Ex-Vanguard dev throws it down in a tell-all interview

The Vanguard Drama Saga continues… F13 has the candid question and answer with a former Vanguard developer. Shrouded in anonymity, no name is revealed - this person might be a forlorn art lackey, maybe a despondent GM, it could be an office lackey that was demoted to a janitorial position after drinking the toilet bowl cleaner McQuaid served as his brainwashing kool-aid.

Whoever it is, they may have an axe-to-grind, or they just want everyone to know the truth on what happened behind the scenes from their point of view. Revealing answers unleash the gory details on management blunders and the impenetrable ivory towers where those in charge listened with deaf ears and arrogant elitism and much more.

Some clips from the interview:

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: 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: 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: 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: 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.

Would read again, highly recommend. A+ Tattletale at its finest!

I’m having trouble believing there were no tools or scripting language in place for the content developers. Vanguard engine is based on the Unreal 2.5 engine, when it comes to a toolbox and scripting some bots or encounters further research reveals:

A great deal of the gameplay code is written in UnrealScript, a proprietary scripting language, and as such large parts of the gameplay can be modified without delving deep into the engine internals. Additionally, as with other middleware packages, the Unreal Engine also provides various tools to assist with content creation, both for designers and artists.

(Update: The no scripting language is true. Confirmed by Kendrick, a former lead dev)

EQ didn’t have one either, and had MUCH worse content tools than VG had. And some people looked at SWG and it’s arcane scripting system (which was the only tool at release) and the limited number of SWG devs that were talented enough to make content using that tool, and concluded “scripting bad”.

That, and there were never enough coders to do the other stuff, let alone cook up or plug in a scripting language.

A good scripting layer on top of VG’s pretty decent (compared to EQ) basic tool set would have been pretty damned awesome. Mass generate base content using the standard tool, and then the option to go crazy with the cheese whiz using scripts.

I find other bits infuriating, how the news was delivered and the no-shows, also the reported I just won the lottery comment, yay for me.

What else… 90k subs, that’s a lot – I’m sure half of those are free accounts given away by McQuaid! Haha, nah, still that isn’t bad for only selling less than 300k boxes given the state it released in.

Only 1 QA tester – Jacked up, but I’m not surprised since Sigil didn’t have any QA testers listed on their team page for the longest time.

I’m not pleased with the new management changes, SOE should bring in someone new to lead, there doesn’t seem to be much faith Gilbertson, who was more or less filling in while Brad visited the homeland and checked himself into a mental institution, I mean took an unannounced sabbatical right when the big bad shit hit the fan.

Anyway, so many gems in that interview, tell me what you think. In the meantime, I’ll be playing a violin in the background.