38 Studios

TomServo

TomServo

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Moorgard_sl said:
I won't address Curt's personal finances. It's easy to mock his actions, given how things turned out. But I want this to be known: He didn't put up his personal money out of ego or hubris. He did it because he cared about all of us and was willing to do anything he could to keep things going. Contrast this with countless executives who, at the first sign of trouble, cash out their golden parachutes and ride money yachts into the sunset. He could have done that a long time before things went bad. He didn't, even though he was advised to, and despite how clearly it was to his personal detriment to stick it out.

Curt went down with the ship. He didn't lock us out of the building or hide away while someone else fired us. He pretty much slept in the office that last week, trying to make any deal he could to stave off the inevitable. He spent those last few days walking through the building, talking to people, apologizing to everyone, saying whatever he could despite the pain he and the rest of us were in. The last time I saw him, we shared a long hug goodbye, both of us in tears. He never ran away and hid. That's the kind of man he is.

Call him a lousy businessman if you want; the burning husk of 38 is all you need to make your case. Say he made foolish decisions; you're unaware of the many good ones he made, but go ahead and focus on the bad. But realize that he was a different kind of boss, and above all else, just a genuinely good guy who wanted to see his team succeed. The world needs more people like Curt, not fewer--hopefully learning from past mistakes rather than repeating them.
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something something evil and idiocy,.misunderstandings and neglect create more confusion in this world than trickery and malice. At any rate, the last two are certainly much less frequent."
 
Famm

Famm

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Moorgard_sl said:
I won't address Curt's personal finances. It's easy to mock his actions, given how things turned out. But I want this to be known: He didn't put up his personal money out of ego or hubris.
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Uh, from that same Boston Magazine article that Ut linked, he pretty much admitted that ego was what did him in. He went down thinking the miracle last pitch was going to save the game for everyone.

As a baseball player, Schilling refused to ever consider the notion of defeat until the final out, even down three games to none to the Yankees. By his own admission, he carried that same attitude into business. One former employee describes it as "rampant and destructive optimism."

Asked if that's truly what undid him, Schilling says, "No," then stutters and pauses. "I don't know any other way to be," he says finally, his voice dropping to just above a whisper and his eyes welling up. "I don't know any other way to be."
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That pro athlete confidence in the face of adversity turned out to be a terrible character flaw in his business venture. A tale as old as pro sports but this one had much higher stakes in an unusual industry with public investing.
 
Utnayan

Utnayan

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Deflections, Good Ol' Boy protections, etc. I want to take a second not to flame like the Utnayan of old, but take a look at this from a gaming perspective. Which believe me, is hard after reading Moorgaard's flat out bullshit post. And there isn't any real nice way to say it. Everyone knows that post is full of shit, from the fans to industry insiders, and obviously to the ex-employees of 38 studios. With that said:

Moorgaard's post here is exactly what is wrong with the industry when it comes to owning up to mistakes and why the genre * never * advances. They scapegoat the mistake, blame it on someone else, and keep their job or use that to launch another job at another studio after a friend who works at another company buys it and sells it to their boss. (See the entire Career of Rich Vogel) Point being? They never own up to mistakes, so they cannot learn from them. Hell, Dave Georgeson still has on his linked in that he is responsible for the most popular expansion of EQ2, which objectively and critically, The Velious expansion (in EQ2 mind you, not EQ1) was hated. It sold because of the name attached. Did he learn from the mistakes that are pleniful and pointed out by customers? No. Because he never owned up to those. He also never owned up to the horrible implementation of EQ2's free to play system. One would hope Smedley would look at how poorly this was received back when it launched (Not sure how this has changed now, if at all) and realize while they may have had success financially, the opportunity cost of lost revenue had they had a person who knew what to do. Does he own up to it? No. He brags about it's success when we all know better. He is just one example in a pool of hundreds.

It's why people continue to get hired failure after failure. A lot of fans would like to get solid answers for the games they play, prevelant of course in the MMORPG genre. What features are up and coming, what is working, what isn't. Transparency with the customer player base is key. If you read Danuser's post will you not only learn after reading tha he hasn't learned a thing about being transparent with people over the internet, this has definitely followed over to his career. Danuser is by far, not the only one that does this. I would say it is a feature in him brought out by years of watching everyone else do the same thing. From McQuaid, Vogel, Koster... These are the folks he grew up and learned from. People like George Scotto and Crosby. Really, not only masters of bullshit, but really, unethical to it's customer base in the same regard but having an aura of infalliability. Almost to the point that they actually enjoyed and laughed at some of their creative replies.

