Grouchy Gamer - Brad McQuaid Abandoned Vanguard

[Zeli]

[source]

Monday, May 14, 2007
Brad McQuaid Abandoned Vanguard, Sigil

This is the blog post that I hoped I would never write. I recently became aware of some "things" about the internal goings-on at Sigil, but for the sake of the people that I know that work there I've kept them to myself. Or should I say "worked" there. According to f13.net, "at approximately 4:30PM today, Sigil employees were told to meet outside. At which point they were terminated. On the spot." You can see the article at f13.net: www.f13.net/?itemid=560

I was able to get confirmation on this tonight from a couple of very reliable sources. So the company has now officially been driven into the ground. Here is what most people don't know, outside of Sigil.

Brad McQuaid has been an absentee manager at Sigil for months. Not only has there been a leadership vacuum at Sigil, with the employees there left twisting in the wind, but I have been able to confirm that Brad hasn't even bothered to be at the office.

Since last year.

Reliable sources confirmed to me that Brad hasn't been at the Sigil offices save a couple of brief visits since December of last year. Whether or not he was supposed to be the creative force behind the game as we were lead to believe, he was the leader of Sigil and at a time when the game was under a deadline and his people (many of whom left promising or lucrative positions elsewhere to hitch their wagons to his star) were left to fend for themselves. That's right. When the shit was hitting the fan, and the game was under crunch, Brad went all Brian Wilson on his people. I'm not sure what the psychology of that was, or whether the producers there didn't want him around. Whatever the case, he wasn't able to show the leadership to rally the troops, or even to keep them up out of the dirt. To their credit, the people working at Sigil remained professional even in the face of the lack of professionalism from the top.

As a fansite operator, I can testify that Brad wasn't around for us either. As a matter of fact, Brad never showed support for the affiliate program. Whether you believe that the Affiliate Program was a good idea or not, the CEO of the company should probably support it. When we challenged Brad on his record of (lack of) support for the program, he let us know that he thought it was better spending his time posting on sites like FOH and MMORPG.COM, to evangelize the program. Evidently that took a lot of time, or it just wasn't possible to cut into his Hero-Clix schedule.

It would be amusing how fast the denizens of FOH are throwing dirt on Sigil's grave were it not so tragic for the lives and careers he's irreparably harmed. Irony at it's finest: www.fohguild.org/forums/mmorpg-general-discussion/28627-soe-own-vg-sigil-fires-employees-4.html


The bottom line for me is this;

I can't believe that the CEO of the company can't make an appearance at his own company for 4 or 5 months if to do nothing more than lend moral support. I have heard that Brad is worthless for anything important, and a lot of people probably found him an irritant. I know that most of my later interaction with Brad wasn't positive. His fansite presentation at E3 2006 left me cold. Jeff Butler had a ton of energy and told us a lot about his vision for the game, but Brad couldn't have looked less interested in being there. On one of my visits to Sigil, Brad was overheard telling someone in a customer/community position not to give an answer to a question, and if someone asked why, just to "tell them I'm eccentric." The best he had to contribute was dismissive. So Mr. Eccentric, how does it feel to have a mud-hole stomped in you by effing Turbine?

In the interest of full disclosure, I should tell you that I'm pissed that I wasted 2 years on developing a community at my site for a game that is nothing more than a steaming pile of shit. I'm pissed that the good people (and good developers) that I care about at Sigil are now in the street, and Brad still has millions and Jeff Butler a job. I'm also pissed that the game was so badly mismanaged and allowed to get to this point. I'm also pissed that the good people at my site have dedicated so much time to help each other only to see this happen.

I truly hope that all my friends at Sigil will land on their feet. I also sincerely hope that no one ever gives Brad another cent to make a game or to start a company and put other's livelihoods at risk. It's evident that Brad lacks the skills, dedication, or maturity to handle that situation.

In the end, this game may someday be good. Tomorrow, when this news is announced a lot of the SOE haters will just jump ship, whether SOE had anything to do with this game failing or not. Fact is, it has (failed.) And fact is, it's not SOE's fault. The blame for this one falls squarely at the desk where the buck should stop. The CEO's office. The empty one in the corner.

Posted by Genda Silverspike at Monday, May 14, 2007

and then...

[source]

Tuesday, May 15, 2007
The Other Shoe Drops at Sigil

Today the other shoe dropped at Sigil. According to John Smedley,

"Today I would like to formally announce that SOE has acquired the assets of Sigil Games Online, including Vanguard: Saga of Heroes. As a part of this acquisition, we are bringing on approx 50 people from Sigil in order to insure [sic] that Vanguard continues to grow. SOE is dedicated to making sure that Vanguard is well taken care of and that we provide the same level of service we do for our other titles. In the near future we will come out with a publishing plan that will largely be driven by the strong player community that Vanguard has already built up. We plan on supporting Vanguard for many years to come, and you can expect many content updates as part of your subscription. Down the line we will of course be coming out with new expansion packs, but right now the focus is on making sure Vanguard is running the way it should be.

"We are also officially opening up forums. In the past, our deal with Sigil didn't allow for this, but as with our other games we feel this is an important part of communicating with the playerbase. You can expect a strong presence from our community team as well as the development team members. While we realize that Sigil had said they wouldn't open up general forums, at SOE we feel this hampers our efforts to communicate effectively with the players. We will continue to support the fansites in a big way, and will be contacting many of them directly to discuss what this change means. By no means do we want to lose the strong fansite support by making this change, but we do think it's important to have a forum for players to communicate directly with SOE.

"A few other items I wanted to mention:

1. Brad McQuaid will be consultant to SOE as a creative advisor for Vanguard. Dave Gilbertson will be the person directly responsible for the day-to-day management of both the Sigil Carlsbad office as well as Vanguard.

2. We do not plan on making any major changes to Vanguard. Any changes are going to come from the team itself. We aren't mandating any big changes to the game. We've learned a thing or two with our experiences with the NGE and don't plan on repeating mistakes from the past and not listening to the players.

