The Hub of All Blame: A Postmortem

[Simond]

Going off on a tangent from part of the interview, I was wondering why no MMOGs have tried to tackle a more Christian mythology...then I realised that I was being dense. The backstory for The Burning Crusade is pretty much that - on one side you've got a huge demonic army lead by the fallen Titan (read: angel) Sargeras. The Burning Legion also tends to conquer by temptation and corruption rather than outright conflict.

On the other hand you have the Naaru, personifications of the Light (read: more angels) trying to help out the mortal races - especially the draenei, who've been exiled from their homeland, persecuted, and had attemped genocide practiced against them.

Anyone know if MADD and their ilk have protested against Blizzard yet?

[Comstar]

Great interview, and kudos for getting Brad to give the answers to some hard hitting questions.

Someone needs to get a documentary crew to follow around the next MMOG to fall flat on it's face. I had no idea there was a sex scandel in Vanguards failure too. 

[Furiously]

Brad, have you given any thought to calling each employee that you couldn't bring yourself to face and apologizing for not being there and explaining yourself to them?

I understand how hard it would be to be there to do it, it would tear me apart to have to let go 1/2 of a team that I put together, but I don't think I could face myself or any of those people in the future if I didn't.

[JWIV]

Fantastic interview and tragic.  If nothing else, it provides some valuable insight as to how this entire thing got off the rails so easily.  Brad simply doesn't understand the roles and responsibilities of being a leader.  He owed it to those people in the parking lot to be there and to tell them that it was over and instead he ducked out of it.    Brad may or may not be a good creative type, but he should never be entrusted to run anything ever again.

[sam, an eggplant]

Brad's ego is even more powerful than I previously believed. I could easily imagine him making all the mistakes he did given past performance, but the most surprising part of the entire vanguard debacle is this very interview. I can't believe he actually took an interview and believed he could successfully spin this debacle. That's just astonishing.

I reckon the ex-sigilites didn't sign a non-disclosure, given all the dirt that's being slung around.

[Jobu]

These series of interviews, while interesting, confuse me a little.

Now bear with me. Who does this serve? I mean, the people at Sigil for the most part, know what happened and what put them there because they were there everyday witnessing it. The people most responsible for the Vanguard's mistakes know what they did, whether they want to accept it, well, that's a different story. So it seems that things like this, kind of airing the dirty laundry, are really in poor taste. Almost a selfishness to be the guy who reveals it all. Kind of like how Nino carries himself on FOH as the cool guy they can count on to talk about the inner workings. It's like posturing for the fan base and the internet, and there's no real point to it other than personal gratification. I can certainly empathize with the entertainment value it affords for people on the outside reading it. But I dunno. It just seems shallow.

[Almighty God]

Going off on a tangent from part of the interview, I was wondering why no MMOGs have tried to tackle a more Christian mythology...then I realised that I was being dense. The backstory for The Burning Crusade is pretty much that - on one side you've got a huge demonic army lead by the fallen Titan (read: angel) Sargeras. The Burning Legion also tends to conquer by temptation and corruption rather than outright conflict.

On the other hand you have the Naaru, personifications of the Light (read: more angels) trying to help out the mortal races - especially the draenei, who've been exiled from their homeland, persecuted, and had attemped genocide practiced against them.

Anyone know if MADD and their ilk have protested against Blizzard yet?

Mothers Against Drunk Driving? Whaaa? What does that have to do with anything? Also, there seem to be a lot of hints floating around that the Naaru aren't actually good. (not evil either, more like "we will make the universe pure by purging it of all imperfection!")

[schild]

These series of interviews, while interesting, confuse me a little.

Now bear with me. Who does this serve? I mean, the people at Sigil for the most part, know what happened and what put them there because they were there everyday witnessing it. The people most responsible for the Vanguard's mistakes know what they did, whether they want to accept it, well, that's a different story. So it seems that things like this, kind of airing the dirty laundry, are really in poor taste. Almost a selfishness to be the guy who reveals it all. Kind of like how Nino carries himself on FOH as the cool guy they can count on to talk about the inner workings. It's like posturing for the fan base and the internet, and there's no real point to it other than personal gratification. I can certainly empathize with the entertainment value it affords for people on the outside reading it. But I dunno. It just seems shallow.

