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

[Mike Sellers]

Sean Howard wrote:
>  "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).

Don't be so sure.  If Vanguard was in fact on the 40/40 plan (40 months,
$40M), then with 200K sales the publisher made about $4M (Sigil made a
fraction of that on retail).  I believe they have about 90K subs now - say
it levels out at 100K or so, which may be generous.  At $15/month, they'll
pull in about $18M/year in revenue.  With a solid gross margin (50% is
probably generous, but we'll use that now), they won't pay of the $40M dev
budget for at least four years.  That's four years until they see the first
profitable dollar -- if the game lasts that long.  If they can grow
relatively quickly to 250K subs or so, they can be profitable in about two
years; even that is poor by MMO standards.  

I'm not surprised Vanguard hasn't done better given how squarely it sits in
the long dark shadow of WoW, but I'm sorry to see the team flame out like
this.  What I'm still trying to figure out is why Sony bought the game,
especially when they have EQ2, which would seem to be a cannibalistic
competitor.    

> >> 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.

Sadly, I have to agree.  There are well-managed teams and companies in the
game industry, but they are fewer than you might think.  This is changing,
slowly.

Mike Sellers