Lead Game Designer / Game Director at Obsdian Entertainment
I originally published this interview on former tattoo webzine Color My Skin in december 2016. As PoE II is entering closed beta, I’m happy to republish it.
Josh has a dream resume : He worked at the mythical Black Isle Studios on cult classics such as Planescape Torment & Icewind Dale, then he became lead designer and project director at Obsidian Entertainment working on titles such as Neverwinter Nights 2 and Fallout New Vegas. Thanks to a record-breaking kickstarter campaign in 2012, his latest game “Pillars of Eternity” (PoE) rekindled the public love for a RPG-genre long forgotten : isometric-RPG & Infinity Engine games. At the moment of the interview, an ongoing crowdfunding campaign for PoE sequel (aka PoE II : Deadfire) is, once again, breaking records.
Stéphane : Josh, hi. Thanks for agreeing to do this interview for Color My Skin. I got the idea to interview you while watching the excellent documentary “Road to Eternity”. I noticed that you were heavily tattooed and we wanted to know more about how you got them ! But first, could you please introduce yourself?
Josh : Yes! My name is Josh Sawyer and I am the design director at Obsidian Entertainment in Orange County California and I am currently the director of Pillars of Eternity II: Dead Fire.
My first question is not tattoo-related but can you tell us when you decided you wanted to design games for a living?
I don’ t know. ..I guess I never really thought about it from a career perspective until I was in college. Growing up I played a lot of tabletop games and computer role playing games. And when I was in highschool I started modifying the rules of the tabletop games I was playing. And when I was in college I started making my own tabletop games. I never thought of it as a job I might have one day, it was just that I looked at rules and then wanted to change them.
For example, I had an idea for a setting and realized I needed new rules to fit that setting. It was just something that I was doing on my own for fun with my friends. Towards the end of college I started thinking it might be something that I could do for a living. Actually I thought I was going to be a tabletop designer if anything. Then I found out there was an opportunity to work for Black Isle Studios as web designer. I had taught myself web design including flash animation in the mid 90s and I was one of the only 3 applicants who knew flash animation at the time. So I got the job working as a webmaster for the Plane Scape Torment website.
That’s how I got into the industry and once I got my foot in, I realized it was my opportunity to just be a designer and I just went from there !
I know the campaign for Pillars of Eternity II is already a huge success, maybe there is room to create a board game of PoE II?
Well, actually there is ! It’s a Lords of the Eastern Reach board game that was created by people from Obsidian like Scott Everts. He, Chris Taylor and John Lewis and a few other people put together a board game that is set in the PoE world. It is something that we actually just announced yesterday, that we are gonna be making a tabletop role playing game guide and hopefully -if that’s successful — we can expand and do more stuff like that.
But a lot of people here play tabletop role playing games so it will be a fun sort of experience, making a tabletop version of the computer game. I mean when I started in the industry it was adapting tabletop rules for computer, PoE was about making a system that was sort of tabletop like but that was for computers and now… we’re gonna make a game for tabletop.. .so that’s an interesting process that we are going through!
Yes! I am a huge player myself and what we’ve seen with games such as Dark Souls is that a pretty big impact on board games with games having the same rules around stamina…etc. And tabletop games have been hugely successful on Kickstarter in 2016. Paradoxically, that’s why I was glad to see you move to Fig, because it seems a more focused platform that will give you much more control.
Indeed I do see a huge number of table top and cards games funded on Kickstarter. Yeah, I mean it’s cool that you can kickstart almost anything but Fig is just for funding games.
So let’s talk about tattoos now! Tell me what triggered your first tattoo. What was it, how old were you and who did it?
I got my first tatoo when I was 18, I was at college, I have no idea who did it; I mean the place was pretty sketchy. The tattoo was pretty bad, it was a 13 on my back. I thought it was cool, there was no deep meaning about it. Actually, my parents did not see it for several years. I was not sure how they would react to it because when I was in highschool I got my eyebrow pierced and my mom got really upset! I had a sense that she would be really upset if I got a tattoo.