You're right. newspapers should only be the front page, car rentals and stock quotes. Let's nix those local arts, leisure, food, entertainment, sports, and back pages.

After that, we can kill all the jews.

[Ironwood]

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Sugar Tits.

[sam, an eggplant]

It just seems shallow.

It is shallow. It's basically malicious gossip. And it's entertaining, and for the most part newsworthy. Nothing wrong with that.

[Hoax]

I'd like to thank Brad for actually talking to Schild and answering questions.

Schild you did an awesome job but you could have perhaps called him on how delusional he has always been with regard to WoW.  Great read though.

To the new lurkers, welcome welcome.

[Jobu]

It just seems shallow.

It is shallow. It's basically malicious gossip. And it's entertaining, and for the most part newsworthy. Nothing wrong with that.

I don't mean to imply there's anything wrong with it. We've all gone through our share of corporate drama, and I certainly understand the urge to shout from the highest rooftop about all the white elephants in the conference room. Just kind of thinking out loud, I guess.

[AcidCat]

Now bear with me. Who does this serve?  It just seems shallow.

No way, this is awesome insight into the business of making these games and how it can all go terribly wrong. Good intentions/cool ideas aren't enough. There needs to be good business sense and management and discipline, and a team effort with the coders to do stuff that actually works. Such a tragedy is of interest and value to anyone with an interest in this industry - it's a huge cautionary tale on how NOT to do things.

[Slayerik]

For being shallow it got pretty deep into the Vanguard debacle. Props to Schild on the interviews, its the kind of stuff I had expected (or maybe hoped) to see since this is the only MMO discussion board I go to. ;)

[Engels]

Man, Schild, just too awsome for words.

I don't think folks realise the kind of Mad Skillz it takes to pull off what Schild did here. F13, probably one of the most hostile sites towards McQuaid, where even a token gesture of support for the man gets run out of town on a pole, tar and feathers, and Schild gets an exclusive interview, marked by probing questions while keeping McQuaid docile and as 'open' as McQuaid is able to be.

Schild, you are MAN ON FIRE!

[McCow]

As the Sigil turns...

What's next? Inoperable brain tumors? 

I always knew the gaming industry was small but now it appears it is more inbred than a mountain village in Switzerland.

[LK]

These series of interviews, while interesting, confuse me a little.

Now bear with me. Who does this serve? I mean, the people at Sigil for the most part, know what happened and what put them there because they were there everyday witnessing it. The people most responsible for the Vanguard's mistakes know what they did, whether they want to accept it, well, that's a different story. So it seems that things like this, kind of airing the dirty laundry, are really in poor taste. Almost a selfishness to be the guy who reveals it all. Kind of like how Nino carries himself on FOH as the cool guy they can count on to talk about the inner workings. It's like posturing for the fan base and the internet, and there's no real point to it other than personal gratification. I can certainly empathize with the entertainment value it affords for people on the outside reading it. But I dunno. It just seems shallow.

I think it was fair that he was able to get both sides of the story.  Without McQuaid giving his opinion (as spun as it seemed to be), it would have been just a one-sided blame game.

[Ixxit]

No way, this is awesome insight into the business of making these games and how it can all go terribly wrong. Good intentions/cool ideas aren't enough. There needs to be good business sense and management and discipline, and a team effort with the coders to do stuff that actually works. Such a tragedy is of interest and value to anyone with an interest in this industry - it's a huge cautionary tale on how NOT to do things.

Exactly, and I also think it finally puts the nail in the coffin in the beleif that you can still release an incomplete  game and finance it's completion with subs. Four years ago this was just par for the course, and I imagine Vanguard would have been quite sucessful.

Cautionary tale or not, I still feel for all  the various  parties. This has turned out to be a real tragedy for all involved, including Brad.

Thanks Schild for another great interview, and Brad for sharing.

[Endie]

Good interview. For what's its worth, I think he was telling the truth about why he wasn't there at the massive firing. At least partly. I think it really would have torn him up. Especially because that moment was pretty much the death of Sigil as Brad envisioned it and the sign that his dream was over. That had to be hard for him to deal with. So yeah, that part is very understandable.
...

