Lets hope we either get some creative input for Vanguard (it certainly could use some, or the devs will probably add more horrible grinds like Shores of Darkness), or he actually starts another MMO project (so theres a successor to Vanguard at least at the most distant horizont).
No offense but I don't see Brad coming back to VG. I would be really suprised. The combination of Vanguard and McQuaid's actions towards the end of it isn't a winning combo and once a game hits it's peak numbers, adding McQuaid certainly wouldn't boost VG's numbers enough to pay him what he probably would want to get back into the video game business.
I actually would be less surpised if we saw SOE announce EQ3 with McQuaid at the helm and the promise to bring back the magic that was EQ1 for all those players who grew tired of WOW and EQ2 . Smedley has said they weren't done with games in Norrath yet.
Only problem is that 38 Studios with McFarland and Salvatore and them are already doing a game that sounds like the spiritual successor to EQ1 from what little we know. Maybe they could hire him?
To this day, I've read so much stuff that I'm not really sure what Brad did on EQ1 that was awesome and what came from other people. I think it will be neat to see if he can prove he is the massive genius he was credited with a few years back. I definitely miss my Fantasy MMORPG fix.
Brad needs to stay retired. Too many stories of explicit office affairs, mismanagement, missing CEOs, and drug abuse. Ask anyone at Sigil and they will tell you they never seen Brad after the SOE acquisition and that was May 2006. The game went Gold in Jan 07. Brad got lucky with EQ1 and it was a great game no doubt, but I wouldn't give him a penny for any new titles.
QFT
Brad McQuaid is a damn moron and the development TEAM worked on VG while he went around dicking with off-roading and TCG's, all while trying to hit up/steal employees drugs for his opiate addiction. He got insanely lucky with EQ no doubt because of that development team as well.
Brad McQuaid is a waste of space and air. Fuck him.
What I've never gotten is the claim that Brad's a bad manager/CEO and that was his only fault. It seems to me that business was the only part he largely got right; tens of millions of dollars in investment, Microsoft and Sony as publishers during two different periods, independent investments in-between those two, four or five years of development plus and the game still made it out of the door. You gotta account for his business successes, which all totaled to ":the second most expensive MMO ever" as he called it. Brad was a great business man. When someone is the utmost creative authority within their company with five some years to spend 30 million dollars and a bad product is produced, well I'd personally probably examine how good of a designer he is rather than his business knack.
The reason why he was able to build those relationships is because of his past experiences. Microsoft, it has been said, it not in the business of MMORPGs. MFST creates awful software and releases it early. I THINK --speculating-- MFST was determined to do that with Vanguard: Saga of Heroes and Sigil resisted it. MFST pulls out, unable to secure financing to continue development, Sigil partners --joint venture or acquisition or whatever the form-- with SOE.
The product is released too early. I have been playing Vanguard just about every day since the free time, and I think I will write a re-re-review of the game. I really wish it were released in the way it is now. The game has a richness, depth, breadth, and complexity to it that most mainstream MMORPGs lack.
Business partners go flat all the time. I apologize if this sounds mean, but I think SIGIL, under Brad's leadership, did suffer from bad management from financing to marketing to just coding Vanguard. The vision, on the other hand, is most impressive. In fact, I think there is a big market for the "vision," but it is costly, timely, and difficult to properly execute. Vanguard, I think, approaches the "complex" (deeper crafting, diplomacy system, diverse range of Quests) and "challenge" (deeper dungeons, death penalty, less hand-holding) and "community-oriented" (grouping, crafting-economy, etc.) and "exploration" (enormous world w/ ship travel) experience that many of us want.
What problem does Vanguard have that you can trace directly to mismanagement and not bad design?
The biggest problem that you cite is that it was released too early; but again, five years is a long time, especially with a hundred person staff at the peak of it.
Were those five years were mismanaged? I'd say so; but I'd say they were mismanaged by bad design decisions.
The "Vision" part is easy; anyone can have a good idea. Whether or not a person is a good designer though should be based on what they put into their design documents and then administrate it. So for example, the decision to use the Unreal 2 engine and rewrite it had to have come from Brad; and all resulting problems he has to be blamed for. Such a decision would come from his capacity as a designer, not a business man.
In short, the word "management" can apply to either capacity, businessman and designer. If mismanagement was a problem, then it was within his capacity as a designer, because he did an excellent job business wise.
I have worked in many tech startups and some that went on to become large businesses. What I've learned in the last 30 years is that the guy that startes a business is the guy with a big idea. The idea and presentation of the idea is what gets investment. Passion is what gets the business off the ground and gets it started. These guys are idea men with a passion for their ideas. Investors and the people around them inherit their passion making for an exciting start. However these same people are the people that kill most companies right out of the gate. The problem is idea guys are visionaries. They imagine something and think that it is obvious. They think everyone is passionate. They also tend to surround themselves with people that adopt their viewpoint without question, ie worshipers. What happens is the company devolves as it grows into chaos. You see it becomes too big for the vision guy to be everywhere and the vision guy thinks everyone shares his vision. Where the reality is the vision guy needs people that can tell him NO. People that can manage day to day development. Basically nuts and bolts people. Vision people that run successful companys don't run the company at all they recognize that they lack that ability and put themselves in the possition of chief visionary or CTO etc, and they bring in a nuts and bolts guy to run the company and be CEO. Unfortunately most of the time these vision types have too much ego and are too detached from people to notice that they are failing till it is too late. I remember one CEO like this I advised. I said we need to have you hold a moral meeting and spend time kinda rallying the troups. His response was that was a waste of time. People knew what to do and just need to do it. Anyway Brad is a classic idea man that is great at starting something but without a CEO partner ends up loosing control, becoming disillusioned and fails. Vanguard is a fantastic vision and everyone will admit that it has awesome potential. Vanguard could have, if it had been executed properly, been the next big thing for 5-10 years. I'm hopeful that Brad will return to the MMO world and having the experience of Vanguard under his belt, learned and grown from it, so his next venture will be an awe inspiring success
But what failure did Brad have business wise?
You can't say he was a bad business man without reason. If Vanguard didn't make it out of the gate; if half the staff was fired two months before release instead of SOE lending developers, if there were distribution hiccups, no marketing; so on and so forth, then I'd see the point.
But all of Vanguard's problems are DESIGN related, and have nothing to do with any business decisions he made.
The whole idea of him being a great idea man and good at starting something doesn't apply to him; because he started AND finished with an unprecedented amount of funding, support and time for a company that had no prior success. Ultimately every problem Vanguard has; is a consequence of a bad idea on his part.
Are you serious? Just because a product was "released" officially, doesn't mean it was finished or a success. You are basing his business success on the official game launch, then on the other hand you admit the game was released too early. Those two don't go together. If a product was put out to the public prematurely, whoever is in charge of letting that happen is often responsible.
He was given $30mil by MS, more by SOE, and perhaps more from private funding, to deliver a finished quality MMORPG. I don't think you'll find anybody saying Vanguard at launch was finished or quality.
As for folks not getting fired, tell that to 90% of the staff that got let go after Sigil went bankrupt and got bought out. That's not a successful business. Releasing an unfinished product to the public then going bankrupt shortly after is not successful, it's a complete, utter failure. It's something investors will take note and avoid in the future. Investors didn't give him money so they could watch all their money go down the drain, that I can guarantee you.
Bottom line is, Brad was the CEO, he was responsible for hiring those in charge of hiring others. He was responsible for overseeing everything to make sure the product he was developing was going to make it. He's not to be blamed for everything, but like how our own goverment works, people always blame those on top that's supposed to oversee things.
As for the argument to how you would decide a game was finished on release? Well how about..
1. Many features on the retail box were not available at launch. Some of these features got added in 6-12 months later, some never even made it in.
2. Game's engine was poorly coded, not tested properly, and anybody with a computer could tell the game was not running well. Even those that spent thousands to build brand new spanking computers back then had tons of issues running the game, so you can forget the majority of gamers out there that do not have the latest & greatest.
3. CTD CTD CTD...and more CTD's. Enough said about this one.
4. No endgame content, people waited a full year before raid interface was even put into the game, and more before raid mobs were even implemented.
5. Bugs, bugs, more bugs, from gameplay, to quests, to combat, to crafting, to diplomacy, etc...
6. When they admit they didn't have coders dedicated to fix specific spheres such as crafting and diplomacy, you knew something wasn't right. How could you run a MMO without having enough coders?
7. When they admit they didn't have proper tools coded for the game designers to design creative content ingame, and that it took a year for them to code designer's interface so they could do their job better.
If you are willing to argue that Vanguard's issues were merely design issues, then Brad has absolutely no chance at making a come back.
all of Vanguard's problems are DESIGN related, and have nothing to do with any business decisions he made.
