The Hub of All Blame: A Postmortem

[Alareth]

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!")

I think he may have meant to refer to B.A.D.D. (Bothered About Dungeons & Dragons), an organization formed by Patricia Pulling in 1983 as a misguided attempt to blame her son's suicide on something other than the fact that he was a persecuted closet homosexual with a poor home life.

[Murgos]

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.

I'm confused, I don't see anyway that point A relates to point B.

Corporate expectations may be for a certain economic model but that in no way implies that proper reporting of what you are doing with their money and time or even if you are on schedule or not is in any way an unachievable or unrealistic goal.

Maybe I'm wrong but I really doubt that the way to make a robust MMO is to hand a bunch of money over to some schmuck and then sit quietly and wait in the corner until he hands you back a finished product.  That Brad felt that the onus of proper project reporting was beyond reason for his project just tells me that internal lines of communication were probably muddier than anyone expected.

There is a semi-psychotic post above yours that tries to make the point that Vanguard was fucked simply because it was Vanguard and that no amount of visibility into the project by upper management could possibly have helped it.  The truth is that the process of creating clear, reportable goals and the objective reporting of the progress towards those goals along with solid metrics to show that you had met those goals would have not only gone a long way to helping maintain Vanguards funding through the turmoil of missed dates and milestones but also would have ABSOLUTELY provided a stronger more robust project as a result (No guarantees on it not still being a pile of poo as in this case the lack of ability to provide that visibility into the project was obviously a symptom of the disease and not the disease itself).

[Reign]

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.  

Truly you cant be serious? Read my post several above yours and you'll understand that Vanguard would have still been an utter failure, regardless of the out of game distractions. Why? brad's idea of a good MMO isnt the industry's idea of a good MMO any longer. Period. Give Brad another shot, and you have the same fundamental problem- his ideas are shit in today's world of MMO's-even his so-called 'epic' ones.

Thats the largest problem and most glaring thing that has come out of this drama- perhaps game companies were fooled during this process, but the players werent. We, as MMO community members, are no longer buying the BS Vision (TM) that Brad Mcquaid is throwing around. From 200k purchases of Vanguard to 90k subscribers in a couple of months speaks volumes about what the MMO market thought of his 'Vision' of a game. Its complete garbage.

[WindupAtheist]

Mmm, wreckage.  And newbs galore.  Fun stuff.

[HaemishM]

What a complete raging douchebag.

You couldn't be there at your own employee's slaughter because you would have cried? BOO FUCKING HOO, YOU DOUCHE. I love how he doesn't blame any of the failings of the game on his stubborn insistence on NOT LISTENING to anyone who doesn't agree with him. He says he accepts responsibility, but won't even be there when his employee's get the chop? Maybe they needed to see you cry, you sloppy cunt, just to see there was a human at the other end of the ginormous shaft they were getting.

Fuck you, douche. No one should ever give you money to make games again.

[Morfiend]

Awesome Schild. No matter what side people fall on, its really nice to see these interviews and get a glimpse of both sides. Keep up the good work.

Oh yeah, watch out for Chedder lurkers. He seems nice, but its only the first hit thats free.

[Stephen Zepp]

Two quick points in semi-support of Brad:

1) QA--while I personally would have never made the same decision, I can absolutely see the decision to use MS's existing QA infrastructure with only a token staff on site. First, QA is freaking HARD, and costs a LOT of money, especially setting up the infrastructure. It would be a huge "win" from a business perspective to be able to avoid that up front cost in a new company.

That being said, while I can see the attractiveness from a business perspective, I will also say that making that decision was in my personal opinion one of the top two or three reasons why Vanguard/Sigil is where it is (or isn't), today. I got "lucky" when it came to learning how to respect the importance of QA: my first professional development job was translating patient data in hospitals from one computer system to another--and if there was a "bug", people literally died. Sure, people don't actually die in MMO development due to terrible QA, but the projects do.