3. We do plan on spending a lot of time cleaning up legacy issues with Vanguard and making sure the game's performance improves.

"By way of comparison, this team is approx. the same size as the EQ2 team and I feel like that team has done an amazing job improving EQ2 since its launch. We intend to do the same thing for Vanguard and it is our hope that the players feel like we're doing right by them."

Just for clarity, the Sigil team was near 100 before these actions were taken.

As far as the central forums are concerned, let them have them. They are already a festering sewer, and will only get worse. The funniest things I've seen through all this was one of the SOE forum slaves over there proclaiming "This is the place to come for answers!"

Yeah, good luck with that.

I have some seriously mixed emotions about this. First of all, some people that I know and care about lost their jobs. Some good people stayed. As the site admin for Vanguard Crafters, I can tell you that the crafting team was in a no-win position. They were going to cut the team in half, and there was no easy choice I'm sure as the crafting team was strong, in my opinion. Salim Grant and Justin Deebs ended up staying, and they are both exceptional in what they do. Losing Kurt Wagner and Daniel "Steve" Newman hurts though, as both of those guys had some skills that won't easily be replaced.

According to my sources at Sigil, some of the people who originally acted as boat anchors to the project remain, and they have less optimism about the ability of Vanguard to recover quickly as they would have had if some of the "disruptive forces" would have been removed at this opportunity. SOE is bound to make some mistakes as they sort out who they should have on the team and who should go.

Overall, I think the businesslike approach that Sony is going to bring, and the needed structure will help get the Sigil team back on track. As I have alluded to before, I don't think it's the working people at Sigil that got Vanguard all balled up, but the leadership or lack thereof. SOE's leadership should help the new smaller team get some things done.

This should be the extent of the drama for now. As the new smaller team gets settled in and the community gets it's feet back under it, we'll see what happens next. For now, we've lost some friends at Sigil. Here's to hoping that they find something better soon.

Posted by Genda Silverspike at Tuesday, May 15, 2007

www.joystiq.com/2007/05/16/soe-acquires-vanguard-dev-sigil-games/

[Wrasse]

To sum it up...McQuaid is a douchebag.

I feel bad for the people who got screwed over by this...it's bullshit.

[Macaubre]

Interview wiith an ex-Sigil employee. There's a few gems in there, but overall, it just plainly sucks. I was in a company before that went under and we were treated with much more class, even if we didn't have a severance package.

www.f13.net/index.php?itemid=561#more

[Zeli]

The above link is for this article for those who can't check game sites.

The Long and Morbid Tale of Sigil Games Online: Interview Edition
News , Industry Paranoia
Posted by: schild @ 00:25:49 on 5/16/07

After the jump, you're going to read an interview with an ex-Sigil employee given just over 24 hours after being let go. I honestly don't have anything more to say than that.

f13.net: How long, roughly speaking, did you work for Sigil?

Ex-Sigil: A Few.

f13.net: Were you there during the Microsoft years? Or at least, before the split.

Ex-Sigil: Yes.

f13.net: In terms of hands-on involvement, how much did Microsoft make their presence known?

Ex-Sigil: Initially they stayed fairly hands-off, but as things got further along they wanted to see results of their money.

f13.net: Can you elaborate on that a bit?

Ex-Sigil: We gave demos to high-level Microsoft people frequently. These demos were often just dog and pony shows where content was created specifically for the demo. There was no intention that this content ever be used in game. When you spend 30+ million on a project, you want to see results. They became more and more suspect as time went on, and more and more people got involved. Though, they were mostly just oversight. They never sent anyone down here to actually work on the project.

f13.net: Did they set the milestones?

Ex-Sigil: They set monthly milestones. They wanted a succesful MMOG. They had so many false starts with other things that they just wanted a profitable game.

f13.net: They weren't trying to be the next WoW?

Ex-Sigil: Anyone who thinks you can make a WoW killer these days is foolish to try. You need to be your own game. WoW is a juggernaut and really needs to not be the watermark for success. WoW is a tough subject around Sigil too...

f13.net: Why?

Ex-Sigil: There are a lot of people, Brad included who were certain it would be a short-lived game. Some, in fact, including Brad, never played it. WoW should have been the example of 'look at what a good game can do!' when instead it was often spoken of like a bad thing.

f13.net: As WoW grew, did Microsoft expect more results from their new investment? Did the pressure get put on at any point?

Ex-Sigil: No.

f13.net: Then when did Microsoft grow suspicious that they weren't going to get an actual product out of Sigil?

Ex-Sigil: When they started testing it themselves.

f13.net: Or rather, talk about how and when things started going downhill.

Ex-Sigil: Tt's hard to say really, management never communicated stuff like that to us. Often times I feel like they told us more spin and nonsense then they told the public.

f13.net: So management kept everyone in the dark as much as possible?

Ex-Sigil: Completely.

f13.net: What was the rumor mill like at this time? Surely people had friends and spoke to eachother.

Ex-Sigil: Sure. People who had contacts at MS kept getting info that they were really unhappy with things, and at the same time, we had a set-in-stone release date of June/July... 2006. Or rather - that was when Microsoft was going to cut of funding.

f13.net: How long before those summer days did rumors of leaving Microsoft start flying around?

Ex-Sigil: Management told us they were shopping things around and were entertaining outside investors to complete the project. But actually leaving Microsoft as a publisher was never discussed until they told us it was happening and we were co-publishing with SOE.

f13.net: At this time, how far along was the game itself?

Ex-Sigil: Well... if you call what we shipped 100%, I'd put the game at around 65%.

f13.net: What were the terms of the alliance with SOE at this time, if you knew?

Ex-Sigil: Co-publishing, with Sigil retaining all IP rights... is what we were told.

f13.net: What was SOE's involvement from beginning the partnership up until E3 2006?

Ex-Sigil: No hands-on influence from SOE, only leveraging of SOE assets like testing.

f13.net: Let me backtrack a little bit, simply for background - what was the hierarchy like within Sigil?

