Originally posted by sepher

What I've never gotten is the claim that Brad's a bad manager/CEO and that was his only fault.

It seems to me that business was the only part he largely got right; tens of millions of dollars in investment, Microsoft and Sony as publishers during two different periods, independent investments in-between those two, four or five years of development plus and the game still made it out of the door.

You gotta account for his business successes, which all totaled to ":the second most expensive MMO ever" as he called it.

Brad was a great business man. When someone is the utmost creative authority within their company with five some years to spend 30 million dollars and a bad product is produced, well I'd personally probably examine how good of a designer he is rather than his business knack.

The reason why he was able to build those relationships is because of his past experiences.  Microsoft, it has been said, it not in the business of MMORPGs.  MFST creates awful software and releases it early.  I THINK --speculating-- MFST was determined to do that with Vanguard: Saga of Heroes and Sigil resisted it.  MFST pulls out, unable to secure financing to continue development, Sigil partners --joint venture or acquisition or whatever the form-- with SOE.

The product is released too early.  I have been playing Vanguard just about every day since the free time, and I think I will write a re-re-review of the game.  I really wish it were released in the way it is now.  The game has a richness, depth, breadth, and complexity to it that most mainstream MMORPGs lack. 

Business partners go flat all the time.  I apologize if this sounds mean, but I think SIGIL, under Brad's leadership, did suffer from bad management from financing to marketing to just coding Vanguard.  The vision, on the other hand, is most impressive.  In fact, I think there is a big market for the "vision," but it is costly, timely, and difficult to properly execute.  Vanguard, I think, approaches the "complex" (deeper crafting, diplomacy system, diverse range of Quests) and "challenge" (deeper dungeons, death penalty, less hand-holding) and "community-oriented" (grouping, crafting-economy, etc.) and "exploration" (enormous world w/ ship travel) experience that many of us want.

Originally posted by sepher

What I've never gotten is the claim that Brad's a bad manager/CEO and that was his only fault.

It seems to me that business was the only part he largely got right; tens of millions of dollars in investment, Microsoft and Sony as publishers during two different periods, independent investments in-between those two, four or five years of development plus and the game still made it out of the door.

You gotta account for his business successes, which all totaled to ":the second most expensive MMO ever" as he called it.

Brad was a great business man. When someone is the utmost creative authority within their company with five some years to spend 30 million dollars and a bad product is produced, well I'd personally probably examine how good of a designer he is rather than his business knack.

I have worked in many tech startups and some that went on to become large businesses.  What I've learned in the last 30 years is that the guy that startes a business is the guy with a big idea.  The idea and presentation of the idea is what gets investment.  Passion is what gets the business off the ground and gets it started.  These guys are idea men with a passion for their ideas.  Investors and the people around them inherit their passion making for an exciting start.

However these same people are the people that kill most companies right out of the gate.  The problem is idea guys are visionaries.  They imagine something and think that it is obvious.  They think everyone is passionate.  They also tend to surround themselves with people that adopt their viewpoint without question, ie worshipers.

What happens is the company devolves as it grows into chaos.  You see it becomes too big for the vision guy to be everywhere and the vision guy thinks everyone shares his vision.  Where the reality is the vision guy needs people that can tell him NO.  People that can manage day to day development.  Basically nuts and bolts people.  Vision people that run successful companys don't run the company at all :) they recognize that they lack that ability and put themselves in the possition of chief visionary or CTO etc, and they bring in a nuts and bolts guy to run the company and be CEO.  Unfortunately most of the time these vision types have too much ego and are too detached from people to notice that they are failing till it is too late.  I remember one CEO like this I advised.  I said we need to have you hold a moral meeting and spend time kinda rallying the troups.  His response was that was a waste of time.  People knew what to do and just need to do it.

Anyway Brad is a classic idea man that is great at starting something but without a CEO partner ends up loosing control, becoming disillusioned and fails.   Vanguard is a fantastic vision and everyone will admit that it has awesome potential.  Vanguard could have, if it had been executed properly, been the next big thing for 5-10 years. 

I'm hopeful that Brad will return to the MMO world and having the experience of Vanguard under his belt, learned and grown from it, so his next venture will be an awe inspiring success :)

Well said ethion.  I think you nailed everything spot on. 