All of Vanguard's problems are "DESIGN" related? I am surprised to hear you say that, because SIGIL INC. was clearly and obviously a business failure. Notwithstanding that, however, what do you mean by "DESIGN" related? Are you refering to the coding or to the intellectual design such as diplomacy, ship travel, classes, etc.?
Are you serious? Just because a product was "released" officially, doesn't mean it was finished or a success. You are basing his business success on the official game launch, then on the other hand you admit the game was released too early. Those two don't go together. If a product was put out to the public prematurely, whoever is in charge of letting that happen is often responsible.
He was given $30mil by MS, more by SOE, and perhaps more from private funding, to deliver a finished quality MMORPG. I don't think you'll find anybody saying Vanguard at launch was finished or quality.
As for folks not getting fired, tell that to 90% of the staff that got let go after Sigil went bankrupt and got bought out. That's not a successful business. Releasing an unfinished product to the public then going bankrupt shortly after is not successful, it's a complete, utter failure. It's something investors will take note and avoid in the future. Investors didn't give him money so they could watch all their money go down the drain, that I can guarantee you.
Bottom line is, Brad was the CEO, he was responsible for hiring those in charge of hiring others. He was responsible for overseeing everything to make sure the product he was developing was going to make it. He's not to be blamed for everything, but like how our own goverment works, people always blame those on top that's supposed to oversee things.
As for the argument to how you would decide a game was finished on release? Well how about.. 1. Many features on the retail box were not available at launch. Some of these features got added in 6-12 months later, some never even made it in. 2. Game's engine was poorly coded, not tested properly, and anybody with a computer could tell the game was not running well. Even those that spent thousands to build brand new spanking computers back then had tons of issues running the game, so you can forget the majority of gamers out there that do not have the latest & greatest. 3. CTD CTD CTD...and more CTD's. Enough said about this one. 4. No endgame content, people waited a full year before raid interface was even put into the game, and more before raid mobs were even implemented. 5. Bugs, bugs, more bugs, from gameplay, to quests, to combat, to crafting, to diplomacy, etc... 6. When they admit they didn't have coders dedicated to fix specific spheres such as crafting and diplomacy, you knew something wasn't right. How could you run a MMO without having enough coders? 7. When they admit they didn't have proper tools coded for the game designers to design creative content ingame, and that it took a year for them to code designer's interface so they could do their job better.
If you are willing to argue that Vanguard's issues were merely design issues, then Brad has absolutely no chance at making a come back.
Released with 30 million dollars and five years spent? Yes, a business success. Not ready after 30 million dollars and five years spent? Design failure.
And you're right, I'm not saying that Vanguard was finished or of quality; but I don't attribute the reasons to bad business decisions because the game had a release window like all games was even given an extension by SOE. I attribute it all to bad design; because after all, a lot of the problems that still linger today exist because of bad design.
As for people getting fired; I don't recall mentioning anything about it. I wouldn't call it bad business though that Sigil went under, since everything that needed to happen for the business to continue did happen, i.e. getting the game out. Sigil's continuation was naturally contingent upon people liking the game however; and obviously they didn't. So I chock that up to yet another failure in Brad's capacity as a designer; he designed a game that didn't work well and people didn't like.
And yep..I do argue that all of those issues are design issues. Everything begins with a design documention, doesn't it? Of all the problems you listed, none of 'em have anything to do with Brad as a CEO and have everything to do with him as a designer.
all of Vanguard's problems are DESIGN related, and have nothing to do with any business decisions he made.
All of Vanguard's problems are "DESIGN" related? I am surprised to hear you say that, because SIGIL INC. was clearly and obviously a business failure. Notwithstanding that, however, what do you mean by "DESIGN" related? Are you refering to the coding or to the intellectual design such as diplomacy, ship travel, classes, etc.?
Right, but the business failed because the game didn't sell. The reason the game didn't sell is because it was poorly designed. Bad design led to it not being ready within the time window given to it, bad design led to poor reception from the greater MMO market.
As for the "intellectual design", I chock all of that up to good ideas. They aren't incredible ideas. It's not a feat for any designer to think seamless world, boats, houses and etc; but it takes a good designer to rein in what can be done and what can't for maximum, functioning impact. That's why I don't give Brad a pass for failing to put out a finished game; because he had an unprecedented amount of resources. If he failed to rein his plans in to what was possible with the time and resources given, that makes 'em a bad designer, not a person who didn'thave enough time and resources and thus a bad business man somehow.
SIGIL INC. did not anticipate Microsoft backing-out, right? One issue is whether MFST withdrew because of bad business (bad communication, deadlines not met, coding, etc.) or bad intellectual design. Unable to obtain financing, SIGIL INC. was forced to release Vanguard early, right? Vanguard sold a lot of boxes, I think, because of the "vision" and so forth. Many people unsubscribed, however, including myself, because the game was unfinished, buggy, poorly coded, and so forth. In fact, I was hoping when SOE came into play that those issues would have been dealt with in an expeditious manner --yes, I am THAT optimistic or perhaps naive-- to see the "vision" come to fruition. As an aside, I am not sure of a clear definition of "vision," but I subjectively interpreted it as freedom and opportunity as central elements in the MMORPG experience.
sepher, you and me definitely seem to agree. It is just that I think SIGIL/McQuaid suffered from a lack of business acumen from dealing with business partners to financing to communication to management problems. In business time and resources (including people) are all you have, and you must use them efficiently and effectively to fulfill your goals. Since Vanguard was a single project, I think MFST and SIGIL used the form of a joint venture? It would at least make sense.
You raise good and interesting points that have me thinking.
You guys seem to be confusing design with management issues. The design of vanguard as a game was solid. Much better than many games that have released in the past years.
The management of sigil resources is root of almost all the problems. The decision to use and modify they game engine they chose (unreal?) was a business choice mistake. Deciding to create to many features for the amount of staff you have and time frame you have to do it in is a management mistake. Not obtaining a scripting tool. Teaming up with soe was a management mistake. Hiring to many inexperienced staff members and to many relatives. Etc etc etc. mnost of these are mistakes brad wouldn't be responsible for if he was just lead designer and someone else was in full control.
The goals of the games design were pretty good. Large open non zoned world, great classes, real housing, real boats, diplomacy, advanced ai (didn't happen), the master level gear system, etc etc. The vision was solid. From a design perspective they are better than most games in the last 4 years. The utilization of staff, resources, spending of money, etc were all major mistakes. The majority those were not design related, but the inability as a company to complete what they were tasked with for far to many reasons.
I guess you could call those design flaws in some abstract way, but when you give the creative force unrestricted power in the company this is what happens. They simple cannot focus on follow through. These people are always looking beyond the horizon to see what new projects and aspects they can get thier fingers into and they are damn good at motivating other around them to do the same.
Released with 30 million dollars and five years spent? Yes, a business success.
It surprises me that you consider SIGIL INC. a business success because you seem like a very reasonable, thoughtful, and intelligent person. Your ideas are interesting albeit incorrect, respectfully, regarding the narrow issue over whether Brad McQuaid was a successful businessman/manager concerning SIGIL INC.
SIGIL INC. would probably make an excellent case study for Business School on business failure: bad marketing; extremely idealistic (and most-likely egotistical) leadership; lack of hands-on management(based on what I know); horrid communication with everybody; mis-allocation of resources (not enough coders); and I could continue.
EDIT: By no means am I pointing my finger at Mr. McQuaid or Sigil and saying, "you suck!" I started my first company while a sophmore in college. I have dissolved two companies of mine, and I had plenty of other failures and the wounds to show it. Believe me by no means am I trying to sound insensitive to the realities of the business world and its many and varied problems and challenges.
www.bradmcquaid.com "After the sale, Brad decided to take an extended break from games development and is currently pursuing his hobbies and spending time with friends and family. That said, as of late, he’s starting to get that itch again..." I thought some may actually be interested seeing this.
His damn site was "made on a mac" which is basically the label of using iweb. This is not an insult in the least, but if you are a serious developer with your own site, you should avoid branding any sort. I mean, you are a professional, and this is your site. To have your site plastered with the iweb noob symbol of "made on a mac"is embarrassing.
Note: I do not mean to disregard the use of Mac OS 10.5 or Linux 2.6 (which is my production rig). Iweb is a very user friendly application for html newcomers, but the uses of a decent CMS have so far shown to be 3x more powerful than a mac/word/dreamweaver wysiwyg. Brad should at least know enough to use social network.
"Made on a mac" ... my god, retreat to web .976. Whatever 1.0 means....
Played (more than a month): SWG, Second Life, Tabula Rasa, Lineage 2, Everquest 2, EvE, MxO, Ryzom.
Released with 30 million dollars and five years spent? Yes, a business success.
It surprises me that you consider SIGIL INC. a business success because you seem like a very reasonable, thoughtful, and intelligent person. Your ideas are interesting albeit incorrect, respectfully, regarding the narrow issue over whether Brad McQuaid was a successful businessman/manager concerning SIGIL INC.
