I think we are all mostly focusing on the little details, but there is a much more profound bigger picture here...
Brad was under the impression that MS would fund the equivalent of a MMORPG skyscraper. He laid a large foundation and built the metal super structure 300 stories high with Boats, houses, many classes, extensive crafting system, things that no other MMORPG has successfully had at release (most are post release); then MS business people see that this massive behemoth and realize that they did did not do enough pre design planning.
This all just reeks of one bad business decision after another. The investors and the builders did not have the same vision. There was too little formal planning. Those deadlines should have been set and planned well before the foundation was ever laid. Brad's is more of a creative director, and really has no place being a CEO. (that is not an insult by any means) This thing was a mess from the beginning
Here is the hard lesson. Just because you are great at something, does not mean that you should try to manage the whole business process. It really does pay to have experienced CEO, project managers, and professional business people when dealing with large multi million dollar deals.
I have seen thing happen time, and time again with major IT projects. (arg have to go)
I think we are all mostly focusing on the little details, but there is a much more profound bigger picture here...
Brad was under the impression that MS would fund the equivalent of a MMORPG skyscraper. He laid a large foundation and built the metal super structure 300 stories high with Boats, houses, many classes, extensive crafting system, things that no other MMORPG has successfully had at release (most are post release); then MS business people see that this massive behemoth and realize that they did did not do enough pre design planning.
This all just reeks of one bad business decision after another. The investors and the builders did not have the same vision. There was too little formal planning. Those deadlines should have been set and planned well before the foundation was ever laid. Brad's is more of a creative director, and really has no place being a CEO. (that is not an insult by any means) This thing was a mess from the beginning
Here is the hard lesson. Just because you are great at something, does not mean that you should try to manage the whole business process. It really does pay to have experienced CEO, project managers, and professional business people when dealing with large multi million dollar deals.
I have seen thing happen time, and time again with major IT projects. (arg have to go)
Well thats one interpretation of events at MS however if you had read the interview with an Ex sigil employee who had a different take on the MS situation perhaps you'd be signing a different tune. Brad spins it as MS's fault where as the Ex sigil dev tells an entirely different tale. I that MS wanted to see results and milestones and working code, where as all they got were demos of code that was never going to be in game and smoke and mirror shows. MS pulled out to cut thier losses on a project that was never going to deliver what was advertised.
And the only game thats going to be a real threat to WoW for the next few years... ...will be annouced tomorrow. (May 19th)
I don't think any game will be a threat to WOW alone. The idea of a WOW-killer is mythical. Instead WOW will slowly fade to average numbers as MMORPG after MMORPG begin to release with better graphics, better quests, better gameplay, more depth etc. AoC might get 800,000 and WAR might get a million and LoTRs might swipe another million.
WOW hit polished and flashy in a time when most MMORPGs were dull and boring grindfests. Word of mouth traveled and it established a huge monopoly. I doubt we will ever see that kind of dominance ever again. Things will slowly even out to several 1 million subscriber games, a bunch of 500,000 thousand games, and the twenty 100,000 games on the SOE Station Pass.
While all of that is true, I think the point they were making is that Blizzard is going to announce their next projects tomorrow, including a new MMO.
At this point, they're really the only ones who can compete with themselves in terms of sheer numbers. A well-done Starcraft MMO could actually be the game to knock WoW down a few pegs, especially in Asia, where Starcraft is freaking huge. We'll see what happens.
I think we are all mostly focusing on the little details, but there is a much more profound bigger picture here...
Brad was under the impression that MS would fund the equivalent of a MMORPG skyscraper. He laid a large foundation and built the metal super structure 300 stories high with Boats, houses, many classes, extensive crafting system, things that no other MMORPG has successfully had at release (most are post release); then MS business people see that this massive behemoth and realize that they did did not do enough pre design planning.
This all just reeks of one bad business decision after another. The investors and the builders did not have the same vision. There was too little formal planning. Those deadlines should have been set and planned well before the foundation was ever laid. Brad's is more of a creative director, and really has no place being a CEO. (that is not an insult by any means) This thing was a mess from the beginning
Here is the hard lesson. Just because you are great at something, does not mean that you should try to manage the whole business process. It really does pay to have experienced CEO, project managers, and professional business people when dealing with large multi million dollar deals.