Brad is fantastic at creating games, but lousy at running a business.  I've worked with someone very similar for ove 20 years and without someone there to keep the visionaries grounded projects will implode. 

If brad allowed someone to keep things in line things could have turned out fantastic for vanguard. 

I would rather have seen Brad and Sigil get their hands on something like the Hyborian IP that FC butchered; heck they might even have done a better job with WAR than Mythics dismal effort. It would be interesting to see him take a shot at something new and big, it's not like there is anything much out there to look forward to now....

Originally posted by ethion

Originally posted by sepher

What I've never gotten is the claim that Brad's a bad manager/CEO and that was his only fault.

It seems to me that business was the only part he largely got right; tens of millions of dollars in investment, Microsoft and Sony as publishers during two different periods, independent investments in-between those two, four or five years of development plus and the game still made it out of the door.

You gotta account for his business successes, which all totaled to ":the second most expensive MMO ever" as he called it.

Brad was a great business man. When someone is the utmost creative authority within their company with five some years to spend 30 million dollars and a bad product is produced, well I'd personally probably examine how good of a designer he is rather than his business knack.

 

I have worked in many tech startups and some that went on to become large businesses.  What I've learned in the last 30 years is that the guy that startes a business is the guy with a big idea.  The idea and presentation of the idea is what gets investment.  Passion is what gets the business off the ground and gets it started.  These guys are idea men with a passion for their ideas.  Investors and the people around them inherit their passion making for an exciting start.

However these same people are the people that kill most companies right out of the gate.  The problem is idea guys are visionaries.  They imagine something and think that it is obvious.  They think everyone is passionate.  They also tend to surround themselves with people that adopt their viewpoint without question, ie worshipers.

What happens is the company devolves as it grows into chaos.  You see it becomes too big for the vision guy to be everywhere and the vision guy thinks everyone shares his vision.  Where the reality is the vision guy needs people that can tell him NO.  People that can manage day to day development.  Basically nuts and bolts people.  Vision people that run successful companys don't run the company at all :) they recognize that they lack that ability and put themselves in the possition of chief visionary or CTO etc, and they bring in a nuts and bolts guy to run the company and be CEO.  Unfortunately most of the time these vision types have too much ego and are too detached from people to notice that they are failing till it is too late.  I remember one CEO like this I advised.  I said we need to have you hold a moral meeting and spend time kinda rallying the troups.  His response was that was a waste of time.  People knew what to do and just need to do it.

Anyway Brad is a classic idea man that is great at starting something but without a CEO partner ends up loosing control, becoming disillusioned and fails.   Vanguard is a fantastic vision and everyone will admit that it has awesome potential.  Vanguard could have, if it had been executed properly, been the next big thing for 5-10 years. 

I'm hopeful that Brad will return to the MMO world and having the experience of Vanguard under his belt, learned and grown from it, so his next venture will be an awe inspiring success :)

very nice Eth :)

Originally posted by Phelcher

Why, he single handedly created this genre' ..!

Vanguard is a great game, ATI/Nvidia and Microsoft didn't come threw on time for that game to perform respectively. I bought an 8800 and it ran Vanguard great.

Performance is what killed that game. Brad was too ambitious about the "realistic" style of VG. To me, that was the only mistake he made.  If he's getting back in the game, I'm going to contact him...   as I have a $12mil/month revenue game in my head! (gauranteed)

What killed the game was that Brad must have taken some bums or old beer buddies as programmers, SOE fired tham all at launch it it took them 2 years to get the game running acceptable.

Vanguards general ideas works well but the programming team and some of the art is really bad. Brad should learn to find someone who actually knows what they are doing instead of the first guy he talks to.

You know really why Wow is so succesful? 2 big reasons: Strain who did the initial programing and basic work, he is a genius (Diablo, Warcraft 3, Guildwars) and the Kaplan who did the rest. Awesome guys and if Vanguard had one of them it would be a success now. Of course Blizz also had a huge fanbase but a competent head dev who actually can program himself is a must for a MMO.

So if you planning a new game, don't bother unless you can get a great head programmer, all badly programmed games have failed even if the content is great.

I don't really blame Brad for VGs failure but he really should pick his team better.

