The Long and Morbid Tale of Sigil Games Online: Interview Edition

[Hutch]

Which means when it reaches 100 pages, we run out of money and have to fire half the thread.

Edited for reasons you should spot below.

Well you can't fire me, I'm the gimp QA guy!

[Stephen Zepp]

I've tried to play WWII online, because I don't give a rat's ass about the 'cool' factor. I've also played Aces High II, a persistent world PVP MMO, with tanks, planes and ships, much like WW2 Online, but with ten times the the playability. The latter is a well done small company production, the former, SB.EXE.

Wow...just wow. Small world! "About Us", especially this line:

"Recently, Dale fulfilled a lifelong dream when he took a ride in the P-51 "Mad Max" with noted aviation author Robert Shaw, flying alongside in the P-51 "Crazy Horse". Dale won the ride last year as a prize for taking top place in an eight man dogfighting tournament with Fighter Pilots USA. "

Dale beat me out for first place in that competition, and it was a blast!

To this day I bring up Dale's work in early internet simulation networking (specifically Warbirds), since he was one of the first to commercially recognize and adapt to the concept and implications of large data messages vs MTU size during the mid 90's internet.

[Engels]

My original post could come across as a snipe against WW2 Online, but it came from the same place Trippy was; The vast generalization that all 'small time' MMO companies (like Sigil!) are walking icons of corporate incompetence and mismanaged disasters.

Sigil doesn't fit into the same category as WW2 Online. I have no insider knowledge, but I suspect that CRG had 1/10th of the budget, if that, to work with. I cut CRS some slack, give 'em an A for effort, and hope that some product of theirs some day evolves into something vaguely human, but I just can't get worked up about them. They tried their best during the nascent days of MMO development, and didn't do so hot. Not gonna get my panties in a bunch about that.

However, blandly stating that as a consumer, I should simply expect asshattery in the workplace of an MMO, when there are plenty of successful examples to choose from, got up my nose. CRS didn't have the resources and/or the professional expertise that's now an industry standard to work with. Sigil does not have that excuse in any category you care to pick.

Edit: my morning has been made complete by the word 'asshattery' being in the Spell Check files.

[DarkSign]

I cant believe the sheer incompetence in the MMO industry based off this interview and Brad's interview/response.

When asshats get money and screw things up, the people with the money are less likely to hand out money for a good, non-dumbed down, sophisticated game that players really want.  How how how could so much incompetence be given so much power?

BTW, just joined here. My usual hangout is RPG Codex, the grumpier, anti-MMO version of f13.
Fun stuff to read here since Im one of the lone MMO guys over on that board.

[Endie]

My usual hangout is RPG Codex, the grumpier, anti-MMO version of f13.

Wtf?  Grumpier?  Do they just eschew conversation and punch each other all day?

[Signe]

I went and looked and it's totally not grumpier than here.  I don't think there's any place grumpier than here.  Especially on a Monday.

[HaemishM]

Oliver ("kfsone") doesn't work on a game most of you find "cool" like WoW or Eve. He also is responsible in large part for turning around WW2OL into a playable game. But since it's on the "cool kids can bash this" list, clearly any of his opinions on development methodology (much of which he picked up, you know, before joining the MMO industry) or history (much of which he learned from, you know, talking to other coders, and which I can personally back up - tools development is traditionally the poor stepsister of game development among people without experience) should be ruled out because LOLZORS TAXI TO VICTOLY!1! Despite the fact that, you know, he has personal experience beyond laughing at people who play or work on games not named WoW.

I played WWIIO years after launch. It was STILL terrible. Perhaps he learned how to make tanks not fly, but nothing in WWIIO is really that redeemable beyond the concept. It's a terrible, terrible game. But I suppose if he is responsible for the fact that it runs without crashing every 5 seconds and that heavy armor is gravity-bound, he can have a cookie. Just ONE cookie, though. Don't want to appear soft.

I'm sorry, I missed where this board turned into FoH Annex. Which game is allowed to be cool again? Is LOTRO still cool? Or does that suck now?

No, they all suck. Everyone. All of them. Except the ones we are playing now, but really that's full of future suck, the potential to suck once we get tired of it.

Seriously, it's a sad statement about the state of the MMOG world that he gets any credit for making WWIIO a stable product. MMO's by this time shouldn't have to claim that stabiilty is a triumph of development rather than a standard feature. That stability is STILL a welcome surprise is due to assheads like McQuaid still being given development money.

