Interview with ex-Sigil employee

[cp#]

F13.net (http://f13.net/) has been running a lot of stories about Sigil lately... and things are not good.

Earlier this week (5/14/07 to be exact), SOE fired all of Sigil's employees:

I do know that at approximately 4:30PM today, Sigil employees were told to meet outside. At which point they were terminated. On the spot.
F13 then put up a great interview (http://f13.net/index.php?itemid=561) with an ex-Sigil employee. It is a great read and I was pretty shocked to find out what was happening during the development of this game.

Here is a quick snippet:

f13.net: What happened in the short time between E3 2006 and Beta?

Ex-Sigil: The dev staff knew the game wasn't ready. Brad set the beta start I think and was completely clueless as to the actual state of the game... not listening to anyone telling him it wasn't ready

f13.net: How hands off was he by this time?

Ex-Sigil: He was playing a lot right through about Beta 2 but then he vanished.

f13.net: As in, just outright disappeared?

Ex-Sigil: Yep.
"Well... if you call what we shipped 100%"

[Vandenh]

Sigil employees were told to meet outside. At which point they were terminated. On the spot.
WTF? Looks like they are lucky they didn't get a headshot.

[PopoWRX]

Bill was there and actually made comments about how he was likely buying a house thanks to his stock.

That is some callous crap there, wow. Great interview but man, I hope those Ex-Sigil ppl land on their feet.

[DangerousDaze]

Earlier this week (5/14/07 to be exact), SOE fired all of Sigil's employees:
According to F13, SOE were not responsible for firing anyone. Have they changed their position on that?

[TrackZero]

Goddamn that was a great read. Nothing like getting the fresh story with all the names dropped.

[Thenetcase]

WOW...

Sounds like SOE is run by a bunch of assclowns... :(

I feel sorry for Sigil, now that I know the people who actually made the game didn't want to release the game when it was released...
Here's hoping that they put some effort into a new developer and actually get someone like Ubisoft to back them up this time. That would be awesome.. a Ubisoft published MMORPG. Maybe base it on something interesting this time. Perhaps a competitor for City of Heroes.

[DangerousDaze]

Sounds like SOE is run by a bunch of assclowns...
Actually, Sigil was run by one assclown, but whatever.

[Noiz]

Sorry, I tend not to read MMO related news so I'm somewhat out of the loop on this story... Can anybody give me a quick run-down of what this is all about?

[pheriannath]

That was an incredible read, I had always been hearing rumblings about how bad things were at Sigil, but I never expected outright incompetence.

My heart goes out to all the developers who lost their jobs because of this and I hope they land on their feet soon.

[NeuroMan42]

Why is anyone surprised...

I mean many publishers go this route these days. This is not new OR not a shock, as it has been happening for years now. Look at the many games that are ruined due to rushing, and other publishing pressures.

[roboninja]

So, ummm, who's buying Vanguard? :D

[Heretic Machine]

As if anyone needed to be told this: Don't work for SoE, or former SoE execs.

[Donut11]

Sad truth proved again - very few "Rock Star Game Designers" are ever successful after they leave the environment of their first success.

Yet people still give them money. And others will follow them off of the cliff.

Turn, turn, turn. Who's next?

[51|RandoM]

I don't think it makes much sense to try to lay all of the blame at the feet of one person. If you've been working at Sigil for awhile, I'd think you'd know what a sorry state Vanguard was in and realize that you needed to get out while the getting was good.

I've jumped ship a number of times when it was obvious a project was doomed by inept management.

[balamoor]

And as bad as the enviroment sounds at Sigil I hear it is even worse at Blizzard, yet they turned out a insanely popular game with WoW. Mike Morhame is said to be as bug shit crazy as Larry Flint, and the office politics are a mix of Hell week at a Kappa Delta house and that Really disturbing scene in JFK with Tommy Lee Jones and Joe Pescie. :rolleyes:

That so far hasn't effected the product, so yeah they were managed poorly and Brads an ass big deal SOE has been making games under those circumstances for years.

[DangerousDaze]

If you read the interview carefully you'll see that Microsoft placed the same pressures on them at one point. As someone who works in the MMO industry and has seen his project pass between publishers I can tell you that the practice of setting hard deadlines is not uncommon, and nor is it fiendish or evil. The development team knows well in advance what the project schedule is and it's up to the developers' own management to ensure that the schedule is met.

[KNOTE]

That was a great read. It was pretty much the same exact experience as working on The Matrix Online.

[Roc Ingersol]

There's also an interview with McQuaid (http://f13.net/?itemid=562) where he basically confirms everything. (including Butler banging the PR broad while getting a divorce from his wife, who was still working for Sigil. Bagga worms n dynamite right there)

Of course he spends most of the time blaming everything/everyone else but himself, and tries to make up with it with a one-line mea culpa at the end. As if that indicated he actually accepts responsibility after an hour of pointing fingers.

[cp#]

There's also an interview with McQuaid (http://f13.net/?itemid=562) where he basically confirms everything. (including Butler banging the PR broad while getting a divorce from his wife, who was still working for Sigil. Bagga worms n dynamite right there)

Of course he spends most of the time blaming everything/everyone else but himself, and tries to make up with it with a one-line mea culpa at the end. As if that indicated he actually accepts responsibility after an hour of pointing fingers.