Ex-Sigil: There was input all around, but at each level, that input was simply discarded by the decision makers. Basically there were a handful of people who made decisions, regardless of input from anyone else.

f13.net: When it came down to actually making game content, how much freedom did designers have?

Ex-Sigil: Quite a bit. The content itself was done almost entirely on their own. The designers on Vanguard did amazing things with the horrific tools and systems in place.

f13.net: What tools were used to make the game?

Ex-Sigil: In-house stuff for the design side... but there was no scripting language for example, even though nearly everyone wanted one except for the people who decided if we got one or not.

f13.net: Because it would cost money to make these tools?

Ex-Sigil: No... because the people in charge just didn't want one

f13.net: How much do you think the lack of reasonable tools hurt the project?

Ex-Sigil: Immeasurably. You can't expect people to create interesting content, and then not give them the means to do it.

f13.net: Do you remember when the game was first shown publically? Surely it was while Microsoft was involved.

Ex-Sigil: I'm pretty sure the first time the game was seen in public, if I recall, was E3 2005. People were shown very small pieces (I was told a dungeon was shown over and over and over). Apparently, those pieces were specifically chosen to not show the glaring flaws. Now.. honestly, everyone does that. Nobody is going to parade around their problems. But the fact is, those problems were shoved under the carpet and ignored instead of being fixed before development moved forward.

f13.net: Was this a forced appearance?

Ex-Sigil: Yes.

f13.net: By Microsoft or Brad?

Ex-Sigil: Both I'd imagine... and that trend continued though for another year. What people don't understand, is the game that went out the door was literally created in the last 15 months. Design worked 12-18 hour days for 9+ months. Coding and Art worked insane hours as well, all trying to actually get something playable out the door.

f13.net: How deep did SOE's hands get into it? What was the progression like?

Ex-Sigil: They were hands-off all the way up til today

f13.net: ... are you serious?

Ex-Sigil: SOE lent a few devs to us in the final days, but it was nothing like people think. I think design had 3 people, art 2, and programming 1 from SOE. They let us use their testing dept too somewhat. We felt somewhat reborn I guess, but with a sense of reservation. When the merger happened SOE embraced us, and spent a LOT of money on us right away. It felt really good.

f13.net: Do you know why they were willing to do that? Surely they saw the lack of... product within the project at that time.

Ex-Sigil: I don't know that they did really. They got the same show that MS did to some degree. I'll say this about Brad.. he's one hell of a salesman. He's VERY passionate about his projects, even so much as to be blinded from seeing reality.

f13.net: SOE knew Brad's game though. Smedley has been around through McQuaid Part 1 & 2 now.

Ex-Sigil: I know.. and I can't explain that part.

f13.net: Surely people around the office knew part of the history. What was the rumor mill like at this time?

Ex-Sigil: Some people were confused. Why would SOE buy a game that's a direct competitor to EQ2? There was always talk, but people who were working on the game continued to put their souls into it in hopes that we could somehow get it all together in the end.

f13.net: Without a scripting language or proper tools, it sounds like some of the people actually on the project were pretty amazing.

Ex-Sigil: The level of creativity to make things work where there were no methods to do so was incredible.

f13.net: What happened in the short time between E3 2006 and Beta?

Ex-Sigil: The dev staff knew the game wasn't ready. Brad set the beta start I think and was completely clueless as to the actual state of the game... not listening to anyone telling him it wasn't ready

f13.net: How hands off was he by this time?

Ex-Sigil: He was playing a lot right through about Beta 2 but then he vanished.

f13.net: As in, just outright disappeared?

Ex-Sigil: Yep.

f13.net: Why? He was still posting on forums during this time...

Ex-Sigil: Well, he showed up to make mandates about game systems and design decisions.

f13.net: Was he there to see that stuff get implemented?

Ex-Sigil: The management knows I'm sure, but I don't have a clue. I just know he disappeared.

f13.net: What was the mood in the office by this time?

Ex-Sigil: People were still trying to stay upbeat, but certain people continually shooting down other's ideas started to take its toll. At least 2 people quit the team due to the heavy handed inflexible people on the class design team. When something isn't fun, except for the people who designed it, and others try to help, they'd get shot down... eventually people stop trying to help.

f13.net: How was QA treated through the course of development?

Ex-Sigil: QA?

f13.net: QA.

Ex-Sigil: QA was one person up until about November... ONE.

f13.net: What.

Ex-Sigil: 100% serious.

f13.net: What? How? This is an MMOG.

Ex-Sigil: Vanguard had one internal tester for probably 95% of the design cycle.

f13.net: Doesn't the complete and utter failure, in hindsight, seem like a self-fulfilled prophecy though with only one QA member?

Ex-Sigil: The reasons for failure are too numerous to list, but can all be summed up by a lack of management. Brad, for all his faults at least made decisions. So did Jeff. Right or wrong, they took a shot. The people in charge now were so afraid to make the wrong decision that they made no decision at all.

f13.net: Surely members of the team that weren't decision makers read forums and knew Sigil was doomed. Did people just blissfully ignore this stuff? I mean, comeon, the writing was on the wall.

Ex-Sigil: Oh, people knew. The only people that didn't know seemed to be the people capable of making the decisions to change it.

f13.net: Who are these people who took over after Brad and Jeff disappeared. Who can we pin the tail on?

Ex-Sigil: Dave Gilbertson, Bill Fisher, and Darrin McPherson... Ryan Elam too, but he spread himself thin by trying to do too much.

f13.net: Can you talk about them a bit? As, for most people, those names mean nothing.

Ex-Sigil: Dave was the VP. Bill is now lead designer, and Darrin heads up the class team and is responsible for class balance.

f13.net: Going down the list, what was each persons contribution to the eventual... failure?

Ex-Sigil: Let's just say they refused to listen to anyone on how to fix what was broken.

f13.net: Did they work as one unit, or are they each responsible in their own way for driving the project into the ground?

Ex-Sigil: Well, they were so pig-headed and arrogant that they believed we were all wrong and they were right.

f13.net: Did anyone have the experience out of those people to actually live in that sort of ivory tower?