And EQ didn't create the MMOs, not even the 3rd person ones, a game I played called Meridian 59 did that. It did refine them and made them fun to play however.

Whow, thats nice.

Lets hope we either get some creative input for Vanguard (it certainly could use some, or the devs will probably add more horrible grinds like Shores of Darkness), or he actually starts another MMO project (so theres a successor to Vanguard at least at the most distant horizont).

I'd work with him, but I'd make sure there was some real project management this time to ensure some results at the end of it all.

No offense but I don't see Brad coming back to VG. I would be really suprised. The combination of Vanguard and McQuaid's actions towards the end of it isn't a winning combo and once a game hits it's peak numbers, adding McQuaid certainly wouldn't boost VG's numbers enough to pay him what he probably would want to get back into the video game business.

I actually would be less surpised if we saw SOE announce EQ3 with McQuaid at the helm and the promise to bring back the magic that was EQ1 for all those players who grew tired of WOW and EQ2 . Smedley has said they weren't done with games in Norrath yet.

Only problem is that 38 Studios with McFarland and Salvatore and them are already doing a game that sounds like the spiritual successor to EQ1 from what little we know. Maybe they could hire him?

To this day, I've read so much stuff that I'm not really sure what Brad did on EQ1 that was awesome and what came from other people. I think it will be neat to see if he can prove he is the massive genius he was credited with a few years back. I definitely miss my Fantasy MMORPG fix.

Originally posted by Letsinod

Brad needs to stay retired.  Too many stories of explicit office affairs, mismanagement, missing CEOs, and drug abuse.  Ask anyone at Sigil and they will tell you they never seen Brad after the SOE acquisition and that was May 2006.  The game went Gold in Jan 07.  Brad got lucky with EQ1 and it was a great game no doubt, but I wouldn't give him a penny for any new titles.

QFT

Brad McQuaid is a damn moron and the development TEAM worked on VG while he went around dicking with off-roading and TCG's, all while trying to hit up/steal employees drugs for his opiate addiction. He got insanely lucky with EQ no doubt because of that development team as well.

Brad McQuaid is a waste of space and air. Fuck him.

Originally posted by declaredemer

Originally posted by sepher

What I've never gotten is the claim that Brad's a bad manager/CEO and that was his only fault.

It seems to me that business was the only part he largely got right; tens of millions of dollars in investment, Microsoft and Sony as publishers during two different periods, independent investments in-between those two, four or five years of development plus and the game still made it out of the door.

You gotta account for his business successes, which all totaled to ":the second most expensive MMO ever" as he called it.

Brad was a great business man. When someone is the utmost creative authority within their company with five some years to spend 30 million dollars and a bad product is produced, well I'd personally probably examine how good of a designer he is rather than his business knack.

 

The reason why he was able to build those relationships is because of his past experiences.  Microsoft, it has been said, it not in the business of MMORPGs.  MFST creates awful software and releases it early.  I THINK --speculating-- MFST was determined to do that with Vanguard: Saga of Heroes and Sigil resisted it.  MFST pulls out, unable to secure financing to continue development, Sigil partners --joint venture or acquisition or whatever the form-- with SOE.

 

 

The product is released too early.  I have been playing Vanguard just about every day since the free time, and I think I will write a re-re-review of the game.  I really wish it were released in the way it is now.  The game has a richness, depth, breadth, and complexity to it that most mainstream MMORPGs lack. 

 

 

Business partners go flat all the time.  I apologize if this sounds mean, but I think SIGIL, under Brad's leadership, did suffer from bad management from financing to marketing to just coding Vanguard.  The vision, on the other hand, is most impressive.  In fact, I think there is a big market for the "vision," but it is costly, timely, and difficult to properly execute.  Vanguard, I think, approaches the "complex" (deeper crafting, diplomacy system, diverse range of Quests) and "challenge" (deeper dungeons, death penalty, less hand-holding) and "community-oriented" (grouping, crafting-economy, etc.) and "exploration" (enormous world w/ ship travel) experience that many of us want.

What problem does Vanguard have that you can trace directly to mismanagement and not bad design? 

The biggest problem that you cite is that it was released too early; but again, five years is a long time, especially with a hundred person staff at the peak of it.

Were those five years were mismanaged? I'd say so; but I'd say they were mismanaged by bad design decisions.

