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

[Mike Rozak]

Mike Sellers wrote:

> 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

This one has been puzzling me. Obviously, Sigil management did the math and 
decided they couldn't keep Vanguard alive on the money that was coming in. 
100 employees = $5M-$10M to keep around, and your numbers imply they'd be 
brining in $9M/year... if I were Vanguard management, I wouldn't have sold 
with those numbers.

And even if there were 50K, the solution is to lay off half the team. (Which 
is what SOE did, which implies that Vanguard has 50K players.)

Repayment of bank loans might be a problem, but I doubt there were any.

So, the math doesn't add up in my head.

Another scenario is that management decided that instant cash from a sellout 
was better than years doing it hard... but given the little I know about 
management, that doesn't make sense either. They seemed to be in it for the 
game/vision, not the quick buck. (But did VCs/Microsoft still have input?)


> 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.

I suspect the more important question: How much did SOE pay?

SOE gets a few semi-valuable items from the sale:
- 200K names, 90K players (some of whom will even go for the full station 
pass)
- Sigil employees (with their employment reviews, so they know who the good 
ones are)
- Another game for their station pass
- One less competitor
- Art and audio (and maybe animation) assets that can be used elsewhere
- Some reusable code... perhaps the long-distance 3D landscapes
- A game that has the chance of making a bit of money