Obsidian Hires Rogue Dao Head

[chevalier]

Obsidian Entertainment has hired Monty, who was the head of the group known as Rogue Dao Studios and working the Planescape: Trilogy conversion. Here's what Rob McGinnis says:

Monty Markland has come to work for Obsidian Entertainment. "Who is this Markland guy," you ask? He was the head of the Community Modding group Rogue Dao Studios - the makers of that great Purgatorio mod we have all been watching so closely. So, to ease your fears about this change, while we fit him for his cybernetic eye and re-designate him as 110 of 110, I held Monty at gunpoint to get him to write this little message to you all

...And here is a part of what Monty adds to this:

Obsidian Entertainment is awesome.

I started working here on Monday. The past five days have been the coolest experience I've ever had. For everyone out there thinking, "It must be rad to work in the game business." I can tell you that, yes indeed, it is rad.

"Who are you and why do we care?"

Well, I've been the public face of the Planescape Trilogy project for the past 15 months. I felt like it was important to let everybody know that my arrival at Obsidian doesn't threaten the completion of Purgatorio or the rest of the Trilogy at all. There are 23 incredibly talented ladies and gentleman currently working on Purgatorio, folks such as: Kevin Chow, Scott Douglas, Johnny Taylor, Courtney Keene, Ryan Placchetti, Daniel Haas, Andrej Bartulovic, Heather Kirk, Jason Ng, Michael Cipriano, Will Sprinkel, Bruce Hayles, Matthew Roeder, Sampo Narhi, Gabor Valasek, Robert Fletcher, Atte Laitenen, Marko Radojkovic, Ryan Farnsworth, Andres Cruz, Johnny Ree, and Kris Hammes. I also continue to work on the project in my own time.

Read the rest at Obsidian, along with the rest of community update, such as a brief spotlight of the new module Harp & Chrysanthemum by Maerduin. I checked it out at Vault a while ago and it looks quite interesting. There are also Weapon Packs by MWMDragon and Kaycei's Hair, which looks great, and a snowed land prefab (Deepsnow Prefab Area) by SGK73. Lastly, patch 1.12 goals.

[Taluntain]

Deja vu, anyone? I bet his ex team appreciates Monty using them as a springboard to a paid position just as much as the Dragonlance team did with their head. It looks more and more like the whole Dragonlance story is repeating again. Not that I expected anything less as soon as I saw that release countdown about a year and a half ago...

[chevalier]

One does wonder why it's just the head... Aren't the other members also good? Competition, hmm?

[Taluntain]

As much as he's been in the (self-created) news and on all the gaming fairs socializing with Obsidian, he was the one in the spotlight the most. And I imagine most other people contributing to the project already have jobs and/or aren't interested in working at Obsidian, which includes moving over there from wherever they live.

[MLMarkland]

I certainly can't speak for everyone on the team, but I do know a number of team members would love to receive a job offer from an established game studio, and would not think twice about accepting such an offer. In fact I'd be surprised if any of the current team members outside of the audio team would turn down a job offer from any established game studio. Point-in-fact, I'm not even the only one on the team who has taken a job with a studio, there have been others -- they just don't work for companies affiliated with NWN2 so the hiring wasn't particularly noticeable to the NWN2 Community. I was not the first person hired into the industry from RDS, I was the third.

Most of the people on the Purgatorio team are on the team to build their resume so that they can get jobs in the game industry. That's sort of always been "the deal". Get a group of talented folks together and they'll work really hard on something and maybe get some benefit out of it in a speculative sense.

This doesn't really affect my involvement much with Purgatorio. I'll still be working on it. I think if you compare the team's original plans back in 2006 with the current plans in almost 2008, you'll begin to appreciate the lengthening of the development cycle a bit more.

Basically I have to have a job like everyone else, so I figure it might as well be doing something I enjoy. If that is cause for people being upset with me, so be it

[Taluntain]

Oh, that's certainly not the reason why anyone is upset... it's just that the community in general over the years has seen pretty much every major and most expected fan project go through a lot of hype and promises, keep everyone's hopes up for a long time, and then dissolve more or less completely without delivering on their promises. I can certainly understand the desire to head off to work in the field professionally as soon as the opportunity arises, I guess I'm just too idealistic in thinking that the teams involved would also like to deliver what they've been promising, even if it takes much longer than originally planned.

Not that I'm saying that I'm certain that your team is going to break up before finishing even the first module, it's just that this is how it's usually been. I for one would certainly rather play what you've been promising than post "deja vu" comments in the news.

[MLMarkland]

Cool, I get ya.

Purgatorio will happen. If I had to finish it by myself, I could. It would take about three years, but if that's what it took that's what I'd do.

Fortunately, that's not the case at all. The team is a very strong team and getting stronger by the day.

We're shooting for AAA quality in every aspect of Purgatorio so it's just going to take some time

[FrozenSnowy]

Congratiulations, Monty. Your premonition sense was pretty accurate, I'd say .