The "Vision" part is easy; anyone can have a good idea. Whether or not a person is a good designer though should be based on what they put into their design documents and then administrate it. So for example, the decision to use the Unreal 2 engine and rewrite it had to have come from Brad; and all resulting problems he has to be blamed for. Such a decision would come from his capacity as a designer, not a business man.

In short, the word "management" can apply to either capacity, businessman and designer. If mismanagement was a problem, then it was within his capacity as a designer, because he did an excellent job business wise.

Originally posted by ethion

 

I have worked in many tech startups and some that went on to become large businesses.  What I've learned in the last 30 years is that the guy that startes a business is the guy with a big idea.  The idea and presentation of the idea is what gets investment.  Passion is what gets the business off the ground and gets it started.  These guys are idea men with a passion for their ideas.  Investors and the people around them inherit their passion making for an exciting start.

However these same people are the people that kill most companies right out of the gate.  The problem is idea guys are visionaries.  They imagine something and think that it is obvious.  They think everyone is passionate.  They also tend to surround themselves with people that adopt their viewpoint without question, ie worshipers.

What happens is the company devolves as it grows into chaos.  You see it becomes too big for the vision guy to be everywhere and the vision guy thinks everyone shares his vision.  Where the reality is the vision guy needs people that can tell him NO.  People that can manage day to day development.  Basically nuts and bolts people.  Vision people that run successful companys don't run the company at all :) they recognize that they lack that ability and put themselves in the possition of chief visionary or CTO etc, and they bring in a nuts and bolts guy to run the company and be CEO.  Unfortunately most of the time these vision types have too much ego and are too detached from people to notice that they are failing till it is too late.  I remember one CEO like this I advised.  I said we need to have you hold a moral meeting and spend time kinda rallying the troups.  His response was that was a waste of time.  People knew what to do and just need to do it.

Anyway Brad is a classic idea man that is great at starting something but without a CEO partner ends up loosing control, becoming disillusioned and fails.   Vanguard is a fantastic vision and everyone will admit that it has awesome potential.  Vanguard could have, if it had been executed properly, been the next big thing for 5-10 years. 

I'm hopeful that Brad will return to the MMO world and having the experience of Vanguard under his belt, learned and grown from it, so his next venture will be an awe inspiring success :)

But what failure did Brad have business wise?

You can't say he was a bad business man without reason. If Vanguard didn't make it out of the gate; if half the staff was fired two months before release instead of SOE lending developers, if there were distribution hiccups, no marketing; so on and so forth, then I'd see the point.

But all of Vanguard's problems are DESIGN related, and have nothing to do with any business decisions he made.

The whole idea of him being a great idea man and good at starting something doesn't apply to him; because he started AND finished with an unprecedented amount of funding, support and time for a company that had no prior success. Ultimately every problem Vanguard has; is a consequence of a bad idea on his part.

Are you serious? Just because a product was "released" officially, doesn't mean it was finished or a success. You are basing his business success on the official game launch, then on the other hand you admit the game was released too early. Those two don't go together.  If a product was put out to the public prematurely, whoever is in charge of letting that happen is often responsible.

He was given $30mil by MS, more by SOE, and perhaps more from private funding, to deliver a finished quality MMORPG. I don't think you'll find anybody saying Vanguard at launch was finished or quality.

As for folks not getting fired, tell that to 90% of the staff that got let go after Sigil went bankrupt and got bought out.  That's not a successful business.  Releasing an unfinished product to the public then going bankrupt shortly after is not successful, it's a complete, utter failure.  It's something investors will take note and avoid in the future.  Investors didn't give him money so they could watch all their money go down the drain, that I can guarantee you.

Bottom line is, Brad was the CEO, he was responsible for hiring those in charge of hiring others.  He was responsible for overseeing everything to make sure the product he was developing was going to make it.   He's not to be blamed for everything, but like how our own goverment works, people always blame those on top that's supposed to oversee things. 

As for the argument to how you would decide a game was finished on release?  Well how about..

1. Many features on the retail box were not available at launch.  Some of these features got added in 6-12 months later, some never even made it in.

2. Game's engine was poorly coded, not tested properly, and anybody with a computer could tell the game was not running well.  Even those that spent thousands to build brand new spanking computers back then had tons of issues running the game, so you can forget the majority of gamers out there that do not have the latest & greatest.

