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Vanguard Post-mortem, part 2 (http://www.bradmcquaid.com/Brad_McQuaid/Blog/Entries/2009/7/12_Vanguard__Post-mortem_Part_2.html) in which the hero addresses the problem of ego.


This is a follow-up to Vanguard Post-mortem, part 1 (http://www.bradmcquaid.com/Brad_McQuaid/Blog/Entries/2009/6/29_Vanguard__Post-mortem_Part_1.html). And on his homepage, writing about himself in the third person, he says "he's starting to get that itch again": http://www.bradmcquaid.com

He should get some ointment for that itch, stat. And stop picking at it so it gets better and he never gets it again.

Heh, there's curious parallels with Mythic's fate. The best part is how in the beginning he says he's mostly gonna pin it on himself, then goes on to blame Microsoft and other people's egos. And then puts huge professional picture of himself on his blog site.  

Dude lives in fantasy land and I don't mean EQ or Vanguard.

Yup:
burn heretics, 3 star yes-men are better. Not sure if the world needs another WAR, though.

The comments to Part 2 are pretty hardcore: several direct comments on his drug abuse including an accusation that he broke into employees' desks to steal their prescription meds and a remark on how several of the Big Ego designers were banging each other in the office routinely.

Wouldn't it be in his best interest to just move along, and make a game if he is going to, instead of talking about the past.

Talking about making games is what he gets paid for.

I didn't read it as him blaming Microsoft or other people's egos, I saw those comments as 'these are the problems that I didn't deal with correctly'.

Apart from the stuff at http://www.bradmcquaid.com/Brad_McQuaid/Blog/Blog.html there are some earlier posts that have slipped into his archive:

"most people's issue was performance" (http://www.bradmcquaid.com/Brad_McQuaid/Blog/Entries/2009/6/14_Vanguard__Saga_of_Heroes.html)
"I was doing the best I could at the time." (http://www.bradmcquaid.com/Brad_McQuaid/Blog/Entries/2009/6/14_Where_the_heck_have_you_been.html)
"bradmcquaid.com is registered to Keith" (http://www.bradmcquaid.com/Brad_McQuaid/Blog/Entries/2009/6/16_Thanks_for_the_questions_and_comments!.html)

This is very much a "I've learned from my mistakes, look how minor they really were, someone give me money to make a game again" series of blogs.

He's not addressing anything specifically, and he's just running down the subject headers for the post mortem meeting. Is this isn't designed to be the background for a sales pitch, then it's perfectly explaining why things went so wrong. Nothing specific is being mentioned, or exactly what should have been done instead. Just generalized "we didn't get anything in writing" "we hired people whose egos clashed" and the upcoming "system specs were high" and "world size!"

I see no solutions or learned lessons, just acknowledgment that these things were problems.

I took it basically as, "if things had been really done my way, it'd all be peachy". As if his active decisions played no part in the failure.

Brad's bullshit posts aren't even worth a raised eyebrow, the only real surprise is that he let those comments referencing drug abuse and rampant misbehavior remain. It's like he really didn't think people would be attacking him, and didn't even think to check. Wacko.

Seriously. If this is actually meant as a calling card for more development money, with a promise of lessons learned, you really don't want a number of quite specific comments up about your oxycontin habit, details of your mismanagement, and so on, all very clearly from ex-Sigil employees. Though frankly even if he was riding herd on comments, vague stuff about how you needed more money and have learned a few lessons about managing other people's egos wouldn't do it either. I think we're past the moment where everybody wanted an MMO and the suits just started pulling in designers from everywhere and anywhere to make it happen. I'm guessing that if you want to drop some money on an MMO now and you're not a complete n00bcomer to the industry, you're going to want some really specific, clear-headed ideas about design AND you're going to want a record of successful project management. Which pretty much disqualifies outright people like McQuaid, Godager, and Jacobs.

Physician, fire thyself.

Managing talent is the sine qua non of management.

Admitting that you cannot manage talent is simply the Peter Principle made flesh.

Given that he posted a comment later in the thread it's pretty obvious he saw them and chose to let them remain.