I have seen thing happen time, and time again with major IT projects. (arg have to go)
Well thats one interpretation of events at MS however if you had read the interview with an Ex sigil employee who had a different take on the MS situation perhaps you'd be signing a different tune. Brad spins it as MS's fault where as the Ex sigil dev tells an entirely different tale. I that MS wanted to see results and milestones and working code, where as all they got were demos of code that was never going to be in game and smoke and mirror shows. MS pulled out to cut thier losses on a project that was never going to deliver what was advertised.
I must not have articulated myself well enough. (I had to take the kids to school ) I am not defending Brad in any way, I am actually bashing both Sigl and Microsoft. They should have had benchmarks set forth from day one. MS used a hands off management style (they do this often), and let the project get out of hand during the foundation stage and ended up playing catchup once they realized what happened. I blame MS more because they are the professionals, Sigl was just a baby of a company.
My take after reading the interview is that Brad and company felt like they had a blank check from Microsoft and spent most of the $30 Million on nebulous "pre-production" (who knows where all that money went, not hard to imagine a lot of it went places not game related). Microsoft was hands off for the first couple years, which undoubtedly fostered the impression that they could just continue to milk the cash cow for all it was worth, while not really getting much of anything done. Microsoft finally woke up to what was going on and started to demand results for their money and that Sigil actually be run like a business and that's when the party was over.
The rest is basically BS to dodge, parry and evade responsibility for the horrible mismanagement that led to the current mess. Am I missing anything?
Face it... with 30 million he should have created a better game.
End of story.
Shayde - SWG (dead) Proud member of the Cabal.
It sounds great, so great in fact, I pitty those who canceled - Some deluded SWG fanboi who pities me. I don't like it when you say things. - A Vanguard fan who does too. 09f911029d74e35bd84156c5635688c0
That is our expectation, but how do we know this wasn't about Brad just paying himself six figures a year for 4-5 years of supposed production? His behavior in and out of the office sure doesn't support the actions of someone trying to create a vision.
The best part of the whole interview is the fact that he, as founder, and CEO of Sigil, had ZERO FUCKING CLUE how his company was being run. Hiring practices? Durrr, I dunno. I could see with a fortune 500 company CEO claiming ignorance of what HR was doing. But a company of 100 people, with NO HR? And the CEO claims zero clue as to how the fucking company he was supposedly running was being run???????????????? Color me stupi-fucking-fied.
Well you know BMQ stated things similar well before this f13 interview you can go back probably a year and tell that he was, essentially, making excuses for not doing his due diligence.
Delegation of responsibility is fine and ultimately unavoidable. But it is not an excuse to completely take yourself out of the loop because you don't want to get your hands dirty.
This interview really shouldn't surprise people, the symptoms were apparent from quite some time ago. It may be amazing, but it shouldn't be surprising. Brad showed the classic signals of someone who runs from problems quite a while and to put it in a nutshell that is one of the worst kinds of CEOs you can have. It leads to really f'd up situation that snowball out of control.
Because he is a "Visionary" its very easy for him to make an armor of excuses that seem plausible. The same thing is true of his game "Vision" as well, it seems plausible when you look at one part or another, but put it all together and its a jumbled mish-mash fraught with contradictions. No amount of "creativeness" will change the fact that "A and NOT A " is a contradiction.
Quality not Quantity is more of a mark of genius. Elegance in design is a subtle and impressive thing. Throwing a bunch of cool ideas and seeing what sticks is not. This is what Brad did with VG and it is what he does in every single interview and he believes what he says. It might a fine approach with a bit of a wider perspective and some courage and discipline. Without those its good for BS'ing people but will generally bring you down in flames eventually.
I don't say any of this out of malice, its simply a cold hard truth. A truth that is good for everyone to understand. Because contrary to what some people have posted there are tons of CEOs and managers that do the same thing Brad has done here. Learn to recognize the symptoms and you will be far better off.
WOW hit polished and flashy in a time when most MMORPGs were dull and boring grindfests. Word of mouth traveled and it established a huge monopoly. I doubt we will ever see that kind of dominance ever again. Things will slowly even out to several 1 million subscriber games, a bunch of 500,000 thousand games, and the twenty 100,000 games on the SOE Station Pass.
Don't forget that the VAST majority of WoW subs are from Asia. L2 has had as many or more subs in Asia too.