[sam, an eggplant]

Grumpy isn't necessarily pejorative, it implies a certain cantankerous charm which they entirely lack. The RPGCodex forum is full of elitist, nasty, navel-gazing, pathetic wankers. They would rather there be no RPGs created at all than those they deem unworthy. Examples of unworthy RPGs include baldur's gate 2 and oblivion.

[Ironwood]

BG2 ?  Are you kidding ?  That's insane.

[Comstar]

Seriously, it's a sad statement about the state of the MMOG world that he gets any credit for making WWIIO a stable product. MMO's by this time shouldn't have to claim that stabiilty is a triumph of development rather than a standard feature. That stability is STILL a welcome surprise is due to assheads like McQuaid still being given development money.

It was my understanding, and note I failed my computer science degree some years ago, that MOST large computer projects fail in exactly the same ways large MMOG projects do.

The're just sometimes more entertaining to read about it afterwards.

[HaemishM]

Seriously, it's a sad statement about the state of the MMOG world that he gets any credit for making WWIIO a stable product. MMO's by this time shouldn't have to claim that stabiilty is a triumph of development rather than a standard feature. That stability is STILL a welcome surprise is due to assheads like McQuaid still being given development money.

It was my understanding, and note I failed my computer science degree some years ago, that MOST large computer projects fail in exactly the same ways large MMOG projects do.

Sure. And they do so by not following the examples of those who have succeeded at that type of development, by thinking they know better than everyone else and not listening to people telling them they are wrong. Sound familiar?

MMOG development, game development, software application development, the development of any software follows a standard set of practices or it risks failure without some serious talent behind the development. Even though the MMOG medium is about a decade old, a decade should be long enough for these practices to get institutionalized. And yet the games industry as a whole still views QA as a dirty word. MMOG devs are expecting players to drop $50 on the box (non-returnable) and a nonrefundable $15-$20 a month for as long as we play. Amateur hour is fucking over, it's time to wear the big boy pants as an industry.

[DarkSign]

Take the 1 person for QA thing for example...

Sure, McQ says M$ was going to do it all, but even when they went to SOE things didnt change. FFS, all you have to do is go to the Austin GDC once to find a company that sells a multi-tiered program that does an insane amount of QA for MMOs using an automated system. (My description isnt doing it justice - I watched it at work; it kicks ass)

a decade should be long enough for these practices to get institutionalized.

Agreed. And the tools/middleware is getting much more standardized too. Not just graphics apps but databases and networking protocols etc. At this point a game should rise or fall based on the gameplay - not middle-management screwups.

[Modern Angel]

If WWIIOL is now a playable game that farts rainbows when you boot it up is about six years of development time. That six years is not germane to the conversation or where I was coming from. I'm comparing WWIIOL from release to six months in because that's where Vanguard is. Vanguard may fart rainbows six years from now and we'll compare how swell they both are then.

So kfsone may be a swell guy (Hell, he probably is) and great coder but that doesn't matter. What matters is that both projects were monuments to how poorly run software of this medium is. That's what I was commenting on.

[kfsone]

Lot of responses, so I'll write this all as one...

But a couple of general remarks: My working for WWII Online wasn't intended to impress you but to convey familiarity with "that failing feeling".

And the bulk of my post was concerned with something ex-sigil described in Sigil, and that I see all too often amongst MMO developers, that fear of tools and resistance to automation. Prior to working for WWIIOL I could only speculate, based on my experience as a developer and dev manager, as to this kind of thing: at my first AGC I got to see the blank looks on many MMO devs' faces when Larry Mellon tried to suggest what is basically fairly standard practice outside the MMO industry (http://www.maggotranch.com/gdc2006.ppt http://www.maggotranch.com/austin_2004.ppt).

With all due credulity you work on WWII Online and you're aghast at how this thing was run?

I didn't say I was aghast at how it was run. I recognize[d] many of the symptoms of looming failure that I did when WWII Online was being developed and for many of the same reasons.

You do realize your product set the industry LOW standard for shitty launches right?

Yes, because I joined the team a year after launch and am "credited" with being responsible for getting the company out of Chapter 11 and staying afloat these last 3 years. (edit: put credited in quotes to convey the tounge in cheek sense it is intended in; a story for another time, although actually related)

So what you're saying is that outright lying to publishers is commonplace and accepted in MMO development? I find that incredibly hard to believe.

