.
It's more like, this is what's established and this is what the audience is familiar with.
And maybe it sucks and you should change it, but I want to hear you articulate what the problem is and why this solves it.
Yeah.
You've worked on... quite a few IP.
What do you when you're a writer and you're coming in and you're working on someone else's IP how?
How should you treat the situation?
Like, what is your advice for that?
Um, someone earlier today was, was talking about, um, working in IP.
And I do think it's well.
We don't always have the choice about like work on something that you love, but I will say that um, you have to find something to love in it and work on that thing that you love.
Cause I've worked in IP is, I mean, I've said this before and I don't feel shy about saying it.
Like there's a lot of stuff in D and D that I really do not like.
And, but there's, but I, there's a lot of stuff in D and D that I do like.
And, um, I try to focus on the stuff that I like when I've had to work in it.
And like the stuff I don't like is there.
And, uh, I don't try to passive aggressively like subvert it or whatever.
Sure.
I just kind of accept, like okay, this is a thing that is not my thing.
But then here's all this other stuff that I'm into.
Yeah.
And like, let me see what I can get out of it.
So I do think you have to find the things that you love and the things that interest you, that you want to explore in the idea.
And also I think it's worthwhile to understand even the things that you don't like within it.
Why do other people like it?
Okay.
If you don't understand that, then working around it is going to be a difficult thing.
I'll just say this for like New Vegas.
I don't really... Sorry, people of Las Vegas.
I don't really like Las Vegas as a city.
It's rough.
And I hate casino gambling.
I'm not going to try to pretend like I'm the ultimate rationalist, but...
I just, I don't, the appeal of gambling is completely lost on me.
Um, but I knew that if we didn't have gambling games, casino games, then people would be bummed.
And so if I wanted to be a big brat, I could be like, nah, there's no casino games.
But I was like, okay, look, like what, what do people like about this?
How can we emulate this?
How can I make this like enjoyable for people and present?
Well, and I had to, I had to sort of embrace that and understand what's the appeal here, so I can try to make that rewarding for the player.
Um, And yeah, I do think sort of like diving in and really, really trying to soak in the IP is good.
And not just the main entries, but also like spinoffs and fan fiction is actually... Ooh, boy.
Well, the thing is, I think Emma Kidwell gave a talk.
Where was that?
GDC is here.
GDC, yeah.
She's like all IP writing is fan fiction, basically.
Yeah, it is.
It's licensed fan fiction.
It's also how...
A lot of us for a lot of us that aren't I am not a professionally trained writer.
It was just a skill I picked up and honed on my own.
I know that sounds so unhumble, but that's just the truth.
I wrote in fan fiction for eons.
Yeah.
Yeah.
I mean, I'm not a trained writer either.
I it's it's I. When I started in the industry.
I'm not going to say that there were no specific writers but, like usually it was.
We were designers and writing dialogue was part of what we did.
And I don't think the dialogue I wrote initially was any good, but now it is better.
Um, but yeah, like, uh, IP writing is effectively licensed fan fiction.
So, so yes, there's a, there's a lot of bad fan fiction.
There's also a lot of bad licensed IP writing.
Like, like there's I'm not going to call out anything but like you can certainly go to plenty of ips and look at what's been published either in comics or novelizations or whatever, and they're not well written and they don't treat the ip well.
So, look like you know there's nothing wrong with there's a lot of fan fiction that is very well written and not only is it very respectful to the ip, but really the people who write it are very passionate about expanding the boundaries of the universe in a way that is consonant with what's been established and it also the popularity of those things show where the fans attitudes uh, are sort of headed.
So um yeah, i do think.
I do think that that sort of stuff is all all very important.
Do you read a lot of fan fiction?
No, not really.
Have you ever?
Have i ever read?
Yes, have you ever read it?
For the stuff that you've worked on?
Uh yeah, a little bit.
Like usually, a lot of what i look at i'm i uh, maybe it's because it's easier to consume, like in quick chunks is usually like fan art i get really stoked about.
Yeah um, so i love fan art and the fan fiction.
I have read some of it um, but not a lot of it, to be honest.
Yeah uh, i i read a lot of call of duty fan fiction nice for research.
That was a hole i never thought i would go down and it's definitely the weirdest hole.
Um, and i mentioned it in my gdc talk as well.
Um, you mentioned that there are things about dnd that you don't love and things that you do to you for you like, i personally find dnd i've i've had a hard time getting into it which feels like a no-brainer for me because i'm super into rpgs, i'm into all that stuff it feels like oh, you know, you'd be, i would be, you know, everyone asking me to, everyone asking me to dm and me being like i'm so fucking overwhelmed.
There's so much shit here.
What about dnd to you is compelling?
Um, I think that the most compelling thing about DD is it is kind of like the lingua franca of tabletop role-playing games.
It is ubiquitous within the tabletop RPG community.