Then I was in a production of “A Comedy of Errors” (Note : a shakespeare play), and I was playing a courtisan and I had to wear a dress that showed my back. I didn’t use any make-up to cover up the tattoo and my parents saw it during the show and afterwards it gave them some time to calm down…so after the show they were really not that upset and that’s how I kind of let them know. So yeah I got that on a whim, saying “I’m in college now I can do what I want I can get a tattoo”…Though it was probably one of the sketchiest tattoo parlour I’ve ever seen.
I’ve been looking at your arms that we can see at length in “Road to Eternity”…It’s getting crowded…I guess you add new pieces every now and then ? Show us !
Yeah. I don’t get that many tattoos nowadays. Maybe every year or so. It has slowed that these years.
Brief contorsion in front of the webcam
I still have some space here. I like to get stuff that’s matching side to side. Haven’t decided yet.
What’s the meaning of the labyrinth ?
It’s actually the labyrinth from the Reims cathedral. It’s actually featured on the cover of one of my favorite books which is “The Name of the Rose” by Umberto Ecco. The labyrinth plays sort of a big role in the story. I knew it was on the cover of the book but I didn’t understand the significance of it until I read about it. It was built in the cathedral maybe in the 12th century and stood there for a few centurie. 18th century some of the priests thought it was being used for some weird cult so they had it destroyed. Many years later they found the plans of the labyrinth and somehow reconstructed it so when people go the the Reims cathedral now, they actually project it on the floor.
I’m french and I saw the movie 25 years ago but I didn’t know any of that. I thought it would be some kind of dungeon & dragon map. That’s culture for you ! Do you always go to the same tattoo artist or do you try to collect different ones ?
I go to different artists…usuallyI try to get artists who are specialized in the type of tattoo that I want to get. For the labyrinth I found a woman in Costa Mesa which is in Orange County, California and she was known for doing very clean line blackwork and so it was perfect because she made the labyrinth very tight. Also she did it surprisingly fast too. So most of my tattoo are black…I don’t use color that much.
In an interview on Fig.co I saw some colors on your shoulder ?
Josh starts to remove his sweat shirt shows japanese botan & ideograms. Yeah there’s more color up here. So these are poppies, but the red has almost completely faded. But they are almost twenty years old now so …we’re old farts. I also have atattoo on the back of my head, a few tattoos on my back …I have a really shitty tattoo on my thigh that I need to cover up, really horrible.
Head tattoo is a bold move ! Usually tattoo artist don’t want to do that unless you’re already completely blue or yourself a tattoo artist
Well the guy I went to didn’t really have a problem with that. He didn’t do a great job…maybe it was the same guy who did my first tattoo *laughs* years after I had a much better artist to not a cover up, actually he redid it much better.
So now you’ve crossed the line in tattoo…You’re a lost cause. And in any case, something nice when you progress in your career is that people know your skills and I think it becomes less of a deal. I’d never thought I ask that but…does the head hurt ?
Actually you know what it didn’t hurt that much it’s right in the back of the head, it’s much less painful than, for example, arm pits or elbows.
Those hurt like hell ! What’s the pattern on your head ?
It’s the eye of Horus. I haven’t shaved my head in a really long time so people don’t know that I have it !
in Road to Eternity you could almost guess the status of the project by the look of your hair. They grow with the amount of JIRAs in the backlog during project crunch (Note : JIRA = a bug tracking tool commonly used by developers, which becomes particularly scary at the end of the project). Do you have a favorite tattoo artist ?
There’s an artist I’ve been interested in for a while, dunno if i’ll be able to get a tattoo from him, it’s Tomas Tomas . He does really cool geometric blackwork. He’s really fantastic. I really like simple, clean, tattoo work. Polynesian tattoos, marquisian tattoo, and a lot of like simple clean geometric stuff. His stuff is really cool, because it’s very simple but also extremely intricate. The way he maps the pattern on a person’s body.
