What happened to Chris Wilson?

what wonders me, even if you got rich in nz like chris did, how do you spend the money there.
even if you bought a tesla (jonathan, i still wonder how he charged it there 6 years ago), a golden pen (Eric) or a house with a huge flatscreen (jonathan), the only sensible thing to sink your money is to start a new business or go abroad.
i hope chris chose the former.

this is a very materialistic way of looking at things. But its also pretty inaccurate they can import pretty much anything to NZ that any other 1st world nation has it just costs a little more shipping and import taxes. Being rich makes that not a real concern.

The thing to do with lots of money is live a life of your own choosing without being obligated or constrained by jobs or money.

"you win, so now what?"

Game designers I feel are the most likely people to come to understand that life is a journey (because so are games) and that the destination or making a number go up; are not the point (because just like games).

I figured this out when I got Asteroids on the Atari 2600 in the 80's and no longer needed quarters. Making the number go up wore off real fast. The gameplay itself became obviously the sole reason to play, and once that was mastered it got boring REAL FAST. Just like when you get a HH or MB and almost immediately start wondering what to do next, and start imagining what the next league might be and lose interest in the current one.

Life is a game in the most literal and most metaphorical sense.

if we're talking about money then we have to realize that chris had a vision for poe and he compromised for money.

one thing i find cruelly ironic, is that so many people sing praises of POE1 and how its a good game and to many its even better than POE2 and would criticize POE2.

the reason why i find it ironic is POE1 is the result of GGG caving into compromises.

a lot of people have forgotten how POE1 started. GGG was "nobody", POE was an unknown diablo clone.

when players found interesting builds that did a lot of dps, GGG SHOULD have nerfed that shit and kept everything grounded so that there are not many overperforming interactions.

but they couldnt because they wanted players to be hyped. they wanted players to discover interesting interactions. they needed more selling points to make players want to play POE. nerfing would have the complete opposite effect where players would feel punished for finding out new things. in fact having your build nerfed in an entirely new game that no one knows could be an excuse for players to just quit the game and look for other games.

if you look at how POE started. combat was WAAAAAY slower and much more meaningful. but with GGG being unable to nerf. player power spiked. there was a time when 50-100k dps was considered huge. 500k dps was godlike.

the game still did not have enough popularity BUT they did have whales that enjoyed the game and continued supporting them. so to keep the whales invested, they created tougher content. power creep on players were met with power creep on the monsters.

the power creep kept increasing and the game technically lost any way to be balanced as theres 1001 different skills and countless combinations to consider. buffing weaker skills could indirectly buff other skills in unknown ways. its too huge of a mess to balance. instead GGG made uber pinnacle bosses gated behind RNG t17 pinnacle content. fuck balance. let RNG decide.

GGG actually realized a lot of this comes from player power spiralling out of control. when they created POE2, not only did they make it separate to "rebalance melee", it was the perfect opportunity to rebalance the game.

the decision to not have life nodes is twofold. on one hand it reduces the player feeling that their passives are taxed as they are forced to take life nodes. thus giving more build flexibility. on another, it helps GGG balance the end game content. GGG and even us players can roughly estimate that most players should have around 2.5-4k hp at the end game. and thus ggg can balance monster damage accordingly in a way that monsters DONT NEED to do a gazillion damage. its also why boss attacks are not too huge. a lot of people cry "we dont have a lot of movespeed/we dont have enough moveskills". a lot of people dont realize, that if we had more movespeed/moveskills, ggg would have to introduce attacks that hit a huge area and with little reaction time to give players a challenge.

its a shame that ggg overlooked ES and there are a lot of over performing skills now. if ggg doesnt nerf them, rest assured reflect damage mods will come to poe2. to me reflect damage is a crutch gamedevs use when they fail to balance their game. its primarily used to combat players that go glasscannon blasting everything.

poe2 definitely is the game that GGG wants to make. regardless of whos at the helm.

the most interesting thing that i observe is unlike POE1, ggg is now FAMOUS, it is established. they also have financial backing. they can finally make the game that they want.

but despite saying that, they still are in a hard spot. making money still is a big deal.

one of the biggest pitfalls of POE2 is that a lot of people actually like the non zoomy, slow and deliberate gamestyle. and to an extent many people like things being slowed down. but if thats the case, POE2 cannot function as a temp league. farming is simply too slow.

its also reminds me of another thing that is ironic. many people forgot that many players who started playing poe1 were diablo2 players. farming and leveling took a long time. a lot of standard players remained in standard because for the very fact that it took a long time to refarm everything.

poe2 (ignoring the overperforming builds and trade) is a good reminder of how things used to be scarce. not only things are scarce, the entire pace of the game is slowed. hitting 40/40 in poe2 would be much more work.

so back to chris's involvement and his wants.

i m pretty sure POE1 did not turn out the way he wanted it BUT i would say hes bloody happy that POE1 turned out the way it did for FINANCIAL reasons.

which begs the question. would he really want POE2 to be its own thing or would he prefer to just focus on POE1?

when he started i believe he was passionate to make his own game.

but now? is it the same passion or is he more motivated by money? would he prefer poe1 or poe2?

we can never know as any response he gives could upset a different set of fans.

but all that said and done, i want to remind everyone of the one time that i fondly remember of chris.

during an interview he talked about PVP, and ended up saying peevee penis. he was aware of the fact after he said it but you guys are all too much of an adult and just forgot about it or let it slide. i m not forgetting it.

whatever it is, i hope he does well and has a happy life.

