[MUD-Dev2] [NEWS] Sigil / Vanguard fallout ... the ex-employee interview

[Sean Howard]

 "Adam Martin" <adam.m.s.martin at googlemail.com>  wrote:

> Interesting to see what particular mistakes they (may have) made, as
> opposed to a generic "oh, they screwed up, generically "mismanaged",
> etc".

I doubt we even got to see exactly where they screwed up. In that
interview, there was a lot of blame put on a lot of people, but most of it
seems rather inconsequential in the grand scheme of things. I don't think
an employee having an affair in the midst of a divorce with another
employee is what made Vangaurd fail (which, technically, having been
shipped and selling 200k copies, it didn't).

If you read the follow up interview with The Vision guy (forgot his name,
I think it's Brad McQuaid), you'll see that he is so absolutely deft at
dodging straight answers, and expertly shifting blame and responsibility,
that he's just too good at spin for any basic employee or outside to see
the real truth.

>> sounds EXACTLY like my experience in the industry. It wasn't a MMORPG,
>> but
>
> That's not "normal" for the industry, though.

If that were true, I wouldn't have left the game industry. It is,
unfortunately, normal enough.

> As a member of some of those, I can attest that it really is the
> exception rather than the rule. If, for instance, it were always the
> case that companies that imploded had no QA departments, it would not
> be interesting to read about the QA situation at Sigil. But it isn't
> always the case, and it's interesting to get another data point there.
> From my own experiences, "no QA" has become one of those warning signs
> that senior management knows a lot less about making games than they
> believe they do, and extra data like this is helpful.

I think "no QA" made a difference. But it's a wart. There is a diseased
and crumpled skeleton there, and obsessing about blemishes ignores the
fact that Sigil had to sleep standing up or it would've suffocated.
Perhaps it was a case where too many straws and too few camels, but I
think the problem was structural. I think it was something fundamental. A
sort of "The Vision" for project management and for game design.

I can tell you why my team failed, the project was cancelled, and half the
team was eventually laid off. It was arrogance, and I strongly suspect
that is the same with Sigil. They did a lot of stupid things, but it's
better to know WHY they did stupid things.

-- 
Sean Howard