2) While I personally think that it wasn't the controlling factor, I do agree with Brad and Ubiq about how hard the impact can be from a tough publisher/developer relationship, especially one that changes mid-stream. Hell, that issue alone is why GarageGames was founded in the first place (to provide alternatives to developers from the standard relationship model), and I personally have watched entire dev teams (Marble Blast Ultra) jam into an office for conference calls to MS--and MBU was (very) successful. Had MS been much more controlling instead of giving us pretty much free reign in MBU development, it could/would have gone very sour. The general nature of publisher/developer relationships in my opinion makes successful game development extremely difficult, and while MS is actually a great publisher to work with, just the nature of the relationship makes it difficult--and once you run into the "we don't understand why it isn't ready, and you need more money"--especially with a changeover at the same time--it would become an increasingly negative factor in the overall success of the project.

Just to reinforce--I don't think the relationship was the only reason, or even a major reason, why the whole thing failed, but I agree it was certainly a contributing factor in the eventual downfall.

[Morat20]

[snip of interesting stuff]
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.

I'm not sure we're talking the same thing -- you're talking about business models, I'm talking about development plans. I mean, they're interrelated -- tracking costs and keeping an eye on projected returns later is part of the whole thing, but it sounded like Brad was bitching about being asked to submit fairly short-term development plans -- which has nothing to do with what MS's expected ROI was.

You think their MS liasons were pushing them towards a more Console/PC development model? If that's the case -- Brad's right to bitch. But MS has eaten two or three MMORPG's so far, and I would have expected them to have grasped the differences between an MMORPG development model (and the associated developmental milestones) and a console title by this point.

Brad speaking of "Several months of milestones with little flexibility" sounds like a more MMORPG-friendly requirement (I would think console titles would have major milestones charted to the actual gold date) -- fairly short term focus (6 months, I would guess), easy to iterate on, etc.

Not having experience -- I'm probably ass wrong -- but a six-month milestone set with really generic true long term (1 year, 3 year, delivery, etc) milestones sounds perfectly suitable to an MMORPG. I mean, just out of my ass -- your first set of milestones (funding -> 6 months) should be talent acquisition, engine selection, a shit ton of management stuff (cost estimates), concept art, really long term shit ("We'd like a playable prototype at 18 months, we'd like full development suite ready 6 months after that, we'd want to be scaling outwards a year later, and in beta a year after that), and the general basic crap of an MMORPG. From six months to a year, it'd be "We'd like two iterations of the engine design, two iterations of the accompaining dev tools -- then on from there.

That's the sort of vibe I got from what was, admittedly, a throw-away comment.

It didn't seem like MS has unreasonable demands on MMORPG development -- it sounded like they simply wanted a real development plan, and for Sigil to create it and more or less stick to it. Brad complained about artistic vision needing flexibility, and the difficulty of actually forecasting those milestones. Which are, to be blunt, bullshit responses.

If MS was asking for a 5 year plan, like the old waterfall models -- yeah, Brad had a serious point. But it sounded like they wanted more short-term plans, in order to access progress in chunks. That's more than doable, and certainly workable in an MMORPG.

[Engels]

I'm sorry, but anything that Brad says in that interview illicits the following image in my mind:

[sam, an eggplant]

I can absolutely see the decision to use MS's existing QA infrastructure with only a token staff on site.

Sure, I don't think anyone disagrees with that. The concern is that they only had one QA guy for the last nine months of development at SOE because they "simply did not have the room to grow". Which is of course insane.

[Simond]

I think he may have meant to refer to B.A.D.D. (Bothered About Dungeons & Dragons), an organization formed by Patricia Pulling in 1983 as a misguided attempt to blame her son's suicide on something other than the fact that he was a persecuted closet homosexual with a poor home life.

Dat's der bunny.

[Stephen Zepp]

I can absolutely see the decision to use MS's existing QA infrastructure with only a token staff on site.

Sure, I don't think anyone disagrees with that. The concern is that they only had one QA guy for the last nine months of development at SOE because they "simply did not have the room to grow". Which is of course insane.

Fair enough, but when it comes down to firing 10 artists/coders (several) months before release to hire QA, it's a catch-22. You probably say to yourself "we'll just do our own QA, because I have no money to hire anyone".

[Xanthippe]

Great job, Schild.  Terrific interviews.

