Welcome Back Brad
Posted by Stropp on June 16, 2009Just saw a post about the return of Brad McQuaid to game development over at the Common Sense Gamer. Darren is linking to a new blog by the veteran designer that has a couple of posts up talking about Vanguard and his re-emerging desire to get back into the world of MMORPG design.
In the post titled, Where the heck have you been? McQuaid briefly recounts the last couple of years since he departed the Vanguard team. In the final paragraph he says:
But in the last few months I’ve really felt that desire to be back in the industry and creating games. I’ve been putting feelers out and weighing my options. Part of me ‘reaching out again’ is this website and blog. It really feels good to return from my self-imposed exile 
Hello everyone, I’m back!
I can certainly understand that desire. As a programmer I’ve occassionally taken on less programmy roles — team leader, test engineer, documentation writer — and have missed the feel of coding. I reckon it must have been tough on him to spend two years away from the field that he loves.
Just a couple of weeks ago I posted an article asking why do gamers, and MMORPG gamers in particular, seem compelled to dump a bucketload of hate on successful game designers who have a single failure. I was referring to luminaries like Richard Garriott and Bill Roper in that post, but I feel this equally applies to McQuaid.
The man was involved in developing the history of some of our most well respected games, starting way back in the text based MUD days, and going on to be a producer and one of the lead designers of Everquest.
It was his stint with Vanguard that proved to be his undoing. Running a company is a completely different kettle of fish than being on a team and it’s my opinion that this, not the game design/production component, is what caused the anxiety he mentions in his post. And that’s not unheard of, and not unforgiveable either. A lot of people move upwards and out of their area of competency, and fail, it happens all the time.
But hey, that’s what life is all about, growth and failure.
It’s said that you learn more from your failures than you learn from your successes. Where most of us take small steps and fail quietly only to retreat back to our corners (if we take the steps at all,) McQuaid pushed himself out of his comfort zone, and failed. In this case spectacularly, with a huge audience. But do you know what? Who cares.
I figure everyone deserves another chance. I for one hope Brad finds a suitable role for himself, somewhere he can pursue his passion, and deliver to us, the hungry MMORPG masses, another great game.
Welcome back Brad.
Popularity: 3% [?]
Thanks for the pointer. I’m surprised there are no nasty replies to that blog yet, but I guess the comments are moderated.
Still, it’s nice to see him back. I only got into playing around with design ideas and blogging because Brad encouraged such discussions on the Sigil forums. I never bought the game, but I spent years debating MMO design on those forums.
I certainly don’t wish ill on Mr. McQuaid, but I also understand why there tends to be bucket loads of hate for those specific failed MMO designers. In every case you bring up, it isn’t that they failed, it’s that they pissed on and off everyone on the way out.
Garriot left a fledgling game to go into space on a publicity stunt that wasn’t even really making all that much publicity. And it closed down within spitting distance of that event, rather making it seem as though he was taking his profits and running while everyone else was left to hold the baggage. Now of course he has a different story, but that’s the perception of the time that the hate began to fester.
Roper more or less just gets saddled with Hellgate: London, which there are a myriad of sites dedicated to the story of. Most importantly, when things were going bad for them, the company line remained “everything’s awesome, it’s all working as intended, trust us!” Add that to a spectacularly bad community manager, and what you get isn’t just a commercial failure, but a whole host of players feeling betrayed.
It’s not that everyone forgets their past contributions that the hate develops, in fact it’s because of their past contributions that the hate develops. People trust them, not just to produce good games, but to be good developers and not leave them in the lurch. That’s why it stings so much when, from all signs, the players have just been completely betrayed.
Vanguard has it’s own Saga surrounding those themes. And McQuaid certainly made his share of mistakes in how he treated the players and the staff.
He gets a second chance. Honestly, all of them certainly deserve second chances. Hell I’m kind of surprised John Romero is still relegated to Mobile Games development. I think players can be a pretty forgiving lot, but just like in regular life, you loose people’s trust and you have to work your way back from zero.
@Aaron – I do recall one nasty comment from an AC, but I was more surprised to see people saying that the orig release of VG was better and that the game was destroyed by the later devs. Hmmm.