Ex-Sigil: No. Dave was a modeler on the project and somehow became VP. Bill left SOE having shipped only Velious and some stuff in Luclin. Darrin left Westwood after Earth and Beyond tanked. Bill and Darrin worked together on this project through release - they were also arrogant and refused to listen to anyone else. To be fair, I don't think Dave did any of this intentionally, he was just in WAY over his head.

f13.net: Would you say, honestly, that they are directly responsible for the unfortunate conclusion?

Ex-Sigil: A part of it. You can't leave out the insane hype machine, the process failures, and the poor design decision making at the very highest levels.

f13.net: I can't speak for the hype machine outside of f13.net. But by this time, we knew the client broke the 20GB barrier and the game was, well, in a word - terrible. So, what do you mean by hype machine? The official forums? The posi... was there any real positive press? I remember reading some, how did it even come about?

Ex-Sigil: Good salesmanship. Brad and Jeff are very passionate about things, and that passion can overwhelm people.

f13.net: But Jeff and Brad weren't even on the scene at this time, were they?

Ex-Sigil: Jeff was to some degree. Brad was gone. Jeff was at least present and tried to be involved.

f13.net: Was it futile at this point? Had these other 3 guys pretty much taken everything over?

Ex-Sigil: Yeah.

f13.net: And what was the attitude by the team towards Brad and Jeff by now? Surely Brad's disappearance absolutely wrecked morale.

Ex-Sigil: Not really. When he was at work he was more an obstacle than a help. A lot of people wanted brad to just go away.

f13.net: That conflicts with a lot of the stories I heard about people leaving companies to join Sigil because of Brad...

Ex-Sigil: People did... a lot of people.

f13.net: What do people think of Brad now? Let's be real here, is he even fit to work in the industry?

Ex-Sigil: I think Brad's situation is an odd one. He's got tons of crazy ideas but he really shouldn't be in charge of anything. He is great as a theorycrafter so long as he was tempered by people who could determine what was possible or not.

f13.net: How much did Microsoft sink into Vanguard?

Ex-Sigil: We always heard numbers like 30 million.

f13.net: And how much did SOE pay Microsoft for it?

Ex-Sigil: I doubt they paid much.

f13.net: Moving on - Beta 2 to Release. How did that go?

Ex-Sigil: Things got a lot better.

f13.net: Who set the release date?

Ex-Sigil: The release date was set as a result of SOE not wanting to fund the project any deeper without SOME revenue coming in...

f13.net: Surely no one thought this was ready for primetime. And what about the giant patches that appeared nearly daily?

Ex-Sigil: We couldn't control that. From what I was told by some on the design team, the sweeping changes were par for the course.

f13.net: At this point, why were you all getting decent press? Did Brad do most of the marketing for that (even though he wasn't in the office)?

Ex-Sigil: Yes. We got press because I think people wanted to believe Brad. They wanted it to be great and they got caught up in his passion.

f13.net: How many copies of Vanguard sell between say, release and today?

Ex-Sigil: Around 200k, I think.

f13.net: How many people stayed after the "free" month?

Ex-Sigil: Numbers I heard yesterday were 90k. But I can't be sure. Actual subscription numbers were something management was very reluctant to tell us.

f13.net: Alright, I apologize for digging up a fresh corpse - but when did you all get the feeling bad things were going to happen?

Ex-Sigil: Three weeks ago. We knew for 3 weeks that layoffs were likely, but nobody said what, when, or how many. So that cloud was over our heads for nearly a month.

f13.net: Can you go into detail about how the final month progressed? How did events unfold?

Ex-Sigil: We kept getting told that the deal was 'in the works' but there were no details to be had. This went on for 2 weeks. Then fairly quickly people started figuring out things were imminent. Then yesterday we were told to grab our things we'd need for the rest of the day and head outside for a company meeting.

f13.net: Was an email sent out, IM sent out, who told you to go outside?

Ex-Sigil: Email. The email said literally to check in any work we were working on, grab anything we'd need for the evening (keys, wallet, purse, whatever) and meet out back for a short company meeting.

f13.net: Who sent the email?

Ex-Sigil: Andy Platter. Director of Production, though nobody at the company knew if he did anything.

f13.net: Go on.

Ex-Sigil: We met in the parking lot. Worse still... though Dave was supposedly in charge all this time, Andy is the one who delivered the 'you're all fired' speech, while Dave never said a single word.

f13.net: Who was standing at the front with Andy?

Ex-Sigil: Dave Gilbertson, Ryan Elam, and Donna Parkinson (the office manager).

f13.net: What was the speech you got?

Ex-Sigil: it was very emotionless. Very callous. "The deal is done, and basically you're all fired so some of you can be re-hired by SOE." Bill was there and actually made comments about how he was likely buying a house thanks to his stock.

f13.net: Wait, what? Did non-stock holders get severance?

Ex-Sigil: There was severance, yes... and they did say they'd help out any way they could with our job search.

f13.net: What was the fallout like?

Ex-Sigil: Well, worst of all.. at the end of Sigil, Brad wasn't even there to look us in the eye and apologize.

f13.net: Why do you think SOE kept him?

Ex-Sigil: His name? I heard he's being paid a minor pittance to have his name associated with the game still... but he won't actually be doing anything. I shouldn't say pittance.. since he's likely being paid more than many of the people who were let go. He got his initial investment back, I think, in the buyout and that's about it. But that's pretty much rumor. Only those involved know for real. For all I know, he could have made plenty. Or he could have not gotten a dime, but I seriously doubt that.

f13.net: Is there anything you want to add?