SIGIL INC. would probably make an excellent case study for Business School on business failure: bad marketing; extremely idealistic (and most-likely egotistical) leadership; lack of hands-on management(based on what I know); horrid communication with everybody; mis-allocation of resources (not enough coders); and I could continue.
EDIT: By no means am I pointing my finger at Mr. McQuaid or Sigil and saying, "you suck!" I started my first company while a sophmore in college. I have dissolved two companies of mine, and I had plenty of other failures and the wounds to show it. Believe me by no means am I trying to sound insensitive to the realities of the business world and its many and varied problems and challenges.
Mostly I judge Brad by comparing him to his peers: Mark Jacobs from Mythic, Raph Koster from Areae, Richard Garriott from Destination Games, Jack Emmert from Cryptic.
Garriott had nearly two decades of Ultima behind him before making UO, and UO was a success. Still, his business relationship with EA was bad and there was that whole non-competitive thing, and even when he launched Destination Games, it became dependent upon NCSoft and before they could begin work on Tabula Rasa, and Garriott had to executive produce everything from the Lineages to City of Heroes before getting to do what he wanted.
Jacobs is similar; two decades of games behind him before his first MMO which was a success, but even after that Mythic had to accept a position within EA acquisition for WAR to be funded and staffed as it needed to be.
Emmert, same kind of deal; no history of videogames before CoH but he was a supplement writer of some kind for PNP. Had a first hit, but has resorted to publisher acquisition for his next couple of games.
McQuaid did War Wizards prior to EQ and then did EQ. Of early MMO successes his of course is the largest, but for him to receive 30 million dollars, 5 years of development time, the support of two of the biggest publishers out there at two different times, and avoid acquisition all the way up to post launch...it's unprecedented.
His peers haven't been able to acquire nearly that much money and time for their projects even after padding their initial successes with even more (Jacobs' half a dozen or more DAoC expansions, Garriott's executive producer role in most of NCSoft's successes, CoH for simply staying afloat in a WoW world).
So the above at least explains why I use words like "unprecedented". For emphasis, there's Brad's own lingo, Vanguard was the "second most expensive MMO ever", behind WoW, and Blizzard has a track record that needs no mentioning. What was Sigil's compared to Blizzard? Or even Cryptic, Mythic or Destination Games (Origin)?
So acquiring an unprecedented amount of support is one thing; then there's actually what Brad did with it in his different capacities.
He was chairman, and in that capacity obviously kept relations between the company and investors good for the most part for them to risk the amount of money that they did. There was the hiccup with Microsoft but that was that.
He was CEO. There's the satire about opiate addiction (I think opiate), affairs, not going to work for half a year, HeroClix, hiring friends and all that mess. If all of that could be directly linked to why this or that sucks in the game; I'd cede ground on that. In the absence of that though, I have to pay attention to what I consider successes.
You believe marketing was bad; well I think not purchasing an established IP, outsourcing trailers and etc. were bad decisions; but Vanguard was quite the viral success. For the poor marketing that it did have; it was a hundred times more exposed than 80% of the MMOs listed on the left over there.
I also found the packaging brilliant; the Guild Edition's trial keys, and a trial key in every box.
What we KNOW is that at least 200k people bought a box; and that is not a failure by any stretch for the launch of a game. And 200k meant months of trial key consumption given the amount out there.
Station Access was good too.
So basically as CEO, I don't think he did bad.
Then there's his role as Executive Producer; delegating where the money goes in the creation of the project. It'd be redundant to go over how I feel about the amount of money and how it was stretched over 5 years; but I will touch on the creative capacity of the role when it comes to things like timetables. Recreating Thestra later on; tacking on Equipment Expertise and other crap in the last few months; those are design-related failings on his part.
Then there's him as a designer. Everything of substance in Vanguard was his idea. There's a lot I don't like about the game, there's plenty of things that other people like about the game; but the game was put out, 200k people bought it, and it sunk from there. Yes it was buggy and unplayable for a lot; but it was also just plain not a fun game to people. Buggy or not fun; both are problems I attribute to bad design.
My whole thing is that the failures of Vanguard aren't at all incidental; they were deliberate and planned. The game was LARGELY made incomplete on purpose and designed that way. I remember Brad talking about the seven year plan or whatever where the game was purposefully meant to stutter until technology was better; how technology was dependent upon to cure things like hitching, where the Unreal 2 engine was always planned to be phased out with Unreal 3; where everything missing from the game but needed was purposefully excluded and placed later down the line in that seven year plan.
What Vanguard was, Brad knew and planned for. It was apart of that giant decade long planning thing he had; and for what Vanguard came out as and how he planned for it, I consider him a terrible designer.
As a business man though? Unprecedented.
What I'd like to hear is what problem Vanguard has or had, that can direclty be linked to his role as Chairman, CEO or Executive Producer even though it has creative capacities. I feel there's PLENTY that link directly to his role as a Designer, but I haven't heard one in the argument that he was a bad business man and that wash is flaw. Quite the opposite to me, but my ears are open.
You guys seem to be confusing design with management issues. The design of vanguard as a game was solid. Much better than many games that have released in the past years. The management of sigil resources is root of almost all the problems. The decision to use and modify they game engine they chose (unreal?) was a business choice mistake. Deciding to create to many features for the amount of staff you have and time frame you have to do it in is a management mistake. Not obtaining a scripting tool. Teaming up with soe was a management mistake. Hiring to many inexperienced staff members and to many relatives. Etc etc etc. mnost of these are mistakes brad wouldn't be responsible for if he was just lead designer and someone else was in full control.
The goals of the games design were pretty good. Large open non zoned world, great classes, real housing, real boats, diplomacy, advanced ai (didn't happen), the master level gear system, etc etc. The vision was solid. From a design perspective they are better than most games in the last 4 years. The utilization of staff, resources, spending of money, etc were all major mistakes. The majority those were not design related, but the inability as a company to complete what they were tasked with for far to many reasons. I guess you could call those design flaws in some abstract way, but when you give the creative force unrestricted power in the company this is what happens. They simple cannot focus on follow through. These people are always looking beyond the horizon to see what new projects and aspects they can get thier fingers into and they are damn good at motivating other around them to do the same.
See, how is the decision to use and modify the Unreal engine a bad business decision? They acquired the license, didn't go broke for it, and made it do exactly what they wanted it to do.
All the way up to launch Brad knew the repercussions of the 'hitching' because he often talked about how future hardware would fix it. It was a DESIGN decision. Chunking works exactly how the design called for it with the hitching deemed as something acceptable.
It'd have been a mismanagement issue if someone was delegated to the task that failed at pulling it off; but that didn't happen.
No scripting tool, not reining in ideas, etc; those have everything to do with the role of the designer. Designing isn't about having an idea and that;s it; its about keeping the idea focused, broken up into doable tasks and scheduling them. Brad did all of that; across his whole seven year after launch plan. You have to attribute all of his fallacies to bad design in that respect. The move to Unreal 3, 64 bit native client, chunking on the Z axis; etc, all apart of his DESIGN.
And no, you can't say the design was good if the application was bad. The design was BAD if it couldn't be done. Like, how's this? A seamless, zoneless, persistent solar system with 15 planets with an average of 5 continents each fully urbanized and populated with billions of denizens. Awesome idea; bad design because of technical limitations.
The technical limitations of Vanguard's designs can't be forgiven, and definitely cant be brushed off as bad business decisions; they're design related.
And that's the root of the issue; Brad is forgiven for not being "restricted". It's part of the role of the designer to KNOW limitations and restrictions. Being a designer would be the easiest job in the world if all one had to do was have a great idea and not worry at all about the consequences. Who's job is it is to take another person's unchecked ideas and tone them down to reality?
The feats lay in having ideas that can be accomplished; and an idea that couldn't be accomplished in five years and thirty million dollars is quite frankly, a terrible idea.
See, how is the decision to use and modify the Unreal engine a bad business decision? They acquired the license, didn't go broke for it, and made it do exactly what they wanted it to do. All the way up to launch Brad knew the repercussions of the 'hitching' because he often talked about how future hardware would fix it. It was a DESIGN decision. Chunking works exactly how the design called for it with the hitching deemed as something acceptable. It'd have been a mismanagement issue if someone was delegated to the task that failed at pulling it off; but that didn't happen. No scripting tool, not reining in ideas, etc; those have everything to do with the role of the designer. Designing isn't about having an idea and that;s it; its about keeping the idea focused, broken up into doable tasks and scheduling them. Brad did all of that; across his whole seven year after launch plan. You have to attribute all of his fallacies to bad design in that respect. The move to Unreal 3, 64 bit native client, chunking on the Z axis; etc, all apart of his DESIGN. And no, you can't say the design was good if the application was bad. The design was BAD if it couldn't be done. Like, how's this? A seamless, zoneless, persistent solar system with 15 planets with an average of 5 continents each fully urbanized and populated with billions of denizens. Awesome idea; bad design because of technical limitations. The technical limitations of Vanguard's designs can't be forgiven, and definitely cant be brushed off as bad business decisions; they're design related. And that's the root of the issue; Brad is forgiven for not being "restricted". It's part of the role of the designer to KNOW limitations and restrictions. Being a designer would be the easiest job in the world if all one had to do was have a great idea and not worry at all about the consequences. Who's job is it is to take another person's unchecked ideas and tone them down to reality? The feats lay in having ideas that can be accomplished; and an idea that couldn't be accomplished in five years and thirty million dollars is quite frankly, a terrible idea.