Character customization engines almost always have tattoos…gamers love to be tattooed. Any opinion why ?
Yeah, at least from my perspective as working on role playing games. A lot of RPG Gamers when they play these games they want to experiment with playing people that are either like them or unlike them, and they want to be able to create a character that is their expression of their idea of what a fantasy is. Tattoos are often an outward expression of personnality or belief or something like that and I think it fits well with personal expression.. Like when you think about a character personnalisation engine or render, there’s a lot of effort put into the look or outward appearance of the character so I think a lot of gamers especially RPG gamers are very visual and tattooing is a natural fit with that, for them to enjoy esthaetically.
Also you know gamers often like to collect, video game boxes or figures. It’s a way to express yourself and bring your digital passion to real life.
Yeah you know, I think it’s incredible, every now and then I receive an email from someone who has a fallout new vegas tattoo, sometimes a whole arm or sleeve. This dedication is unbelievable, they have this passion and they want to have something to carry with them and also show it to people sometimes, but they want it to be a part of them.
I agree, big tattoos you can’t remove them with lasers so that’s a kind of ultimate commitment on your skin. So, next…any favorite video games tattooed character ?
Obvious one is the nameless from planescape torment…also I have to say 47, even though it’s very simple like a barcode, but well, I love hitman. Geez I can’t seem to remember any right now !
You had the questions in advance though !!
*laughs* yeah yeah I know, lots of stuff going on right now
So may I suggest Okami *showing my tattoo* you know in japanese tattooing, having a tattoo of a tattooed character is a classic theme since “outlaws of the marsh” (classical chinese novel from 14th, then adapted into Suikoden in Japan…also one of the main inspiration for the JRPG series). So…moving on. Any next tattoo project ?
I want to get something on my left arm, lots of ideas but not one really satisfying right now. I also want something on my leg, geometric patterns, blackwork, possibly some marquisian island style. But most likely something more geometric from tomas tomas. I’m a cyclist so I spend lots of time on my bike wearing short shorts *laughs* and my legs are like bright white so I will be a cool blackwork on my leg when I’m cycling around.
As an IT project manager myself. Something that stroke me was that you seemed to be everywhere, game designer, project manager, team leader. Obviously this is linked to the small size of the team, but don’t you think it’s also linked to the human being you are, and thus…your tattoos. Don’t you think you wouldn’t be the same in your professional life without your tattoos ?
Hum…I don’t know. It’s interesting. A lot of the time at work I’m wearing long sleeves, and I think people tend to forget that I have tattoos or they forget the extent to which I have tattoos and they don’t realize they go all around my arms. I mostly got those tattoos for myself, this is actually kind of rare for me, I don’t usually talk to people about my tattoos very much. And, I guess that it’s unavoidable that it’s part of how people think of me now, but it’s really not something I got to project outward, it was really for personal reasons, something that I really enjoy. I don’t know if it’s a good answer…Although some them really draw attention, like the words “HONESTY” and “HUMILITY” tattoos, it’s big and people can read them easily so they ask about that.
But the other ones are more subtle or they’re not clear enough unless people are looking at them for a long time. I guess they have become part of how people think of me but that’s kind of an incidental thing. It’s hard for me to tell, because sometimes people tell me I’m intimidating …I don’t really get that sense that I’m intimidating. Although that’s maybe because I’m 6″ tall and I forget it… that maybe part of it as well. Anyway, I guess yeah, if I didn’t have those tattoos It’d change how I look at myself and how people would look at me.
My day job is in a french investment bank and, especially in small teams, I show my tattoos to reflect an image of proximity, energy & team spirit…you obviously exhibit great energy as well. But you’re right, probably it’s also a matter of generation. We are from a generation where tattoos are not well accepted but statistics show that younger generations are between 2 to 4 times more tattooed than us. This will have an impact on the way people feel about tattooing.