Ex-Sigil: It's hard. I really wanted Vanguard to be a great game, but it seemed like we were blocked by stupid decision making at nearly every step. Good people busted their ass, only to be shown the door because they weren't a 'culture fit' moving forward. I don't believe Brad is a bad guy like some people are painting him on the various forums right now. I DO think however, that he believed people wanted to play a game that HE liked, regardless of the masses of people telling him they didn't like his ideas. He ignored the opinions of people who worked for him, and busted their ass for him, and it cost him dearly, at least in reputation. So many of us jumped at the chance to work with Brad, only to find out he was a paper leader. You can only fool me once. I never want to work for Brad or Dave ever again. There was so much good in the team, so much effort wasted. None of the people listed above should ever work in any position of leadership. Though, Jeff might have a chance. He learned lessons from this, I think. The others did not. The whole ordeal has been rough. I know I'm exhausted.

f13.net: Thank you.

[Macaubre]

Thanks Z for the post. A few gems tho:

f13.net: How was QA treated through the course of development?

Ex-Sigil: QA?

f13.net: QA.

Ex-Sigil: QA was one person up until about November... ONE.

f13.net: What.

Ex-Sigil: 100% serious.

and then,

Ex-Sigil: We met in the parking lot. Worse still... though Dave was supposedly in charge all this time, Andy is the one who delivered the 'you're all fired' speech, while Dave never said a single word.

[...]

Ex-Sigil: it was very emotionless. Very callous. "The deal is done, and basically you're all fired so some of you can be re-hired by SOE." Bill was there and actually made comments about how he was likely buying a house thanks to his stock.

[Winin]

Wow. Brad sounds almost exactly like someone I used to work for. Lots of great ideas, but shouldn't be in charge of anything. It will be interesting to see what becomes of it. I think it has some great potential, but I don't really want to pay my way through the transformation stage.

[Zeli]

[source]

The Hub of All Blame: A Postmortem
Posted by: schild @ 06:38:11 on 5/17/07

This is the transcript of an interview with Brad McQuaid via telephone which began at 1:40AM and finished at 3:09AM on May 17th, 2007. As before, I am adding no personal comments to this article outside of what is presented in the interview.

f13.net: What was the relationship in the office between Microsoft and Sigil prior to the split?

Brad McQuaid:: As I've posted a number of times, there was a regime change at Microsoft where they reorganized a lot of their game studios. The people who were in charge of the Vanguard project on the Microsoft side went elsewhere and a completely new group of people were put in place. In that new group of people, the upper management side were also in charge of getting the Xbox 360 out the door. So, the PC games at the time were not receiving a lot of support and I don't blame Microsoft for this at all. When you've got billions of dollars spent trying to launch a new console and millions on the PC titles, you're gonna make sure that the Xbox 360 kicks ass - I think they did a good job of that. The lower level people were put in charge of our project were people who didn't have any MMO experience. They had done Zoo Tycoon 1 & 2. We tried very hard to bring them up to speed and with open arms to show them the differences and similarities between developing an MMO and a single player game - the scale and things like that. That just didn't seem to work. Previously, the people who were dealing with us committed to us - verbally - that they, Microsoft, wanted and were determined to launch a AAA Massively Multiplayer Role-Playing Game - and to do whatever it took to make sure that happened. While that's not down on paper - as no company ever would put down on paper - that was our understanding. Under the new regime, that commitment, nobody remembered it.

When games like WoW were getting heavily into development and dollar amounts on games like EQ2 and WoW were becoming public - we said it would always be our understanding and agreement that we would compete with these guys. They backed down off of that and said that it was no longer their goal and at that point, the money started drying.

f13.net: So, Microsoft simply wasn't ready to compete and they had previously failed projects...

Brad McQuaid:: You have to understand how Microsoft works - and like I said, I don't blame them. They're given different marching orders from a corporate level when it comes to large expenditures. If you go back to Xbox 1 there was a lot of concerns. Can it handle Nintendo and Sony and Sega? Microsoft, you're big, but you can't have the console arena. Microsoft said "we're gonna do it, whatever it takes." The Xbox 1 was ok, and the Xbox 360 is doing great - and that, well, that was their mandate: To do whatever it took to start dominating the console market. They may not be there yet, but they're a lot farther along than they were with the Xbox 1. They had made that decision at some level to look ahead at online gaming and really do the same thing with MMOs. The day or the day after I left Sony, Ed Fries - I think the general manager at Windows Gaming - and other publishers called me, EA and NCSoft, but I had known Ed from before and had a relationship with him. I just knew that Microsoft, when they put their mind to do something, there's no stopping them. They were ready to make the next big MMO. A couple years into the project there was a significant change - the gaming group - and that was no longer the mandate. It took several months to really figure that out. When you have the Zoo Tycoon team assigned to you and the upper manager is in charge of your project and in charge of launching the 360... he must have had ten seconds a day to bother thinking about Vanguard. As there are - and I don't want to sound bitter - in large corporate entities, they make changes. When that change occurred, our relationship started going downhill. We knew what we needed to be competitive with World of Warcraft was in jeopardy.

f13.net: People have said that Microsoft were completely hands off in the development...

Brad McQuaid:: Well, before the transition, they weren't completely - but we were working hand in hand. It was a fantastic relationship. After the change they became completely hands-on.

f13.net: What did that do with the game?

Brad McQuaid:: 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.

f13.net: I was told that Microsoft actually came in and set a firm release date when you all were somewhere between 55 and 65 percent done.

Brad McQuaid:: Before the regime change, they had committed to us that they would adjust budgets and time frames to make sure it was a AAA game. These things take a long time to develop. Changes are happening, getting more expensive and customers are expecting more. We went back a couple of times together with [the managing team] to increase our budget or increase our time here and there. They were totally cool with that and understood that it was necessary to remain competitive.

After the regime change, that was considered "we were late" or "mismanaging" or "not adhering to strict schedules." It was looked upon not as staying competitive or making a AAA WoW-level game but rather that we were doing something wrong. They frowned upon us needing more time or money. When we'd ask for it, it was considered that we were making errors. Each time that occurred the micromanagement would increase. More and more Microsoft people would come down and try to analyze what was going on. Where we were "messing up." What they could do to "help us." Until finally they flat out said no. No more money, no more time. Your release date needs to be in the July 2006 time frame and that's it.