Another great interview, thanks!

[Pureboy]

I just got back from an MBA leadership seminar- this interview perfectly illustrates some important concepts of what to do, and what not to do. Thanks!

[Serapth]

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.


Um.... yeah.

[DangerousDaze]

You have to have a QA process that involves the whole team as well as a separate QA group. The question isn't exactly clear which one they're referring to. If it's just process, or both process and team then the interviewee has a lousy approach to development himself, but that doesn't surprise me judging by what I've seen of Sigil in the last few days. I'm not criticising the dev there, by the way - the project quality plan is determined by the lead engineer and ultimately the company itself.

From what I understand of the interview, about the only change SOE made when they initially bought the project was to bring in their own QA expertise and resources so it's obviously something they were equally concerned with.

[Johan]

Those of you who are in the gaming industry: God bless you...

I'll stick to buying/playing the games. What a sad mess.

[Trazzlo the Magnificant]

I read these interviews yesterday. What i thought was interesting is that overall, Brad McQuaid's summary isn't all that different from what employees expressed. Usually you get entirely different stories.

MS didn't like the way things were being run. They wanted little stuff like reports on where the 30 million dollar project was at, schedules, and time estimates. How rude of them! :)

QA: I thought the employees were giving a mean spirited point of view, but McQuaid confirmed that they simply didn't have the money to hire more after MS left the project.

A company with over 100 employees and a $30+ million project should have had a Human Resources department. People were hired as friends-of-friends sorts of things, inter-relations throughout the office. Things pop up like upper management dating someone in the company which apparently pissed off his wife, who also worked at Sigil.

McQuaid wasn't in the office for the last few months, staff never really saw him. He said he was out looking for money (which I assume never came in).

Launch party was what, hotdogs in the parking lot? McQuaid wasn't sure since he wasn't there.

Termination? McQuaid wasn't there for that either, so wasn't sure what was said or how it was done.

Essentially, McQuaid walked away months ago but didn't tell any one. Others in the company had to do the firing, and it looks like they couldn't have handled it worse. I assume that was the best of their HR that was in the parking lot on firing day. He left them doing the dirty work.

Nobody was really in charge of the project.

Now the Beta makes a lot more sense. The incomplete world, the lack of quests, the "half finished" feel to the game. The client weighed in at 20 gigabytes.

It could have been so much more, but really terrible corporate management killed this project. So many times you see blame cast on the quality of the artists or programmers. This case is great since it is a complete management cluster fuck, and you can't really blame the workers when management couldn't make decisions or keep their peckers in their pants long enough to make one.

Management can make or break a company. Working for bad management leads to situations like this one. Working for good management is fabulous. Managers who know their job is to maximize what you do best, and give common direction and goals, deadlines, and budgets that are reasonable can make working easier.

[Deadend]

I would love to read a nice big postmortem on Sigil. Maybe it even deserves a book. Interview EVERYONE, and basically make it a tome for those in the industry to read. As that interview, just WOW. If the game's client was made in the last 18 or so months, then what the fuck did they spend the money on?

I think they are kinda lucky Microsoft did not try and sue them for fraud.

[DangerousDaze]

Management can make or break a company. Working for bad management leads to situations like this one. Working for good management is fabulous. Managers who know their job is to maximize what you do best, and give common direction and goals, deadlines, and budgets that are reasonable can make working easier.
Jackpot. And not only in the games industry.

[Serapth]

I would love to read a nice big postmortem on Sigil. Maybe it even deserves a book. Interview EVERYONE, and basically make it a tome for those in the industry to read. As that interview, just WOW. If the game's client was made in the last 18 or so months, then what the fuck did they spend the money on?

I think they are kinda lucky Microsoft did not try and sue them for fraud.


Sigil is probrably lucky that to Microsoft 30 million is mice nuts. I imagine most other companies would have persued legal action.

[Trazzlo the Magnificant]

Microsoft probably had a good idea of how much money there was in the shoe box once they left with the funding. If they did get a comment from MS, it would probably be "They managed to stay in business for how long?!?!". It's likely that they had no confidence at all that the product would ever reach market.

[LongStepMantis]

I couldn't help but feel angry when I read the interview they did with Brad.
Specifically the part where the interviewer tells him repeatedly about how blunt and cruel the firing part was, and Brad just keeps saying, "no, that can't be true" even though the same story has come out of lots of different terminated employees.

So either he's covering his own ass so he doesn't come off as a complete tool (still does in my opinion), or he's covering for his new overlords.
I never heard of Brad until the Sigil firings, but now I want him dead. Prick.

[DangerousDaze]

I never heard of Brad until the Sigil firings, but now I want him dead. Prick.
Overreact much?

[Serapth]

Overreact much?


Internet Hyberbolitis. A fairly common affliction.

[LongStepMantis]

Overreact much?

Only as much as others seem to think they can read my mind. :D
The problem with the internet is that you can't see someone when they type something as a joke. So i guess it loses a little in translation. :rolleyes:

[jadkins555]

Overreact much?

Also, there are two sides to every story. And don't believe everything you read on the internet. Some of the information in the interviews may be true, but I doubt the entirety of it played out exactly as it was written.