I agree.  I think I said that might be the reason in the last thread.  Of course, the tendency to get visibly upset rather than offering at least a depiction of strong leadership is not a great thing in some roles (CEO) but on a human level, seeing someone try something and have it fail, I am glad I feel a bit empathic there.  I'd be worried if I didn't.

One final note, the stuff about the QA guy actually sounds fairly plausible to me. To some extents Brad was counting on MS to be the infrastructure and Sigil was going to be the creative end of things. When that relationship fell apart...well...any chance at all was gone. I'm not even sure why SOE bought Vanguard.

Again, I agree.  Though the quandary he faced is what leadership at that level is about: you have one QA person; your anticipated resource is gone; you seem to need all of the resources you have to continue what they are doing.  What do you cut?  The real gift is to be able to cut that Gordian knot.  Maybe someone with les of a commitment to making their Perfect Game (TM) would have seen more obvious solutions.

I think that anyone that imagines he won't get another shot in some capacity is kidding themselves due to continuing deep pain about what happened to their druid in EQ.  If he actually sits back and looks at what happened then he'll learn a lot of valuable lessons, not least about where his best position in the industry is, and what he's better finding others to do.

Yeah, i was sympathetic to Brad.  Flame away.

[squirrel]

Great series of interviews schild. Rare to see the inside of this kind of event so close to it occurring. Kudos.

[Engels]

When you have a sick game, you have to invest in QA. QA are the team to figure out things to make a sick game healthy again. You can continue pretending your game isn't sick, and you get the now forseable results.

If you take the blinders off, you realize that everything has to come to a screeching halt and QA has to have several hands in the goings on, like a triage team at a hospital.

What we had here is quite simply an inability to see that your product was in crisis.

[sam, an eggplant]

I don't pretend to know what was actually running through his head so I won't comment there.

Brad's explanation for lack of QA personnel is absolute bullshit. QA isn't a luxury, it's a necessity. If your toilet broke and the landlord refused to fix it, you wouldn't just let it go, right? You'd sue him, or move out, or maybe even pay for a plumber yourself. Because no matter what, you need a toilet. There's no debate.

How can you say Brad will get another chance after this incredibly expensive and public debacle? I'm not saying that he'll never work in the industry again, just that he won't be in an executive or lead design position.

[Morat20]

It slowed down development significantly. Managing the game from their perspective, well... We tried to explain how MMO development is different from Zoo Tycoon and that explanation just wasn't being agreed with or understood - one of the two, I'm not sure. They wanted detailed schedules going out for months that were fairly inflexible. The more artistic a project is, the less schedulable it is down to the long term. I'm all for scheduling - but you have to be flexible. What if a technology doesn't work out? What if you find a better way to do something? You have to be flexible. Especially in pre-production. They wanted everything systematically and that it would take exactly this amount of time, this amount of art assets, and this amount of people to make, say, a dungeon. Are we talking about a premiere dungeon? A level 30 dungeon? A raid dungeon? A dungeon for core gamers? A dungeon where we can reuse certain art assets? Are we talking one where new art is used? There are a lot of variables there. There's not a lot of flexibility there. Our interpretation of that early on is that they don't understand MMO development. Later on, we determined that the decision was made that this is how the studio would be run regardless of the game.

That bugs me. In one sense, Brad is absolutely correct -- developing an MMO is totally different from making Zoo Tycoon. On the other hand, developing Zoo Tycoon is completely different from making Doom 3. Very, very, VERY few software projects are ever all that much alike.

There are ways -- people use them each and every day -- to actually forecast the stuff Microsoft wanted, even for an MMORPG. It required understanding the stuff Microsoft wanted, understanding the processes that you used to come up with that stuff, and tailoring those things to your particular project -- but it's imminently doable.

Brad just didn't know how. (Or he didn't want to do the boring work -- I suspect it was "Didn't know how", though). Which was why he was a very, very, very bad choice for that position. He should have hired an actual project manager to manage the thing, while he played company cheerleader and second-rate PR guy. I mean, especially for fucking Microsoft. On the one hand, lack of that documentation probably kept MS in the game a lot longer than they would have been, but on the other hand -- if they'd done the planning and management, Sigil might have been able to keep this from clusterfucking so badly.