So if you grab just a random assortment of tabletop role-playing people, it is very likely that the most of them or the most commonly played system among them, is going to be DD.
And it is more likely that people will have those books and be familiar with the conventions of whatever fucking edition you're on.
And then that's why it kind of becomes the de facto thing that people play.
Even if people are not individually jazzed about playing it.
If people start proposing you know like Lancer or Call of Cthulhu or all these other sort of games, or you know something newer, like Morkborg or something like that.
People are like, what the fuck is that?
Like, there's so, there's like no familiarity.
They're a lot more niche and it's very difficult to get a group of people that are all on board.
Yeah.
And with D and D very often people will kind of go like, sure.
Okay.
Like, sure.
We can play that.
And it's, it's like, it's pretty easy to get into.
The conventions are pretty like mainstream.
Um, And you know, D 20, even though I think it's a fucking terrible die for your main resolution mechanics, people get it and they get it.
Oh, I rolled 20.
Oh my God.
Wow.
I'm so excited.
Nothing, nothing is no mechanical advantage is better than the thrill of rolling a D 20.
So we're just going to keep using this die forever.
Great.
I, I have only played D and D exactly once.
It was in 2016, 2016.
2015 and it was a filmed live streamed nice critical role one shot i am a canonical one shot character sweet i was a orc named taco t-a-k-o nice it was great very good a thousand years ago that's the one time i played dnd and every time i started i fall off do you feel like for people that want to get into rpg rpg writing or game writing or whatever i have gotten a I've gotten advice in the past from other people.
I'd be like oh, like when I was starting out.
They're like well, try DMing for DD.
Or like read DD, try DD.
Do you think that's like it's a good?
I know we talked about tabletop being a pretty good place to start, but do you think it's a good place to start?
I do, but I think that it needs more contextualization.
I think that advice needs to be contextualized.
So... Just DM, just do it.
Yeah, I mean just that's especially if you've never played D and D before saying run a game.
It's like dude, calm down.
And and the thing is cause, there are, there are systems that are so straightforward where if you kind of get the, if you get the narrative, like vibe that they're going for, the mechanics are not very difficult.
D and D no addition of D and D is actually that easy to DM.
Uh, yeah, it's in a weird zone of, it's not all that complicated, but it is kind of esoteric because D and D has its own quirks.
But anyway um, What I would say is as a player playing DD, you especially, and it does take the right group of players, but players fuck around.
And when you have a DM, I mean, that's why you play it.
Like if it were just a war game, then you would just play a war game.
That's not, and DD, at its heart, is still an old war game, which is one of the weirder things about it.
Because when you watch things, you know, when you watch a lot of the popular games, podcasts and YouTube channels about playing, the mechanics basically, are gone.
It's all the trappings of it.
So it's weird because the mechanics itself come from a 1970s war game.
And so much of it is still based in war gaming.
But so many other people played for collaborative storytelling.
And in the more dynamic and fun kind of campaigns.
That's why people dig.
It is because the players are like, like you know, this time we were playing in college where this we were kind of picking on the DM a little bit because he, he was really loath to ever kill anyone's character.
And fun.
Well, I agree.
And I'm not, I'm not like a player slaughterer, but I will kill player characters.
Um, but he really never liked doing it.
And in fact had stated like that, he thought it was kind of bad.
Um, So we would push the limits.
And that in itself was very funny, even though he got very frustrated with it.
Like, I remember we went in and we were talking like this is like the mayor of the town.
And I don't remember.
It was like one of us said, like, we're not doing that unless you give us like this.
And he was like, that's like way too much.
It's ridiculous.
And I like slapped him.
Like physically, like actually slapped him?
Not the DM, but like the mayor.
Oh, the character.
Oh, see, I thought you like slapped your DM.
No, no, no, no, no, no, no.
We're not getting that.
I wouldn't have been surprised.
Gotten into it.
No, I would not do that.
But like, and then the guards like got aggro on us.
And then we started like fireballing the place.
And like, we basically just went completely off the rails.
But the DM, he wouldn't kill us, but he kept.
He kept changing the story to his credit even though I do think it's silly to not kill the characters, no matter what they do but he kept moving the story to adapt to what we're doing and that's why it is fun.
Okay, and i think the thing is what.
I think the value in that for someone who works on role-playing games, the sort of which obsidian makes anyway is that we often say, like imagine that the player goes off, or like what do you think in the situation the player might do?
That's really kind of funny or crazy.
And can we support that option?
I think Larian does a very good job of that.
Um, which is why it's such a great adaptation of a tabletop experience where you're like Whoa, like you can do a thing, as though I were in tabletop.
And so I think, playing with a group of care, you have to have a group of players that are in that mindset.
And then you have to have a DM where they understand that they are yes, they have a scenario that they want to run, but they're here to kind of adjudicate and go with the flow, which isn't just do whatever the players want, but to create new and entertaining and interesting scenarios for the players to try to role play out of role play mechanically and role play, you know, personality wise, through.