See my points about MMO devs being so resistant to concepts of unit testing and testing automation and scripting. Publishers are still used to building box games and so MMO devs have to translate their development into something a publisher can understand.

Aka lie.

You're dubious about it being commonplace? Maybe review some of the MMO publishing disasters you've heard of...

Did you work on all those projects? Have you talked in detail with developers who have? Or are you just making stuff up as you go along?

I picked games I was an avid fan of, personally, and which I've talked to a number of devs working on. I'm not trying to sully them with the same general brush, but to pick games I know took a far more traditional dev approach.

City of Heroes and Earth and Beyond were *splendidly* crafted games. If we had awards in this industry, and those games did not get the Raphies for development excellence, it'd be time to start lobbing nukes around. If either had been developed as a single or "co-op" multiplayer game, I suspect they would actually have been significantly more successful.

And look at AC2 - they'd made a reasonably successful game out of AC1, but in AC2 Microsoft were far more hands on and the result was a more traditionally engineered game which failed as an MMO.

Despite the fact that, you know, he has personal experience beyond laughing at people who play or work on games not named WoW.

Maybe we'll call those awards the Lummies instead ;)

C'mon Lum, you of all people know that when someone appears out of the woodwork and says "Listen to me for I have the gospel." and gives a questionable source for us to believe in his veracity there is going to have to be some "Uh, what?" going on.

Or, are you actually suggesting that every Tom, Dick and Harry that posts with an appeal to authority "I'm right because I work on a 3rd rate MMO" should be granted a pass and their views immediately, sans discussion, entered into the gestalt?

I wasn't expecting to radically shift anyones perspectives about Sigil. I was merely trying to offer a little counterpoint to "ex-sigil"s perspectives before rejoining the "wtf, why don't MMOs learn some of these useful skills from traditional disciplines?" part on tools/automation.

CRS (WWIIOL's developer) had previous online game development history before WWIIOL, and they figured they could use it to march into the MMO sector by hiring up and assimilating warm bodies. That's what I take from ex-sigil's interview and from my general observations of Vg's development.

I've since read Brad's interview and I read exactly the same thing there when he describes his regrets about managing a larger team. I don't think it was the size of the team but a failure in integrating both sets of talent and transferring skills in *both* directions. There's no better way to turn a dev into an angry beastie than to try and foist your "superior skillz and experience" on him while suspending him on a spit over a chasm of absent skills that happen to be his speciality.

Like hiring an automation dev and saying "NO! JOO NO MAKE SKRIPTING LANGUAGE! WE WRITE ALL SYSTEMS IN ASS-EMBLER! NOW YOU TYPE 60,000 LINES OF SQL CAUSE WE NO HAVE ADMIN TOOL AND YOU NO REPEAT DIRTY 'T**L' WORD OR WE BEAT JOO ASS WITH MACINTOSH"

guy who worked on WORLD WAR TWO ONLINE ... is throwing stones

works - we're actually still in business.

I draw a comparison in my post between the mistakes made in WWIIOL and Vanguard - particularly in resistance to tools and automation, something that I have spent a lot of time correcting at CRS, although it is not my speciality.

So - the larger, second half of my original post is entirely in agreement with ex-sigil. So, quite contrary to your interpretation, my point is "even a guy who works for WWIIOL knows that", if you will.

I've also played Aces High II, a persistent world PVP MMO, with tanks, planes and ships, much like WW2 Online, but with ten times the the playability. The latter is a well done small company production, the former, SB.EXE.

Now, this actually goes in-line with what I'm saying. Aces High is developed by a *very* small team; almost all the code is done by Dale "Hitech" Addink. Hitech is one of the same ICI/IMagic team that departed the old WarBirds project and formed a new company.

Dale scaled his experience with WarBirds and did a better version of what he already had done. He kept it small, he brought new team members in where necessary, and saw to an effective transfer of skills. AH goes under most people's radar. It's a well developed project.

Horizons and WWIIOL share a common flaw - both teams were actually trying to bottle and sell their experience as developers. The WWII team figured if they hired people and pointed them in the right direction, they could develop a suite of middleware systems roughly hewn into the shape of WWIIOL and rake in money from both angles. You will, perhaps, recall that Horizons was supposed to be the showpiece of AEs MMO engine... People recall the crash & burn of WWIIOL but they forget the laughable failure to corner the portal market that was PlayNet ;) It flopped that abjectly.

its about competence and talent.