So yes, Brad -- you can actually give Microsoft those things they want. In fact, they -- being a big grown-up software development house with actual successful products under their belt, are even aware of the exact sort of issues you bring up. They just expected you to be professional about it and basically manage the project. Depending on what you meant by "schedules going out for months that were fairly inflexible", it might have involved a bit of hammering out with MS about your actual process, but I bet they would have gone for that. BUt "schedules going out for months that were fairly inflexible" isn't really an obscene requirement for a multi-year project. In fact, if it's just "months" and not "years", you have all the damn flexibility you could want.

Surely you weren't developing it all in one go, right? You had to have had some form of internal goals and milestones -- features coming on line, tools becoming available to developers, game areas textured/populated, etc? You weren't just all hammering away at fucking random, were you?

If anyone is ever stupid enough to give this man money again, they better require he hire a competent, experienced manager with full authority to run the damn thing. Let Brad write all the vision plans he wants. Someone has to do the work.

[Calandryll]

As was Mr. McQuaid's notion that he should still be operating in a public-facing role.  I don't know Mr. McQuaid and I really hope that everything turns out ok for him and everybody.  But he needs to stay away from message boards for a while, certainly in an official capacity.

Yea I figured that would be the one thing SOE would want to stop. Not trying to kick Brad while he is down, but his posts consistently had the opposite effect of what he was trying to accomplish. Constantly reminding players that the game is broken and why it shipped in a bad state isn't the way to build confidence. There didn't seem to be an overall strategy to the posts to help turn things around. It was all very reactionary.

I think they'd be MUCH better off letting a community person take over that role and drive the message going forward. I've never thought "higher-ups" should be on the forums. No matter how much they think otherwise, the will never know the communtiy as well as the OCR rep. If I may illustrate what I mean with a graph I recently posted on a community relations e-mail list:

[voblat]

I agree.  I think I said that might be the reason in the last thread.  Of course, the tendency to get visibly upset rather than offering at least a depiction of strong leadership is not a great thing in some roles (CEO) but on a human level, seeing someone try something and have it fail, I am glad I feel a bit empathic there.  I'd be worried if I didn't.

Trying and failing, I wont ever give someone a hard time for that.

I will criticise for the firing situation though.

Hiring staff is easy. Hiring the right staff, not so much.

Firing staff is the hard part, especially when its down to you not them.

To put it simply, someone who knows they cant face the hard parts of employing staff , if they have any respect for other people, should not employ staff.

If you cant say thanks and goodbye, you have no business profiting from their labour.

There is no excuse for treating people that way, none at all.

You may say he was upset, Im fairly sure the people losing their jobs were too.

[Vinadil]

I actually play Vanguard... and one of my thoughts these last few months was, "How do people spend so much time and money on a project and yet miss so many obvious things?"  The only answer I could come up with was that the project itself became the sole focus, and not the "real" project, as in what was actually being created, but this surreal project that existed in the minds of some of its creators.

But, the more I read about this whole thing, the real question going through my mind is... who in the world first looked at Brad and said, "Now that guy is CEO material... I think I will give him 4 years and $30million to create a game."  He might be the world's best salesman or pitch artist, but you have to think the guys at MS have been around the block enough times to see through that kind of junk and actually assess a persons ability to RUN a project like that.  Fact is, the buck doesn't stop at Brad... I think it goes to show a failing a step or two above him.

[tentimes]

I've read posts from both Brad and Smed when they were obviously drunk - I remember one of Smed's being pulled by the moderators only half an hour after he wrote it - he was obviously steaming.

So....

Can someon please call to Smeds house tonight with something in a big brown bag? This has been better than Dallas so far and popcorn sales must be through the roof. Absolutely awesome reporting ;)

This will be remembered for the next 20 years in the industry for sure, as a lesson hom not to develop a game.

Thing is though - it's a good game. I've been playing since paper D&D 25 years ago and it has sound stuff. There is just this huge vacuum of content. Maybe it is a good thing that it didn;t limp on like a wounded thing under inept management - we might get the game now. Just MHO.