And that's where, that's where the fun in tabletop role playing games are.
And that's why I think it's, it's good to play.
And once you get comfortable, then DM, because it's if you're a designer, it's not the same as being a DM.
And I will say like, I don't even know if I'm in the top five DMS at obsidian.
Like when I DM, the way I approach it is much more mechanical.
I'm a much more systems oriented person as a tabletop designer.
And, um, the other DMS are much more like they do.
They do the voices and they do like, they, they, they're like way into it.
I'm not good at it.
And I, and it's like fine.
Um, but as a, as a designer, you are kind of a, of a, of an obsidian role-playing game designer.
You are kind of like the DM for that quest in that area.
And so you're thinking about what if the player fucks around?
What if the player wants to climb up the wall?
What if the player wants to poison this guy or like whatever?
Like, think about all these different ways that a player would want to do it.
And usually the times when I just I wind up crying and shaking my head at obsidian is when, when either i find a thing that i can do but it's not, it's not really, it's not really supported, or i'll say hey, it would be really cool if, in this situation, you let the player do this and it's not like really expensive yeah, and the designer says like oh, i'll like.
Basically they'll just kind of like say well, i'll make sure that they can't do that.
I'm like You don't get it, buddy.
That's the wrong answer.
And there are resources and blah, blah, whatever.
We all have to deal with constraints, but we make games that are expensive, in part because there's lots of ways to do things and players can go ham.
You've worked on a lot of RPGs.
To you, what is...
Like, what is RPG writing about?
If someone marches up to you and says I want to write for an RPG, what would you tell them they need to do?
I do think they need to think about.
I think the distinctive thing about role-playing game writing is that there is a meaningful range of responses in the player stack.
And that is going to vary from project to project, that range.
And it's going to range tonally.
It's going to range into style of writing.
Um, but the role playing aspect of it is given a character with a certain level of definition.
And that can be as open as like, I'm a complete blank slate.
I could be any of these species or any of these classes in something like BG three to like, I am Geralt of Rivia, or I am V or I am um shepherd, where there's different levels of definition.
Yeah, but within that there's a level of constraint, and then there's a range of attitudes and voices and players want to feel like there's a meaningful range, that there are surprises, things that like shock them or make them laugh.
Often the presence of an option that is supported but won't be picked is entertainment enough.
Like if you see that you can say something super outlandish, And it has an effect.
The player doesn't have to pick it to find it funny that it's there.
Sure.
And also a range of responses that are keyed off of mechanics that you can like how you build your character mechanically.
So, for example, like Geralt, there's certainly a range of responses.
Geralt has a certain range of voice.
You know, he's never going to really sound like silly.
Right.
Right.
It would be fun if he was, though.
There's a certain gruffness to him, but there's still a range of expression within his personality.
But then there are different ways you could build a character where you could see different things unlocking mechanically.
Based on that build.
But in something like PG-3 it's even more wide open, where you could be all these different alignments.
And it's very difficult, actually, to write for things that are that expansive.
Yes.
But that's kind of.
The challenge is that a lot of people will kind of focus on the focus on the NPCs voice, which is very important, but that's a very traditional thing.
Like here's a character build their voice and express it.
And they'll kind of treat the player stack as like, yes, no, maybe so.
And it all kind of like roots to the same shit.
And there's like, there's no surprises.
There's nothing fresh.
And also it needs to be variety, visual variety.
Cause that's.
The other thing is like, when you look at the stack, if it just becomes like a mass of words kind of all the same length, all the same kind of it, just there's an art to it.
And that's, that's actually where the challenge is.
It's writing the stack, seeing how it opens up and closes based on options that the player is intrigued by.
Like, Oh shit.
If I put like a few more points in intellect, I like would have had something there, or like Oh, I put a few points in charisma and that unlocked this thing.
And I got a really funny response.
Um, and then that unlocked either a different way through or it made the guy super mad and it was funny.
Um, or whatever that is, but it's.
It's about writing that stack and seeing how the range of character expression plays off of the established character voice, the NPC voice, and how you kind of vibe with that in an individual conversation.
But then over the course of the entire game, you basically taught yourself.
Yeah.
Like this.
Yeah.
Yes.
And no, I mean I sort of taught myself.
But also, you know, like I, I didn't work on Torment, but certainly a lot of the designers who worked on Torment were my peers on Icewind Dale.
And there wasn't like it wasn't like they formally were sitting down and mentoring me.
But I would like look at how they wrote.
Yeah.
And like, oh, they write stacks like this and that we're all constrained by the same tools.
Like we had these templates that we would write within and that helped shape how we would, you know, structure dialogues.
The tools?
Are they both liberate and constrain?
