Chris Avellone

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Chris Avellone is an American computer game designer, who has worked on many of the most successful role-playing games that have been published. He is a founding officer of Obsidian Entertainment. He formerly worked for Black Isle Studios. He is one of the well-known designers for Fallout 2 and Icewind Dale, but the work he is most famous for is Planescape: Torment. In December 2004, he shipped Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic II: The Sith Lords, his first published game with Obsidian.

[edit] Career

Avellone is a descendant of Sicilian immigrants. He attended College of William and Mary in Virginia and completed with a Bachelor in the English. During that time, he wrote short stories and scripts for role-playing games, some of which were published in the D&D magazine Dragon.

By Bruce Harlick, the editor at that time with Hero Games, he received the chance to write a book for the role-playing games Dark Champions. After several publications with Hero Games, it became a career option for him. Steve Peterson, one of the bosses with Hero Games, provided him an interview with Interplay, a large game publisher at the time. His role-playing games knowledge and ideas impressed Interplay, and he was offered the position as a game designer.

Avellone moved to Orange County (the Interplay headquarters) where he started to work on development of computer games. It was around 1997 and 1998. He was involved in games such as Star Trek: Star Fleet Academy, Fallout 2, and Descent to Undermountain.

In the following years, he was involved in many more successful computer role-playing games made by Interplay. He worked on projects for Dragonplay and later projects for Black Isle Studios. He was a lead designer for the 1999 published role-playing games Planescape: Torment, which is based in large part on his ideas.

After the completion of Planescape: Torment, Avellone began to work do pre-development work for the next Fallout sequel, Fallout 3. This was interrupted several times by Icewind Dale, Icewind Dale: Heart of Winter, Icewind Dale II and the console game Baldur's Gate: Dark Alliance.

During this time, Interplay’s financial situation worsened considerably. The development cycles for games became ever shorter. His coworkers began leaving for better opportunities. Nevertheless, Avellone remained with Black Isle, since he enjoyed the developing role-playing games, and the prospect of a sequel for Baldur's Gate still existed.

At the time, he supported other game studios with his role-playing games expertise as well. He helped Reflexive Entertainment dialogues and character development during the early development of Lionheart.He participated in the story development and writing of Champions of Norrath with Snowblind Studios.

When Interplay decided to stop development of Baldur's Gate 3, many of Black Isle Studios members were shocked. Avellone had lost all confidence in the corporate management. By then, Brian Fargo had left the company. Avellone feared that Fallout 3 would reach the same fate as Baldur's Gate 3 and started to promote it in the Fallout community with publications such as the Fallout Bible.

When Feargus Urquhart submitted his notice of resignation, reactions inside Black Isle changed drastically. Avellone decided to leave the game studio after working there for almost eight years. He quit, despite having spent three to four years with the pre-production of Fallout 3. Together with Feargus Urquhart, Darren Monahan, Chris Parker, and Chris Jones, he formed the game studio Obsidian Entertainment.

The first Obsidian project he worked on was the celebrated Star Wars role-playing games Knights of the Old Republic II, for which he was the lead developer. Since then he has also worked on Star Wars Tales 24. His most recent project was Neverwinter Nights 2.

He is currently working as a Creative Lead Designer on the Alien computer role-playing game and Senior Designer on an (as yet) unannounced project at Obsidian Entertainment.