I think you’re right. I think that in america it was accepted a bit earlier, this is just my perception. I was in france in 2008, paris, orleans, carcassonne (note : one of Josh many passion is history and Carcassonne & Orleans have great castles) and I got looks sometimes when I had my sleeves rolled up. Now it’s much more accepted 10 years later. I think you’re right.
You were one of the main instigator behind kickstarting PoE…it meant breaking from old models with publishers constraints. Once again, tattoo give some people feeling of freedom…out of the box thinking…do you think it’s related and, with a step back, how do you feel about that move ?
Hum. I don’t know. I guess the thing is, my first tattoo was done on a whim. And then the later ones….I mostly got them in places that people couldn’t see because i got them like a personal thing. For me it was less about sort of an active rebellion even though I knew my first tattoo was something my mom was going to be mad of. But the ones I got after that were things that I wanted, I wanted my skin to have that all the time. Coming back to crowdfunding, I think that we really wanted to do something the way we wanted to do, and that we hadn’t been able to do for so long. I know it’s a horrible way to say that but like…we had been making games for publishers for so long, doing them the way that publisher wanted to do them, that’s very frustrating. We couldn’t really make the type of things we wanted.
Things that were done 15 years ago (note : classic infinity engine games) and people still liked them, so going to crowdfunding was our way to get out of that cycle. We’re constantly working on games, we might like them or enjoy the process on working on them but we don’t own the property it’s not our idea, we cannot keep it or build it over time. That’s what kickstarter and now fig allowed us to do : we really want to make this type of games, publishers are not interested in funding us to build this kind of game. We know we can build this type of games…and this is the only way we could do it.
I agree, this had been a great ride for all of us who followed you on PoE adventure, and it seems PoE 2 crowdfunding campaign will break records too ($ 2.5m raised with an initial goal of $1m and 15 days remaining at time of the interview)…so tell us, will you return as a choirboy ?
I don’t know it remains to be seen I don’t know what the soundtrack expectations are. Justin Bell he’s our audio producer, he did pretty much all compositions on PoE I. It was his idea to do that choir. Maybe we’ll find a better place to record *laughs* (Note : Justin Bell had decided to use the acoustic of Obsidian hallway to record the choirs of PoE trailer…trying to record the soundtrack at night, between cleaning ladies going back and forth in the building is quite an epic moment of Road to Eternity) we have a lot of talented musicians at Obsidian. And I’m always interested in singing and helping out with that sort of stuff but it really depends on what Justin wants to do.
Your team has delivered a great game and seem to have been very cohesive …will all of you get a tattoo as a stretch goal ? Like crew of Lord of the Rings at the end of the famous trilogy ?
*laughs* I’ve certainly got dumber tattoos so…it does not seem a bad idea. I don’t know about the rest of the team, but, I also know a few other people who have even worse tattoos than I have so…maybe…that’s a possiblity. You know there’s a bike race in Los Angeles every year, a cyclo-cross race, and part of the deal is that the winner has to go and immediatly get a tattoo at a shop, whatever they want. So I raced in that race, I mean there was no way that I could win, I’m horrible at cyclo-cross, but I was willing to get that stupid tattoo…so that’s definitly a possibility
What would be the pattern ?
That’s a good question, huh, if it were for Deadfire, I don’t know…it’s have to be the sun burst & stars from Eothas.
So that would be our $4m stretch goal…maybe I’m willing to pay the remaining $2m just to see Feargus get such a tattoo on the back of his head !
*laughs* yeah that’s be really funny ! Can’t get that image out of my head now !
So that’s it for today…anything you wanted to add ?
Yeah. I would reiterate…I’m always impressed and humbled to see gamers with tattoos with things in games that I’ve worked on. I’d never expect things like that to happen. I’m really honored to be sort of the focus of this interview, but I will say that there are, at least in the US, lot of game developpers who have cool and crazy tattoos…it’s part of gamer and game developer culture.
Thank you Josh, we cross fingers for PoE II, which now definitely happens…and wish you the best for 2017 !