It was a bad business decision to buy and modify the engine, because they could not do it with what they had or in the time they had to do it. That is a mismanagement of resources. Do you really think brad is the type of person who has the ability to project where future gaming hardware would be 5 years after he started sigil, or is he the kind of guy who would be more excited about what they could do with the unreal engine blind to how that might strangle the games performance in 5 years?
Brad is an idea man, someone to inspire the team and keep them energized and excited. That is the type of person he is and that is exactly the type of person who needs oversight. I know this from person experience in the business world. I am not giving him a pass for not having oversight, but I think that is the problem, not his design ideas.
For example when he had oversight at soe, they put out one of the best mmos ever. He had someone to account to. Someone to tell him no, which I don't think you understand just how powerful that is in a company and in the design process.
Look what happened when the creative force left soe and someone else took over the reigns of everquest. How many people call shadows of luclin the downturn of everquest? Going to the moon and cat people? It was a horrible expansion, because the inspiration was gone.
Look what happened when the creative force behind everquest was given unrestricted contol over a company. There was no one there to say no and they tried to do everything, because visionaries have no restraint.
Brads design ideas were sound, but the company was mismanged in so many aspects. The facts are that when he had oversight he produced a winner. When he was in complete control of the entire company, the company collapsed.
No he single handedly detroyed much of what was good and introduced large amounts of boring repeative stuff. Out with complexity in with camping and grinding yay! Sadly as EQ enjoyed some comercial success many simplY emulated that. He set the genre back years not sure its completely recovered now. Nice to see some games coming along that are skill based with more freedom to forge your own path.
Sepher, what you call bad design I consider to be an effect of bad management.
A good manager/CEO brings in strong independent thinkers to manage the different areas of the company and manages the people as well as the investors. A good CEO doesn't design the product, I doubt even Brad specifically did that. A good CEO sets the design direction and has his development team put together the details which he would then review and approve and keep an update on project plan and implementation balanced agains cash and schedule.
A good manager is part of a team and imspires the time and company with transparency and encouraging people to strive to do their best.
This vs your typical entrepreneur who surrounds himself with doers not managers and then tries to be a team of one with a bunch of followers. He is passionate and sees his vision strongly and can present it and get people to follow it. He falls down on execution of the vision because it becomes to complex for one person and he still tries to control everything and to run everything. In Brads case it looks like at some people when MS left Sigil that the preasure was just too much for him and he pretty much checked out, leaving a team of weak leaders to try to pick up the peices and the rest of the company in confusion and dispair. Toward the end I think he tried to get more involved but the damage was done and the money was running out.
You say the design of vanguard is bad but I say it was the execution of vanguard. The scope of the design and how the game works is in my opinion amazing and blows away any other game. Where it falls down is in the detials, bugs, polish. Vanguard had it had better implementation of the design would have been great. EVERYONE you talk to who has played vanguard will say the game has amazing potential. What they are saying is that the design of the game is amazing but it isn't polished/finished/bug free. I played vanguard at release and the failure is obvious. The game would kill you with hitching, loot would get stuck so you couldn't get it, running on a hill would frequently kill you and leave your corpse unrecoverable, items in you inventory would vanish, groups would get broken and you couldn't invite people or other issues, chat channels would be borked, gold duping was out of control, about 1/3 of the current game content was missing (above lvl 35-40 there was nothing to do), and there were many more issues. I've played beta games that were in better shape. This is execution. The game world, the dungeons, the combat system, the crafting system, the diplomacy system were all outstanding leaving other games well behind. Vanguard failed entirely based on execution. Execution failed due to poor management, money management, bad decisions on development, poor schedule management, lack of operation management. Read some of the posts by old developers, the company ran like a chicken with it's head cut off. One manager going in one direction annother in a diff direction, nobody knowing what was going on. Brad was passionate but when he stepped out it left a void that nobody could fill and people that tried to step up had to fight with everyone else.
Just read the history on this company. It is a classic tutorial of why MANY companies fail. They could have been making cerial and it would have died in the same way.
See, how is the decision to use and modify the Unreal engine a bad business decision? They acquired the license, didn't go broke for it, and made it do exactly what they wanted it to do. All the way up to launch Brad knew the repercussions of the 'hitching' because he often talked about how future hardware would fix it. It was a DESIGN decision. Chunking works exactly how the design called for it with the hitching deemed as something acceptable. It'd have been a mismanagement issue if someone was delegated to the task that failed at pulling it off; but that didn't happen. No scripting tool, not reining in ideas, etc; those have everything to do with the role of the designer. Designing isn't about having an idea and that;s it; its about keeping the idea focused, broken up into doable tasks and scheduling them. Brad did all of that; across his whole seven year after launch plan. You have to attribute all of his fallacies to bad design in that respect. The move to Unreal 3, 64 bit native client, chunking on the Z axis; etc, all apart of his DESIGN. And no, you can't say the design was good if the application was bad. The design was BAD if it couldn't be done. Like, how's this? A seamless, zoneless, persistent solar system with 15 planets with an average of 5 continents each fully urbanized and populated with billions of denizens. Awesome idea; bad design because of technical limitations. The technical limitations of Vanguard's designs can't be forgiven, and definitely cant be brushed off as bad business decisions; they're design related. And that's the root of the issue; Brad is forgiven for not being "restricted". It's part of the role of the designer to KNOW limitations and restrictions. Being a designer would be the easiest job in the world if all one had to do was have a great idea and not worry at all about the consequences. Who's job is it is to take another person's unchecked ideas and tone them down to reality? The feats lay in having ideas that can be accomplished; and an idea that couldn't be accomplished in five years and thirty million dollars is quite frankly, a terrible idea.
It was a bad business decision to buy and modify the engine, because they could not do it with what they had or in the time they had to do it. That is a mismanagement of resources. Do you really think brad is the type of person who has the ability to project where future gaming hardware would be 5 years after he started sigil, or is he the kind of guy who would be more excited about what they could do with the unreal engine blind to how that might strangle the games performance in 5 years?
Brad is an idea man, someone to inspire the team and keep them energized and excited. That is the type of person he is and that is exactly the type of person who needs oversight. I know this from person experience in the business world. I am not giving him a pass for not having oversight, but I think that is the problem, not his design ideas.
For example when he had oversight at soe, they put out one of the best mmos ever. He had someone to account to. Someone to tell him no, which I don't think you understand just how powerful that is in a company and in the design process.
Look what happened when the creative force left soe and someone else took over the reigns of everquest. How many people call shadows of luclin the downturn of everquest? Going to the moon and cat people? It was a horrible expansion, because the inspiration was gone.
Look what happened when the creative force behind everquest was given unrestricted contol over a company. There was no one there to say no and they tried to do everything, because visionaries have no restraint.
Brads design ideas were sound, but the company was mismanged in so many aspects. The facts are that when he had oversight he produced a winner. When he was in complete control of the entire company, the company collapsed.
It may be a business decision to buy the engine, but its a design decision to modify it. Business didn't call for modification of the engine, design did. Furthermore as I stated, the consequences of the engine being modified weren't incidental, they knew exactly what design they were building on and didn't reverse course.
And yes; Brad was very much a guy that designed around projecting where hardware would be years ahead of the product release. He credits his EQ success to going 3D and allowing hardware to catch up. He believes EQ pushed hardware sales, and he believed Vanguard would do the same; so he designed Vanguard around that.
Again with the idea man thing; there exists NO WHERE a job description where your only job is to have an idea, people keep energized and excited about it and in no way shape or form be tied to any realities. Being a designer means it was his jobs to come up with designs that would WORK, not ones that just sound the best. Failing the former he failed as a designer.
And yes I understand having input from other people is crucial, but it's not like you're suggesting Brad be limited to a storywriter, a map designer or some other lesser role. For what you believe he's good at, it calls for being Lead Designer; oft the beginning and end or otherwise ultimate authority of design-related decisions. So it's not unreasonable to expect he should know how to check himself and that's part of being a good designer. It's only within a hierarchy of designers would he ever be checked; so if you believe he needed checking, then you believe he shouldn't be a Lead Designer.
I won't get into the politics of which EQ expansions were good and bad and etc; mainly because I haven't played them, but visionaries check themselves by making a WORKABLE vision. There's absolutely no point in a person having a "vision" that its then the job of the CEO or another executive to make design-related decisions in curtailing. It's the job of the DESIGN to nitpick what the design document calls for; and failing that it's the failure of the designer.
