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Nepotism and Incompetence - Sigil's Legacy

Posted by Zonk on from the let-this-be-a-lesson-to-you dept.

Visceral Monkey writes "In the wake of SOE's purchase of Sigil and Vanguard , there are a number of questions to be answered. The commentary site F13, purveyors of usefully cynical opinions, have a pair of fascinating interviews on the subject. The first is an anonymous discussion with a former team member, laying out the working conditions at Sigil prior to the end. The second is a talk with Brad McQuaid, one of the men behind EverQuest and the captain of the debacle that is Vanguard. Both interviews highlight the nepotism, incompetence, corruption, and evasion that were the last day of Sigil Online Games."

3 of 68 comments (clear)

  1. Deja Vu by Organic+Brain+Damage · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Sigil = Ion Storm
    Vanguard = Daikatana
    McQuaid = Romero
    EQ1 = DOOM

    Details here... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daikatana

    Same as it ever was.

  2. Most MMOs will be flops by ceswiedler · · Score: 3, Insightful

    The MMO industry is shaping up to be much like the movie industry. There's a ton of money to be made, and everyone knows it, and everyone wants a piece. But making a blockbuster, or even breaking-even, is HARD. Really hard. And expensive. And so the only way to be profitable is to make a lot of them, some good and some bad, and hope you come out ahead.

    Worse, at least the movie business is rather mature. There are lots of people who know what they're doing, more or less. The MMO business is in its infancy. It's as if movies had been invented in 1970, then Jaws comes out in 1976, and you have a dozen production companies striving to reproduce that one huge success.

    In this day and age, just getting an MMO out the door is basically a success.

  3. Re:How to conduct an interview 101 by Kohath · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Real journalists tend to conduct the most worthless, uninformative interviews. Have you ever read an interview about a game before? The journalist hasn't played the game. The questions are extremely generic because the journalist doesn't have a clue.

    Journalists are some of the least-informed, least-interesting, least-curious people. If they don't care about the subject of the interview, you get PR drivel. If they do care, they are biased and not objective and after the interview is edited, you basically get the journalist's spin rather than information.

    These interviews were good because the interviewer cared about the answers and the subject.