I'll disagree with the above poster who said that Vanguard failed because nobody wants to play that kind of game.  It is nowhere near my perfect MMO, but had it been functional with a smooth launch, I would have been good for a purchase, and 3 months on a sub. 

I'll also disagree with the other above poster who claimed no point to these interviews.  The information gleaned here is very valuable - not just to mmo designers or players but to people in general.  If nothing else, this tale illustrates how important QA or a lack of it is.

It's amazing to me how delusional people are when they have a strong belief even when faced with direct counter-examples.  How people can just tune out anything not in line with their own beliefs while maintaining perfect tunnel vision.

One question occurred to me reading that - has McQuaid never heard of a college course entitled "Software Development"?  They actually teach people how to keep these metrics and complicated things.  It sounds like whatever process they were using at Sigil was not the SOP used by modern software businesses. 

[Hoax]

Truly you cant be serious? Read my post several above yours and you'll understand that Vanguard would have still been an utter failure, regardless of the out of game distractions. Why? brad's idea of a good MMO isnt the industry's idea of a good MMO any longer. Period. Give Brad another shot, and you have the same fundamental problem- his ideas are shit in today's world of MMO's-even his so-called 'epic' ones.

Thats the largest problem and most glaring thing that has come out of this drama- perhaps game companies were fooled during this process, but the players werent. We, as MMO community members, are no longer buying the BS Vision (TM) that Brad Mcquaid is throwing around. From 200k purchases of Vanguard to 90k subscribers in a couple of months speaks volumes about what the MMO market thought of his 'Vision' of a game. Its complete garbage.

Truly, I was only half serious, we haven't assigned a text color to that yet.  I think I specifically said that Brad needed to update the vision and ditch the part that involves things like corpse runs, spawn camping and ultra rare drops.  Instead he needs to focus on his solid ability to make interesting game worlds from scratch.  The few people who like VG have gotten away with saying that the world itself is fairly impressive at times.  EQ1 was quite impressive at times in terms of the world.  Its Brad's gameplay theories that blow nuts not his ability to inspire game environments.  So yes, if he was to get a third shot, perhaps after leveling a char or three to 70 in WoW and re-finding fun.  I'd be all for it.

Game sucks?
We get more of this, which is fun and entertaining.

Game doesn't suck?
We get a good game.

That's called a win-win, I never touched VG with a 10' clown pole, because I knew it was still based on Brad's stupid ideas of fun gameplay.  Having a bad game to laugh about and getting to watch it wreck itself now three times has been fun.  What's the problem?

[Morat20]

One question occurred to me reading that - has McQuaid never heard of a college course entitled "Software Development"?  They actually teach people how to keep these metrics and complicated things.  It sounds like whatever process they were using at Sigil was not the SOP used by modern software businesses. 

It sounds like what Sigil was using could be sort of descrbed as agile development by someone kindly, or "bunch of people hacking away in groups" by everyone else. You had a Vision substituting for design documents, you had Management Fiat substituting for actual deliverables and milestones, and once MS figured out what was going on they dropped Sigil like a hot potato because you get consistent levels of pure shit when you use that as a design process in the real world.

Look, 5 guys coding a game together? You can do that. You can generally keep pretty good track of what the other four are doing and you know who to pester about interfaces, or when something's breaking something else. You know who to go hassle over expanding a tool or whatnot, and the five of you together sort of mentally hack together a "How do we want to put this together" plan that evolves over time.

A company of 100 with a budget of 30 million -- that's different. Vision doesn't substitute for proper management -- Vision helps management make changes, Vision helps everyone up and down the line come up with new ideas or float ways of solving problems, but Vision doesn't make a good product.

You know, Frank Lloyd Wright created some gorgeous buildings. They all started as Vision. But before they made it to reality, they got turned into blueprints, those blueprints were vetted, loads were calculated, changes were made, materials were selected, changed, selected again, the whole thing got started building, mistakes were found, things were changed again, building resumed, and after a really fucking large amount of paperwork, calculations, and drudgery -- he got his pretty buildings. (Although he probably could have hired a consultent -- he was a bit weak on interiors and functionality).