And the company collapsed because a badly designed product was released. In his capacity as CEO and Chairman; he did everything he was supposed to do exceedingly so. Secure funding and time, get the product out. It was up to the integrity of the product after that; and it had littl, and for reasons unrelated to business decisions.
Sepher, what you call bad design I consider to be an effect of bad management. A good manager/CEO brings in strong independent thinkers to manage the different areas of the company and manages the people as well as the investors. A good CEO doesn't design the product, I doubt even Brad specifically did that. A good CEO sets the design direction and has his development team put together the details which he would then review and approve and keep an update on project plan and implementation balanced agains cash and schedule. A good manager is part of a team and imspires the time and company with transparency and encouraging people to strive to do their best. This vs your typical entrepreneur who surrounds himself with doers not managers and then tries to be a team of one with a bunch of followers. He is passionate and sees his vision strongly and can present it and get people to follow it. He falls down on execution of the vision because it becomes to complex for one person and he still tries to control everything and to run everything. In Brads case it looks like at some people when MS left Sigil that the preasure was just too much for him and he pretty much checked out, leaving a team of weak leaders to try to pick up the peices and the rest of the company in confusion and dispair. Toward the end I think he tried to get more involved but the damage was done and the money was running out. You say the design of vanguard is bad but I say it was the execution of vanguard. The scope of the design and how the game works is in my opinion amazing and blows away any other game. Where it falls down is in the detials, bugs, polish. Vanguard had it had better implementation of the design would have been great. EVERYONE you talk to who has played vanguard will say the game has amazing potential. What they are saying is that the design of the game is amazing but it isn't polished/finished/bug free. I played vanguard at release and the failure is obvious. The game would kill you with hitching, loot would get stuck so you couldn't get it, running on a hill would frequently kill you and leave your corpse unrecoverable, items in you inventory would vanish, groups would get broken and you couldn't invite people or other issues, chat channels would be borked, gold duping was out of control, about 1/3 of the current game content was missing (above lvl 35-40 there was nothing to do), and there were many more issues. I've played beta games that were in better shape. This is execution. The game world, the dungeons, the combat system, the crafting system, the diplomacy system were all outstanding leaving other games well behind. Vanguard failed entirely based on execution. Execution failed due to poor management, money management, bad decisions on development, poor schedule management, lack of operation management. Read some of the posts by old developers, the company ran like a chicken with it's head cut off. One manager going in one direction annother in a diff direction, nobody knowing what was going on. Brad was passionate but when he stepped out it left a void that nobody could fill and people that tried to step up had to fight with everyone else. Just read the history on this company. It is a classic tutorial of why MANY companies fail. They could have been making cerial and it would have died in the same way.
See that's wrong. CEO's don't set "design directions" unless they're specifically occupying that role of designer as well; and when they design something bad, you don't cite their capacity as CEO as the reason, you blame them as designers.
And Brad often went on tangents about being fully involved in Vanguard's whole seven-year plan thing. He was very vocal about what the design document had to have looked like and his involvement with it.
And yep, as CEO Brad made managed to have 5 years of development time. I cite that as a success. He also intentionally released the game as not ready and contigent upon future hardware, engine updates, etc. Those were all DESIGN decisions; bolstered by his success with EQ and the belief that software can push hardware when it has to.
As far as "execution", again nothing was incidental. Every problem Vanguard had; we knew about before release and it came out of Brad's mouth. The execution was exact and purposed; Vanguard was released with problems Brad fully expected people to WANT to deal with because again, of that idea that software can push hardware and that all MMOs release unfinished, so its fine. Design decision.
As for bugs and polish; design decisions. Bugs will occur in every piece of software; but they'll occur least in ones that are designed well. The same goes for polish. So nothing incidental about a purposefully designed for and championed 20gig+ game having that much more bugs and lack of polish.
And if Sigil released cereal in a 500oz box that took up 1/4th the free space in the pantry, required new-fangled utensils that'd only began rolling out the last year or so, and what was in the box was three giant hard to deal with flakes, then I'm going to call that product a bad idea.
For it to have garnered enough funds to be the second most expensive cereal ever with no prior successes as a company, begun by Kellogg's and put out by Post, I'm going to cite the guy behind the the business of it a business behemoth to have pulled it off.
What was the problems behind that lead up to the symptons here?
No I am not refering to Vanguards success or not as the problem, its a problem behind the sympton the downfall of Sigil. But, Vanguards condition at release is a sympton aswell in this matter.
What problems was there leading to this?
There is alot of talk about the symptons here without really knowing or specyfying the problem behind it.
Maybe it was a real good design descicion to change alot in the code for an engine that didn't fit for the work, meaning the business chioce of buying the engine was bad. Or maybe it was a real good descicion to buy a finished engine that didn't need so much work, meaning it was a bad idea to redesign (in that extenct) a working engine.
Is the reworking, in the amount that it sounds like, of the engine sympton of a problem? And if so, what problem?
Eh? What was the problems behind that lead up to the symptons here? No I am not refering to Vanguards success or not as the problem, its a problem behind the sympton the downfall of Sigil. But, Vanguards condition at release is a sympton aswell in this matter. What problems was there leading to this? There is alot of talk about the symptons here without really knowing or specyfying the problem behind it.
Maybe it was a real good design descicion to change alot in the code for an engine that didn't fit for the work, meaning the business chioce of buying the engine was bad. Or maybe it was a real good descicion to buy a finished engine that didn't need so much work, meaning it was a bad idea to redesign (in that extenct) a working engine. Is the reworking, in the amount that it sounds like, of the engine sympton of a problem? And if so, what problem?
But the engine was worked to do exactly what they wanted. The negative impacts were embraced deemed acceptable. There's no maybes about it because there's no cloud of hypothesis. We know exactly what happened and why.
Since when has buying an Unreal Engine license been a bad business move? Having a design that called for butchering it though, that'd be a bad design move.
Comments
Whow, thats nice.
Lets hope we either get some creative input for Vanguard (it certainly could use some, or the devs will probably add more horrible grinds like Shores of Darkness), or he actually starts another MMO project (so theres a successor to Vanguard at least at the most distant horizont).
I'd work with him, but I'd make sure there was some real project management this time to ensure some results at the end of it all.
No offense but I don't see Brad coming back to VG. I would be really suprised. The combination of Vanguard and McQuaid's actions towards the end of it isn't a winning combo and once a game hits it's peak numbers, adding McQuaid certainly wouldn't boost VG's numbers enough to pay him what he probably would want to get back into the video game business.
I actually would be less surpised if we saw SOE announce EQ3 with McQuaid at the helm and the promise to bring back the magic that was EQ1 for all those players who grew tired of WOW and EQ2 . Smedley has said they weren't done with games in Norrath yet.
Only problem is that 38 Studios with McFarland and Salvatore and them are already doing a game that sounds like the spiritual successor to EQ1 from what little we know. Maybe they could hire him?
To this day, I've read so much stuff that I'm not really sure what Brad did on EQ1 that was awesome and what came from other people. I think it will be neat to see if he can prove he is the massive genius he was credited with a few years back. I definitely miss my Fantasy MMORPG fix.
QFT
Brad McQuaid is a damn moron and the development TEAM worked on VG while he went around dicking with off-roading and TCG's, all while trying to hit up/steal employees drugs for his opiate addiction. He got insanely lucky with EQ no doubt because of that development team as well.
Brad McQuaid is a waste of space and air. Fuck him.
The reason why he was able to build those relationships is because of his past experiences. Microsoft, it has been said, it not in the business of MMORPGs. MFST creates awful software and releases it early. I THINK --speculating-- MFST was determined to do that with Vanguard: Saga of Heroes and Sigil resisted it. MFST pulls out, unable to secure financing to continue development, Sigil partners --joint venture or acquisition or whatever the form-- with SOE.
The product is released too early. I have been playing Vanguard just about every day since the free time, and I think I will write a re-re-review of the game. I really wish it were released in the way it is now. The game has a richness, depth, breadth, and complexity to it that most mainstream MMORPGs lack.
Business partners go flat all the time. I apologize if this sounds mean, but I think SIGIL, under Brad's leadership, did suffer from bad management from financing to marketing to just coding Vanguard. The vision, on the other hand, is most impressive. In fact, I think there is a big market for the "vision," but it is costly, timely, and difficult to properly execute. Vanguard, I think, approaches the "complex" (deeper crafting, diplomacy system, diverse range of Quests) and "challenge" (deeper dungeons, death penalty, less hand-holding) and "community-oriented" (grouping, crafting-economy, etc.) and "exploration" (enormous world w/ ship travel) experience that many of us want.
What problem does Vanguard have that you can trace directly to mismanagement and not bad design?