3. CTD CTD CTD...and more CTD's.  Enough said about this one.

4. No endgame content, people waited a full year before raid interface was even put into the game, and more before raid mobs were even implemented.

5. Bugs, bugs, more bugs, from gameplay, to quests, to combat, to crafting, to diplomacy, etc...

6. When they admit they didn't have coders dedicated to fix specific spheres such as crafting and diplomacy, you knew something wasn't right.  How could you run a MMO without having enough coders?

7. When they admit they didn't have proper tools coded for the game designers to design creative content ingame, and that it took a year for them to code designer's interface so they could do their job better.

If you are willing to argue that Vanguard's issues were merely design issues, then Brad has absolutely no chance at making a come back.
 

Originally posted by sepher

all of Vanguard's problems are DESIGN related, and have nothing to do with any business decisions he made.

 

All of Vanguard's problems are "DESIGN" related?  I am surprised to hear you say that, because SIGIL INC. was clearly and obviously a business failure.  Notwithstanding that, however, what do you mean by "DESIGN" related?  Are you refering to the coding or to the intellectual design such as diplomacy, ship travel, classes, etc.?  

Originally posted by Mardy

Are you serious? Just because a product was "released" officially, doesn't mean it was finished or a success. You are basing his business success on the official game launch, then on the other hand you admit the game was released too early. Those two don't go together.  If a product was put out to the public prematurely, whoever is in charge of letting that happen is often responsible.

 

He was given $30mil by MS, more by SOE, and perhaps more from private funding, to deliver a finished quality MMORPG. I don't think you'll find anybody saying Vanguard at launch was finished or quality.

 

As for folks not getting fired, tell that to 90% of the staff that got let go after Sigil went bankrupt and got bought out.  That's not a successful business.  Releasing an unfinished product to the public then going bankrupt shortly after is not successful, it's a complete, utter failure.  It's something investors will take note and avoid in the future.  Investors didn't give him money so they could watch all their money go down the drain, that I can guarantee you.

 

Bottom line is, Brad was the CEO, he was responsible for hiring those in charge of hiring others.  He was responsible for overseeing everything to make sure the product he was developing was going to make it.   He's not to be blamed for everything, but like how our own goverment works, people always blame those on top that's supposed to oversee things. 

 

As for the argument to how you would decide a game was finished on release?  Well how about..

1. Many features on the retail box were not available at launch.  Some of these features got added in 6-12 months later, some never even made it in.

2. Game's engine was poorly coded, not tested properly, and anybody with a computer could tell the game was not running well.  Even those that spent thousands to build brand new spanking computers back then had tons of issues running the game, so you can forget the majority of gamers out there that do not have the latest & greatest.

3. CTD CTD CTD...and more CTD's.  Enough said about this one.

4. No endgame content, people waited a full year before raid interface was even put into the game, and more before raid mobs were even implemented.

5. Bugs, bugs, more bugs, from gameplay, to quests, to combat, to crafting, to diplomacy, etc...

6. When they admit they didn't have coders dedicated to fix specific spheres such as crafting and diplomacy, you knew something wasn't right.  How could you run a MMO without having enough coders?

7. When they admit they didn't have proper tools coded for the game designers to design creative content ingame, and that it took a year for them to code designer's interface so they could do their job better.

 

If you are willing to argue that Vanguard's issues were merely design issues, then Brad has absolutely no chance at making a come back.
 

Released with 30 million dollars and five years spent? Yes, a business success. Not ready after 30 million dollars and five years spent? Design failure.

And you're right, I'm not saying that Vanguard was finished or of quality; but I don't attribute the reasons to bad business decisions because the game had a release window like all games was even given an extension by SOE. I attribute it all to bad design; because after all, a lot of the problems that still linger today exist because of bad design.

As for people getting fired; I don't recall mentioning anything about it. I wouldn't call it bad business though that Sigil went under, since everything that needed to happen for the business to continue did happen, i.e. getting the game out. Sigil's continuation was naturally contingent upon people liking the game however; and obviously they didn't. So I chock that up to yet another failure in Brad's capacity as a designer; he designed a game that didn't work well and people didn't like.