I think Sigil had talent, but my hunch is that they lacked the competence to bring that expanded talent set together coherently. And I think Brad's interview to some degree backs that up.

Cornered Rat aimed high - massively fucking high - with WWIIOL.  Too high, of course, it turned out.

And the shame is that I think they actually had the talent on-board to deliver it, but they had too much - I'll be kind - "potential talent" - in the mix to realize the project. Ex-Rats are spread far and wide throughout the industry, from Blizzard to Microsoft.

It's all about actions in this industry. Aiming high and failing is worse than aiming low and succeeding.

I couldn't agree more. Puzzle Pirates?

That's certainly fair: I had big difficulty with the point that you raised in your post, for instance, about the line "WoW is the first MMO that was developed more systematically".  That needs evidence, a frame of reference, and a huge dollop more specificity.

That's understandable, because my statement as written is inaccurate and even contradcits what I say about CoH/E&B. It should say "first successful MMO". I'll have to go source hunting for interviewees/transcripts of the various individuals, conferences and seminars where these devs have expounded on the process.

To this day I bring up Dale's work in early internet simulation networking (specifically Warbirds), since he was one of the first to commercially recognize and adapt to the concept and implications of large data messages vs MTU size during the mid 90's internet.

Its worth noting that joint credit for much of that work goes to John MacQueen ("Killer") who was one of the instigators of the WWII Online project. Killer can be a wee bit the way Brad is portrayed - too much forum time and not enough hands on time.

The vast generalization that all 'small time' MMO companies (like Sigil!) are walking icons of corporate incompetence and mismanaged disasters.

Sigil doesn't fit into the same category as WW2 Online. I have no insider knowledge, but I suspect that CRG had 1/10th of the budget, if that, to work with.

Actually, CRS had a pretty massive budget. Once they'd assembled the team, they were so overconfident about their ability to have their waldo-like team-extensions build the game of their dreaming that they allowed themselves to burn away much of that budget on their "Playnet" portal project.

"Vast generalisation ... of corporate incompetence"? No, I see a pioneering industry which hasn't yet found its formula. From inside the industry - and I'm not talking about my "throne" as host developer for WWII Online, but amongst the conferences, discussions, meetings, emails, blogs, etc it has given me access to - I still see much of what I was seeing as a player and beta tester and, primarily, a professional software developer/developer-manager, which is an industry that has in places thrown the baby out with the bathwater.

Or - more succinctly - I don't think we've left the nascent days of MMO development. I happen to believe the next WoW is dependent not on copying its product but its methods.

On the one hand, ex-sigil points at one aspect of MMO development with fear and loathing (the "dog and pony" show) - I perceive that as his inexperienced perception of how the guys who knew what they were doing were doing. On the other hand, the guy points out the very failing I've speculated on in other MMOs and subsequently had verified by devs I've gotten to know.

That's where I draw my conclusion of a failure to blend skills from both sides in the largely expanded team Brad had working on Vanguard (over the team on EQ1).

Many years ago, I worked for a company that adapted a standardized product to serve as bespoke software for a variety of businesses. We expanded and took on new developers who were less and less a part of the specification process, and thus unaware that the use of preexisting code stock as a basis was part of our sell. The uncorrected belief that they were working on a dog & pony show, IMHO, was what lead to the final wind-down of that company. Our management made them part of the workforce, not brought them on-board the team.

I played WWIIO years after launch. It was STILL terrible. Perhaps he learned how to make tanks not fly, but nothing in WWIIO is really that redeemable beyond the concept. It's a terrible, terrible game. But I suppose if he is responsible for the fact that it runs without crashing every 5 seconds and that heavy armor is gravity-bound, he can have a cookie. Just ONE cookie, though. Don't want to appear soft.

Nawh; I work on the servers - I put the "persistent" in "persistent world" there with server processes that run for years instead of days, and developed a variety of methodologies for detecting and preventing cheaters other than listing in plain-text the URLs of all the applications you don't want people to run in the .exe. Cause, no wily hacker would ever think to look there. No, sir!

Sure. And they do so by not following the examples of those who have succeeded at that type of development, by thinking they know better than everyone else and not listening to people telling them they are wrong. Sound familiar?

Which is really the element I'm preaching. From down here in nowhere land ;)

So kfsone may be a swell guy (Hell, he probably is) and great coder but that doesn't matter. What matters is that both projects were monuments to how poorly run software of this medium is. That's what I was commenting on.