Brad had visions in his head -- what he didn't seem to have was the layer that turned that vision into something 100+ people could work on, in a way that the actual project leaders could check to see what was going on and where the problems were, and what needed to be assessed, changed, readjusted.....

[Reign]

Ahh so you're looking forward to more of this....I must admit, it is a bit gratifying, isnt it, after mostly all us of were flamed to hell by Vanbois on various sites after telling them that this game and Brads ideology would fail miserably....

Perhaps you're right, and we should be rooting for someone to give Brad more money and a new game to develop, just for entertainment value alone..hehe

I'll disagree with the above poster who said that Vanguard failed because nobody wants to play that kind of game.  It is nowhere near my perfect MMO, but had it been functional with a smooth launch, I would have been good for a purchase, and 3 months on a sub.  

Xanthippe - your opinion is very much the minority, proven by rapidly falling subscription numbers and ghostly servers on the VG client side. Look on virtually every MMO fan or information site and youll see thousands of threads talking about the piss poor game design and ideas that went into making this POS.

This is indeed a very bad game my friend. Vanguard has a great WORLD, and some good visuals, views, and neat sites to look at- but we're talking a game here....not a scenic painting. While you think a good launch would have saved it, that is nowehere near the truth. A good launch just would have made it impossible for the 'bad launch' excuse usage when everyone finally saw that the core game is just...well...downright terrible, and had been done over 3-4 times before with other MMO's....I mean the exact same game, except with updated graphics...people dont want that crap anymore...they have options now- and will have some very good options with the new MMO's releasing this year.

Besides- launch wasnt even THAT bad- the minor nuisances that became major annoyances didnt start hitting til a couple of weeks afterwards. My guild and I played the first 4-5 days without crashing for the most part, and without having any major technical problems. It was the EQ2 clone-like systems, boring combat, tediously slow travel, un-imaginative abilities and gameplay that did this game in (in general, brads ideas of 'fun' that no one else agrees with).... Anarchy Online shows us that games can survive bad launches and thirve for at least a small amount of time if they are fun to play or are innovative in some way or another. Vanguard had none of these qualities, and therefore is surely destined to fail because of a combination of technical diffculties and lack of inspiration.

[Yegolev]

One question occurred to me reading that - has McQuaid never heard of a college course entitled "Software Development"?

Brad's an ar-teest.  Or maybe just an artist.  I haven't taken any business classes and it would acutally be a benefit to me, so I'm sure he did not either.  Unfortunately for many people, this was his big "Welcome to the real world, hippie!" kick in the ass.

Morat does a great job explaining these things.  Communication is key to any project, and when you reach a certain size then you have to have people and processes solely dedicated to that.  These processes and professions are not mysteries, either.  Good use of architect as an analogy in this case.

[Vinadil]

I am probably in a very small minority of people that chose VG as a PvP game.  I follow a VERY different game that is still in development, and when many of the people there said they were headed to VG to try out the FFA PvP server, well I went along.

What I found was a game that has the Potential to be the best PvP experience since Shadowbane... and a game facing many of the same problems as SB... it just won't run, especially when you actually try to play anywhere NEAR other players.  Combine that with the fact that most of the people developing the game don't SEE any of the same potential that exists on the PvP server and you have a game that has potential beyond just landscape... but will likely never realize it.

[Endie]

I'm with Xanthippe.  I never tried Vanguard because I could see what sort of game it turned out as.  But some of the ideas might have tempted me to try it if brought to fruition better.  I really do want a big world with "meaningful travel".  Eve has that, for instance: a very large gamespace with travel that introduces risk and costs, allowing for hauling as a way of making money, for instance.

Brad's ideas of how to keep people playing suck (make the goals take longer to get to), but there were elements of the dsign that could have been useful additions.  What these interviews are showing is why that wasn't the case.

And haemish, does the milkman of human kindness not deliver chez vous?  I could have written that post for you:

"[Opening, short sweary insult]

"[Longer middle paragraph, mainly just venting more Tourette's but pretending to be all hard-nosed about someone whose world just fell apart]

"[closing obscenity]"

[Reign]

I am probably in a very small minority of people that chose VG as a PvP game.  I follow a VERY different game that is still in development, and when many of the people there said they were headed to VG to try out the FFA PvP server, well I went along.