I miss the good ol' days when nerds were actually intelligent.
I really honestly believe Brad didn't fail .....his team failed him.
You've got it backwards. He failed them by not being there as a CEO, or as a team leader. And he doubly failed them all by not being there when the axe fell.
His team failed him????! This is awful. Those people put in 14 hours days, they are the only reason there is some quality stuff in VG.
Whether brad is at fault or not please don't disparage that team. Do you have any idea what it must have been like to make that content with complete crap for tools? To make that sheer amount of content without tools and make it decent quality. In what like 15 months?
They worked frigging miracles. Please leave them out of it.
If "team" is meant to refer the small set of upper management like Jeff and Bill, then that is simply wrong. Its a CEOs job to keep them on track. No one else can and if he is not able then he needs to hire someone who can and give him oversight power.
Don't forget that the VAST majority of WoW subs are from Asia. L2 has had as many or more subs in Asia too.
Which is precisely why the only real competition for Blizzard in Asia, aside from NCSoft, is Blizzard. The only two games that I can think of that would be serious contenders to topple WoW in Asia are a Starcraft MMO, since Starcraft is huge over there, and Lineage 3.
Here in the States, it's supposed to be 1-2 million or so players in Warcraft. That's still huge, but games like AoC and WAR have a solid chance at peeling off some of those numbers, and LOTR is already making inroads, as well as bringing in new players just because of the Tolkien lore.
Vanguard never had a chance because Sigil and Brad completely misread the market, and they were trying to put the genie back in the bottle. That was never going to happen.
He sold-out his customers and employees while ensureing he made a profit and continued to work along with the other misfits he called the Sigil Management team. The only people who got screwed are the people that had nothing but a monthly salary to rely on. The ones that made the decisions and ruined VSOH are not hurting. What a joke.
I apologise to you for my somewhat curt response. Very Sorry.
I hope for those Vanguard fans that remain and have stayed as dedicated paying customers that SOE will apply to the game the performance increases, optimizations, content and polish they deserve.
Considering SOE have reinstated over fifty of Sigils "Released" employees then that is a considerable statement of intent. Fifty is still a somewhat significant development team. If Vanguard is subject to the same QA now as what Everquest 2 has certainly been placed through in the last 12 months (whilst not globally successful and popular) it should produce a healthy game in the months ahead and i wish them all the best.
Regards
Mag
No problem Mag!
I would love to see V:SoH topping the charts and being of a quality that is/was anticipated. I bought it and enjoyed my 30 day trial even with the major setbacks that occurred... beautiful game... just needs to be fully refurbished!
My take after reading the interview is that Brad and company felt like they had a blank check from Microsoft and spent most of the $30 Million on nebulous "pre-production" (who knows where all that money went, not hard to imagine a lot of it went places not game related). Microsoft was hands off for the first couple years, which undoubtedly fostered the impression that they could just continue to milk the cash cow for all it was worth, while not really getting much of anything done. Microsoft finally woke up to what was going on and started to demand results for their money and that Sigil actually be run like a business and that's when the party was over.
The rest is basically BS to dodge, parry and evade responsibility for the horrible mismanagement that led to the current mess. Am I missing anything?
This post got it exactly right.
EQ1, EQ2, SWG, SWTOR, GW, GW2 CoH, CoV, FFXI, WoW, CO, War,TSW and a slew of free trials and beta tests
WOW hit polished and flashy in a time when most MMORPGs were dull and boring grindfests. Word of mouth traveled and it established a huge monopoly. I doubt we will ever see that kind of dominance ever again. Things will slowly even out to several 1 million subscriber games, a bunch of 500,000 thousand games, and the twenty 100,000 games on the SOE Station Pass.
Don't forget that the VAST majority of WoW subs are from Asia. L2 has had as many or more subs in Asia too.
That's a bullshit statement. At most it's half.
Shayde - SWG (dead) Proud member of the Cabal.
It sounds great, so great in fact, I pitty those who canceled - Some deluded SWG fanboi who pities me. I don't like it when you say things. - A Vanguard fan who does too. 09f911029d74e35bd84156c5635688c0
What kind of Leader / CEO does not at least attend the parking lot final blow? This is about responsibility... what happened to going down with the ship! Where is Optimus Prime! (My mental ideal leader that is too good to be true) While I dont expect someone to actualy live up to my fantasy leader, I would at least expect a bit more hands on and communication during the final blow I know it would have been hard, but leaders do hard things...