BTW, my post may have been premature, looks like Genda has discovered evidence that the blog is not by Brad McQuaid. More on that later…
@Sara – I know where you are coming from, but (at this point) I want to address one thing. According to the recent lawsuit documents, Garriott had the space trip booked for quite a while (some years I think) and it was an event that couldn’t be moved (was there a deposit? Not sure.) In fact, it came shortly after the game had been released, and he took the opportunity.
Then when he had come down and was still in the quarantine phase, NCSoft did the dirty (allegedly) and effectively sacked him and made it seem like he had left voluntarily. Now the results of that will be seen in the court case, but to me, it doesn’t look like Garriott did the dirty at all.
Hell, if I was offered a trip into space and my boss refused to give me the time, I’d quit. Simple as that. Space is a dream for me, and always has been since I was a kid. So I’d take the opportunity on the assumption that it’d never happen again. Perhaps Garriott felt the same way.
I think, in hindsight, the promotion of TR tied to that flight was the mistake, especially since everything fell apart soon after. It made RG a good scapegoat.
As for John Romero, I think he also found out how hard it is to run a company. Especially one as public and with the rockstar status of Ion Storm. They promised a lot and also failed to deliver (for the most part.) As for the mobile games, I suspect that Romero found the mother lode with that one. There may be more money in that industry than in any PC game studio.
Perhaps one day he’ll pop up in the limelight again.
Oh I understand Garriot’s position in hindsight. And I don’t really hate any of the developers, these are just the things that I observed as the major triggers for the hate.
Much of the time, I’m more worried that someday I’ll meet the same fate. Right now, I’m mostly just taking down notes on how things have been handled so if it ever comes up in the future, I’ll be ready to roll with the punches… or hopefully avoid the hate all together.
Well said, well written article and FINALLY a voice of reason and wisdom in the gaming world.
I too am boggled by the ‘haters’ that plague the world of MMORPG’s. Is it role playing carrying over? But then in raiding I often wonder why a grown adult would allow someone to scream and berate them during a raid that would otherwise, face to face, not be tolerated.
I too am excited at Brads reemergence into our world and love of gaming. There is no one that can design a game, no one with vision like his. He is truly one of a kind. I don’t see how hanging onto bitterness and hateful feelings can outweigh the amazing experience of playing one of his games, regardless the game bugs/issues and they ALL have them.
So thank you for writing this and showing there are gamers out there that still use their hearts and wisdom.
Actually, Romero is doing MMO development now (http://slipg8.com/). He got bought by Gazillion when they bought up a bunch of MMO-related companies a while ago.
As for designer hate, people hate us when things are going well.
These games encourage a certain passion, and people sometimes get worked up when their favorite game doesn’t live up to expectations. If the game actually stumbles and falls, then the knives come out.
In McQuaid’s case, the perspective I’ve heard is that it seems a bit rude to say, “Yeah, I was out riding dirt bikes and having a blast while the employees I convinced to work long hours with me were being fired….” Of course, the politics of the game industry prevent him from really discussing the issue. If he were worked over by Sony, it would be career suicide to say that’s what happened. To admit fault would cast a shadow his reputation. So, the best option is to remain silent and let people fill in their own blanks.
Personally, I wish him the best. I suspect he’s gotten a dose of humility from the experience, and hope he takes it as an opportunity for personal growth.
Thanks for the info Brian, the last I’d heard of Romero was when he dropped out of the AAA FPS space to work on Cellphone games.
I expect that (some) players tend to invest themselves heavily in the games they play, perhaps more so that with other forms of entertainment — Although I’ve never heard of a game-designer stalker whereas there have been plenty of stalkers of other celebrities — and they’re somewhat technical, the internet is a great forum to vent ones ill-considered rage.
The comments about having fun, yeah, I can see where people could be offended. But does anyone seriously consider that he should have spent the last two years sitting in a darkened room watching reruns of the Brady Bunch? (That would have been punishment enough for the most hardened criminal – Madoff was lucky) With the (reported) personal issues he faced during the development of Vanguard, taking time off like that would have been the best thing he could have done.
Not only would it have been career suicide, at that level he was probably subject to a number of non-disclosures which would have made spilling the beans financial suicide as well.
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