What I found was a game that has the Potential to be the best PvP experience since Shadowbane... and a game facing many of the same problems as SB... it just won't run, especially when you actually try to play anywhere NEAR other players.  Combine that with the fact that most of the people developing the game don't SEE any of the same potential that exists on the PvP server and you have a game that has potential beyond just landscape... but will likely never realize it.

I always love these rather vague explanations of 'potential'. You almost sound like Mcquaid there..exactly what potential do you see in the PvP aspect that you could not apply to any other game and say 'Oh this has potential!' Sure, every game with PvP has potential to truly do something special, but I havent see anyone implement anything worth drooling over yet- the closest thing would be the city/kingdom/zone takeover possibilities of warhammer, or perhaps the Seige Tower/fortress system of AoC in their PvP zones- but Im a bit skeptical even of these systems. Vanguard would never come close to implementing something liek that, so Id love to see what kind of 'potential' you are referring to.

[Xanthippe]

I'll disagree with the above poster who said that Vanguard failed because nobody wants to play that kind of game.  It is nowhere near my perfect MMO, but had it been functional with a smooth launch, I would have been good for a purchase, and 3 months on a sub. 

Xanthippe - your opinion is very much the minority, proven by rapidly falling subscription numbers and ghostly servers on the VG client side. Look on virtually every MMO fan or information site and youll see thousands of threads talking about the piss poor game design and ideas that went into making this POS.

This is indeed a very bad game my friend. Vanguard has a great WORLD, and some good visuals, views, and neat sites to look at- but we're talking a game here....not a scenic painting. While you think a good launch would have saved it, that is nowehere near the truth. A good launch just would have made it impossible for the 'bad launch' excuse usage when everyone finally saw that the core game is just...well...downright terrible, and had been done over 3-4 times before with other MMO's....

Now, I haven't heard a great deal about the actual gameplay in comparison to the showstopping bugs, crashes and game weirdness that people had actually trying to play the game.  The actual gameplay ideas I heard about plenty before launch.  So what I mean by good launch was being able to actually play the game for 4 hours without a crash, no showstoppers, and a steady march toward "betterness."

If indeed Vanguard wasn't that way (I never tried it) then my apologies.  But I would have played it despite my hating that particular style of hardcore/punishing playstyle even if all it was was a properly polished, working diku.

I probably am a minority in that I will buy and try any mmog that comes down the pike - but only if it actually works.

[Reign]

I actually edited my post while you were responding, and mentioned that I, nor my guild really had a bad launch at all. So yeah, if you didnt play it, I'll sum it up for you- you could go and play EQ2 and youll have a pre-beta beta of Vanguard with lesser graphics and a smaller world. A large world with good views and art was about the only thing Vanguard succeeded on, and Im not sure Brad can take the credit for that... See 'Keith Parkinson'.

On another note Im really glad Keith does not have to go through this debacle. He was a really good guy and is really the one who ended up making the biggest positive impact on a dev team full of negatives.

I know many that will say that the world, architecture, art, scenic horizons, and clever geography of some things are really why people stayed onboard for longer than several weeks. I will admit that some of the cities in Vanguard are breath-taking, but sadly, it does not last long to keep players from leaving. Art cannot save a game alone. It definitely helps immersion, but if the game is counter-balancing that aspect, it doesnt mean anything.

[Engels]

Kieth Parkinson's contribution is probably one of the only reasons to even play VG.

[Reign]

Amen to that.

[Nebu]

A large world with good views and art was about the only thing Vanguard succeeded on, and Im not sure Brad can take the credit for that... See 'Keith Parkinson'.

I have to agree completely.  This was the only reason that I bothered to play VG at all.  It was an interesting new world to run around in and explore.  I must admit that the classes were at least moderately interesting as well.  Fairly balanced with some interesting abilities.  It was a pleasant surprise in a game I gravitated toward for world exploration.  