Oh and btw although Optimus is a fantasy char from Transformers. I have indeed met people who try to be great leaders, especially in the Army. Some of those leaders would take a bullet for any of their troops, salute!
What kind of Leader / CEO does not at least attend the parking lot final blow? This is about responsibility... what happened to going down with the ship! Where is Optimus Prime! (My mental ideal leader that is too good to be true) While I dont expect someone to actualy live up to my fantasy leader, I would at least expect a bit more hands on and communication during the final blow I know it would have been hard, but leaders do hard things...
Oh and btw although Optimus is a fantasy char from Transformers. I have indeed met people who try to be great leaders, especially in the Army. Some of those leaders would take a bullet for any of their troops, salute!
Nowadays, I think most managers (not good leaders) prefer jumping out with Golden Parachutes.
- How can you talk if you haven't got a brain?
- I don't know, but some people without brains do an awful lot of talking, don't they?
well,from what i read was from this interview i got this from it:
Microsoft got too demanding and impatient and was distracted with the X Box and after Sigil got away from them things got weird inside Sigil.
it was kind of like a real soap opera.cheating on your spouse and a power struggle for control of things.people like me won't ever know what really happened but i still stick up for Brad.he trusted these people and gave them jobs and they went behind his back and i think eventually things got way out of hand.
A coup attempt! Do you guys know what that means?Everyone turned on the captain!how could the captain command the ship when they were all against him?
I think there are some people who are not getting their fair share of blame and you guys are being way too mean to Brad.
i read that there was a "coup" attempt.What really happened? we will never know but i think brad is getting too much blame.
The boss never really does anything ,that is how real life is.So i think it's not mostly his fault.
I think Brad is the goat,but it's the guy just under him who should get the biggest blame.
Micrsoft gave Brad 30+ million dollars to make a Triple A MMORPG. If they asked him to do a naked tap dance he needed to be asking what sort of shoes he should wear. They paid for the right to start asking questions and wondering why Sigil couldn't show anything of value to it's fans, to E3 and most importantly to MS, their investor. Who cares if they started focusing on the Xbox 360, they had given you 30 million dollars and you didn't do anything with it.
Most of the time when a Mutiny happens it's because the captain is doing something stupid like ramming into the same iceberg over and over. Read the developer post and his interview over again and tell me that Brad isn't a pig headed selfish wank who probably never listnened to his employees.
I will agree that Brad isn't the only one to blame but everyone else sunk with the ship while Brad stayed home. I know he has watched enough Star Trek to know that you always go down with the ship. He may have hid from his employees but the fans will sink him now.
Indeed. Think of the quarterbacks in football, or presidents of countries. Many of the things that happen are out of their hands, but they get the blame. And it is to be expected. They are the leaders. If your company tanks, it is your fault, and you deserve the blame.
As the token religious guy in any game i play, organization i write for, etc, I can say pretty safely, one of the things that is most important about the Christian faith that I myself profess, and Brad says he does, is accountability for one's actions. Accountability and repentance. Its obvious that Brad's decisions caused these people to lose their jobs. The least he could do, out of the Christian charity he believes, is be man enough to face them, and maybe even apologize.
Ya, just f'ing perfect. You mean the company that has invested $30 mil in your crappy game actually wants you to set milestones and timelines? You mean they wanted you to try and wrap something up that had been in development for years? You mean they wanted you to stop running your company like a grade-school art project and run it like a business??
This guy is just priceless. The only people who still support anything he says are people who have not worked in the real world. Do you think my company would just allow me to work, doing whatever the h*ll I wanted, and then say, "oh that technology didn't work, we are going to try a new one?" This whole thing is absurd. The game sux. This guy is retarded and is someone who should never have been in charge of a company as he has no idea how the real business world is run.
Microsoft, I applaud you. Sometimes you got to "know when to hold em.......know when to walk away.......know when to run."
Did you read the entire article??
Microsoft wanted him to make a AAA MMO to compete with WOW... Blizzard spent 80 million making WOW, Sigil was suppose to get the financing to take on WOW and halfway through it Microsoft pulled the rug from under there feet and decided to spend there time and money pushing out the Xbox 360 instead of Vanguard... You guys keep saying 30 million like its a lot of money, its not in the gaming industry anymore... Again Blizzard spent 80 million on WOW,... I wonder what Vanguard would of been like if they spent 80 million on it...
