Part one of Brad McQuaid's Vanguard post-mortem

by William Dobson Jun 30th 2009 at 11:00AM

Filed under: Fantasy, MMO industry, Vanguard

When most people think of Vanguard, they usually remember that the game had an extremely rocky launch period. A lot of things were changed and fixed after the game was sold to Sony Online Entertainment. The original developer Sigil Games Online (headed by former SOE superstar Brad McQuaid) was also sold in this deal. McQuaid's blog welcome-page mentions that he's been on a break from the games industry since the above events in 2007, but "as of late, he's starting to get that itch again...". It was probably this itch that prompted him to start a multi-part post-mortem of his time with Vanguard at his blog.

McQuaid said that he will be addressing topics in chronological order, and part one deals with what he calls the first big mistake that Sigil made: get everything in writing.

"The first mistake that would have a serious impact later in development was the verbal agreement with Microsoft that Vanguard was to be a first rate, AAA title."

It sounds like a change at Microsoft led to a completely different level of support for Vanguard; less funding, less time, and overall a different outlook on what Vanguard was to become.

"So the moral of the story is one that should have occurred to us: get everything in writing, get it into the contract, because even a company like Microsoft can suddenly undergo significant changes to its management and teams. And when those changes do happen, you might as well be dealing with a new company – anything and everything can change, and change quickly."

Part two of the post-mortem will be dealing with the good and bad aspects of creating an all-star team, and we'll bring it to your attention when it surfaces.

Tags: brad-mcquaid, get-everything-in-writing, post-mortem, sigil, sigil-games-online, soe, sony-online-entertainment, vanguard

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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)

Seth said on 11:24AM 6-30-2009

Brad... Please... Don't scratch that itch. Just go away from MMO's. You have a warped sense of "fun", masochistic some might call it. Just stop. Please.

Damn Dirty Ape said on 11:42AM 6-30-2009

Has anyone confirmed that this is not a fake? I seem to remember Brad always being a bit more......verbose.

SgtBaker said on 12:10PM 6-30-2009

I'm with you on this one. I still think it's a fake.
Can anyone from Massively confirm, this is really Brad? (one of you guys must have his cell number?)

Celestian said on 11:44AM 6-30-2009

Once again he just tries and blame everyone else but himself. The problem wasn't the money people, the problem was the quality and direction of the game. People can cope with missing features, they can't cope with a buggy game that won't run on most of the PCs in existence.

Skypp said on 12:11PM 6-30-2009

Yep.

Problem #1.

Hired Brad McQuaid.

Hades said on 12:57PM 6-30-2009

He released a game at a time when most people had P4 or early C2D PC's, and the thing required a monster rig and monster video card to play. The most successful games are the ones where people can play on modern PC's or PC's within the last five years.

Vanguard, AOC, and War all ran horribly on PC's that even met their recommended settings, and how many folks are willing to blow 3,000 on a new gaming rig for 1 game when they run everything else just dandy?

Bad gaming performance = bad word of mouth = few friend referrals = low subs.

Twarsong said on 2:01PM 6-30-2009

O'RLY? Microsoft's legal department allows verbal long-term agreements?!? I would think that would be ok for mom & pop operations, but for the almighty-conglomerate-overlord-that-is-micro$oft? Riiiigght.

JGaltTK said on 3:00PM 6-30-2009

Did MASSIVELY go out and find the douchy-ist pic they could find of this guy, or does he just normally photograph as a douche?

Just curious.

Brian! said on 3:19PM 6-30-2009

Er... follow the to the source blog. Notice pictures there.

Still, like people say here it is rumored that this might just be a fake blog. As Masively is just a Blog as well, there is no one around with investigative journalism requirements to verify the authenticity of the source.

I have my doubts.

Arath said on 3:17PM 6-30-2009

You'd be surprised how many companies do not actually detail everything in a contractual written agreement between the parties involved.