They didn't have their MMO people anymore really, and they had a major priority of getting the Xbox 360 out which cost billions and billions of dollars. Our ability to petition this to higher-ups and get any attention just really wasn't there.

I don't want to appear to negative here... but this happens with large corporations. There are changes and changes in mandate and focus, and clearly the Xbox 360 is doing very, very well. It has great titles and Microsoft is sitting fine. It's not like they made a catastrophic corporate error. I very much respect Microsoft as a whole and there are a lot of great people there and I'm definitely not one of those "I love Linux and hate all things Windows guys." I understand that all these things happen. Unfortunately it happened to us.

f13.net: Right after the split and before the tragedy the other day, that's when people claim you started to be in the office... not quite as much. Can you explain why?

Brad McQuaid:: We need to back up a little bit. After we split from Microsoft - because obviously we couldn't ship the game in an unready state - we had to go out and do something. Find money to make the game that we could and all dreamed about. We cut a deal pretty quickly so that we could get into SOE's E3 kiosk. We ended up having to meet payroll and to pay the bills. We needed to raise money. We went out and found some people who specialized in venture capital and I worked with those people immediately following the deal coming together. I started working with them on putting a deal together to fund the game to completion and fund the company post-completion and to possibly start a second title. It was basically "get money that we needed." So I started working with these people, it was a learning experience - I'd never really been in the private investor/VC world - and we started that process. I was in and out of the office quite a bit. Demoing the game, showing it to potential investors and putting together the documentation. All sorts of stuff you have to do for that kind of money.

f13.net: So that time being out of the office was business?

Brad McQuaid:: It was a bummer. Even going back to SOE, I want to make games. The executive producer side of things is more fun than the CEO business side of things. But it had to be done, right? So it was a bummer leaving a lot of that behind and it simply had to be done.

f13.net: The SOE-speak was vague in their press release, what are you doing on the game now.

Brad McQuaid:: Pretty much what the press release said. It will become more clear and more announced in the future. I'll be posting on message boards, working with the creative/marketing team on Vanguard, perhaps future things... projects, and working as a consultant in that area. Which are some of the things I really enjoy like posting on message boards.

f13.net: Like FoH?

Brad McQuaid:: If that had gotten to me, I'd have gone under in 1998.

f13.net: I don't know. You refuse to post on f13, even though you said you "read us daily."

Brad McQuaid:: No offense, it looks like a lot more people read FoH and I was posting on there to get the word out about the game. I had no intention to argue or or debate about the game. It was to show people that there was a difference. F13 is a smaller group of guys that really gets into MMOs - the analysis of MMOs and what makes them work. I enjoy reading it, it just doesn't seem like the same type of forum [as FoH].. On FoH, some people would say - "Oh Brad," You're just here promoting, go away. I say, "well, if that's your feeling, let me know." A bunch of other guys say "stay" and well, as long as I'm welcome here that I would. I was simply too engaged with other stuff to get into the more esoteric and more philosophical parts of MMO design which f13 is a bit more focused on...

f13.net: Well, it's irrelevant these days since everyone links to everyone else.

Brad McQuaid:: This is true.

f13.net: For everyone involved, do you have a Google Alert on "The Vision?"

Brad McQuaid::Hm. No. I have it on McQuaid and Sigil I think. I should probably put one on "The Hub of All Blame" as well.

f13.net: Actually, 9 out of 10 people believe that "The Hub of All Blame" is Gilbertson and Fisher. Do you even want to comment?

Brad McQuaid:: No. They're great guys, personal friends of mine and I can understand why people can be upset with them. While I understand it, I disagree on a professional level. Going further would have to wait for an SOE interview.

f13.net: Do you think some of that contributed to some of the eventual problems that arose?

Brad McQuaid:: I can't answer that, but when a company grows and you start being a manager, it's worrisome to hire somebody from outside though. So your inclination is to hire from the inside, your downside to that is that. Growing a company really, really fast is tough. I certainly made my share of errors and there are books written on it. It's not something easy. It goes back into something I said earlier about how quick this industry is expecting more and more - Everquest cost 8 million dollars, WoW cost 80 Million. Jesus. That's in a period of how many years?

f13.net: There were three questions people really want answers to... the first being, why weren't you at the office on launch day?

Brad McQuaid:: Launch day?

f13.net: Apparently they had "cake and champagne."

Brad McQuaid:: In general, I had just found out about future events and what was likely or possible to occur... and it broke my heart. Emotionally, I just couldn't be sitting there celebrating and putting on a big smile when I knew the troubles we might be facing in the future.

f13.net: Next, I was told there was no launch party... Most companies I know, I've been to a few of them, they have launch parties in the face of utter defeat or complete success - what happened there?

Brad McQuaid:: Are you talking about a party for employees or media?

f13.net: Media and employees. A launch party.

Brad McQuaid:: We had hoped to have a big one... well, my favorite one was with Velious. We went to Vegas. We had all the media down one night and a fan-fare another... There were enough things going on with launch and financial realities, that it just wasn't going to work out. I think they had a big hot dog and burger cookout and let everyone go early.

f13.net: And the next party... god, I am a fucking cynic. Why weren't you at the firing party?

Brad McQuaid:: Well, this is going to sound corny but it's true. I would have broken down in tears.

f13.net: I have since discovered that SOE didn't even know it was going to go down like that. They had something else planned, something less cold. You read the interview right?

Brad McQuaid:: The Long and Morbid tale one?

f13.net: Well, let me just read it back. I've now had multiple people say the same thing. It's uncanny. Not a single one of them seem to have embellished. That Andy Platter - who no one knows, they don't even know what he did at Sigil.. Dave Gilbertson, Ryan Elam, and Donna Parkinson - well basically "You're all fired, some of you may be rehired by Sony Online Entertainment" an-

Brad McQuaid:: I know those people and have a great deal of respect for them, but that sounds awful cold the way you said it...

f13.net: No, you don't understand. Everyone said the same thing. I have confirmed it with no less than six people. That they used the phrase "you're all fired." On that day. In a parking lot. My big problem with this is, well, I don't know your relationship with Bill Fisher, but at this event he made a joke about his stock options buying him a new house. I don't even know how you can comment on this.