And considering we know that nothing was really done until the very end, perhaps what Microsoft did could be described as "prescient." They saw the writing on the wall, and started hedging their bets.
We need a thread dedicated to Jeff Butler. The guy is as much to blame, if not even more. Just because he isn't talking (which is damn smart granted) doesn't mean he can escape all our wrath!
This has got to be a joke, right? Forgot the smileys and /sacasm tags. If it's not a joke, then you are a scary person. A person with balls would have been at the firings, standing up in front of the people who he was supposed to be leading.
I will admit that I was a bit emotional in writing this. It makes me sick how so many people can be so heartless.
So some don't think the game is fun and were disappointed. That gives people the sense that they have a right to say all the extreme and ugly things about a person they don't even know?
Just love how so many people in these forums think they are MMO 'experts' or something.
These forums are like a ghetto full of the most negative assholes ever assembled in one place.
Why is it so hard to believe that a huge corporation like Microsoft screwed him over? And they did! After all they did to him he still has the decency to try and speak well of them. Thats what I call professional.
I know of greed and I know the power money has over people. It's a religion of capital. It's all most people know or even consider.
I have always thought people like Raph Koster and Brad McQuaid are misunderstood and flawed artists. Laugh all you want. You say I'm "scary" because you are so 'shocked' that someone disagrees with something you believe to be a given fact.
Both these visionaries have had major failings. Koster with SWG and McQuaid with VG. Both failing because of huge corporate greed. Neither getting to fully realize their vision. Both projects destroyed due to the pursuit of more money faster.
Whats scary is the level of hate and ignorance in this thread.
Some people lost their jobs and that is terrible - almost as terrible as McQuaid losing his entire company and dream due to corporate greed. I feel sad for all at Sigil.
To McQuaid I would remind him of something Nietzsche wrote - "what can not destroy you can only make you stronger!"
So you are whining about whining? You talk about all the negativity then use profanity in your post.
Me, I guess I'm used to the decline in civility on the internet. Though I do think the majorityo f people who post are articulate enough to avoid using profanity, and they do avoid it.
Comments
Brad was under the impression that MS would fund the equivalent of a MMORPG skyscraper. He laid a large foundation and built the metal super structure 300 stories high with Boats, houses, many classes, extensive crafting system, things that no other MMORPG has successfully had at release (most are post release); then MS business people see that this massive behemoth and realize that they did did not do enough pre design planning.
This all just reeks of one bad business decision after another. The investors and the builders did not have the same vision. There was too little formal planning. Those deadlines should have been set and planned well before the foundation was ever laid. Brad's is more of a creative director, and really has no place being a CEO. (that is not an insult by any means) This thing was a mess from the beginning
Here is the hard lesson. Just because you are great at something, does not mean that you should try to manage the whole business process. It really does pay to have experienced CEO, project managers, and professional business people when dealing with large multi million dollar deals.
I have seen thing happen time, and time again with major IT projects. (arg have to go)
I don't think any game will be a threat to WOW alone. The idea of a WOW-killer is mythical. Instead WOW will slowly fade to average numbers as MMORPG after MMORPG begin to release with better graphics, better quests, better gameplay, more depth etc. AoC might get 800,000 and WAR might get a million and LoTRs might swipe another million.
WOW hit polished and flashy in a time when most MMORPGs were dull and boring grindfests. Word of mouth traveled and it established a huge monopoly. I doubt we will ever see that kind of dominance ever again. Things will slowly even out to several 1 million subscriber games, a bunch of 500,000 thousand games, and the twenty 100,000 games on the SOE Station Pass.
While all of that is true, I think the point they were making is that Blizzard is going to announce their next projects tomorrow, including a new MMO.
At this point, they're really the only ones who can compete with themselves in terms of sheer numbers. A well-done Starcraft MMO could actually be the game to knock WoW down a few pegs, especially in Asia, where Starcraft is freaking huge. We'll see what happens.
I must not have articulated myself well enough. (I had to take the kids to school
The rest is basically BS to dodge, parry and evade responsibility for the horrible mismanagement that led to the current mess. Am I missing anything?
