Legendary developer explains why he made bad decisions on purpose in 2 successful RPGs

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47-year-old game developer Josh Sawyer is the mastermind behind some of the most popular PC role-playing games of all time, such as Fallout 3 and Fallout: New Vegas. Pillars of Eternity 1 and 2 are RPG fan favorites on Steam. But the developer says the two games could have been better, that he compromised and made bad design choices openly because of his commitment to “ultra-nostalgic gamers”.

What games did Sawyer make?

  • Sawyer started in 1998 in his mid-20s as a designer and lead designer on Icewind Dale, a game that, like Baldur’s Gate, wanted to replicate the tabletop role-playing game Dungeons and Dragons as a computer game as closely as possible.
  • He later worked as lead designer on Fallout 3 and Fallout New Vegas. This is the premier class of role-playing games: Fallout: New Vegas has 96% positive reviews on Steam. He also worked on Neverwinter Nights 2.
  • In 2015 and 2018 he worked as chief developer at “Pillars of Eternity”. These are two “RPGs like in the old days” that were funded via Kickstarter.

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    At the beginning of his career he only wanted to make Dungeons and Dragons as a computer game

    This is what he says now: Speaking to a panel of PC Gamers during the GDC developer conference, he explained:

    I’ve played D&D since 1985 and other tabletop roleplaying games since then. When I made my first game in 1998 it was Icewind Dale and I was so YEAH! I was so excited.

    Sawyer says he poured every single idea he had while roleplaying Dungeons and Dragons into Icewind Dale from 1998 onwards.

    But then, in 2012, 14 years later, he wanted to develop Pillars of Eternity, which had raised nearly $4 million on Kickstarter. And now a difficult situation arose.

    Ultra-nostalgic fans wanted Old Game even though he had better ideas

    This was his problem: Sawyer says Pillars of Eternity 1 and 2 are probably the games where he made the most compromises.

    Because he had evolved in 14 years as a developer and had new ideas in his head about how he would design the games. But it was two Kickstarter, customer-funded games, and the customers were like, “No, we want Dungeons and Dragons, we want the exact same experience as the Infinity Engine Games.”

    Sawyer says: Because people had paid for a game “like before”, he felt a duty to develop the games like this – actually against his better judgment:

    I felt that obligation, but I also felt that I ultimately had to make bad design decisions. It was like making a game worse to cater to the preferences of an audience that wanted something ultra-nostalgic.

    Not only publishers demand compromises – fans do too

    That’s behind it: That is paradoxical. Because when it comes to video games like Star Citizen, it is actually said that developers are only independent through “crowdfunding” and can implement their own vision without making the compromises that a publisher demands.

    Proponents of crowdfunding say that only if you don’t have to listen to “the people in suits” can you create something big of your own.

    But fans also have their needs, which do not always correspond to the developer’s vision.

    Pillars of Eternity 1 and 2 each have 87% positive reviews on Steam. Good question if Sawyer’s “original version” might even have cracked the 90%. We will probably never know.

    RPGs like Pillars of Eternity work well on Kickstarter. MMORPG don’t have such a great record:

    6 promising crowdfunding MMORPGs that failed miserably

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