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Avellone: "I hope digital stabs the used market in the heart"

Obsidian boss loves digital for hurting used market, low environmental impact and flexibility

Obsidian's chief creative officer, Chris Avellone, has said that he loves digital distribution not only because it saves environmental impact through lack of packaging and because it gives developers extra flexibility, but also because it could spell the end of the second hand market.

Speaking in an interview with Industry Gamers, Avellone poured praise on the digital model, despite his company's predilection for large, disc-based RPGs.

"I love digital distribution," said Avellone. "For one thing, being environmentally conscious, I really appreciate that we're not making more boxes and shipping them and creating all that waste. It's better just to download the game through Steam and not have to have all that packaging.

"I hope digital distribution stabs the used game market in the heart."

Chris Avellone, Chief Creative Office, Obsidian Entertainment

"One of the things I enjoyed with Fallout: New Vegas was that digital distribution of the DLC made things more flexible in terms of getting the content done. You didn't have to worry about production times for discs, and so you could take an extra week if you needed that to get things right."

The creative chief wasn't keen on diluting his opinions about used game sales and how he hopes that digital will affect them.

"Of course, one of the greatest things about digital distribution is what it does to reduce the used game market," he continued.

"I hope digital distribution stabs the used game market in the heart."

Avellone also revealed that Obsidian does harbour ambitions to develop and publish its own IP eventually, instead of the solid work for hire it has done for companies such as Bethesda. These titles, he says, are likely to be distributed non-physically.

"Our eventual hope is that we can stockpile enough resources to release our own titles digitally. Smaller games can be very satisfying projects to work on, and it would be great to do that. But it's going to take time for us to get there; we want to make sure we do it right."

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