Want to know more about GW2 and why there is so much buzz? Start here: Guild Wars 2 Mass Info for the Uninitiated
End of story.
Shayde - SWG (dead)
Proud member of the Cabal.
It sounds great, so great in fact, I pitty those who canceled
I don't like it when you say things. - A Vanguard fan who does too.
09f911029d74e35bd84156c5635688c0
That is our expectation, but how do we know this wasn't about Brad just paying himself six figures a year for 4-5 years of supposed production? His behavior in and out of the office sure doesn't support the actions of someone trying to create a vision.
This is labeled brad speaks, sorry i thought it said brad sucks and i just wanted to post a Yeah He Does! in here. Sorry for the confusion.
Delegation of responsibility is fine and ultimately unavoidable. But it is not an excuse to completely take yourself out of the loop because you don't want to get your hands dirty.
This interview really shouldn't surprise people, the symptoms were apparent from quite some time ago. It may be amazing, but it shouldn't be surprising. Brad showed the classic signals of someone who runs from problems quite a while and to put it in a nutshell that is one of the worst kinds of CEOs you can have. It leads to really f'd up situation that snowball out of control.
Because he is a "Visionary" its very easy for him to make an armor of excuses that seem plausible. The same thing is true of his game "Vision" as well, it seems plausible when you look at one part or another, but put it all together and its a jumbled mish-mash fraught with contradictions. No amount of "creativeness" will change the fact that "A and NOT A " is a contradiction.
Quality not Quantity is more of a mark of genius. Elegance in design is a subtle and impressive thing. Throwing a bunch of cool ideas and seeing what sticks is not. This is what Brad did with VG and it is what he does in every single interview and he believes what he says. It might a fine approach with a bit of a wider perspective and some courage and discipline. Without those its good for BS'ing people but will generally bring you down in flames eventually.
I don't say any of this out of malice, its simply a cold hard truth. A truth that is good for everyone to understand. Because contrary to what some people have posted there are tons of CEOs and managers that do the same thing Brad has done here. Learn to recognize the symptoms and you will be far better off.
Tell me I'm not the only person who sees the irony in this statement...
I miss the good ol' days when nerds were actually intelligent.
You've got it backwards. He failed them by not being there as a CEO, or as a team leader. And he doubly failed them all by not being there when the axe fell.
His team failed him????! This is awful. Those people put in 14 hours days, they are the only reason there is some quality stuff in VG.Whether brad is at fault or not please don't disparage that team. Do you have any idea what it must have been like to make that content with complete crap for tools? To make that sheer amount of content without tools and make it decent quality. In what like 15 months?
They worked frigging miracles. Please leave them out of it.
If "team" is meant to refer the small set of upper management like Jeff and Bill, then that is simply wrong. Its a CEOs job to keep them on track. No one else can and if he is not able then he needs to hire someone who can and give him oversight power.
Which is precisely why the only real competition for Blizzard in Asia, aside from NCSoft, is Blizzard. The only two games that I can think of that would be serious contenders to topple WoW in Asia are a Starcraft MMO, since Starcraft is huge over there, and Lineage 3.
Here in the States, it's supposed to be 1-2 million or so players in Warcraft. That's still huge, but games like AoC and WAR have a solid chance at peeling off some of those numbers, and LOTR is already making inroads, as well as bringing in new players just because of the Tolkien lore.
Vanguard never had a chance because Sigil and Brad completely misread the market, and they were trying to put the genie back in the bottle. That was never going to happen.
Brad is a sell-out.
He sold-out his customers and employees while ensureing he made a profit and continued to work along with the other misfits he called the Sigil Management team. The only people who got screwed are the people that had nothing but a monthly salary to rely on. The ones that made the decisions and ruined VSOH are not hurting. What a joke.
Tell me I'm not the only person who sees the irony in this statement...
Reality bites....OUCH!
All I want is the truth
Just gimme some truth
John Lennon
I would love to see V:SoH topping the charts and being of a quality that is/was anticipated. I bought it and enjoyed my 30 day trial even with the major setbacks that occurred... beautiful game... just needs to be fully refurbished!
Cheers
EQ1, EQ2, SWG, SWTOR, GW, GW2 CoH, CoV, FFXI, WoW, CO, War,TSW and a slew of free trials and beta tests
That's a bullshit statement. At most it's half.
Shayde - SWG (dead)
Proud member of the Cabal.