It is exactly what is wrong today. And I think it speaks volumes that when everyone else on the planet knows the real truth of what happened by now, it takes amazing balls for a guy to come here where people follow this (almost religiously) genre and see this post fly in the face of truth. But aside from Danuser doing this, damn near everyone in the industry does this. Look at Pitchford and Aliens. Pitchford makes Danuser in this regard look like the most ethical of people in the business. And unfortunately, the customers and creativity of the games suffer, and the entire credibility of the industry is a joke. Which then will at some point, just reduce it to a pile of idiocy. The last excuse won't be of course taking accountibility for horrible business and customer practices, but, "The gaming market grew up. There is no more gaming market" and a couple sheep executives and investors will nod their head at a pie chart, not knowing it was caused by internal mismanagement, and off we go into microtransactional speed bikes on the iPad 7.

Thanks Moorgard. For showing what is exactly wrong with the industry and why it needs fresh meat now more than ever.
 
F

Fuya_sl

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Curt Schilling is never going to come to this board and post his thoughts on what happened nor is Moorgard going to say anything bad. So lets get Curt of 2008 in the Vanguard FoH thread to respond.

Bloody Sock_sl said:
Dismissing the obvious Pandora's box I'm opening by posting here I was wondering something.

Does it truly make people feel good about themselves to observe other people's misery and failure? Does it validate you to gloat over other peoples failings and the ruining of peoples lives/careers?

I barely know Brad, barely, but I sure as hell don't feel the slightest bit of happiness knowing his life is in turmoil, his dream and his vision came crashing down and in the process hundreds of people's careers were changed/ruined/screwed up in the process.

If anyone on this board could have legitimate reasons to root against Brad, Sigil, VG or any of it I'd imagine it would be someone like me running a competing company.

I feel the exact opposite of all those things. Listen, Brad has to take account for his part in all this, and I am hoping someday if he hasn't already, he will.

But this is real life shit folks, a persons life is at stake, or was, due to what is thought to be a serious drug addiction, a company was pretty much run into the ground, and there is a large contingent of people here dancing on both of their graves. Over what? A 40 dollar purchase? A bad game? Again, you make your own bed, he bears the burden of everything he impacted, I get that, but I would question the integrity of a team member, after the fact, airing the dirty laundry he did on a forum like this, in the fashion it was done.

I can only speak for me, a personal opinion and observation, but I can't fathom ANY possible scenario ever when I'd consider someone that did something like this to be a potential employee, no matter how talented or passionate they were.

You spend thousands of hours grinding in production of this massive 'thing', saying now that the entire time you knew it was all a train wreck, everyone and their mother was clueless and the company was a chaotic nightmare every second of the day but nowhere in that post did you claim to make your opinions of the goings on and your feelings known to anyone that mattered.

Had the bulk of the people in that company, if they truly felt and knew they were heading down a path of utter disaster, taken a stand, aired the dirty laundry, where would Brad and VG be right now?

I can only speak for myself but if 50% of my dev team stand up at an all hands and proclaim the current project un-salvageable I have to think things as we know it would come to a screeching halt. Hell if 5 people of the dev team say that then I am thinking there is something HORRIFICALLY wrong.

Understand this, anyone that has the slightest insight into who I am knows I am all about openness and honesty, and I am the last person on this planet to tell you anything or offer anyone advice in keeping their mouth shut, but at the end of the day what did that post accomplish?

Make someone who's clearly at a breaking point in their lives feel worse?
Make a group of people who clearly had passion for gaming, got caught in a meat grinder and were 'forced' to churn out something that was far from reaching it's potential feel worse?
Further validate an effort that has already lined up a million or say "I told you it sucked" gamers with more bravado?

I don't think the post told us anything we all didn't already know did it? We all know what VG was when it launched, as gamers anyway, that post, to me anyway, was the first episiode of FOH's version of Jerry Springer.

