Brad McQuaid Talks About His Mistakes with Vanguard
Brad McQuaid admittedly made his share of mistakes during the development of Vanguard: Saga of Heroes and on his newest blog post today titled "Vanguard: Post-mortem Part 1," Brad talks about those mistakes and how he will learn from them and apply that knowledge to any of his future projects. The post covers one big mistake that hindered Vanguard's early development with the issues at Microsoft that eventually landed Sigil with Sony Online Entertainment.
Quote:
The first mistake that would have a serious impact later in development was the verbal agreement with Microsoft that Vanguard was to be a first rate, AAA title.*In other words, we were going to get the funding we needed to compete with other AAA MMOGs, and that we would periodically evaluate the competition and adjust Vanguard’s budget and/or release date if it made sense to us and Microsoft.*And as time past by, we did increase the budget as games like WoW were released with very high development costs and a ton of polish.*But then there was a regime change at Microsoft, and the people with whom we had this understanding and commitment were no longer there.*The new hierarchy did not have the same perspective and commitment to Vanguard and when we needed more time and more money, the general reaction was that we were screwing up management-wise.
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Originally Posted by Martuk
Brad McQuaid admittedly made his share of mistakes during the development of Vanguard: Saga of Heroes and on his newest blog post today titled "Vanguard: Post-mortem Part 1," Brad talks about those mistakes and how he will learn from them and apply that knowledge to any of his future projects. The post covers one big mistake that hindered Vanguard's early development with the issues at Microsoft that eventually landed Sigil with Sony Online Entertainment.
anywho... didn't microsoft decide to put people in a "let's review stuff and get actual updates on the game's progress" position? those people saw, iirc, a shell of a game that in no fashion resembled the "current gameplay video" that microsoft had been shown.
i could be wrong. but i seem to remember something along those lines when the split from MS happened (and shortly after).
Last edited by blehack33; 06-29-2009 at 08:20 PM.
Reason: typo
anywho... didn't microsoft decide to put people in a "let's review stuff and get actual updates on the game's progress" position? those people saw, iirc, a shell of a game that in no fashion resembled the "current gameplay video" that microsoft had been shown.
i could be wrong. but i seem to remember something along those lines when the split from MS happened (and shortly after).
Shhh... don't try to confuse the issue by bringing reality into it.
He is just refining his version of events for whoever he can convince to cough up dough for his next... project.
Ugh, think I'm getting cynical because I've seen this "it wasn't really my fault" game played way to many damn times.
This is part 1, we know there was a regime change at Microsoft and after that regime change that was when they started to get some real milestones down and ask to see the product. Obviously Sigil couldn't produce, but what Brad wrote is accurate from his point of view, he's just not mentioning at this time that he couldn't deliver what they were asking for.
Also I'm sure that verbal agreements are the norm in the industry, especially when millions of dollars are in play. I'm sure the people at MS that closed the original deal did not have to justify to shareholders or bosses where the money was going and how it was to be spent. I'm sure written contracts are a no-no in this industry.
Also I'm sure that verbal agreements are the norm in the industry, especially when millions of dollars are in play. I'm sure the people at MS that closed the original deal did not have to justify to shareholders or bosses where the money was going and how it was to be spent. I'm sure written contracts are a no-no in this industry.
Contracts in the games industry and usually very one-sided and almost always full of loop holes that allows both parties to screw each other continously.
Things have moved on a lot in the last few years, but it is fair to say the games industry is run like a bunch of cowboy builders and not a respectable business entity.
Brad McQuaid Talks About His Mistakes with Vanguard
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