How the mind shapes, like moving from node to node, and how you build reply stacks and stuff like that and um, so i learned sort of the house style, more or less of black isle, and then after that then it was sort of like seeing how players responded to it, iterating within a project and then from project to project, and and also, of course, looking at our competitors, looking at bioware, looking at bethesda Now looking at Larry and stuff like that and seeing like how did they do it?
What do we like about it?
What do we not like about it?
Thinking about the expense of supporting those things, because we all have different budgets and schedules and things like that.
So your, your expertise is in RPG games and you are you're, a design director.
Now, when you're starting to work on one like, where do you start?
In your brain?
Like, where does that start?
I mean, it, it, it varies a lot.
I mean, certainly there's a lot of work that we've done.
That's work for hire.
So it's, it starts with someone else's idea.
Like new Vegas.
It wasn't, it wasn't my idea.
It was Chris Avalon's idea.
You know, like Fergus, I think had talked to someone at Bethesda about maybe doing a fallout thing.
And then Avalon wrote up this uh pitch about uh and you know, forgive me if I get this wrong, but it's basically it starts with you being shot in the head and buried in a shallow grave.
And, and, um, You know, I, that's not, I can't take any credit for that.
Um, and John Gonzalez, who was our creative lead on the project he built out Mr House and all this other stuff.
But, like the, the core hook of it was not my idea.
And it was something that Fergus Urquhart my, you know, my boss, came to me and said Hey, we want you to direct this.
Here's the pitch that we got Bethesda interested in run with it.
And so, um, so in that case, a lot of things were constrained for me from the beginning.
For Pillars of Eternity.
It was the constraints of the Infinity Engine games and the fact that we were crowdfunded.
So we didn't have a publisher to answer to, but we did have tens of thousands of backers.
And then the expectations of D&D and Forgotten Realms and all that stuff.
And some of that.
For example, we don't have halflings or gnomes or orcs, but we do have Orleans, who are little guys, little furry guys.
And then we have Amawa, who are big guys because we're kind of like well, are people super attached to orcs, or are they super attached to halflings or gnomes?
Probably not.
I mean, some players are, but they probably want little guys and big guys.
And we kept elves and dwarves, which are not original but a lot of people want to play elves and some people want to play dwarves.
You love me a dwarf.
So, you know, it's sort of like thinking about what are the audience expectations?
What are the things where, We can cleave to them so they have their nuggies.
The chicken nuggies.
Their delicious chicken nuggies.
The comfort food so they don't make a frowny face.
Not nuggets, nuggies specifically.
Yeah, nuggies.
And then mom chicken nuggies.
And then what are the areas where we can kind of just make new stuff?
And maybe they won't dig it very much.
Like maybe they'll be like, I think it's stupid.
It's like, well, okay.
But we get to create some new things and give a little bit of new stuff.
And some people will dig it and some people won't.
That's okay.
So it kind of depends on the constraints.
Like with Pentament, I was like, I know that it's going to be a small game.
I know that it's going to be mechanically similar to Night in the Woods without the platforming.
So it's just walking around and talking.
And then it was kind of like thinking about the art style with Hannah Kennedy, who did an amazing job as our art director.
So it depends a lot on the constraints.
Scope constraints, stylistic constraints, genre constraints, expectations of the audience, expectations of excuse me the publisher.
And then I kind of think from there and then you know, depending on the game, that also will change the expectation of the protagonist and how they're defined.
So, for example, in a D&D-like game where you have lots of different species and lots of different classes, it's a lot harder to... sell the audience on the idea that you have a specific character you're playing so they kind of are really used to being a blank slate baldur's gate one because they're used to dnd that's when when i come to play dnd i make my own character from nothing i can be whatever gender i can be whatever species whatever class look however i want um whereas something like the witcher or mass effect is about an even better example you know like you're a shepherd you're a human and classes don't exist so don't complain about that really or actually it's not classes don't exist but attributes don't exist so you don't have ability scores uh and then you do have classes but they're kind of like loosey-goosey and like the landscape it's sci-fi and so you don't have the familiarity of dnd so you can't like make a frowny face about it bioware had a lot more flexibility to say like yeah you're kind of more defined here and we're not going to do the exact same things mechanically as you might see in a dnd game so just kind of deal with Um, player expectation drive a lot of that.
You know we were talking the other day about.
Someone was saying um, you know, people looked at about and expected to be like Skyrim, which is unfair.
Yes.
I said, sure.
Except that every fucking person sees a first person fantasy game and goes, it must be like Skyrim.
Yeah.
And you can say it's unfair, but it doesn't matter.
That's what they all do.
Yeah.
Like, okay.
So you, whether you cleave to or tear away from the expectation you have to like, understand the expectation and then deal with it instead of ignoring it.
Because if you ignore it, then usually you're going to get a bit in the ass.
Why do you think so many people hold Skyrim to that standard?
Because like 20 million people played it.
I, I genuinely think, like I think it's just it's it's, it's a million, you know, and maybe even more than that but like, tens of millions of people have played that game and there aren't actually a ton of comparable games in the space.