The biggest problem that you cite is that it was released too early; but again, five years is a long time, especially with a hundred person staff at the peak of it.
Were those five years were mismanaged? I'd say so; but I'd say they were mismanaged by bad design decisions.
The "Vision" part is easy; anyone can have a good idea. Whether or not a person is a good designer though should be based on what they put into their design documents and then administrate it. So for example, the decision to use the Unreal 2 engine and rewrite it had to have come from Brad; and all resulting problems he has to be blamed for. Such a decision would come from his capacity as a designer, not a business man.
In short, the word "management" can apply to either capacity, businessman and designer. If mismanagement was a problem, then it was within his capacity as a designer, because he did an excellent job business wise.
But what failure did Brad have business wise?
You can't say he was a bad business man without reason. If Vanguard didn't make it out of the gate; if half the staff was fired two months before release instead of SOE lending developers, if there were distribution hiccups, no marketing; so on and so forth, then I'd see the point.
But all of Vanguard's problems are DESIGN related, and have nothing to do with any business decisions he made.
The whole idea of him being a great idea man and good at starting something doesn't apply to him; because he started AND finished with an unprecedented amount of funding, support and time for a company that had no prior success. Ultimately every problem Vanguard has; is a consequence of a bad idea on his part.
Are you serious? Just because a product was "released" officially, doesn't mean it was finished or a success. You are basing his business success on the official game launch, then on the other hand you admit the game was released too early. Those two don't go together. If a product was put out to the public prematurely, whoever is in charge of letting that happen is often responsible.
He was given $30mil by MS, more by SOE, and perhaps more from private funding, to deliver a finished quality MMORPG. I don't think you'll find anybody saying Vanguard at launch was finished or quality.
As for folks not getting fired, tell that to 90% of the staff that got let go after Sigil went bankrupt and got bought out. That's not a successful business. Releasing an unfinished product to the public then going bankrupt shortly after is not successful, it's a complete, utter failure. It's something investors will take note and avoid in the future. Investors didn't give him money so they could watch all their money go down the drain, that I can guarantee you.
Bottom line is, Brad was the CEO, he was responsible for hiring those in charge of hiring others. He was responsible for overseeing everything to make sure the product he was developing was going to make it. He's not to be blamed for everything, but like how our own goverment works, people always blame those on top that's supposed to oversee things.
As for the argument to how you would decide a game was finished on release? Well how about..
1. Many features on the retail box were not available at launch. Some of these features got added in 6-12 months later, some never even made it in.
2. Game's engine was poorly coded, not tested properly, and anybody with a computer could tell the game was not running well. Even those that spent thousands to build brand new spanking computers back then had tons of issues running the game, so you can forget the majority of gamers out there that do not have the latest & greatest.
3. CTD CTD CTD...and more CTD's. Enough said about this one.
4. No endgame content, people waited a full year before raid interface was even put into the game, and more before raid mobs were even implemented.
5. Bugs, bugs, more bugs, from gameplay, to quests, to combat, to crafting, to diplomacy, etc...
6. When they admit they didn't have coders dedicated to fix specific spheres such as crafting and diplomacy, you knew something wasn't right. How could you run a MMO without having enough coders?
7. When they admit they didn't have proper tools coded for the game designers to design creative content ingame, and that it took a year for them to code designer's interface so they could do their job better.
If you are willing to argue that Vanguard's issues were merely design issues, then Brad has absolutely no chance at making a come back.
EQ1-AC1-DAOC-FFXI-L2-EQ2-WoW-DDO-GW-LoTR-VG-WAR-GW2-ESO
All of Vanguard's problems are "DESIGN" related? I am surprised to hear you say that, because SIGIL INC. was clearly and obviously a business failure. Notwithstanding that, however, what do you mean by "DESIGN" related? Are you refering to the coding or to the intellectual design such as diplomacy, ship travel, classes, etc.?
Released with 30 million dollars and five years spent? Yes, a business success. Not ready after 30 million dollars and five years spent? Design failure.
And you're right, I'm not saying that Vanguard was finished or of quality; but I don't attribute the reasons to bad business decisions because the game had a release window like all games was even given an extension by SOE. I attribute it all to bad design; because after all, a lot of the problems that still linger today exist because of bad design.
As for people getting fired; I don't recall mentioning anything about it. I wouldn't call it bad business though that Sigil went under, since everything that needed to happen for the business to continue did happen, i.e. getting the game out. Sigil's continuation was naturally contingent upon people liking the game however; and obviously they didn't. So I chock that up to yet another failure in Brad's capacity as a designer; he designed a game that didn't work well and people didn't like.
And yep..I do argue that all of those issues are design issues. Everything begins with a design documention, doesn't it? Of all the problems you listed, none of 'em have anything to do with Brad as a CEO and have everything to do with him as a designer.
Most all of your are repeatedly making the mistake of seeing everything in only 2 colors.
By definition vision breaks those bounds and is almost never fulfilled ideally until near the end.
All of Vanguard's problems are "DESIGN" related? I am surprised to hear you say that, because SIGIL INC. was clearly and obviously a business failure. Notwithstanding that, however, what do you mean by "DESIGN" related? Are you refering to the coding or to the intellectual design such as diplomacy, ship travel, classes, etc.?
Right, but the business failed because the game didn't sell. The reason the game didn't sell is because it was poorly designed. Bad design led to it not being ready within the time window given to it, bad design led to poor reception from the greater MMO market.
As for the "intellectual design", I chock all of that up to good ideas. They aren't incredible ideas. It's not a feat for any designer to think seamless world, boats, houses and etc; but it takes a good designer to rein in what can be done and what can't for maximum, functioning impact. That's why I don't give Brad a pass for failing to put out a finished game; because he had an unprecedented amount of resources. If he failed to rein his plans in to what was possible with the time and resources given, that makes 'em a bad designer, not a person who didn'thave enough time and resources and thus a bad business man somehow.
SIGIL INC. did not anticipate Microsoft backing-out, right? One issue is whether MFST withdrew because of bad business (bad communication, deadlines not met, coding, etc.) or bad intellectual design. Unable to obtain financing, SIGIL INC. was forced to release Vanguard early, right? Vanguard sold a lot of boxes, I think, because of the "vision" and so forth. Many people unsubscribed, however, including myself, because the game was unfinished, buggy, poorly coded, and so forth. In fact, I was hoping when SOE came into play that those issues would have been dealt with in an expeditious manner --yes, I am THAT optimistic or perhaps naive-- to see the "vision" come to fruition. As an aside, I am not sure of a clear definition of "vision," but I subjectively interpreted it as freedom and opportunity as central elements in the MMORPG experience.
sepher, you and me definitely seem to agree. It is just that I think SIGIL/McQuaid suffered from a lack of business acumen from dealing with business partners to financing to communication to management problems. In business time and resources (including people) are all you have, and you must use them efficiently and effectively to fulfill your goals. Since Vanguard was a single project, I think MFST and SIGIL used the form of a joint venture? It would at least make sense.
You raise good and interesting points that have me thinking.
This is true. Vision is the over-arching goal that you never really attain but also pursue.
Your mission is your reason for existence. And the goals you pursue ought to be fulfilled, through strategy and tactics.
You guys seem to be confusing design with management issues. The design of vanguard as a game was solid. Much better than many games that have released in the past years.
The management of sigil resources is root of almost all the problems. The decision to use and modify they game engine they chose (unreal?) was a business choice mistake. Deciding to create to many features for the amount of staff you have and time frame you have to do it in is a management mistake. Not obtaining a scripting tool. Teaming up with soe was a management mistake. Hiring to many inexperienced staff members and to many relatives. Etc etc etc. mnost of these are mistakes brad wouldn't be responsible for if he was just lead designer and someone else was in full control.
The goals of the games design were pretty good. Large open non zoned world, great classes, real housing, real boats, diplomacy, advanced ai (didn't happen), the master level gear system, etc etc. The vision was solid. From a design perspective they are better than most games in the last 4 years. The utilization of staff, resources, spending of money, etc were all major mistakes. The majority those were not design related, but the inability as a company to complete what they were tasked with for far to many reasons.
I guess you could call those design flaws in some abstract way, but when you give the creative force unrestricted power in the company this is what happens. They simple cannot focus on follow through. These people are always looking beyond the horizon to see what new projects and aspects they can get thier fingers into and they are damn good at motivating other around them to do the same.
It surprises me that you consider SIGIL INC. a business success because you seem like a very reasonable, thoughtful, and intelligent person. Your ideas are interesting albeit incorrect, respectfully, regarding the narrow issue over whether Brad McQuaid was a successful businessman/manager concerning SIGIL INC.
SIGIL INC. would probably make an excellent case study for Business School on business failure: bad marketing; extremely idealistic (and most-likely egotistical) leadership; lack of hands-on management(based on what I know); horrid communication with everybody; mis-allocation of resources (not enough coders); and I could continue.