Brad McQuaid:: I would find that hard to believe.

f13.net: Uhm....

Brad McQuaid:: I think, this is speculation... there was some turmoil on design and Fisher was doing very well and he was one of the people who wasn't let go. If you can imagine perhaps a designer who was let go having some animosity for Bill and maybe hearing that he said something like that or maybe they overheard him sarcastically talking to one of his buddies like "huh, oh, yea, I'm gonna go buy a car now." Ya know, we're not talking those kind of dollar figures I don't think. I can imagine him going "Woo hoo, going to buy a new car" and I can imagine a third party not knowing Bill's sarcastic joke-around with the guys personality and hearing it and taking it in a bad way, you know what I'm saying? I wasn't there. But I sincerely doubt that he said that in the way it's being construed.

f13.net: Going another direction, I know that there was at one point, a coup that was attempted. On the business side, what happened to the relationship with you and Jeff Butler?

Brad McQuaid:: When you work with someone as long as Jeff Butler and I have - a long time... you're basically business partners. You agree on most things but there are certain things you do not agree on. We have been described as an old married couple. So, ya know, we've had our disagreements. In the early days, everything was new and we had all these wild and cool ideas to share with each other. And then after the stress of running a business together and seeing each other everyday, we could complete each other's sentences. We've had our disagreements, but I wish him the best in whatever he's doing.

f13.net: This is something that, well, I've already got the people involved to corroborate... did the affair between April Jones and Jeff Butler actually affect anything in development?

Brad McQuaid:: I'm not going to comment on their personal life.

f13.net: Not their personal life, the office life due to it.

Brad McQuaid:: Uhm, I have a lot of respect for them. In general, I mean, you work together so much and so many hours in game development and it's creative and people have common interests. This guy watches BSG, this guy collects comic books. You make lots of friends. Relationships form that are more serious than friendships. The only way to stop that would be to basically fire people on the spot and draw some line in the sand. I don't even know how to define that, the legalities. Or do what most companies do and forbid relationships. But we're in games, I don't want to work in a dry environment. I want to goof off and have friends. Obviously something like... a scenario like that isn't good for the company. Is there an easy solution... how to not let that occur.

f13.net: I'll be honest, you touched on my next question. I heard that, well, apparently it was an open secret. That's fine. Whatever. It happens in every office. But the real problem was, well, seemed to have been that - Jeff's wife still worked there. How do you... you know, never mind, it needs to come from them.

Brad McQuaid:: It made it worse, that's all I'll say.

f13.net: I'm going to do a 180 here. Apologies. But you're a religious person. You've said that angels and demons not being in EQ while you were there isn't just because of your religious beliefs. What was the core reason?

Brad McQuaid:: There are different symbols, beings, supernatural beliefs - belief systems that people have that are active today in this world. Gods, demons, angels, others. I guess, in a textbook, would be world religions. You can't avoid offending everyone. Let's take angels. Christians generally believe that angels are real. Many other people don't. That they're mythological beings. Most people don't believe that dragons are real. Or that a griffin is real. Putting a griffin in your game though, versus an angel - is much less a problem. What we decided to do was to avoid anything that's from a major religion. There's some fundamentalist Christian that won't let their kid play period. Dragons, dungeons, death. Whatever. There's also going to be more moderate Christians who are going to let them play EQ or DAoC because there aren't demons or angels or something. We're creative enough people, why not just use the plentiful fantasy out there and not elements of major religions. I also wanted to not use symbols, even from dead religions. While I definitely think it would be great to take themes from mythologies like East-Asian, Norse, Egyptian and things like that - let's avoid using an ankh or whatever. Let's come up with our own religion and our own symbol that means life. This is a different world. Maybe we don't have the time or creativity of Tolkien - who borrowed from mythologies. We're not going to make our own huge religion, but at least come up with our own pantheon of gods and symbols and whatnot. That was just one of the things I wanted to do early on - by simply avoiding offending people if we can. To an atheist sure, an angel is no different than a griffin. But Johnny's mom will let him play our game.

I am a Christian so this probably goes back to me seeing 'Deities and Demigods' and kind of being bummed about that even though I still play [D&D]. It would have made me feel better if they had not used - or rather, had other creatures that weren't demons. So, is this kind of like, "if I'm going to be involved in making games, can a kid play this without being bother by it or his parents saying get away from that evil stuff!" That's the origin of it, but by no means is it me trying to hoist my religious beliefs on anybod-

f13.net: That cuts directly to the core of something I've heard from at least a couple employees who are upset. Someone is alleging - and I'm sure I'll get a straight no comment, but please just deal with the question... Did you distribute religious materials and offer promotions based on people who took you up on it?

Brad McQuaid:: Absolutely not. No and no. Nor would I ever.

f13.net: Ok.

Brad McQuaid:: I believe very much in spreading the gospel of Christianity through ones actions. I don't think you're going to force or debate anyone into believing something. It's got to be based on your actions and morals. On top of that in a work environment - and on top of that, in a management position - it is completely unacceptable to do anything like that and I wouldn't dream of it.

f13.net: Fair enough. So, a lot of people talked about this Andy Platter guy. From two people, I got the exact same response. Neither know who he was, or what he did, or why he played any role in the firing of employees. Simply to explain to the employees reading this - who was he and what did he do?

Brad McQuaid:: He was the Director of Operations. He tested servers, websites, and so on. Most of the developers would probably not interact with him. He had also been out of town recently with a family illness. I'll stop there. As for why he was involved in that event, I have no comment because I wasn't there. As the company grew, well, it's another sociological thing. The company gets big enough, it leases another building. Then the people in the first building are like "what do those guys do?" That's just more human nature stuff. If you're a programmer you don't interact with design much. What does that guy do? I haven't seen anything he's done. Is he a waste of space? Well, he could be the best designer on the team. That's just people.

f13.net: I've kind of got a family tree of the company going here and normally this isn't tolerated. I'm trying to figure out - because I know you didn't have final say in a lot of things, specifically hiring practices among non-design folks...

