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Nepotism and Incompetence - Sigil's Legacy
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."
Brad wasn't the genius behind EverQuest. EverQuest was just a situation. The right game at the right time with the right design. Vanguard now has become the biggest flop vs hype in MMO history. This guy so poorly managed his company, it's amazing he ever had one to begin with... Anybody following Brad McQuaid might as well drink the poison-laced kool-aid now as he has nothing to offer but broken promises and nothing tangible.
Sounds like they subscribe to the Art of Demotivation.
Collector's Edition
f13.net: How long, roughly speaking, did you work for Sigil?
Ex-Sigil: A Few.
f13.net: Were you there during the Microsoft years? Or at least, before the split.
Ex-Sigil: Yes.
f13.net: In terms of hands-on involvement, how much did Microsoft make their presence known?
Ex-Sigil: Initially they stayed fairly hands-off, but as things got further along they wanted to see results of their money.
f13.net: Can you elaborate on that a bit?
Ex-Sigil: We gave demos to high-level Microsoft people frequently. These demos were often just dog and pony shows where content was created specifically for the demo. There was no intention that this content ever be used in game. When you spend 30+ million on a project, you want to see results. They became more and more suspect as time went on, and more and more people got involved. Though, they were mostly just oversight. They never sent anyone down here to actually work on the project.
f13.net: Did they set the milestones?
Ex-Sigil: They set monthly milestones. They wanted a succesful MMOG. They had so many false starts with other things that they just wanted a profitable game.
f13.net: They weren't trying to be the next WoW?
Ex-Sigil: Anyone who thinks you can make a WoW killer these days is foolish to try. You need to be your own game. WoW is a juggernaut and really needs to not be the watermark for success. WoW is a tough subject around Sigil too...
f13.net: Why?
Ex-Sigil: There are a lot of people, Brad included who were certain it would be a short-lived game. Some, in fact, including Brad, never played it. WoW should have been the example of 'look at what a good game can do!' when instead it was often spoken of like a bad thing.
f13.net: As WoW grew, did Microsoft expect more results from their new investment? Did the pressure get put on at any point?
Ex-Sigil: No.
f13.net: Then when did Microsoft grow suspicious that they weren't going to get an actual product out of Sigil?
Ex-Sigil: When they started testing it themselves.
f13.net: Or rather, talk about how and when things started going downhill.
Ex-Sigil: Tt's hard to say really, management never communicated stuff like that to us. Often times I feel like they told us more spin and nonsense then they told the public.
f13.net: So management kept everyone in the dark as much as possible?
Ex-Sigil: Completely.
f13.net: What was the rumor mill like at this time? Surely people had friends and spoke to eachother.
Ex-Sigil: Sure. People who had contacts at MS kept getting info that they were really unhappy with things, and at the same time, we had a set-in-stone release date of June/July... 2006. Or rather - that was when Microsoft was going to cut of funding.
f13.net: How long before those summer days did rumors of leaving Microsoft start flying around?
Ex-Sigil: Management told us they were shopping things around and were entertaining outside investors to complete the project. But actually leaving Microsoft as a publisher was never discussed until they told us it was happening and we were co-publishing with SOE.
f13.net: At this time, how far along was the game itself?
Ex-Sigil: Well... if you call what we shipped 100%, I'd put the game at around 65%.
f13.net: What were the terms of the alliance with SOE at this time, if you knew?
Ex-Sigil: Co-publishing, with Sigil retaining all IP rights... is what we were told.
f13.net: What was SOE's involvement from beginning the partnership up until E3 2006?
Ex-Sigil: No hands-on influence from SOE, only leveraging of SOE assets like testing.
f13.net: Let me backtrack a little bit, simply for background - what was the hierarchy like within Sigil?
Ex-Sigil: There was input all around, but at each level, that input was simply discarded by the decision makers. Basically there were a handful of people who made decisions, regardless of input from anyone else.
f13.net: Wh
O RLY? http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2006/05/10
It's pretty easy to criticize when things go wrong. But in order for something like an MMO to be completed and succeed, a tremendous number of things need to go right. And even when that happens, like with Everquest 2 (which is a fun, profitable game), you still get criticized.