And more:

Don't for a second think I am talking or preaching from a pedestal. I am more than ok with admitting to making more than my share of stupid mistakes, and I'll make more.
It happens, we're human, I just have trouble with the entire 'piling on' thing and the mob mentality that follows threads like this.
What happened was an unmitigated disaster, we all know that, it's just amazing that this all made so many people jump for joy.
I don't gloat in other peoples' misery, I have certainly spoken out of turn more than once, but I don't revel in other peoples lives falling apart.
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I feel like Curts thoughts will be the same today as it was then now that his company is the one gone and not Sigils.
 
Lleauaric

Lleauaric

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Its a shame Curt wasnt born a black man. All this could have been solved so much simpler with a failed rap music label.
 
Utnayan

Utnayan

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Fuya_sl said:
Curt Schilling is never going to come to this board and post his thoughts on what happened nor is Moorgard going to say anything bad. So lets get Curt of 2008 in the Vanguard FoH thread to respond.



I feel like Curts thoughts will be the same today as it was then now that his company is the one gone and not Sigils.
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^^^ You have the wrong quote name on that as I never wrote that. FYI.

Also, to what you stated Curt said, I do not think anyone was jumping for joy. I think people were tired (And now DEFINITELY are tired) of the infalliability approach to it's customer base and out right lies. I just had a PMfrom a game dev agree with the previous post and talked about their experience.

I think they said it best. I will not use their name. I hope they do not mind me quoting, they had some awesome points.

PM to Utnayan_sl said:
Now, some time later, I realize that the Bullshit Problem is endemic to all forms of business, but it becomes especially pernicious in a closed-off, incestuous industry like ours. You can't call out failures because it upsets people, even when they know it's true, and you'll probably need that guy to not hate you later on in your career anyway. It's the same shit as the game review sites that only ever use 70-100, the way you reference a catastrophic failure to someone's face would be something like... "I really liked the concept and it had a ton of promise, it's unfortunate that it underperformed the way it did, let's try to figure out how to not do this the next time around" and everyone around the table nods and agrees, and the Rich Vogel at the table truly believes in his heart of hearts that it wasn't his fault, HE's the one with the talent, he just needs the right people around him to make it shine. Maybe they don't really believe it, not really, but goddamn if they're not good at pretending they do.

The people at the Vogel/Pitchford level are *professional bullshitters*, and as such, are not particularly credible or trustworthy from as external perspective. Frequently, they're untrustworthy from the inside as well. They rarely experience any consequences for failure, nor for making patently false statements. People like me always do. So, what I'm getting at is that it makes sense to see Danuser talking about huggy hug crytimes with Curt... he's probably running the numbers in his head and sees that he has a lot more to gain from maintaining a friendly relationship with his former colleagues who are now failing-up or failing-around than he does from cathartically feeding the hatred of internet cannibals.
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This is why we will not have any innovation in the game space again. And why this genre in particular? Is a fast dying breed. Internally, people are even afraid to stand up for themselves. Ideas are stagnated, and the people responsible for the failures continue to mark their fire hydrant with more failures with a quick lift of the leg.

What this industry needs is one gigantic shake down.
 
G

Gecko_sl

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Utnayan_sl said:
Moorgaard's post here is exactly what is wrong with the industry when it comes to owning up to mistakes and why the genre * never * advances. They scapegoat the mistake, blame it on someone else, and keep their job or use that to launch another job at another studio .
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You pretty much summed up corporate America in a nutshell, there.

I'd guess Curt did quite a lot to help the people at .38S, even at the end. That said, Curt did hire an executive team to run the company. I'd love to hear what, if anything, they actually did besides blow a lot of Curt's money and breed?
 
spronk

spronk

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you guys are way too pessimistic in this thread, in every industry its normal for the gorillas to stagnate, become ultra conservative, and overthrown by the young guns who have a better way and decide to do it. I've been really enjoying playing Gamebook Adventures on my nexus, weird little text based choose-your-adventure thing, and of course all the crazy ass minecraft or dwarf fortress stuff came from single guys. No doubt the next awesome its-an-MMO-but-not-the-way-we-think is brewing in the mind of a 15 year old kid being picked on in high school, but I can definitely tell you it won't come from SOE, EA, Blizzard, or any of those guys. Isn't there a couple revolutionary MMO ideas swirling around on Kickstarter too?
 