True, so he chose to let them remain but not to acknowledge them. That also makes no sense to me.

It's bradmcquaid.com. If some random internet lowlife slandered me as I planned my big comeback on samaneggplant.com, I would damn well delete the post.

Edit: I was replying to a deleted post saying something like "he ignored a troll, big deal."

I'm surprised that wasn't the first post in reply.

I actually give him credit for leaving them up.  Takes balls. 

I'm surprised it wasn't "BURN IT! BURN IT WITH FIRE!"

Probably better for him to have those "strong" comments now on a relatively meaningless blog than later associated with whatever his next project might be...

Ardune asking for a rez

I'm pretty sure you can string together the same words from one internet post and use them again in another internet post.... so I'm not sure exactly what you mean here?

The quest for a rez is working as intended.

On some level you want to say, "Internet superhero is proved to be merely human."  But this guy just keeps shooting himself in the foot.

Irony. (http://www.bradmcquaid.com/Brad_McQuaid/Blog/Entries/2009/6/16_Thanks_for_the_questions_and_comments!.html)


... and in less than a month, he's into the demise of Sigil.

The future isn't what it used to be.

blog#1:  always write things down, especially contracts
blog#2:  manage people well, have professional standards
blog#3:  keep shoes tied, where did I put my bong?


I mean, come the fuck on.   How did this guy ever get money to do anything?

If MMO's were music he would be nothing more then a 1-hit wonder, hes the Rick Astley of MMO's

There aren't many 2-hit wonders in MMOs, for that matter.

One would get the feeling that he has a good idea of who he's dealing with. It may be better not to delete the comments, since the person may be a rather dedicated hater who would proxy up and keep posting the same stuff. The comments might get more detailed, even. Better to let them post the comments there than delete them, start a pissing contest, and have acid reflux follow you around for two or three years.

Hell, you can delete them in a few months so they're not linkable and they become internet legend, anyway.

A friend once told me, that in HR, there are four kinds of people:

Those with talent and no drive. This is fine - you can steer them in the needed direction, and they're never a danger to the project.

Those with talent and drive. These people are great - they require little management, get shit done by themselves and do it well.

Those without talent, nor drive. Easily manageable. These people aren't your star performers, but they are easily directed and won't get ahead of themselves.

Those without talent, but with great drive. Avoid! They will actively screw things up (not intentionally, of course), and require constant vigilance.

That was on my CO's wall when I was in the Marines.

Sage advice. It still boggles my mind that both McQuaid and Jacobs both said star performers were no good for their teams.

I suspect the inoperable phrase is "little management"

Small companies often fail the transition to large companies because the Management that worked when you were small, doesn't work when you are big.

The smartest founders are the ones who promote themselves to the board and hire real managers to manage their growth.

Get it in writing.

Sorry, if you made it past the age of 25 without learning that fucking lesson, AND you actually thought a company like Microsoft would honor verbal agreements made by people who are no longer employed with the company, you really are the oxy-addled drooling idiot everyone thinks you are. You'd think after having been screwed out of the EQ pie by Smedley, he'd have learned that shit before he ever talked to Microsoft. Or at the very least, if he was any kind of conscientious employer (he wasn't, but still), he would realize that not getting things in writing could mean his employees starve. The whole part about "all-star" egos is ROFLCOPTERZ. First off, there were no All-Stars on his team, just a lot of fuckheads who kissed his ass and Keith Parkinson. If you can't manage all-star egos, the problem isn't their egos, it's your management skills.

What is really sad is you guys talking about him so much it's on page 2.  I don't think it's worth the schadenfreude.

We love kicking douchebags?

There is no way this will stop being entertaining. It's the ultimate 2 for 1 deal - the thrills of a 90s era rock star game dev in free fall crash and burn, excited by the catalyst of early MMO standards being exposed for crap. I wouldn't be surprised if his next move was to marry some Romanian girl in space.

In both cases it seems that there were star performers causing problems. However, there is a difference between inappropriate problems - such as husband and wife going at it doggy-style in the next cubicle during the lunch hour - and appropriate problems - such as "these systems aren't working correctly and the design is flawed".

It's not easy to deal with the appropriate problems if you think that you are always right.

