According to Google, the guy is 45. Does the game industry pay that well that he can set aside enough money too not to care that he could be seriously impacting his revenue stream? It’s not like he’s near retirement age. I think he has a family, too, right?
The “set money aside” comment just reads like puffery to me. Most people get used to making what they make and a substantial change in that isn’t ever comfortable, even if you started pretty high.
The gaming industry can pay pretty well, yeah. There’s no reason why someone with his employment history couldn’t be set for retirement by 45 if he had lived reasonably. That said, the same goes true for many white collar jobs - living isn’t that expensive; spending is.
I laughed when Chris Avellone called Feargus a jackass. Man, those “Owner meetings” so like a round of survivor where anyone could be voted off the island for any dumb thing.
I have a idea for a game, 100 C-RPG game developers are drop in a isle, only one can survive.
Chris Avellone to choose them.
Somewhere, someone is making a battle royale game with that kind of setup.
Sawyer would win. He cares so much about balance, he’d immediately recognize which weapons were overpowered.
But would he use them?
He would nerf them first, then use them. While riding a bicycle.
Huh, some info about Guide Henkel from Torment development…
Actually, this has always interested me, not sure this was ever asked, did you have much interaction with Henkel on PST and how was the relationship, what was your impression of him?
It’s a long story, but Guido got fired b/c the VP (Trish), Feargus, and Parker all got sick of him (I’ll be blunt - I was sick of him 4 days after he started because of how he treated people, but then he pissed off people with a lot more authority than me, which is the death knell). I almost quit because of Guido’s management during Torment and went to Westwood, longer story. I’m glad I hung in there, though.
To save face (which arguably, should be a nice thing to do), Feargus allowed Guido to act as if it was “resignation.” (When Feargus doesn’t like someone, he encourages them… actively… to quit.)
Even though I got the real story later on, I will say his resignation definitely wasn’t by choice to everyone hearing it when it happened (he had to tell the whole team in the conference room and very suddenly) - Feargus was sitting by him the whole time while he was making the announcement, being the crushing, you better-behave-and-stick-to-script invisible hand on his resignation shoulder as Guido, pouting and upset, told the room he was resigning. Guido didn’t look happy or content at his own news, for sure, which is when I got suspicious.
Usually, people resigning are like, “I wish you all the best,” and “fuck yes,” and “happy to keep working in 2 weeks, then I’m out of this dump, AMF” (although Black Isle wasn’t doing as badly as the rest of Interplay), but Guido’s expression wasn’t that of someone who was a-joy with his own news, and it wasn’t something that a very cold-looking Feargus needed to be there for. It was pretty creepy.
Based on that and asking later for confirmation, I was told by Feargus it wasn’t Guido’s choice at all - he really had only one choice. But in truth, I didn’t need that - because Chris Parker had told me almost a month before (thank god for beer), “Avellone, I don’t think you’ll have to worry about Guido for much longer.” I just had to make sure that Parker hadn’t been drinking too much for confirmation, which Feargus provided. Admittedly, he could have been lying.
But to be clear, Guido’s firing wasn’t because of me - I genuinely believe Guido just pissed off people at a higher grade than me, and they hit back - hard. I can’t say I wasn’t glad to see him go, since he had checked out of Torment long before (our leads used to catch him working on his DVD review website at work, and had lectured him about it). Also, while I doubt this was the reason, Feargus also kept getting upset b/c Guido kept saying the paycheck he (Guido) agreed to was too small.
There’s other stories about his, but I’m just answering the Grauken question - I didn’t have much interaction with him, I didn’t think he was a good PD, and he seemed more focused on fighting with his former partners on Realms of Arkania vs. the project he was on. Overall, when Ken Lee took over as lead producer (and then was also mistreated by Feargus, which I thought was unfair), I was incredibly relieved.
Guido had less impact on PST on anyone he mentioned vs. his face on the cover of the game (which he orchestrated without telling anyone), and it’s something that can be checked with metrics. I would have gladly replaced Guido with a clone of any of the three people he disparaged (even me, and I’d have killed the clone quickly to prevent it from taking over my life), and the game would have been far better for it. I thought his comments on the Deadfire name for Pillars 2 was hilarious, and a perfect example for how he acted at Interplay.
Interesting.
I searched Guido, then Fargo, then found this article:
Which is interesting. Allow me to resell my digital game?
Under his model, a used game sale would still be worth more to the publisher than a new game sale in Steam, so the math works for that. But building a platform like Steam is not easy, and of course this would require always on internet DRM, which some consumers don’t love.
But it’s an interesting idea.
It will undoubtedly affect his career negatively, how much so is unknowable, but I feel for him too because it is clearly an emotional response and an unburdening of sorts for him.
Like it or not Obsidian was a large chunk of his life, and I don’t think he’d have intended for it to end that way with such bitterness.
I think he knows his career is substantially over. He is 45 and contracting on various gigs and none of them are particularly stellar or weighty in comparison to major project roles.
Maybe now he can let go of it a bit and might help him relax more with contract work and not having any real control over projects.
He was on Prey and that made some amateur narrative mistakes in resolving the story, it became entirely dissonant and nonsensical to how the story was introduced, and I doubt staffers would appreciate him piping up, especially if he happens to be correct. So maybe he just needed to get it all off his chest.
Poor old Guido did not deserve to be dragged into it. The idea of lawyering up and all this nonsense, you’re probably overestimating the financial clout of the companies involved and their capability for embarrassment.
It’s funny, I came here expecting the usual laughing and mocking of this blokes misfortune from some of the self-righteous anonymous parasites that infest this website, and some of them were even responding like adults - in a subdued and somewhat measured fashion.
You could do with more of it. You could get hit by a car tomorrow then all of your selfish inane bullshit evaporates and you become acquainted with something much harder.
Parasite is such an odd word to describe people on a gaming forum.
The hell is this?
Nobody cared who he was until he put on the mask.
Please tell me you’re Feargus coming here to get everything off your chest. We could use our own 1000-post epic drama thread.
😐😕😒🙄
In the big scheme of things, aren’t we all parasites?
/ponders deeply
Agent Smith was on to something.
Someone’s got a case of the Mondays!