So how does my having the inside skivvy to how one of the two projects achieved it lessen my ability to comment on similarities in both?

[kfsone]

Conclusion:

- Yes, I do infact think that working on WWFlopOnline qualifies me to smell a project walking down the same path when I see it, and I've barked at Vanguard in my time;
- I did actually believe that before I worked for WWII, and was very outspoken about my perceptions of shoddy development before I had any real insight from behind the scenes. I like to call this "15 years experience";
- Yes, I do infact think that some of the contributing factors to the less-than-blooming success of Vg is in part down to less than perfect development practices, especially those highlighted by ex-sigil in his post;
- No, I don't think Vanguard was a dog & pony show, rather I think that ex-sigils perception of it thus highlights a managerial failing within Sigil;
- If I wasn't egotistical enough to think I knew something about software development that was actually relevant to building MMOs I would never have crossed Scott's radar and I would still be developing business and Internet critical servers and applications... Or working for page3.com [NSFW!]

[Modern Angel]

It doesn't lessen your ability to comment on it at all. I eat this stuff up and after a feelgood interview a few days ago I'm reasonably confident that I'm going to be a QA grunt for a big MMO type company soon so I'm interested in hearing the story in detail (just not in this thread). Comment away.

I'm just saying that comparing WWIIOL even two years post release to Vaguard/Sigil six months post release is a little off which is where Lum reprimanding us for being meanypants was coming from. If anyone wants to tell those of us who remember the release and sometimes very weird behavior by some of the Rats back in The Day to cool it, fine, but let's compare WWIIOL six months out instead.

[kfsone]

I'm not talking as much about the development of the project as the management of the development of the project. I taught myself to program by writing a MUD language in 1984 which earned me an invitation to meet with Richard Bartle. But I went business/networking/systems dev instead for 15 years. During that time I've seen hits and misses and worked on the cutting edge of a pioneering industry - the Internet. (I'm the same Oliver Smith some people recall from AmiTCP and nascent domain registry days; not the EQ1 Oliver J Smith or EVE's Oliver Smith)

I'm the guy who replaced Pop Idol's 0.25 million pound online voting engine with a single Apache sever and a little CGI script consisting of little more than "echo >$VOTE_FILE" with delayed (non-realtime) voting adjustment based on the resulting apache logs. TTBOMK this was part of the franchise deal sold to American Idol and is used by Idol franchises around the world still, 6 years later. Something must be paying for my little annual royalty cheque.

But my goal was always online gaming - from the age of 10. So as many dev teams/projects/processes as I was able to observe up close and personal, it was always how it could be applied to game development that interested me. I just took too long making the Internet a household commodity and missed my chance to get in on the gaming wavefront ;)

Many of the people in managerial positions in MMOs today have come from the earlier days of garage game development, and are still indoctrinated with the philosophies of departure from convention that made early games possible. Case in point, Sigil's hostility towards certain types of development, described by ex-sigil. Larry Mellon, Austin 2004, had to overcome the same thing in The Sims Online to prevent a launch disaster - that said, if he hadn't had to, perhaps it wouldn't have slipped so quietly into the night.

Sorry if my posts have read like I consider myself to be game developer extraordinaire. I'm in the same boat as ex-sigil, I'm a dev with prior experience finding myself on the inside looking around and thinking "uh, guys?" but I don't see it as incompetance the way ex-sigil does; I understand why those devs are resistant to this last great stumbling block, the same reasons MMO devs went from not trusting databases with a 1000ft pole to not understanding how Scott could sit on a conference panel and proudly state his database was "flat text files". I went into CRS with a good idea of what to expect, but having not been on that side of the fence, without really understanding what lead to it.

[Morat20]

[snip]

So the short version of that is: "Most of the guys in charge started out by hacking shit together in their garage, and firmly believe that's all you really need -- a vision, a bunch of talented people, and some schmuck fronting the cash".

Color me shocked. It's like the entire software industry, only lagged. (Lagged by, I would bet, by almsot exactly the amount of time between the wide-spread production of software and the wide-spread production of games).

[kfsone]

[snip]

So the short version of that is: "Most of the guys in charge started out by hacking shit together in their garage, and firmly believe that's all you really need -- a vision, a bunch of talented people, and some schmuck fronting the cash".

Color me shocked. It's like the entire software industry, only lagged. (Lagged by, I would bet, by almsot exactly the amount of time between the wide-spread production of software and the wide-spread production of games).