Again - well done in the reporting (go get Smed drunk!)

[Engels]

Microsoft is an enormous entity; its an entire city's (Redmond) engine. Think Boeing, not SoE. Sigil was just one of the flies buzzing about Microsoft's bovine tail. Within such an impersonal entity, its no wonder that Sigil got tossed out with yesterday's garbage if it didn't meet corporate expectations ASAP. Blaming it on Zoo Tycoon's team is a scapegoat; it would have happened to them eventually with any Microsoft supervisory team, regardless of expertise.

[MrHat]

I took the role of CEO very seriously, that I was responsible for every person there.

You are not allowed to say that. 

Responsible means you gave a shit.  Not being the one to fire them in PERSON means you didn't.

You can tell yourself whatever lame excuse you want.

[Reign]

I think most of you- not all, because a few of you are pointing it out in  a small way- but most of you are missing the most important point of all:

Brad is naive about the fact that has game ideas, philosophy, and systems are still a good thing! But what he doesnt get is that, even if MicroSoft would have stayed on-board, he made all the necessary deadlines, all the bugs were fixed and the didnt have the massive hardware issues- this game would still be a failure, and MicroSoft would be thrown under the bus with it....Why? Because its a piss poor game, period.

Lets not all get caught up in the 'MicroSoft/Zoo Tycoon killed it' debate, because 1) We all know thats not the case, and 2)This game was dead long before MicroSoft dropped Vanguard.

What we should all learn from Vanguards development is this: This MMO market and it's communities are just plain tired of the same lame shit like monotonous, un-inspired grindfests, boring MMO combat systems that we've had for going on 9 years now, clones of past ability systems (Vanguard = EQ2 ability system), harsh and overdramatic death penalties that further slowed down the game, mind numbing and slow travel, and the whole 'our world is bigger than yours and is seamless' BS that some devs actually think makes a difference when it doesnt.

This industry wants new and innovative ideas (like AoC's NPC hiving ability and mounted combat), new combat systems (like Tabula Rasa, AoC, PotBS), new MMO genres other than humans, elves, and dwarfs, oh my!, new ways of PvP implementation (kingdom and city takeovers like Warhammer) - these are the key things for new companies to remember in this MMO day in age...If new companies start developing the same old crap we've had for the past nine years, the gaming community will do exactly like it did with Vanguard, and reject the game completely- regardless of the outside distractiosn and intercompany drama and politics.

Vanguard has shown us that if the game is just a rehash of old ideas and brings nothing new to this MMO genre, we might as well go back to a polished WoW.

Whats even more hilarious is that Vanguard was originally touted as a 'Third Generation MMO'. Boy we're all getting a good laugh from that one right about now.

[Ubiq]

That bugs me. In one sense, Brad is absolutely correct -- developing an MMO is totally different from making Zoo Tycoon. On the other hand, developing Zoo Tycoon is completely different from making Doom 3. Very, very, VERY few software projects are ever all that much alike.

There are ways -- people use them each and every day -- to actually forecast the stuff Microsoft wanted, even for an MMORPG. It required understanding the stuff Microsoft wanted, understanding the processes that you used to come up with that stuff, and tailoring those things to your particular project -- but it's imminently doable.

Trust me on this one - Brad's absolutely right.

Corporations and even divisions within corporations tend to build themselves towards a business model, and they tend to understand that business model very well.  They get kind of wierded out when presented with something different, and MMOs are VERY different.  It takes a ton of handholding to get a major corporating to understand something different.

Back in the day, Origin had a hell of a time getting EA to truly invest in UO in the way it deserved to be invested in - even though the game coasted over the $100M in revenue mark without breaking a sweat, and remains one of the most profitable franchises that EA has ever produced.  And given what EA has produced over the years, that's saying a lot.

A huge part of the problem is that MMOs look so different on the balance sheet.  Companies that ship a lot of console games like EA want to spend $1 buck to make $5 or $10.  In an MMO, spending $1 buck often earns you $2 or $3.  When you combine that with the fact that it cost $30M to make VG whereas it probably cost less than $3M to make Zoo Tycoon, and you can see how a number cruncher can easily get spooked.