Really?
First-person fantasy single-player open-world games.
There's 60?
60.
We've been corrected.
60 million people have played Skyrim.
A lot of platforms.
So when you have that much cultural familiarity across so many players and you don't really have that many games that are directly comparable, then people are going to just kind of say
Well, and especially now that it's a, it's a 14 year old game at this point.
So it's, it's, you know, it's been around a long time.
It's been played by a zillion people over and over and over again.
And so there's kind of whether you think it's fair or not, they're just like.
This is the kind of standard bearer within the genre.
So again, whether you think it's fair or not, you have to sort of understand and respond to.
And the thing is, it's not like.
It was a surprise that, Like with Avowed, people were constantly comparing it to Skyrim.
And we were like, it's not really like it.
But they kept saying it and they kept comparing it.
So again it kind of goes back to you don't have to like it, but you do have to sort of understand it and then figure out how to deal with that expectation.
Even if you're subverting it, you can do that, but you have to do it conscientiously, I think.
Going off of that, do you think there – like what is the balance in –
Because sometimes as developers, we're told like, oh, you know, players don't know what they want.
We have to tell them what they want, or figure out what they want, depending on what kind of game you're working on, what company you're working for.
What is the balance of listening to the community and your players and your audience and working on this thing?
That is your vision, or whatever?
Like, what is that balance there to you?
Well, I think there's an element now where you do have to There's.
The first thing is weed out bad faith commentary.
Cause there's a lot of people where they hate you all the time or they don't actually like the genre.
And I think this is something, well, no, but this is a thing where I used to see like an RPGs.
It used to be there, you know, RPGs are big now.
I'm not going to say they're ever like small, but certainly when I started in the industry I would see people who like playing FPSs or things like that.
And they're like, this sucks.
I'm like, just don't play it.
Cry baby.
Like fine.
That's okay.
But it's sort of like is the criticism coming from within the house or is it like you know?
Or is it just someone walking by saying like RPG suck and like okay.
Well then, your specific feedback about this RPG is not incredibly valuable to us.
Yes.
So I do feel like one.
If there are people that just fundamentally hate, you probably don't have to listen to them.
If it's people that don't dig the genre, uh, okay.
Noted like continue not liking the genre, but then yeah, then it's sort of like okay, if this is a good faith commentary from someone that likes games in this type and um, they don't fundamentally hate your guts, then I think that the usually the important thing is when they say they don't like something, that is completely valid.
Anything that is more detailed than that below that is a questionable validity.
Like.
The more detailed it gets, the less likely it is to be valid, especially to the point where they say and what you should do to fix it is this
Oh yeah.
That's usually where you're like, okay, you're wrong.
But you know, almost always if you have people within who are like we're RPG people and we're playing this game and we don't like how the stats work, like they don't like it.
And if we, if we, if we assume they're speaking in good faith Again, there are actually many times where I'll say that is dumb, but okay.
Like, right.
Like, cause I have very different tastes from a lot of other people.
I'm not saying they're better or worse, but like, I like RPGs to be a specific way.
And often I design them in that way, but that often does not align with a lot of other players in the genre.
And so sometimes I think, I think your complaints are bad and dumb.
I don't like them, but I still will do something about it.
Can you provide an example of a time you did that?
Yeah.
I mean, there's a lot of stuff with abilities, like how abilities are tuned or how stats are tuned.
Very often, people will say, I do or don't like how this is balanced or how this is tuned.
And I will think that they're having...
Like their perception of what's going on is not really accurate to the magnitude of what's really happening.
But also I can make a change that addresses their complaint in a genuine, not like a cynical, shitty way.
I'll be like okay like, I think you are, like you are misanalyzing what the problem is, but your your your, your negative experience is valid.
The thing you're saying it is, is wrong.
It's actually this other thing.
I don't have to explain that to you because I know that's what it is.
And I, there's no point in arguing with you, but I can still fix it.
So, like you know, very often, for example, people will say like the RNG is screwed up every single project because random number generation is a part of almost every RPG I've worked on.
You're right.
And on almost every project players will say, aren't these fucked up?
Like die rolls are fucked up.
I'm like, no.
And literally never, never, never, never has it ever been fucked up.
It's, You're wrong.
There's something else that's not right.
But it's not the RNG.
Or you don't understand.
What's that?
But it's not the RNG.
It's not the RNG.
It's R. It's random.
It's random.
And we run, you know, and sometimes we're pushed to run tests and we confirm yes, it is actually random.
But, you know, for example, and this is actually, this was actually testers.
These weren't players.
But way back in the day on Icewind Dale 2.
So Icewind Dale 1 was second edition D&D.
Isondale two was third edition D&D.
Okay.
There's a change, backstab to sneak attack.
Backstab is a multiplier.
So you stab someone, you roll a D, let's say eight.