But that's the twist. The wave already passed thru Gaming. While its not unprecedented, MMO Gaming brings together the gaming discipline and more formal dsciplines (particularly in my area, networking/servers) but the gaming guys seem to predate the transformation of regular gaming (or never accepted it) and the older garage mentality somehow still wins out.

[Lum]

not understanding how Scott could sit on a conference panel and proudly state his database was "flat text files".

Sweet, that's one person who was awake in the room!

[Furiously]

But that's the twist. The wave already passed thru Gaming. While its not unprecedented, MMO Gaming brings together the gaming discipline and more formal dsciplines (particularly in my area, networking/servers) but the gaming guys seem to predate the transformation of regular gaming (or never accepted it) and the older garage mentality somehow still wins out.

Name me one famous database programmer. Name me a famous game programmer.

So you're saying the rockstar mentality needs to be replaced with a orchestra mentality?

[Comstar]

Sweet, that's one person who was awake in the room!

Why are flat text files good for a MMOG? On topic: I'm guessing Vanguard doesn't use them.

[sam, an eggplant]

Name me one famous database programmer.

Tom Kyte, Cary Millsap, Jeremy Zawodny, Mike Ault, Donald Burleson, and Steve Adams. These guys are all gods. Of course I'm a DBA by trade.

[kfsone]

And anyway, bollocks to this :)

Color me shocked

... that someone would go to work for Brad McQuaid on "lets do everything wrong about EQ1 again" and be surprized that what they see looks like a dog and pony show :)

That anyone wouldn't recognize Brad for the forumite he is, the Raph who hadn't had his SWG ;) My stand on that goes back to MUD Dev and Brad failed to "prove [me] wrong with [his] next game" (BM, MUD-Dev, June 2004).

[Ironwood]

I'm starting to like Oliver.  Oliver can come round my house and fuck my sister.

I might even have a rational reply once I've fully digested that wall of text.  Can it be put in a flat file ?

[Lum]

Sweet, that's one person who was awake in the room!

Why are flat text files good for a MMOG? On topic: I'm guessing Vanguard doesn't use them.

Speed. (Note that Moore's Law has gone a long way to making this obsolete in the 3-4 year interim).

[kfsone]

Sweet, that's one person who was awake in the room!

Why are flat text files good for a MMOG? On topic: I'm guessing Vanguard doesn't use them.

Lum should answer that ;) Mostly it was the looks of horror on the faces of the rest of the panel. Lum, to me, was a voice of reason on that panel: Don't go Oracle because. Think about what your product needs.

I was awake Scott, just trying not to laugh; your message in that seminar, to me, was "don't move the goal posts just to excuse reinventing the wheel". There's a big difference between what databases can do for a game and what a game should do because a database can. SWG case in point, not least from that seminar. I felt that what Doug Mellencamp was espousing was the flip-side of the coin that leads garage-backgrounds to resist what talent from other disciplines has to offer.

Name me one famous database programmer.

Not my background; I can name "famous" influences, but I suspect they are only famous in my circles, all of whom have developed systems/strategies for development that directly relate to translating single user development practices to massively/multi-user development disciplines that was too elite to embrace those techniques, all of which have relevance to developing MMO game systems: Richard Bartle, Alan Cox, Mark Kosters, David Kessens, Jon Postel, Ronald Khoo, Jef Poskanzer. (I've met all but two, both of whom I've had "origins" disputes with)

Name me a famous game programmer.

Carmack? Mollyneux?

I'm not trying to preach that "mother knows better", ie "ditch the rockstar mentality". That gets the rockstar's heckles up and holds back the industry in the first place ;) But even big rockstars do coversongs, and sooner or later the rockstars need to learn some of the tricks of the guys in the first lists, at least when it comes to developing complex backend systems.

[kfsone]

Sweet, that's one person who was awake in the room!

Why are flat text files good for a MMOG? On topic: I'm guessing Vanguard doesn't use them.

Speed. (Note that Moore's Law has gone a long way to making this obsolete in the 3-4 year interim).

=( I always thought it was just to make Doug Mellencamp look like a used-car salesman trying to convince you that this Oracle Mustang having 2 wheels was a feature that helped reduce running costs normally associated with tire wear ;)

[Apologies to Doug, he just had that vibe about him in that one seminar; I think Scott completely flumoxed the guy, and Scott's explanations and arguments were incredibly good, solid, basic development stuff]

[kfsone]

I'm starting to like Oliver.  Oliver can come round my house and fuck my sister.