I do very much look forward to seeing how much detail we get through this post mortem. Vanguard is a unique case I think in the industry and one that attests to how much can go wrong even with the biggest and brightest.

Arath said on 3:16PM 6-30-2009

You'd be surprised how many companies do not actually detail
everything in a contractual written agreement between the parties
involved.

I do very much look forward to seeing how much detail we get through
this post mortem. Vanguard is a unique case I think in the industry
and one that attests to how much can go wrong even with the biggest
and brightest.

Also that image is actually from his Blog.

Atnor said on 3:22PM 6-30-2009

yep, I also am looking forward to what Brad has to say about that situation, esp. when he gets to more game-related developments, like for example the horrible performance issues mentioned above....

Also, dont be afraid to check out Vanguard and give the trial a chance. It's come a long way since that rocky launch :)

CindyL said on 3:28PM 6-30-2009

The shape the game launched in was shameful. Vanguard was a lesson to every mmo developer don't launch if you don't have 90% of your bugs resolved. Minor glitches and typos is one thing, but huge memory leaks and game breaking bugs shout not be present in a commercial product.

I do think the big companies like Microsoft are partly to blame when it comes to pressure, but only partly. I'm scared about part two of this, I really hope he doesn't dare to blame the people under him that would be the extreme leader faux pas and no one better ever hire him again to lead anything. Simple reason is, the captain is the ship, ship goes down so do you and you're the one to blame.

The Claw said on 7:12PM 6-30-2009

"Vanguard was a lesson to every mmo developer don't launch if you don't have 90% of your bugs resolved."

Well, they started development in a time when MMOs could and did launch in fairly crappy states, and got away with it.

But then.. while they were working.. WoW came out and basically rewrote the rulebook with regards to the level of quality people would demand in future MMO releases. And Vanguard launched still trying to play by the 2003 rules.

dk20 said on 3:35PM 6-30-2009

The *only* things wrong with Sigil and Vanguard was the horrible management (at the root of which was Brad) they were subjected to. Brad McQuaid is the biggest spinner of the truth I have ever seen. Don't believe a thing he says.

From his blog, "When Vanguard wasn't as successful as was hoped, Sigil sold the company and Vanguard to Sony Online Entertainment." Oh, you mean when Brad's failure led the game to its miserable fate? When Brad disappeared from the office for weeks? When all the employees were called to a parking lot and fired on the spot? So the fat cats at Sigil could buy new houses with their shares?

Sigil truly had an all-star cast of programmers, writers, and artists. They could have created something amazing, if they were allowed to do their jobs, but at every level the management's complete incompetence prevented this (not listening to suggestions, not staying in development longer, etc).

Here's is an interview of an ex-Sigil employee of how things really went down in the last few weeks.

http://f13.net/index.php?itemid=561

Brad is a LOON and needs to keep his "itch" to himself.

Zar said on 11:07PM 6-30-2009

I really tried to like the game when it was released, even played with some friends for several months. Hundreds of dollars in system upgrades and hours of frustration made me eventually leave the game.

First it was the early release to blame, then the current state of hardware that was to blame, then the expectations of the players to blame, the list goes on and on. So if you had another 30+ Million dollars, a few more years and today's hardware we might just see the game that he envisioned in say another few years...

He's just "itching" to get into another game development position while the rest of us get a rash just thinking about it. Brad showed great potential, but situations like this occur when you put the cook in charge of the restaurant. Perhaps that's what Microsoft observed when they started to pull the reigns in. SoE perhaps believed that he did fantastic work under their management direction in the past and they maybe could have pulled off a decent release. You can only go to the investors so many times though before they expect you to deliver a product, its all about the bottom line in the end.

CindyL said on 11:56AM 7-01-2009

"SoE perhaps believed that he did fantastic work under their management direction in the past and they maybe could have pulled off a decent release."

Or maybe SOE saw it coming and were already prepared to buy it off Sigil if things should go wrong, which apparently everyone knew except Brad. I wouldn't put it past Smedley... :)