EDIT: By no means am I pointing my finger at Mr. McQuaid or Sigil and saying, "you suck!" I started my first company while a sophmore in college. I have dissolved two companies of mine, and I had plenty of other failures and the wounds to show it. Believe me by no means am I trying to sound insensitive to the realities of the business world and its many and varied problems and challenges.
His damn site was "made on a mac" which is basically the label of using iweb. This is not an insult in the least, but if you are a serious developer with your own site, you should avoid branding any sort. I mean, you are a professional, and this is your site. To have your site plastered with the iweb noob symbol of "made on a mac"is embarrassing.
Note: I do not mean to disregard the use of Mac OS 10.5 or Linux 2.6 (which is my production rig). Iweb is a very user friendly application for html newcomers, but the uses of a decent CMS have so far shown to be 3x more powerful than a mac/word/dreamweaver wysiwyg. Brad should at least know enough to use social network.
"Made on a mac" ... my god, retreat to web .976. Whatever 1.0 means....
Played (more than a month): SWG, Second Life, Tabula Rasa, Lineage 2, Everquest 2, EvE, MxO, Ryzom.
Tried: WoW, Shadowbane, Anarchy Online, Everquest, WWII Online, Planetside
Beta: Lotro, Tabula Rasa, WAR.
It surprises me that you consider SIGIL INC. a business success because you seem like a very reasonable, thoughtful, and intelligent person. Your ideas are interesting albeit incorrect, respectfully, regarding the narrow issue over whether Brad McQuaid was a successful businessman/manager concerning SIGIL INC.
SIGIL INC. would probably make an excellent case study for Business School on business failure: bad marketing; extremely idealistic (and most-likely egotistical) leadership; lack of hands-on management(based on what I know); horrid communication with everybody; mis-allocation of resources (not enough coders); and I could continue.
EDIT: By no means am I pointing my finger at Mr. McQuaid or Sigil and saying, "you suck!" I started my first company while a sophmore in college. I have dissolved two companies of mine, and I had plenty of other failures and the wounds to show it. Believe me by no means am I trying to sound insensitive to the realities of the business world and its many and varied problems and challenges.
Mostly I judge Brad by comparing him to his peers: Mark Jacobs from Mythic, Raph Koster from Areae, Richard Garriott from Destination Games, Jack Emmert from Cryptic.
Garriott had nearly two decades of Ultima behind him before making UO, and UO was a success. Still, his business relationship with EA was bad and there was that whole non-competitive thing, and even when he launched Destination Games, it became dependent upon NCSoft and before they could begin work on Tabula Rasa, and Garriott had to executive produce everything from the Lineages to City of Heroes before getting to do what he wanted.
Jacobs is similar; two decades of games behind him before his first MMO which was a success, but even after that Mythic had to accept a position within EA acquisition for WAR to be funded and staffed as it needed to be.
Emmert, same kind of deal; no history of videogames before CoH but he was a supplement writer of some kind for PNP. Had a first hit, but has resorted to publisher acquisition for his next couple of games.
McQuaid did War Wizards prior to EQ and then did EQ. Of early MMO successes his of course is the largest, but for him to receive 30 million dollars, 5 years of development time, the support of two of the biggest publishers out there at two different times, and avoid acquisition all the way up to post launch...it's unprecedented.
His peers haven't been able to acquire nearly that much money and time for their projects even after padding their initial successes with even more (Jacobs' half a dozen or more DAoC expansions, Garriott's executive producer role in most of NCSoft's successes, CoH for simply staying afloat in a WoW world).
So the above at least explains why I use words like "unprecedented". For emphasis, there's Brad's own lingo, Vanguard was the "second most expensive MMO ever", behind WoW, and Blizzard has a track record that needs no mentioning. What was Sigil's compared to Blizzard? Or even Cryptic, Mythic or Destination Games (Origin)?
So acquiring an unprecedented amount of support is one thing; then there's actually what Brad did with it in his different capacities.
He was chairman, and in that capacity obviously kept relations between the company and investors good for the most part for them to risk the amount of money that they did. There was the hiccup with Microsoft but that was that.
He was CEO. There's the satire about opiate addiction (I think opiate), affairs, not going to work for half a year, HeroClix, hiring friends and all that mess. If all of that could be directly linked to why this or that sucks in the game; I'd cede ground on that. In the absence of that though, I have to pay attention to what I consider successes.
You believe marketing was bad; well I think not purchasing an established IP, outsourcing trailers and etc. were bad decisions; but Vanguard was quite the viral success. For the poor marketing that it did have; it was a hundred times more exposed than 80% of the MMOs listed on the left over there.
I also found the packaging brilliant; the Guild Edition's trial keys, and a trial key in every box.
What we KNOW is that at least 200k people bought a box; and that is not a failure by any stretch for the launch of a game. And 200k meant months of trial key consumption given the amount out there.
Station Access was good too.
So basically as CEO, I don't think he did bad.
Then there's his role as Executive Producer; delegating where the money goes in the creation of the project. It'd be redundant to go over how I feel about the amount of money and how it was stretched over 5 years; but I will touch on the creative capacity of the role when it comes to things like timetables. Recreating Thestra later on; tacking on Equipment Expertise and other crap in the last few months; those are design-related failings on his part.
Then there's him as a designer. Everything of substance in Vanguard was his idea. There's a lot I don't like about the game, there's plenty of things that other people like about the game; but the game was put out, 200k people bought it, and it sunk from there. Yes it was buggy and unplayable for a lot; but it was also just plain not a fun game to people. Buggy or not fun; both are problems I attribute to bad design.
My whole thing is that the failures of Vanguard aren't at all incidental; they were deliberate and planned. The game was LARGELY made incomplete on purpose and designed that way. I remember Brad talking about the seven year plan or whatever where the game was purposefully meant to stutter until technology was better; how technology was dependent upon to cure things like hitching, where the Unreal 2 engine was always planned to be phased out with Unreal 3; where everything missing from the game but needed was purposefully excluded and placed later down the line in that seven year plan.
What Vanguard was, Brad knew and planned for. It was apart of that giant decade long planning thing he had; and for what Vanguard came out as and how he planned for it, I consider him a terrible designer.
As a business man though? Unprecedented.
What I'd like to hear is what problem Vanguard has or had, that can direclty be linked to his role as Chairman, CEO or Executive Producer even though it has creative capacities. I feel there's PLENTY that link directly to his role as a Designer, but I haven't heard one in the argument that he was a bad business man and that wash is flaw. Quite the opposite to me, but my ears are open.
See, how is the decision to use and modify the Unreal engine a bad business decision? They acquired the license, didn't go broke for it, and made it do exactly what they wanted it to do.
All the way up to launch Brad knew the repercussions of the 'hitching' because he often talked about how future hardware would fix it. It was a DESIGN decision. Chunking works exactly how the design called for it with the hitching deemed as something acceptable.
It'd have been a mismanagement issue if someone was delegated to the task that failed at pulling it off; but that didn't happen.
No scripting tool, not reining in ideas, etc; those have everything to do with the role of the designer. Designing isn't about having an idea and that;s it; its about keeping the idea focused, broken up into doable tasks and scheduling them. Brad did all of that; across his whole seven year after launch plan. You have to attribute all of his fallacies to bad design in that respect. The move to Unreal 3, 64 bit native client, chunking on the Z axis; etc, all apart of his DESIGN.
And no, you can't say the design was good if the application was bad. The design was BAD if it couldn't be done. Like, how's this? A seamless, zoneless, persistent solar system with 15 planets with an average of 5 continents each fully urbanized and populated with billions of denizens. Awesome idea; bad design because of technical limitations.
The technical limitations of Vanguard's designs can't be forgiven, and definitely cant be brushed off as bad business decisions; they're design related.
And that's the root of the issue; Brad is forgiven for not being "restricted". It's part of the role of the designer to KNOW limitations and restrictions. Being a designer would be the easiest job in the world if all one had to do was have a great idea and not worry at all about the consequences. Who's job is it is to take another person's unchecked ideas and tone them down to reality?
The feats lay in having ideas that can be accomplished; and an idea that couldn't be accomplished in five years and thirty million dollars is quite frankly, a terrible idea.
It was a bad business decision to buy and modify the engine, because they could not do it with what they had or in the time they had to do it. That is a mismanagement of resources. Do you really think brad is the type of person who has the ability to project where future gaming hardware would be 5 years after he started sigil, or is he the kind of guy who would be more excited about what they could do with the unreal engine blind to how that might strangle the games performance in 5 years?
Brad is an idea man, someone to inspire the team and keep them energized and excited. That is the type of person he is and that is exactly the type of person who needs oversight. I know this from person experience in the business world. I am not giving him a pass for not having oversight, but I think that is the problem, not his design ideas.
For example when he had oversight at soe, they put out one of the best mmos ever. He had someone to account to. Someone to tell him no, which I don't think you understand just how powerful that is in a company and in the design process.