I might even have a rational reply once I've fully digested that wall of text.  Can it be put in a flat file ?

I dunno, but if we put it in an ipod and wrap a condom around it, maybe your sister won't need me? :)

[Morat20]

And anyway, bollocks to this :)

Color me shocked

... that someone would go to work for Brad McQuaid on "lets do everything wrong about EQ1 again" and be surprized that what they see looks like a dog and pony show :)

That anyone wouldn't recognize Brad for the forumite he is, the Raph who hadn't had his SWG ;) My stand on that goes back to MUD Dev and Brad failed to "prove [me] wrong with [his] next game" (BM, MUD-Dev, June 2004).

That was sarcasm, I promise -- especially since I've been harping on the lack of professionalism and quality management processes for, oh, the entire time I've been here and a lot of this thread.

I've worked in IT a very long time -- in shops with loose, highly flexible processes that were basically a formal version of the "garage programming" to full-on DoD-specced crap wherein the request to so much as change a font required four reams of paper, six months of meetings, and a Vogon Poetry Reading.

So it doesn't really surprise me at all. My experience has been that the very, very, very cutting edge coders, designers, developers -- don't think they need that software management crap. They are generally quite capable of doing it all in their head, and sometimes can even lead a fairly sizeable team to do it.

But the thing is -- they're wrong. They really do need all that software management crap. Not for them -- but for everyone else. A good manager creates the framework in the background, gives the hot-shots room to do their shit -- and half the time the hot-shots never really realize how much work was done around them to make their little works of genius flourish and grow.

So seeing a bunch of Vision guys, a bunch of hot-shot designers and such, moving on to actually handle the nuts and bolts --- I'm not surprised at all how it turned out. Had Sigil simply hired an experienced, qualified management team --- they probably would have shipped with a playable, solid game. Maybe not a fun game -- maybe not a game with much of a market -- but it wouldn't have been a fucking joke.

[kfsone]

That was sarcasm, I promise -- especially since I've been harping on the lack of professionalism and quality management processes for, oh, the entire time I've been here and a lot of this thread.

No, I got it, I was embracing your sarcasm rather than continuing my defensive ;)

[CharlieMopps]

Sweet, that's one person who was awake in the room!

Why are flat text files good for a MMOG? On topic: I'm guessing Vanguard doesn't use them.

Speed. (Note that Moore's Law has gone a long way to making this obsolete in the 3-4 year interim).

I have to agree there... I kind of stumbled into being a Database admin for a couple years myself. I had written a program that tracked some basic crap for my company. The bigwigs liked it soo much they wanted it converted to a "Real" database. I personally had been storing the data in Text files. When we converted to Oracle suddenly my application was MIND CRUSHINGLY SLOW. We went from instant results to waiting up 3 seconds per query. Mores law doesnt really apply in a corporate environment... our servers arent the newest.

[Lum]

Database vs flatfiles is actually an interesting microcosm of the whole argument about scripting vs hard coding, since SQL is basically a scripting language that allows you to do things with data.

Scripting means that your designers can offlload more of the game's "work" onto code that they write themselves. It makes it far more likely that you will see cool and interesting combat features, for example. However, a script will never run as fast as well-written C code. So, it's a tradeoff. How much do you let your designers script vs how much do you hardcode and rely on programmers to write everything. It's an argument I'm well enmeshed in right now (and ironically, I'm coming down more on the scripting side of the equation!)

Games (like any other large ungainly software engineering project) are the art of the possible. It's always a juggling act between features vs. speed vs. stability vs. efficient budget vs. time to market. You can't have all of the above - it's unpossible.

[Hoax]

Does this all mean you love us again Lum and you've forgiven us for thinking games that dont work aren't cool?

[DarkSign]

So why does the "garage mentality" still abound in MMOs?  Is it because the product is such an undefineable beast? With profits so high that control over them never really solidified into a disciplined method?

Seriously, what parts of the production cycle should be concrete and where does improvisation kick in?

The modeling, texturing, and animation tools are all pretty standard. While the clients are different for each game, is there one game that has something so incredibly hard to code that it requires stepping outside of programming norms?  The AI? The networking? The database?

Or is it just that getting to control the production of an MMO has so many variables that it lends itself to being different every time and therefore requires a less disciplined approach?

If anything, both interviews taken together show that more discipline is needed in some areas, but it can be faked with dog-and-pony shows to the unwary.