[HaemishM]

And haemish, does the milkman of human kindness not deliver chez vous?  I could have written that post for you:

"[Opening, short sweary insult]

"[Longer middle paragraph, mainly just venting more Tourette's but pretending to be all hard-nosed about someone whose world just fell apart]

"[closing obscenity]"

Not for McQuaid. He has now had 2 chances, and he's fucked them both directly in the clownass. He's not listened repeatedly when myself and folks less sweary than me have told him how misguided his ideas of game design are, and how his game would fail partly because of it. If I had been WRONG about any of the Vanguard predictions, then maybe I might have some kindness left for him, but I haven't been at all wrong.

His world fell apart long ago, he was just too much of an egotistical douche to see it. And he brought 100 people down with him because of said ego. There are 50 people out there without fucking jobs anymore because of his myopic ego AND he didn't even have the sack to go and face them when they got shitcanned. How much kindness should I have for someone like that?

[Sky]

You know, seeing the big boss break down in tears might have been classier than some dude making sarcastic jokes about buying a house (shades of needing an upgrade on a ferrari, eh?).

[Yegolev]

Tears or not, Boss Man should be there when you cut loose your people.

[Pyran]

It sounds like what Sigil was using could be sort of descrbed as agile development by someone kindly, or "bunch of people hacking away in groups" by everyone else. You had a Vision substituting for design documents, you had Management Fiat substituting for actual deliverables and milestones, and once MS figured out what was going on they dropped Sigil like a hot potato because you get consistent levels of pure shit when you use that as a design process in the real world.

Another name for it is Extreme Programming 

Yeah its pure shit in a hippie-ish socialistic type of way.

[Ominous]

One of the complaints about the firing was that it was emotionless.  Brad bawling certainly would have added some emotion to the scene.

[Murgos]

The original post was edited and now this one no longer makes sense.  Have fun wondering what was here ;-)

[wraith808]

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.

Actually, it's not.  Not that QA isn't a necessity.  But that you could end up in this situation isn't necessarily a fault.  My company does only internal unit/assembly testing... we're a consulting firm.  QA is handled by the client.  If they decided to drop us, and we had to try to release the product on our own, we'd be up the creek.  Of course, in our case, it wouldn't matter, since they're paying for a product for their use.. we get our money no matter what.  But to bring this around to the case of Sigil...

If Sigil was depending on MS infrastructure for their testing, then they wouldn't need a large internal QA team.  But getting dropped would have exposed them to this issue.  What he can be blamed for in this case is not bringing it up as a risk to SOE and getting them to foot for QA if Sigil couldn't afford it.  You can develop a product without QA during the beginning of the development cycle- it increases risk, but it is possible if the project is planned well, which this one apparently was not.  You can't however release a product with no QA.

[Sauced]

Yeah its pure shit in a hippie-ish socialistic type of way.

Yeah, because team work and communication are such awful pains in the ass.  I mean, if you worked in that type of environment you'd actually have to admit that you don't get things right the first time, or that some of your code might not be as fucking awesome as you think it is.  Fuck talking to other people and soliciting opinions, I'm a fucking rock star and I'm gonna sit in my cube with my head phones on.  You'll see my shit when it's done in 2 months.

[wraith808]

It sounds like what Sigil was using could be sort of descrbed as agile development by someone kindly, or "bunch of people hacking away in groups" by everyone else. You had a Vision substituting for design documents, you had Management Fiat substituting for actual deliverables and milestones, and once MS figured out what was going on they dropped Sigil like a hot potato because you get consistent levels of pure shit when you use that as a design process in the real world.

Another name for it is Extreme Programming 

Yeah its pure shit in a hippie-ish socialistic type of way.

Actually, XP does work, but it requires discipline.  Most people that claim to be following XP are actually just a

"bunch of people hacking away in groups"

[AaronC]

Some of those questions were out of line and I'm surprised Brad answered them.  Speaks to his character to be so forthright - regardless of what you think of Sigil, Vanguard or whatnot.

I'm sure he'll bounce back and learn from the Sigil experience.  He has had more success and given more to this industry than any of the snarky douchebags taking potshots on this forum, that is for-fucking-sure.