Vanguard had a lot of problems, but if you actually read all the interviews, the core of their problems seems to be excess optimism. They tried to create the end-all and be-all MMO, and they didn't have what it took to succeed.
They didn't have the money or time to achieve their vision. And they didn't have the discipline to narrow their vision to fit the resources they had.
A lot of the rest of their problems seem to be less significant (or facets of the lack of discipline). You can say Brad ought to have been in the office at some events, but that doesn't make any money change hands. Employees' feelings don't make an MMO succeed. Hype doesn't make a bad game good or an over-hyped game bad. The practical things are the ones that matter.
Sigil = Ion Storm
Vanguard = Daikatana
McQuaid = Romero
EQ1 = DOOM
Details here... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daikatana
Same as it ever was.
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.
Today's glaring violations of the unwritten interview rules are: Rule of journalism #1: You NEVER ask yes/no questions of an interviewee. You can elicit more information from the respondent using open-ended questions, which encourage them to talk and provide salient details. Rule of journalism #2: Don't ask leading or biased questions. It happens a few times during this interview. Rule of journalism 3#: You should not be talking more than the subject. Ask more open-ended questions. Break the ice prior to conducting the interview. Have some questions prepared beforehand that will require your respondent to elaborate.
I am on the road crew. This is my stop sign.
To stay out of the MMO minefield I will instead use racing games as an example. Grand Prix Legends on the PC and, well any racing game on the consoles.
GPL is brutal, the cars are a bitch to handle, require real skill, have full length F1 races, are fragile as hell and have random breakdowns. This means that if you make a mistake that could easily be the end of the race, if you drive the full 2 hours succesfully you can still be out by a random failure or simply running out of fuel.
Compare this to console racing games, no random failures, damage model is a health bar (no sudden death by loosing a wheel), races are at most a few minutes, the AI sucks donkey balls and you can usually easily make up a mistake and overtake all of the computer racers even if you are way behind.
Two totally different ways of doing the same game type.
Which is better? Well, for me they both got their place. Console racers on my PSP (I own a DS as well, no big consoles) for a quick fix and GPL and similar on the PC for when I am at home and got the time for them.
Driving a full race, definitly makes you more aware of the risks. Go for first and overtake the leader (well, 2nd, 3rd Oh okay, overtaking the guy with the smoking engine 5 laps behind the leader) OR play it safe and get the 2nd place points and NOT risk wrecking your car on the finishing lap.
Choose right and you win, choose wrong and 2 hours of gameplay are, wasted?
HOLD ON ONE FUCKING SECOND
What kind of player would consider those hours wasted? Are you so shallow that that you think 2 hours spend playing a game is only worth it if you the game tells you, you are a winner?
Surely it is the game itself that should be fun? Two hours racing EVEN if I crash in GPL is FUN! Every single lap. The risk of NOT finishing the race on adds to it. No victory without defeat. What is the thrill in completing Monaco in 3rd place if you didn't feel like it took all your skill and a lot of luck to do it?
I get more satisfaction from GPL then a console racer. Offcourse GPL takes more time BUT it also gives me more.
On the other hand I can't just run GPL while travelling on the train, nor would I want to loose my GPL race because the conductor asked for my ticket, a console race, well, who cares, no risk, no punishement.
So I can see your point BUT I can also see why you are absolutly wrong.
In MMORPG's the "risk" is in taking on higher level mobs, more of them and with the risk of adds. For non MMO players who are still reading, MMO's offcourse got no saves, so death cannot be as brutal and simple as in single player games. Permanent death is considered to extreme as well so avatars when they bite off more then they can chew have to be brought back into the game world. Usually a player respawns at a fixed location with some punishement (loss of XP, temporary stats decrease, equipment loss). Sometimes these punishments can be lowered by travelling back to the area of your death.
How harsh this punishement is depends on a lot of things. Some games have almost no penalty, some make you long for real death.
WoW and Everquest 1/2 for instance both asked you to go back to your place of death to lower the penalty. The difference being that in WoW you travel back as an immortal ghost who cannot be attacked or attack. A save run that is purely a time waster.
In Everquest 1/2 and Vangaurd the corpse run is done while you are alive BUT under influence of a stat punishement. In Vanguard even with your best gear missing. So you have to fight your way back in a reduced state to your death body that is probably surrounded by the same mob that killed you in the first place.