Roll a long sword, roll an eight-sided die, and then you multiply that by your backstab multiplier, and then you add a bonus to it.
So if you roll an eight-sided die, there is an equal chance of rolling an eight as a one.
If you roll an eight and you multiply that by five, it's 40 points damage.
Ooh, it's a lot.
Yeah.
The difference is sneak attack in... third edition is you add six sided dice.
You add more dice.
So it'll get to the point where you have 15 D six that you're rolling.
And the theoretical maximum of that is 90.
Yeah.
And we got these bugs that were saying it never rolls 90.
I'm like, do you understand how probability works?
And they're like, yeah, it should come up sometimes.
I'm like, When your bones turn to fucking dust, dude, like it's not going to come up.
You're rolling 15 dice and waiting for all of them to come up six.
And it's a low probability.
It's literally million.
Like it's very tiny.
The more dice you're rolling, the less likely everything comes up, you know, a specific number.
So their complaint was, I want the big damage number.
And no, And it was like, well, that doesn't really work that way.
Um, and we tried to address it with like other things, but it was one of those things where like, your complaint is not invalid, but your understanding of the mechanic is not correct.
And it's difficult to explain that stuff.
I mean, one of the biggest challenges I've had is I generally like kind of mechanically crunchy and fiddly things.
And uh, that doesn't actually mean they're good and players can very easily easily like misunderstand, misunderstand them, not because they're like dummies, but it's just.
There's a lot of stuff going on.
There's a lot of math happening.
And um, you know, like in in dead fire, I implemented an armor system which I still believe, if you understand how it works, is just a better armor system than the first game had.
But it's not easy to get.
So if you don't get it, you're going to be real frustrated and real mad.
And sometimes you have to accept, like even if this is theoretically better, in practice it is not better, because players don't understand it.
And so it leads to these situations where I'll I'll kind of have to just swallow my pride and go like I know in my heart that this is good, but it's not good for this game.
And it's, it's just not working.
And everyone, like I can be theoretically right.
And everyone will complain and say, I'm a dummy.
And like okay, like they're not going to like the game and they're going to think I'm stupid and they're right.
So at a certain point I have to accept like mechanically, even if I don't address the specific thing that they're talking about in the specific way.
It's very foolish to just persist in saying they're all just being dumb.
And I'm actually right.
Yeah.
Like.
So it's a difficult balancing act, but I do think, I do think like you do have to read.
I don't think you have to respond.
I do think you have to read what people are talking about and talk about it internally and think about it.
And I'm never going to not be spicy about it.
But that doesn't mean I'm not going to do something about it.
Sure.
Because I think at a certain point, or you can just accept like okay, everyone's going to hate you and think this is bad.
But then, and you can do that.
I mean, my father's a bronze sculptor and uh, he's a very opinionated guy and he believes that he is, he is the artist.
And so sometimes people will say i don't want this.
And he's like yes, you do, i don't care, and you can do that, just don't expect anyone to pay you again for it.
And that's the same with games.
Like i can be, i can be a stubborn jackass and ignore feedback um, but you know, i can only do that so much before.
People are like this guy doesn't fucking listen to anybody and he doesn't really respect players.
So Well, games like that also have.
Like there is on the player side, there's a bit of a learning curve.
There is.
And it's, it's, and also, yeah, it's again, it's a, it's a tricky thing because there are the, the, I would say, I feel like RPGs now have people come to them for a lot of different things.
I never came to RPGs for romance and it's something I don't really come to games.
I don't really come to games for romance.
And, but a lot of players now do like they just do.
And I come to them for killing.
Yeah.
And killing stats and fiddling and micromanaging shit.
And, um, and some other players also do.
And then other people come to it cause they like the aesthetic and they like the vibes.
And so different people want different things and none of them is completely dominant and, And you know, I will tend to err on the side of making things mechanically crunchier and more, you know, intricate.
And some of the fans really like that.
Some of them, even if they like that, will say that I'm bad at it, which is fine.
But then there are players where they're like, I'm not into this at all.
Like, I want sexy time and or I want just kind of vibes.
And I'm I'll do a little bit of math, but not very much, please.
Just a little math, just a smidge.
Yeah, people come to it for all different sorts of reasons.
On the subject of romance in games, I feel like... I agree with you.
I never came to RPGs for romance sexy times.
I like having control over something in my life, and so that's why I play RPGs.
But isn't it weird to you?
You don't like them either, but isn't it weird to you that we've like It's essentially gamifying a relationship?
Like, if you bring this person the right trinket at the right time and you do the thing and you save their hometown, they'll like put out.
That's basically what that is.
Yeah.
I think there's a lot of different ways to handle it.
I think there's a lot of different ways to handle it.
And there are like, it's become a lot more nuanced than that.
I think in a lot of games now um, but uh, I mean, I guess if, if let's take the sex aspect out of it, just because I think that it it relationship.
