This is the latest part of an interview series, “Unmasking the Gamers,” humanising the people who play video games: the real character controlling that fictional character; the person behind that First Person game. Previous interviewee(s): Brendan Stapley, Andrew Doherty, Cody Winn, Chris Avellone Part 1.

This is the latest part of an interview series, “Unmasking the Gamers,” humanising the people who play video games: the real character controlling that fictional character; the person behind that First Person game. Previous interviewee(s): Brendan Stapley, Andrew Doherty, Cody Winn

This particular edition of Unmasking the Gamers features the first part of an interview with a special guest.

Mr Chris Avellone, popularly known as MCA, has been the creative mastermind behind many of the highest profile Western RPGs released, with notable contributions to the Fallout series (including the creation of the Fallout Bible with help from fans), Star Wars Knights of the Old Republic (KOTOR) II, and the classic Planescape: Torment, oft-mentioned as featuring the best RPG narrative of all time. MCA was kind enough to take some time out during development of Fallout New Vegas downloadable content at Obsidian Entertainment to answer some questions, and in Part 1 of our discussion we’ll cover various aspects of his role in New Vegas, game writing, as well as his views on the player experience and character design and development.

WillOoi: Hi Chris, thanks very much for taking time out to participate in this interview. You’re quite the hero to many RPG fans out there and your willingness to answer questions is well documented and much appreciated. So what are you up to at the moment?

Chris Avellone: Still working hard here at Obsidian, wrapping up the last bits of Fallout New Vegas DLC, Lonesome Road. We had the last narrative tasks and voice-acting session last week (Ed: end of May), it went well, and now it’s a matter of doing more run-throughs of DLC4 to get a feel for the pacing and polish what we can. It’s been a long road from New Vegas to the end of the DLCs, and now when I go home, I’m not sure what to do with myself – on NV and the DLCs, it was easy, I just didn’t go home.

As for what’s next, we still have a number of titles in development, so I’ve been playing those builds, going to design meetings, making and reviewing critiques and working on pitches for additional products. One thing I’ll say – being an independent developer gives you access to franchises I never thought possible a few years back.

[Gamasutra Feature & Fallout Wiki]

This is the third part of an interview series, “Unmasking the Gamers,” humanising the people who play video games: the real character controlling that fictional character; the person behind that First Person Genre. Previous interviewee(s): Brendan Stapley, Andrew Doherty

This edition of Unmasking the Gamers features an interview with Cody, an old 1up friend, artist and up-and-coming gaming journalist. A vocal and influential member of the 1up network for several years and I had the good fortune of being able to sit down with him for a Q&A (or rather, sitting down in front of a computer, half the planet apart from each other and exchanging emails over time) =).