And yep..I do argue that all of those issues are design issues. Everything begins with a design documention, doesn't it? Of all the problems you listed, none of 'em have anything to do with Brad as a CEO and have everything to do with him as a designer.

Most all of your are repeatedly making the mistake of seeing everything in only 2 colors.

By definition vision breaks those bounds and is almost never fulfilled ideally until near the end.

Originally posted by declaredemer

Originally posted by sepher

all of Vanguard's problems are DESIGN related, and have nothing to do with any business decisions he made.

 

 

All of Vanguard's problems are "DESIGN" related?  I am surprised to hear you say that, because SIGIL INC. was clearly and obviously a business failure.  Notwithstanding that, however, what do you mean by "DESIGN" related?  Are you refering to the coding or to the intellectual design such as diplomacy, ship travel, classes, etc.?  

Right, but the business failed because the game didn't sell. The reason the game didn't sell is because it was poorly designed. Bad design led to it not being ready within the time window given to it, bad design led to poor reception from the greater MMO market.

As for the "intellectual design", I chock all of that up to good ideas. They aren't incredible ideas. It's not a feat for any designer to think seamless world, boats, houses and etc; but it takes a good designer to rein in what can be done and what can't for maximum, functioning impact. That's why I don't give Brad a pass for failing to put out a finished game; because he had an unprecedented amount of resources. If he failed to rein his plans in to what was possible with the time and resources given, that makes 'em a bad designer, not a person who didn'thave enough time and resources and thus a bad business man somehow.

SIGIL INC. did not anticipate Microsoft backing-out, right?  One issue is whether MFST withdrew because of bad business (bad communication, deadlines not met, coding, etc.)  or bad intellectual design.  Unable to obtain financing, SIGIL INC. was forced to release Vanguard early, right?  Vanguard sold a lot of boxes, I think, because of the "vision" and so forth.  Many people unsubscribed, however, including myself, because the game was unfinished, buggy, poorly coded, and so forth.  In fact, I was hoping when SOE came into play that those issues would have been dealt with in an expeditious manner --yes, I am THAT optimistic or perhaps naive-- to see the "vision" come to fruition.   As an aside, I am not sure of a clear definition of "vision," but I subjectively interpreted it as freedom and opportunity as central elements in the MMORPG experience. 

sepher, you and me definitely seem to agree.  It is just that I think SIGIL/McQuaid suffered from a lack of business acumen from dealing with business partners to financing to communication to management problems.  In business time and resources (including people) are all you have, and you must use them efficiently and effectively to fulfill your goals.  Since Vanguard was a single project, I think MFST and SIGIL used the form of a joint venture?  It would at least make sense. 

You raise good and interesting points that have me thinking. 

Originally posted by SonikFlash 

By definition vision breaks those bounds and is almost never fulfilled ideally until near the end.

This is true.  Vision is the over-arching goal that you never really attain but also pursue. 

Your mission is your reason for existence.  And the goals you pursue ought to be fulfilled, through strategy and tactics. 

You guys seem to be confusing design with management issues.  The design of vanguard as a game was solid.  Much better than many games that have released in the past years.

The management of sigil resources is root of almost all the problems.  The decision to use and modify they game engine they chose (unreal?) was a business choice mistake.  Deciding to create to many features for the amount of staff you have and time frame you have to do it in is a management mistake.  Not obtaining a scripting tool.  Teaming up with soe was a management mistake.  Hiring to many inexperienced staff members and to many relatives.  Etc etc etc.  mnost of these are mistakes brad wouldn't be responsible for if he was just lead designer and someone else was in full control.

The goals of the games design were pretty good.  Large open non zoned world, great classes, real housing, real boats, diplomacy, advanced ai (didn't happen), the master level gear system, etc etc.  The vision was solid.   From a design perspective they are better than most games in the last 4 years.  The utilization of staff, resources, spending of money, etc were all major mistakes.  The majority those were not design related, but the inability as a company to complete what they were tasked with for far to many reasons. 

I guess you could call those design flaws in some abstract way, but when you give the creative force unrestricted power in the company this is what happens.  They simple cannot focus on follow through.  These people are always looking beyond the horizon to see what new projects and aspects they can get thier fingers into and they are damn good at motivating other around them to do the same.