Yeah sure, like you could reduce all relationships to you do a thing and you give them a thing, and then a thing happens.
Like that's games, that's logic, right?
That's how everything operates.
Um, so sex is just a component of that.
And I do think that some games, the way they handle romance, becomes very formulaic and that does kind of feel odd.
Um, but I think that the games that are doing romance now well, from my perspective, as someone who's not super into romance um, It is usually more nuanced or there is more variety, let's say.
So let's say there's a bunch of romanceable characters.
They're not all romanceable in the same way.
It is something that I don't inherently dislike.
It's not why I came into RPGs and it's not what I look for in RPGs.
And so it's taken me a long time to sort of try to understand where people are coming from.
And also different people want different things out of it.
Very much so.
And yeah, it's just sort of a learning curve.
And I'm not actually opposed to doing romances and RPGs, but I certainly don't want to do them in a way that feels very formulaic.
I mean, and I don't think love or sex are things that shouldn't be in games or RPGs.
I mean, Pentament had love was like part of a lot of the storylines.
You can hook up with a nun, which by the way, like everyone immediately was like, Hell yeah.
Let me hook up with the sexy nun.
Um, so I'm not opposed to any of that.
It's just one of those things where I feel like uh, I'm a, I'm a stranger in a strange land and I'm still trying to figure out the way that I want to do it.
I don't want to do it in a way.
Cause sometimes, you know, we all get kind of like, what's the right way?
Like maybe petty or like, I'm going to do it the right way.
And it's like, that's the wrong fucking attitude because the way you think is good.
The players are going to be like each shit.
Like you, you, Like what's the point then?
Like that's just being petty and stupid.
And so I have to check those instincts and be like, try to be true to myself and say, like players want this thing.
What is a way that I could approach this where I feel good about doing it?
I feel like it's being done in a way that I think is cool and interesting.
And also the audience.
Um, maybe not everyone will come along with it, but that it's.
It's not being done at a spite and it's not being done to like.
Leave those players behind.
It's sort of like, here's, here's my take on this.
Like I'm trying to understand what this audience wants, but I'm trying to also show them a way that I would like to do it.
That feels true to just my creative sensibilities.
So, which is difficult.
What do you mean?
What do you, what do you mean?
You were like, that's difficult.
Oh no, it's, it's, it's difficult to try to approach.
It's difficult to try to approach the taste of someone that are very, very unfamiliar to you and then make a thing that fulfills that, in a way that um feels true to you, instead of trying to mimic something that someone else does in a way that you don't really get or vibe with.
Yeah.
So what are, what are your favorite RPGs?
Like.
What are the ones that you're like?
This is my, this inspired me or this was the um I really still go back to uh I've, I've traditionally said fallout uh, the original fallout, dark lands uh, which is a more obscure game, and pool of radiance, which is one of the first uh AD and D games, like sort of tactical games.
And I don't, I wouldn't say I take a whole, I still love pool of radiance and it's like, it's really sort of seared into my memory.
I don't necessarily feel like I pull a lot from it anymore, but fallout I still do, like you know a lot of people.
Yeah.
Praised sort of the open structure of new Vegas.
I just copied fallout one.
Like, like I really did fallout one.
You have to go look for a water chip and you are sent on this, like, go here.
It's not there.
Okay.
Now follow this lead.
Now follow this lead.
Now follow this lead.
And eventually you get to the necropolis spoilers and you get the water chip, and then you get a new crisis.
And eventually you get to the cathedral and you follow a series of steps but the open world.
You can leave vault 13 and And you can go directly to the necropolis.
You can go directly to the necropolis and get the water chip.
And you can then go, I can't remember if you can go directly to the cathedral before that.
But anyway, the point is it's an information chain where you can skip steps in the chain because the map is all black.
Like you don't know where anything is.
But if you have that meta knowledge you can speed run it, and the game completely allows it, which feels very cool.
And so finding Benny Benny is the water chip and they he went that away or they went that away.
I can't remember the name of the quest of my own game anymore, but basically it's we saw him go here, we saw him go here, we saw him go here, and you go around the horn and then eventually you get to the strip spoilers and then benny's at the top, or if you leave good springs and go directly to the strip by whatever means possible, benny is also still at the tops and you don't have to do and you can go back and do all that content out of order.
It's completely fine.
But like i really did feel, and one like the ability to kill anyone in the game I thought was really cool also to not, if I recall correctly, you didn't have to kill anybody.
You could ghost it and just stealth around.
Those are principles that I just took over new to Vegas from fall one.
And it goes back to that role playing thing of like, I'm, we're all crazy.
We're murderers.
Like we're gonna, we're gonna just, you know, I'm going to slap the mayor and fireball city hall.
Um or like no, I'm going to do it the super ghost way and not kill anyone and feel super clever about it.
Um, and the fact that they have the karma system, which you know kind of, while imperfect.