Brad McQuaid:: The larger the company got, the more we had to build up middle management and delegate responsibility.

f13.net: Well, how did nepotism run so freely to the point that - there's just, ugh, so many family members in this company. We've got brothers, brother-in-laws, a wife - how did this happen? Did you need that many people?

Brad McQuaid:: Two answers. I don't know enough about well. I don't have a family tree. I don't know if this is a higher than normal number. You may have that information. I don't. The other thing too is, when you need to rely on somebody or know somebody or vouch for somebody, especially in a creative environment and know how they interact with people... well, you find a lot of pre-existing friendships and relationships. Because so many interests are shared, even some relationships that didn't exist beforehand - it's likely to happen just like it does with MMOs. You spend all this time with people and have a real relationship with people. I honestly don't know if there's more or less in Sigil.

f13.net: Ok.

Brad McQuaid:: We didn't encourage it. We did encourage the general concept of "Hey do you know this guy, can you vouch for him?" "Well yea, I've known this guy six year. He's intelligent and super creative and he won't steal your car."

f13.net: Well of course, there's "I've known this guy 22 years, he's my brother. In secret, he's a big douche."

Brad McQuaid:: That's the risk. And then you find out and you hopefully get rid of both. The industry is not that big. Basically, if you say "hey, I vouch for my brother" and then you hire him and they both turn out to be jerks, ya know, you're gonna hopefully get rid of them. When it comes time to recommendations, it's going to get around. Formally or informally. That stuff doesn't work out so well. More times than not, you get a good person than you get some guy who can't hold down a job.

f13.net: Ok, here's a loaded one. A number of people have said there was one QA member up through at least beta 3 or 4. How did an MMOG survive with one person dedicated to quality assurance.

Brad McQuaid:: The original plan was to use Microsoft's vast testing facility. We were to keep a small testing team at Sigil -

f13.net: But one?!

Brad McQuaid:: No. A small team that was very close to the dev team and use the massive facility at Microsoft. When that relationship went south and we were scrambling for money, we simply did not have the room to grow.

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to be continued (max character limit)

[Zeli]

continued....

f13.net: Can you talk about The Vision a bit?

Brad McQuaid:: Well, it goes way back to Everquest.

f13.net: Well, we know that.

Brad McQuaid:: I honestly don't know when it started. I probably started using... I think it had to do with something I commented on - why some games - well, you can tell if a development team really had their hearts in it or not, regardless of the type of game it may be. I think for any game, you need a vision. Either a visionary or visionaries and if you don't have that, you kind of meander around and I don't think you get nearly as strong of a game. Or anything. A piece of art. Anything creative. Unless there's a strong vision. My guess is I was doing a long-winded post back in 1999.

f13.net: Finally, is there anything you'd like to say to the people who were let go without warning. You weren't there, and you're the type of guy that would have said... something.

Brad McQuaid:: I'm really sorry it went down that way. The way that it did. I can promise you that I and everybody in upper management did everything they possibly could to avoid this happening. Sigil was everything to us. It was our dream. Starting our own company. Providing a great working environment. You know, we worked months and months - as great as SOE is, and it was great working with them as a partner - as some people said "Brad, why did you sell out to.." We didn't. We had hoped that Vanguard would be more of a success. It turned out we all worked very hard. Did the best we could. I thank everyone for pouring their hearts and souls into the game. I think it's a great game. I think it has huge potential. When I've talked and made posts about the future of Vanguard and talked about Vanguard next year - I do believe that it was planned and architected to be an amazing game. We hoped to do it as our own company. It didn't work out that way. I'm sorry.

As CEO, I take full responsibility and the buck stops here. I did everything I could and so did everybody else to make it work. But it didn't. I hope that everything works out for you guys in the future. If there's anything I can do - recommendations, things like that for all of you guys - please don't hesitate to contact me. I hope that you learned a lot in your time at Sigil and that you've become a more valuable asset in the games industry than when you first started. I wish you guys the best. I'm sorry that I wasn't there the day that people were let go. But honestly, these months have been very, very heartbreaking for me. Emotionally I couldn't have handled it. I would've been sitting there bawling my head off. You can ask anybody who knows me about the heartache I've felt because things didn't work out for the company. I do believe Sony will do a great job. I know they will.

That doesn't make it any easier for someone who lost their job. It's got to be a horrible thing. You can ask people when I had to fire one person who really deserved it, I'd have to take the afternoon off because it was so hard for me. And that was firing someone who deserved it. Laying people off was just too much. I guess I'm too empathic in some ways. I took the role of CEO very seriously, that I was responsible for every person there. Their well-being. It got harder and harder as the company. It was a weight on my shoulders. Please, again, if there's anything I can do to help you out. Do not hesitate to contact me. And I wish you guys the very best.

f13.net: Thank you.

[Addendum: There are sites that are assuming things. Brad already knew about the relationship between April Jones and Jeff Butler. The management at Sigil knew about the relationship and that's why I asked in such a short manner, but the need to clarify has come up. Divorce was already in effect. Jeff and Michelle were seperated and going through a divorce. April was dating Jeff. It was not something that was under lock and key.]

[Zeli]

what a pussy! it's all about how hard things were for him? people were good employees and worked their asses off and lost their jobs anyway. yes it happens and yes it sucks but BE THE CEO and show them some respect by being there.

[Winin]

Brad McQuaid:: We need to back up a little bit. After we split from Microsoft - because obviously we couldn't ship the game in an unready state...

Heheh.


Yeah, I can understand not being around because you are out doing the VC thing, but on layoff day, CEO better be there and doing it.

[Zeli]

omg, i should have put a warning on the interview - comes with a strong stench of bullshit!

[Macaubre]

Some people did try to shooot soooooo much high that eventually it all came down on them straight in the face.

Can't believe I bought that game for 49$ and only played like 5 hours.