Look what happened when the creative force left soe and someone else took over the reigns of everquest. How many people call shadows of luclin the downturn of everquest? Going to the moon and cat people? It was a horrible expansion, because the inspiration was gone.
Look what happened when the creative force behind everquest was given unrestricted contol over a company. There was no one there to say no and they tried to do everything, because visionaries have no restraint.
Brads design ideas were sound, but the company was mismanged in so many aspects. The facts are that when he had oversight he produced a winner. When he was in complete control of the entire company, the company collapsed.
No he single handedly detroyed much of what was good and introduced large amounts of boring repeative stuff. Out with complexity in with camping and grinding yay! Sadly as EQ enjoyed some comercial success many simplY emulated that. He set the genre back years not sure its completely recovered now. Nice to see some games coming along that are skill based with more freedom to forge your own path.
Sepher, what you call bad design I consider to be an effect of bad management.
A good manager/CEO brings in strong independent thinkers to manage the different areas of the company and manages the people as well as the investors. A good CEO doesn't design the product, I doubt even Brad specifically did that. A good CEO sets the design direction and has his development team put together the details which he would then review and approve and keep an update on project plan and implementation balanced agains cash and schedule.
A good manager is part of a team and imspires the time and company with transparency and encouraging people to strive to do their best.
This vs your typical entrepreneur who surrounds himself with doers not managers and then tries to be a team of one with a bunch of followers. He is passionate and sees his vision strongly and can present it and get people to follow it. He falls down on execution of the vision because it becomes to complex for one person and he still tries to control everything and to run everything. In Brads case it looks like at some people when MS left Sigil that the preasure was just too much for him and he pretty much checked out, leaving a team of weak leaders to try to pick up the peices and the rest of the company in confusion and dispair. Toward the end I think he tried to get more involved but the damage was done and the money was running out.
You say the design of vanguard is bad but I say it was the execution of vanguard. The scope of the design and how the game works is in my opinion amazing and blows away any other game. Where it falls down is in the detials, bugs, polish. Vanguard had it had better implementation of the design would have been great. EVERYONE you talk to who has played vanguard will say the game has amazing potential. What they are saying is that the design of the game is amazing but it isn't polished/finished/bug free. I played vanguard at release and the failure is obvious. The game would kill you with hitching, loot would get stuck so you couldn't get it, running on a hill would frequently kill you and leave your corpse unrecoverable, items in you inventory would vanish, groups would get broken and you couldn't invite people or other issues, chat channels would be borked, gold duping was out of control, about 1/3 of the current game content was missing (above lvl 35-40 there was nothing to do), and there were many more issues. I've played beta games that were in better shape. This is execution. The game world, the dungeons, the combat system, the crafting system, the diplomacy system were all outstanding leaving other games well behind. Vanguard failed entirely based on execution. Execution failed due to poor management, money management, bad decisions on development, poor schedule management, lack of operation management. Read some of the posts by old developers, the company ran like a chicken with it's head cut off. One manager going in one direction annother in a diff direction, nobody knowing what was going on. Brad was passionate but when he stepped out it left a void that nobody could fill and people that tried to step up had to fight with everyone else.
Just read the history on this company. It is a classic tutorial of why MANY companies fail. They could have been making cerial and it would have died in the same way.
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Ethion
It was a bad business decision to buy and modify the engine, because they could not do it with what they had or in the time they had to do it. That is a mismanagement of resources. Do you really think brad is the type of person who has the ability to project where future gaming hardware would be 5 years after he started sigil, or is he the kind of guy who would be more excited about what they could do with the unreal engine blind to how that might strangle the games performance in 5 years?
Brad is an idea man, someone to inspire the team and keep them energized and excited. That is the type of person he is and that is exactly the type of person who needs oversight. I know this from person experience in the business world. I am not giving him a pass for not having oversight, but I think that is the problem, not his design ideas.
For example when he had oversight at soe, they put out one of the best mmos ever. He had someone to account to. Someone to tell him no, which I don't think you understand just how powerful that is in a company and in the design process.
Look what happened when the creative force left soe and someone else took over the reigns of everquest. How many people call shadows of luclin the downturn of everquest? Going to the moon and cat people? It was a horrible expansion, because the inspiration was gone.
Look what happened when the creative force behind everquest was given unrestricted contol over a company. There was no one there to say no and they tried to do everything, because visionaries have no restraint.
Brads design ideas were sound, but the company was mismanged in so many aspects. The facts are that when he had oversight he produced a winner. When he was in complete control of the entire company, the company collapsed.
It may be a business decision to buy the engine, but its a design decision to modify it. Business didn't call for modification of the engine, design did. Furthermore as I stated, the consequences of the engine being modified weren't incidental, they knew exactly what design they were building on and didn't reverse course.
And yes; Brad was very much a guy that designed around projecting where hardware would be years ahead of the product release. He credits his EQ success to going 3D and allowing hardware to catch up. He believes EQ pushed hardware sales, and he believed Vanguard would do the same; so he designed Vanguard around that.
Again with the idea man thing; there exists NO WHERE a job description where your only job is to have an idea, people keep energized and excited about it and in no way shape or form be tied to any realities. Being a designer means it was his jobs to come up with designs that would WORK, not ones that just sound the best. Failing the former he failed as a designer.
And yes I understand having input from other people is crucial, but it's not like you're suggesting Brad be limited to a storywriter, a map designer or some other lesser role. For what you believe he's good at, it calls for being Lead Designer; oft the beginning and end or otherwise ultimate authority of design-related decisions. So it's not unreasonable to expect he should know how to check himself and that's part of being a good designer. It's only within a hierarchy of designers would he ever be checked; so if you believe he needed checking, then you believe he shouldn't be a Lead Designer.
I won't get into the politics of which EQ expansions were good and bad and etc; mainly because I haven't played them, but visionaries check themselves by making a WORKABLE vision. There's absolutely no point in a person having a "vision" that its then the job of the CEO or another executive to make design-related decisions in curtailing. It's the job of the DESIGN to nitpick what the design document calls for; and failing that it's the failure of the designer.
And the company collapsed because a badly designed product was released. In his capacity as CEO and Chairman; he did everything he was supposed to do exceedingly so. Secure funding and time, get the product out. It was up to the integrity of the product after that; and it had littl, and for reasons unrelated to business decisions.
See that's wrong. CEO's don't set "design directions" unless they're specifically occupying that role of designer as well; and when they design something bad, you don't cite their capacity as CEO as the reason, you blame them as designers.
And Brad often went on tangents about being fully involved in Vanguard's whole seven-year plan thing. He was very vocal about what the design document had to have looked like and his involvement with it.
And yep, as CEO Brad made managed to have 5 years of development time. I cite that as a success. He also intentionally released the game as not ready and contigent upon future hardware, engine updates, etc. Those were all DESIGN decisions; bolstered by his success with EQ and the belief that software can push hardware when it has to.
As far as "execution", again nothing was incidental. Every problem Vanguard had; we knew about before release and it came out of Brad's mouth. The execution was exact and purposed; Vanguard was released with problems Brad fully expected people to WANT to deal with because again, of that idea that software can push hardware and that all MMOs release unfinished, so its fine. Design decision.
As for bugs and polish; design decisions. Bugs will occur in every piece of software; but they'll occur least in ones that are designed well. The same goes for polish. So nothing incidental about a purposefully designed for and championed 20gig+ game having that much more bugs and lack of polish.
And if Sigil released cereal in a 500oz box that took up 1/4th the free space in the pantry, required new-fangled utensils that'd only began rolling out the last year or so, and what was in the box was three giant hard to deal with flakes, then I'm going to call that product a bad idea.
For it to have garnered enough funds to be the second most expensive cereal ever with no prior successes as a company, begun by Kellogg's and put out by Post, I'm going to cite the guy behind the the business of it a business behemoth to have pulled it off.
Eh?
What was the problems behind that lead up to the symptons here?
No I am not refering to Vanguards success or not as the problem, its a problem behind the sympton the downfall of Sigil. But, Vanguards condition at release is a sympton aswell in this matter.
What problems was there leading to this?
There is alot of talk about the symptons here without really knowing or specyfying the problem behind it.
Maybe it was a real good design descicion to change alot in the code for an engine that didn't fit for the work, meaning the business chioce of buying the engine was bad. Or maybe it was a real good descicion to buy a finished engine that didn't need so much work, meaning it was a bad idea to redesign (in that extenct) a working engine.
Is the reworking, in the amount that it sounds like, of the engine sympton of a problem? And if so, what problem?
I'm so broke. I can't even pay attention.
"You have the right not to be killed"
But the engine was worked to do exactly what they wanted. The negative impacts were embraced deemed acceptable. There's no maybes about it because there's no cloud of hypothesis. We know exactly what happened and why.
Since when has buying an Unreal Engine license been a bad business move? Having a design that called for butchering it though, that'd be a bad design move.