Um Oh, I can play as a good character.
I can play as an evil character.
I get different endings.
That was like a big thing where I played through the whole game.
I got a good ending because I just was playing a good character.
And then I went online and I saw people saying like, oh, the evil ending is so crazy.
I was like, what?
So I went back and I didn't replay it.
I actually loaded up my save and I went through the world and I killed every innocent NPC.
And you did it.
You just tested it.
Yeah.
And then I, and then I, and then I went to the end and I got the evil ending cause.
I got negative karma.
So, but it was like and then you know the open skill system and the fact that I could not all the skills are represented.
Well, like I think outdoorsman is not right, but but there's a lot of use of like I can use science.
I can use all these skills in conversation.
And so that was really influential on me.
And then dark lands is a 1992, basically open, a world role playing game set in 15th century England germany, but it's mythic germany, so like the myths of that period are real, and like witches are real and alchemy works and there are mythical monsters in the woods and stuff like that, and it was just very open and very unusual and mechanically it was very different from other rpgs i had played, and so i think a lot often about um, the fact that they sort of made this very oddball rpg.
That being said, there were a lot of oddball rpgs at that time um Um, things like magic candle and stuff like that.
But um uh, it just kind of stuck with me about how cool it was that they chose to make a game that didn't do the things mechanically that D and D or most other RPGs did.
They just made something that felt very true to 15th century Germany.
And, that was really cool.
Um, one last question.
And it is an advice question.
So, um, as you pointed out yesterday in your dice conversation, turn-based is back, baby.
Like it's making a research.
I don't think it ever really left.
I think we're just paying it.
I mean, us sickos have always been here that have enjoyed turn-based, but now they're making more of them.
And I think we'll probably see a lot more studios, small teams teams whatever, trying to make an RPG.
So what is your advice for new teams wanting to take a crack at making an RPG?
Yeah. talk to Larian or the expedition team.
I've never worked on a turn-based RPG actually.
I'm not just turn-based, but in general, I feel like we're going to see more RPGs.
Yeah.
Jeez.
There's.
I do think that a compelling world and visual style are like you know, whether it's sci-fi or proper fantasy, fantasy is part of it.
There's a fantastic world.
I mean, maybe that seems obvious, but yeah, There is sort of an aesthetic that has to pull people in.
Whether you're making a defined character or a character with a sort of more blank slate, there's a range of expression.
People play RPGs to express themselves mechanically and personality-wise and aesthetically.
And so thinking about the type of RPG you're making and how does the type of RPG you're making compare to other RPGs that will probably drive the expectation of the audience.
Doesn't mean you have to do the thing that they expect, but again you have to deal with that expectation.
And then, when you're defining that central character, think about what is the range of types of characters that you want to support.
And then what is the range of voices?
And think about how much you really want to let players mess with the story, break the story um, break the story positively like like yes, you can break it, but we will let you keep playing in a way that feels satisfying and cool.
Um, and uh yeah, there's lots of different ways that people think about rpgs and lots of different styles of rpgs, and so i think usually, if you're really just coming to it for the first time, really think about what is the closest comparison to this and that will drive the player expectations of it.
And you don't you don't have to do that, but you have to sort of internalize those expectations that you can deal with them.
Um, bg3 was a very expensive game.
Yep yes, it was.
Um, you know, i think yesterday a lot of people were talking about like, where's the?
We were talking about like, where's the double a version of the of bg3.
Is that even possible?
So it's interesting because I guess we would say probably, although it's not BG3, but Expedition 33 budget-wise is definitely falling into the AA range.
Yes.
Oh, yeah.
That's AA.
But I would say that realistically, Pillars of Eternity 1 and 2, I mean, people know what the Kickstarter, but those weren't the final budgets.
I'm not going to say what those are.
But I would say they're not even really AA.
So going from... deadfire which again you can look up the what was raised fig wise for that and we spent more than that i'm not going to say what but then compare it to numbers that have been floated around for bg3 and there's an enormous gap in there yes so it would be interesting to see some studios i'm sure there are studios that could do it that could make a game that is in the double a range it's not as crazy as bg3 also bg3 is humongous it's long i don't i think players if you made a game that was like More.
Half that size?
Yeah.
Probably okay.
But I do think like, again, focusing on what are the expectations of the players?
What are they going to be into?
What are they going to be like really frowny face if you don't support?
That's very important.
And I do think RPGs are about kind of that range of play styles, range of character vibes, range of personality types.
Yeah.
And sort of just figure that out and then vibe on it.
Vibe on it.
You heard it.
Vibe on it.
Thank you so much for chatting with me.
This was nice and fun.
Thank you for having me.
It's great.
Anytime.
Thank you for joining us for the Game Maker's Notebook.
For more information on the Academy of Interactive Arts and Sciences, our podcasts and our other initiatives, please visit wwwinteractiveorg.