It sounds great, so great in fact, I pitty those who canceled
I don't like it when you say things. - A Vanguard fan who does too.
09f911029d74e35bd84156c5635688c0
Oh and btw although Optimus is a fantasy char from Transformers. I have indeed met people who try to be great leaders, especially in the Army. Some of those leaders would take a bullet for any of their troops, salute!
Nowadays, I think most managers (not good leaders) prefer jumping out with Golden Parachutes.
- How can you talk if you haven't got a brain?
- I don't know, but some people without brains do an awful lot of talking, don't they?
nice this thread have too many posts .....thx for ur work
Hey Everyone
Micrsoft gave Brad 30+ million dollars to make a Triple A MMORPG. If they asked him to do a naked tap dance he needed to be asking what sort of shoes he should wear. They paid for the right to start asking questions and wondering why Sigil couldn't show anything of value to it's fans, to E3 and most importantly to MS, their investor. Who cares if they started focusing on the Xbox 360, they had given you 30 million dollars and you didn't do anything with it.
Most of the time when a Mutiny happens it's because the captain is doing something stupid like ramming into the same iceberg over and over. Read the developer post and his interview over again and tell me that Brad isn't a pig headed selfish wank who probably never listnened to his employees.
I will agree that Brad isn't the only one to blame but everyone else sunk with the ship while Brad stayed home. I know he has watched enough Star Trek to know that you always go down with the ship. He may have hid from his employees but the fans will sink him now.
Indeed. Think of the quarterbacks in football, or presidents of countries. Many of the things that happen are out of their hands, but they get the blame. And it is to be expected. They are the leaders. If your company tanks, it is your fault, and you deserve the blame.
As the token religious guy in any game i play, organization i write for, etc, I can say pretty safely, one of the things that is most important about the Christian faith that I myself profess, and Brad says he does, is accountability for one's actions. Accountability and repentance. Its obvious that Brad's decisions caused these people to lose their jobs. The least he could do, out of the Christian charity he believes, is be man enough to face them, and maybe even apologize.
Did you read the entire article??
Microsoft wanted him to make a AAA MMO to compete with WOW... Blizzard spent 80 million making WOW, Sigil was suppose to get the financing to take on WOW and halfway through it Microsoft pulled the rug from under there feet and decided to spend there time and money pushing out the Xbox 360 instead of Vanguard... You guys keep saying 30 million like its a lot of money, its not in the gaming industry anymore... Again Blizzard spent 80 million on WOW,... I wonder what Vanguard would of been like if they spent 80 million on it...
And considering we know that nothing was really done until the very end, perhaps what Microsoft did could be described as "prescient." They saw the writing on the wall, and started hedging their bets.
We need a thread dedicated to Jeff Butler. The guy is as much to blame, if not even more. Just because he isn't talking (which is damn smart granted) doesn't mean he can escape all our wrath!
So some don't think the game is fun and were disappointed. That gives people the sense that they have a right to say all the extreme and ugly things about a person they don't even know?
Just love how so many people in these forums think they are MMO 'experts' or something.
These forums are like a ghetto full of the most negative assholes ever assembled in one place.
Why is it so hard to believe that a huge corporation like Microsoft screwed him over? And they did! After all they did to him he still has the decency to try and speak well of them. Thats what I call professional.
I know of greed and I know the power money has over people. It's a religion of capital. It's all most people know or even consider.
I have always thought people like Raph Koster and Brad McQuaid are misunderstood and flawed artists. Laugh all you want. You say I'm "scary" because you are so 'shocked' that someone disagrees with something you believe to be a given fact.
Both these visionaries have had major failings. Koster with SWG and McQuaid with VG. Both failing because of huge corporate greed. Neither getting to fully realize their vision. Both projects destroyed due to the pursuit of more money faster.
Whats scary is the level of hate and ignorance in this thread.
Some people lost their jobs and that is terrible - almost as terrible as McQuaid losing his entire company and dream due to corporate greed. I feel sad for all at Sigil.
To McQuaid I would remind him of something Nietzsche wrote - "what can not destroy you can only make you stronger!"
So you are whining about whining? You talk about all the negativity then use profanity in your post.
Me, I guess I'm used to the decline in civility on the internet. Though I do think the majorityo f people who post are articulate enough to avoid using profanity, and they do avoid it.