Denaut

Denaut

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Utnayan_sl said:
This is why we will not have any innovation in the game space again. And why this genre in particular? Is a fast dying breed. Internally, people are even afraid to stand up for themselves. Ideas are stagnated, and the people responsible for the failures continue to mark their fire hydrant with more failures with a quick lift of the leg.

What this industry needs is one gigantic shake down.
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While this is true in many places, and certainly a problems in many companies, it probably isn't the main reason we see so much stagnation. There are many people that I don't blather about publicly but would never, ever work with again. And, if I were in some situation that forced me into a private discussion, they would certainly hear the unvarnished truth. Just because you don't spout off on message boards for posterity doesn't mean people don't talk in private. Plenty of people in the industry have a bad reputation. The biggest reason you see so much stagnation is money, pure and simple.

To make a solid, proper, AAA MMO you are looking at a minimum of $15 million in my estimation, and that is if you keep scope down, a clear plan, knowledge of pitfalls, and have a proper pre-production. The people with that kind of money, at least the ones with final approval, don't know jack about game production.

So let's say you and I are pitching to one of these people to make an MMO. You have a solid production plan, realistic goals, well thought out targets, and a modest scope that will fit within the budget I mentioned above. I, on the other hand, am a bullshit artist extraordinaire that could talk a habit off of a nun. I pitch a fantastic scope with wild returns, I point out the huge success of some games and say "an amazing combination of all three!" My schedule is hopelessly optimistic, way under-budgeted, and calls for a short pre-production with a quick to market time-frame. The person that does a better job of making their eyes turn to dollar signs gets the funding, and not the sober pragmatist.

The money goes to the wrong people because the skills required for getting it are utterly unrelated to the ones needed to design, build, and complete a good, fun game on time and on budget. Like, say, baseball stars.
 
F

Fuya_sl

shitlord
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Utnayan_sl said:
^^^ You have the wrong quote name on that as I never wrote that. FYI.
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Yeah I'm sorry about that. The post wasn't going to be that at first then it later did. I had quoted you for a reply about Brad on the FoH board finally admitting on lying to his players in EQ and how raid zones were not finished. Again, I'm sorry about that. Ran out the door as soon as I hit the post button without thinking to change the quote header.
 
Tmac

Tmac

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Fuya_sl said:
Yeah I'm sorry about that. The post wasn't going to be that at first then it later did. I had quoted you for a reply about Brad on the FoH board finally admitting on lying to his players in EQ and how raid zones were not finished. Again, I'm sorry about that. Ran out the door as soon as I hit the post button without thinking to change the quote header.
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YOU CAN FIX IT.
 
D

Draegan_sl

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Someone should hire me to make an MMO. I bet I could design one that would make some money. I'd hire Lithose to write the lore.
 
E

etchazz

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i'm not happy that 38 studios failed, i'm not rejoicing in what happened to curt schilling as i'm sure his intentions were good, and i understand completely why moorgard would want to say positive things about his employer and friend. what i am more than anything is completely and hopelessly confused as to how a company could spend that much fucking money and take that much time and literally have nothing to show for it except for what should have taken less than a month to produce. that, is what blows my fucking mind.
 
Tmac

Tmac

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etchazz_sl said:
i'm not happy that 38 studios failed, i'm not rejoicing in what happened to curt schilling as i'm sure his intentions were good, and i understand completely why moorgard would want to say positive things about his employer and friend. what i am more than anything is completely and hopelessly confused as to how a company could spend that much fucking money...
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I was with you until...

etchazz_sl said:
...and take that much time andliterally have nothing to show for itexcept forwhat should have taken less than a month to produce. that, is what blows my fucking mind.
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They've got nothing to show, but also have something to show, but only something that would take less than a month to produce? Wat?
 
E

etchazz

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well, what i meant was what they had actually completed after nearly 6 years and hundreds of millions of dollars should have been able to be done in a month.
 
Dandai

Dandai

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Having worked with some of the systems they used and watching the leaked videos of the environments, I can assure you that is more than a month's work. 6 years? Also highly unlikely, but certainly more than a month.
 
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