Did Jacobs ever actually say that? I remember the horrible yelling man-child saying it, but not Mark Jacobs.

I only recall Barnett speaking on the subject.

Barnett was the source of that particular quote, but various behind-the-scenes views of how Mythic operates make a great case for certain devs not being able to handle criticisms and make adjustments.

Sure, the leadership theory that leaders are completely responsible for the culture of their company is a bit over-simplistic, but Mythic has a poor reputation for understanding its players and Jacobs was well known for arguing his point without ever listening to the other side.

I feel like I'm in that last category. >_<

I got a weird vibe from why he is doing this now.  I just saw the first two installments yesterday.  Later on I was listening to some generic MMOG related podcast.  One of the ones where everyone goes around the horn and for some boring reason have to say what game they have playing this week?  (I deserve scorn and ridicule for listening to it in the first place, I understand.)  I was listening to an installment from a few weeks/months ago and they were talking about Bill Roper and the problems he had and how he managed to work through it by providing a mea culpa and doing a post-mortem on his experiences with his company.  Hearing post-mortem twice in 12 hours for the first time ever as it related to MMORPGs was a bit jarring for me. 

It certainly made me think what some others have said, that this is totally self-serving and a blatant attempt to try and let people know he is available and that he didn't really do anything wrong.  In general I am pretty non-plussed about game developers/designers.  I don't care what they do or who they do it to... if I like the game I play it, if I don't I don't.  The issue with him and Sigil though, has been the first, and so far, only time I have ever actual held serious contempt for someone and what they did revolving around the development of the game and beyond.

The reality though, is if he has an ability to help design an MMORPG he could be useful to someone, and his baggage would mean jack and squat as almost no MMORPG players, let alone non-players, have any idea who he is.  Sure a bunch of board jockeys like myself might chime in, but it would not have any actual impact on a game's development beyond what he could actually do or not do for the game.  I guess that is the big question, though. Does he actually have any skills or abilities to bring to the table?

My assessment of what happened with Sigil is he did not have anywhere close to the requisite business management experience to run that company and did not hire anyone competent, that I know of, to run the operations side.  Being the VP in charge of development in a subsidiary of a massive company does not provide all the requisite experience for running your own business.  He needed someone to run the show from an operations standpoint, and it never seemed to me like that ever happened.  That doesn't even take into account all the design side decisions.

So you throw out the potential of him being any kind of operations guy in a business, and the only question is, is he a capable developer/game designer?  I have no idea myself.  I don't think he did much of that with Sigil, and I think history has clouded how much he really did with EQ.

I don't claim to be a SOE/EQ/Sigil/Brad historian, these are just my personal observations from over the years, and certainly some of my assumptions could be based on things that are factually wrong.

Could you really see Brad leading a design team for someone else?  I would have a hard time trusting that he has the necessary management skills to keep that ship on course.  Could he be a second-banana designer/developer?  I don't know.  Could he keep his ego in check?  So my question is, he is seemingly doing this to get back in the marketplace, but what is his target?  He can't really expect someone to give him the keys to the kingdom again, especially not in this economic climate and with the Sigil history easily known.  So where is he trying to go? 

I would caveat all this with the fact that I have been a massive EQ fan since the beginning.  It offered an amazing and unique experience that has not been duplicated for me.  Hindsight, though, tells me a lot of that was purely coincidental and/or dumb luck.  Not to mention with all the Brad bashing I have read over the years, I question how significant and impactful his role was on the original game.  I certainly realize now that many more people deserve some of that pie, at the very least.

The thing with McQuaid was this was almost the exact opposite.  He was essentially a middle-manager in a large corporation and tasked with running a small business.  Just like it is often a mistake for the small business owner growing big to hold on to the reins, it is at times equally as bad to do the opposite.

All has to do with skill sets really.  Certainly someone could be good at both.  Bill Gates was good at both.  A lot of people are not though, as you said.

http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/nonplussed

Interesting assumption you made there.

lol

Butthurt much?

Aradune needs to get his ass punted to India for his next project.  If this were one of the requirements i'd be all for someone throwing $$ at him.