So what does this mean?
Well, lets mention another game, Star Wars Galaxies. At one point people in that game KILLED THEMSELVES to safe having to travel back to base. Suicide as a fast travel option, desirable gaming tactic OR the sign of complete and utter ruin. Discuss.
In LoTRO if you do NOT die when yo
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
Brad McQuaid announces that he will develop and publish games for mobile devices...
I am also an ex-Sigil employee. I was not there for the mass firing... I left earlier. But I have no doubt that it went down exactly as this person says. That's how things are run at Sigil. It's the most unprofessional place I have ever worked. Hell, the McDonald's where I worked when I was a kid was more professional and had better morale than at Sigil. My quality of life went up about 100% after leaving there.
The meeting was even worse than this guy said. I heard that someone asked if there was going to be any kind of severence for people getting fired and when he didn't get an answer and asked again, Donna Parkinson... a direcor... managment... was overheard to say "would someone please answer this asshole." Nice touch, huh? That doesn't surprise me either.
There were dozens of problems with this project. But the bottom line comes down to mismanagement. Brad and Jeff isolated themselves from most of the company, leaving management of the the project, company, and personnel to the directors, namely Platter, Gilbertson, and Donna Parkinson (the former Office Manager turned Director of Business Development). And I can't think of one person at the company that has any respect left for any one of them.
The thing that sucks is that most of us there at Sigil left other jobs to be there. Some people turned down other offers and stuck it out to finish the project and finally get some kind of pay off for the rediculious hours and demands we had put up with. Now we all walk away with nothing. Oh, wait.... not all of us. Some people are house hunting with what they made from the sale of the company. The rest of us got nothing for our years of work and the sacrifices we made.
I keep reading comments like none of these people should ever be given management positions again. I agree. Hell, I wouldn't hire them to run a hamburger stand. And I will leave any project that they are ever attached to in the future. They don't deserve another chance or one bit of my respect.
To all of you in management that are moving on to SOE or got paid for your share of the company, I hope you all sleep well tonight and enjoy your new jobs and your money from the sale (I don't care how much you did or didn't get, you got more than the rest of us). I still believe what goes around comes around. So I am hoping that all of us that you have screwed over the past few years find a way to land on our feet again in spite of our names being attached to your company. And I hope other people finally see you for the back-stabbing, greedy, childish assholes the rest of us from Sigil already know you are.
Just about everyone and their brother was trying to come up with the next WoW, after seeing the money that Blizzard was raking in. Heck, it started before that, with the success of EQ1.
A MMO that has more than 100,000 subscribers is basically printing money. Keep the customers happy, and you have a great revenue stream that keeps on coming. Sure, you can release some non-MMO and make xx% on those 100,000 copies, and have to patch it. Or, you can release a MMO, make that same money, and keep on making money from your monthly fee while you do those patches. Gee, I wonder what many companies tried to do?
Yep, make MMOs. LOTS of them. Look at some of the crap NCSoft is putting out. Some of them are old Korean games that are simply getting a re-skin. I liked CoH/V for simple fun, but most of their titles have been crap.
The problem lies in the fact that most of these MMOs were bad ideas that only got worse as the corruption and nepotism set in. Everyone wants to get in on that "sure thing" revenue stream that a successful MMO has. So, there was some nepotistic investor "bloat".
Brad simply had a major leg up on the competition. Simply having his name associated with Sigil and V:SoH meant that people were going to pay a LOT more attention to this game than any other new game publisher was going to get. And that extra attention, coupled with the Brad "fanboi" syndrome, meant a guarantee of a certain intial sales figure. Hello, Investors!
So, this shouldn't really surprise people THAT much. Sure, you wish Brad and Sigil had better motives and intentions, but making and running a MMO is pure business. Brad figured that out, and became just like any other business man. He did his best to ensure his own profits, and screw the guys who really got him there: the developers.
The sad part here is folks are getting bent out of shape over this, and it happens all the time in other businesses. Someone buys out company, brings in various "pet investor friends", milks the company a little, then sells it off. The employees that made the company get shit on, and the investors make a fortune.
Welcome to the real world, MMOs!