The "Supported by NZ On Air" logo at the bottom of this page appeared on all their websites around the same time as CW’s listed directorial cessation date, January 21, 2025.

i wonder if he will turn around and make another game eventually.
never know.

sometimes devs get the urge to create one last gem after retirement :)

RIP chris wilson

Where are the corpo-bots who dismissed the internal leak facts about his disappearance ?

"

AngryGekko#0233 wrote:

Guys, i dont wanna disturb worshipping Chris, but...
Am i the only one witnessing that PoE2 is EXACTLY the game Chris Wilson's dream of 'Ruthless' was all about?

yep, its gonna be great.

"

AngryGekko#0233 wrote:

Not a single mentally intact businessman would EVER call poe2's base concept a solid foundation for an arpg supporting f2p seasonal restarts.

true. its not a game made by businessmen, its a game made by arpg vets who want to make a great arpg. the motivation is not money, theres no pressure to make the game a certain kind of way coming from tencent, theyre just making the game they want to make. they are artists, this is their art and it is intended for those who share their taste in arpg games.

that is their right as artists. no one can go and tell ghost or opeth how to write their next albums, thats their art. if people like it they can listen to it, if not go listen to something else.

"

AngryGekko#0233 wrote:

And now, two years later, despite of all the community's disagreement regarding his ruthless vision back then, a company famous for making money is settling on this pure insanity of an arpg idea? Really?

a company famous for making a good game. blizzard made more money, bobby kotek was a better business man, diablo3 and 4 were giant piles of dogshit and path of exile is a great game. thats what theyre famous for.

D3 and D4 had more raw players on launch, and they lost most of them rapidly because they made the game and sold it to people who buy a game play it for 50 hours over a few weeks and then buy the next assassins creed or god of war or monster hunter etc and move on. because that makes business sense.

poe held and grew a dedicated arpg fan base for 12 years because it was a great game.

"

AngryGekko#0233 wrote:

I can not see a company with rational eonomic incentives would in any way ever accept such a mess of direction.

yep, thats absolutely true. thats why all this talk of tencent making the game rubbish to earn more money or ggg sold their souls or they only care about cash now thats why game sucks, all that stuff is absolute nonsense and we can clearly see that because like you say there is no world in which what they are doing makes any sense from a view of trying to make as much money as possible. they are obviously not motivated by that.








heres a thing tho. people looking at it thinking well if the game is a bit faster it will be more exciting, if i can get better items easier it will be more exciting. ok, how do you keep people coming back for 12 years? by making the game progressively more exciting. each season is a bit more exciting, year on year the game gets more exciting. what happens if the game gets too fast and too much shit drops? it becomes stupid and stops being fun.

so how do you set up a game? you have to establish expectations, then have room to keep giving people more than they have grown to expect incrementally for a decade without it becoming stupid.

poe1 is on the verge of becoming really, really stupid. what was poe1 like on launch? how did poe change over time that kept it becoming more and more exciting?




right. glad we all get it, so lets chill and enjoy the great ride we are now on. eta 10-16 months? cool, sounds great i got a ton of books and art and games to be getting on with in the mean time. see you all there.

"

alhazred70#2994 wrote:

this is a very materialistic way of looking at things. But its also pretty inaccurate they can import pretty much anything to NZ that any other 1st world nation has it just costs a little more shipping and import taxes. Being rich makes that not a real concern.

The thing to do with lots of money is live a life of your own choosing without being obligated or constrained by jobs or money.

"you win, so now what?"

Game designers I feel are the most likely people to come to understand that life is a journey (because so are games) and that the destination or making a number go up; are not the point (because just like games).

I figured this out when I got Asteroids on the Atari 2600 in the 80's and no longer needed quarters. Making the number go up wore off real fast. The gameplay itself became obviously the sole reason to play, and once that was mastered it got boring REAL FAST. Just like when you get a HH or MB and almost immediately start wondering what to do next, and start imagining what the next league might be and lose interest in the current one.

Life is a game in the most literal and most metaphorical sense.

m8, its so true.



if i were chris i would leave ggg, get as far away from knowing anything about poe2 as i could, go play magic for 12 months then sit down on launch and finally be able to play path of exile unspoiled as a player. to be able to actually enjoy the game i spent 12 years of my life on in a way no artist can enjoy the art they make, as a detached fan who doesnt just see a bunch of variables and design regrets.

I don't want to speculate too much, but is anyone but me surprised that no1 of the big PoE creators made a video about this? Usually there's a video within minutes after some minor news broke, but this time... radio silence. (except Talkative Tri)

It signals to me that they already knew and weren't allowed to talk about it.

"

Ulsarek#7159 wrote:

Alright let's keep it real, there is no way of us knowing and that's fine. No need to find a scapegoat.

Someone working with passion on a project for a decade not saying goodbye is not normal. There is (was) beef behind the scenes 100%. I might even go as far as claiming streamers were told to not ask questions about it on live streams with GGG staff. Not a single streamer ever had the idea to ask what is going on with Chris and why he is no longer showing up without any notice? Sure...

"

Ulsarek#7159 wrote:

If you say so, then surely!

I could be wrong, but I am probably not. It works for D4 and WoW, why shouldn´t it work for PoE2? Especially considering PoE2 has a much broader target audience than PoE1 had (and has).