Turnover on the publisher side tends to hurt as well.  Even if you manage to educate your liaison and convince him of the way the online world works, he'll often quit before the game is finished (not uncommon, given an MMO dev cycle is roughly 3 years), and you have to explain it all over again.  It also factors in the return on investment problem as well.  The $2-3 return on an MMO dev/live dollar spent is hugely profitable because of the long life of the game.  However, if your liaison is career-ladder-climbing, he doesn't expect to be there long enough to see the payoff.  To him, it's better for his career to turn around a fast buck, which means throwing more support to the Zoo Tycoons and less to the ambitious MMOs that may not turn a dime of profit until after being live 2 years.

This was all increasingly obvious to me when I was trying to get my startup off the ground.  It became quickly apparent that, despite any issues that SOE or NCSoft might happen to have, they were vastly superior partners for a 3rd party developer because they understood and were wedded to how MMOs get made and make money.

[DataGod]

"But, the more I read about this whole thing, the real question going through my mind is... who in the world first looked at Brad and said, "Now that guy is CEO material... I think I will give him 4 years and $30million to create a game."  He might be the world's best salesman or pitch artist, but you have to think the guys at MS have been around the block enough times to see through that kind of junk and actually assess a persons ability to RUN a project like that.  Fact is, the buck doesn't stop at Brad... I think it goes to show a failing a step or two above him."

I can tell you from direct experiance trying to get money for a project or a business for that matter related to the games industry and NOT having a reputation within the industry or the relationships built up within it is absurdly impossible, without selling your soul to some VC. The Games industry like most others is about relationships, and exclusivity. The only thing this little debacle does is make the bar higher and harder to reach for people without those connections in the interim. Fortunately for the indie garage developers with good ideas, they're starting not to need those connections because theyre taking it directly to the playerbase sans the 30m deal, the publishing, and the distrobution.

As far as PM and ability, who knows, Brad might be great at both or neither. Being a CEO is knowing your limitations, and delegating control, while maintaining expectations. It doesnt matter if the project is 30k for a small client or 30m, you treat both the same and expect performance by your organization.

30m, 4 years and 100 employees? With rampant Nepotism, no apparent PM, no design paradyme, no professional HR person? Thats a complete CF, and shameful.

I'm trying not to kick this guy when hes down, I dont know him, hes probably decent, but those are some pretty expensive fucking lessons on the backs of 100 employees, some of whom have kids and a mortgage I'm sure.

Some people never have that luck and opprotunity for a shot like that.

This isnt a lesson in mismanagment its a lesson in hubris and ego. There are books I'm sure hes familiar with that deal with these two topics.

[Hoax]

Brad's explanation for lack of QA personnel is absolute bullshit. QA isn't a luxury, it's a necessity. If your toilet broke and the landlord refused to fix it, you wouldn't just let it go, right? You'd sue him, or move out, or maybe even pay for a plumber yourself. Because no matter what, you need a toilet. There's no debate.

This is a fucking gem, because he compares QA to a toilet while making a good point.  I love it.

I want to restate again that at least Brad has guts, unlike say, the turdbrains who developed AutoAssault who have never even attempted to explain why that game became such an abortive pile of shit.  Or perhaps the people responsible for DDO explaining why there were no dragons in the game at launch.  Dont even get me started on the AC2 team...

I would like to see Brad get another shot, just because if he fails it'll be spectacular and he'll talk about it publically.  Also I think if Brad could get over the parts of his "vision" that involve cock blocking the fuck out of his players and stick to the "large, inspiring world" bits and made a third game that worked it could be kind of cool, in theory.  Cooler then LTRO or whatever the latest fucking existing IP cashcow regurgitation happens to be.  

[Nija]

Brad and George Broussard should team up.

[fuser]

Schild you did an awesome job but you could have perhaps called him on how delusional he has always been with regard to WoW.  Great read though.

Excellent read.

 I don't know how anyone involved in development of a MMORPG can disregard the good aspects of WoW. It would be interesting for some insights to future Vanguard plans after SOE has already licensed the Unreal 3 engine. I guess they now have some good people from Sigil that have experience with Unreal.

To the new lurkers, welcome welcome.