Scott Hartsman/Gallenite is a free agent

[Old Man Potter]

Does anyone know why Scott left SOE in the first place?

There seems to be a lot of hype concerning Scott and his abilities. What exactly are his achievements that would justify conferring this superstar status on him?

The road to the MMO garbage heap of history is paved with the bones of so-called "gamer gods".

Just wondering...

[Agraza]

He's smart, productive, and doesn't talk shit as far as I know. In this business you'll be worshipped so long as you're not bad, which many MMO devs apparently are considering this genre/medium is a wasteland of failed concepts.

[Gallenite]

This I wasn't expecting.

I'm incredibly flattered by the positives, and at least half agreeing with the negatives.

The thing about being the public face for anything that has a significant audience of passionate people is that you're going to inspire a couple different things:

a) Disproportionate positive reaction from people who liked you or what you helped make.

b) Disproportionate negative reaction from people who don't like or don't know you or what you helped make.

The most public people always get either too much credit or too much blame, simply because people know their names. I'd go so far as to say that the strength of the reactions have far more to do with how much of a public figure you are than they do with any actual work you did.


As for my current free agency - I've been in this state for three days. Finished the last of the paperwork an hour ago. To be fair, it's not entirely accurate to characterize anything as: "...hasn't been picked up yet."

After working pretty much straight through the last year and change, helping build an entirely new kind of games company from the ground up, doing everything from production, to game design, to writing some code, to management, to operations, to community work, and hell, to facilities work... I'm extremely fortunate in that I have some time to make measured, intelligent decisions about what to do next, and I plan on taking advantage of that.

Originally Posted by Horse

get him a webcam and a paypal acct. and he'd make a lot judging by this thread.

...and that probably won't be it. Which is better for all of us.

- Scott

[Araxen]

Could always make a MMO podcast like TWiT. I haven't found a really decent one yet.

[Utnayan]

Cliffnotes:

(Shooting from the hip on this one)

1> Hartsman at Green Monster Games.
2> McQuaid gets hired.
3> Hartsman leaves.

Complete speculation since I never got confirmation of McQuaid being hired, and I am guessing if he had, you wouldn't be able to say anything anyway.

[Mippo]

Gallenite played on Innoruuk........ He's ok in my book just for that alone. The rest is gravy.

[Snugglebear]

Originally Posted by Genjiro

Shadowrun - get Scott and the license and make millions as I've been saying on here for years now. This game not being a mmo yet is a travesty~

YES PLZ

[Ngruk]

Originally Posted by Utnayan

Cliffnotes:

(Shooting from the hip on this one)

1> Hartsman at Green Monster Games.
2> McQuaid gets hired.
3> Hartsman leaves.

Complete speculation since I never got confirmation of McQuaid being hired, and I am guessing if he had, you wouldn't be able to say anything anyway.

1) Nope
2) Nope
3) Non issue

Don't let that be anything but fact, I am a Hartsman fan as a gamer. I love anyone with the passion he has for games and gaming.

No doubt he lands on his feet, alive and kicking, doing something fun and cool as hell. Pretty confident he's a Cali boy though, this NE weather likely wouldn't be an incentive for him

[Mr Element]

Originally Posted by Ngruk

1) Nope
2) Nope
3) None issue

Don't let that be anything but fact, I am a Hartsman fan as a gamer. I love anyone with the passion he has for games and gaming.

No doubt he lands on his feet, alive and kicking, doing something fun and cool as hell. Pretty confident he's a Cali boy though, this NE weather likely wouldn't be an incentive for him

God, thank you.

[Gecko]

Originally Posted by Ngruk

1)
No doubt he lands on his feet, alive and kicking, doing something fun and cool as hell. Pretty confident he's a Cali boy though, this NE weather likely wouldn't be an incentive for him

As someone who was raised and spent the first half of my life in San Diego, it's actually nice living somewhere with four seasons. That does grow on one.

Plus, when we sell California to the Chinese to pay off our debt and balance their budget, he'll have to move somewhere else.

After working pretty much straight through the last year and change, helping build an entirely new kind of games company from the ground up, doing everything from production, to game design, to writing some code, to management, to operations, to community work, and hell, to facilities work... I'm extremely fortunate in that I have some time to make measured, intelligent decisions about what to do next, and I plan on taking advantage of that.

This is a very Mark Jacobs'ish post. You have his level of discourse in relation to community and corporate, which is a compliment. However, it's a tad odd to leave when you are leaving in a companies development cycle given your contributions.

Were you caught with one of the board members wives or something?

[Gallenite]

Originally Posted by Gecko

This is a very Mark Jacobs'ish post. You have his level of discourse in relation to community and corporate, which is a compliment. However, it's a tad odd to leave when you are leaving in a companies development cycle given your contributions.

Were you caught with one of the board members wives or something?

Haha - That would be a far more entertaining story, and probably would have made our board meetings a lot more interesting to boot.

Nothing like that, but it's a fair question. Yes, it's an exceptional set of circumstances.

I'm a big believer in that if you're going to be doing something that's all-consuming, it should be something you're both good at and enjoy doing.

Their MMO isn't generally available yet, so I can't be specific about product. Without breaking confidences:

I'm good at and enjoy helping build something from nothing. At varying degrees of competence/enjoyability, I can build organizations, teams, processes. I'm good at and enjoy growing audiences for live games based on what a given audience will find the most fun and working with the communities who play games (they do have live SN games). I'm good at and enjoy setting product direction, budget, timeline and executing on it.

What I'm not is the guy to take it in the new product direction they're heading, and more than one cook in any kitchen wouldn't be a benefit to anyone. I've yet to see where that turned out anything other than disastrous, especially in a small company. (At best, gridlock. At worst, opposing direction. Either one leads to a poor work environment for all and significantly lowers chance of succeeding.) I've experienced the problems it invariably causes elsewhere - It was the most logical choice.

That's the slightly longer version of what I mentioned in the blog post.

Entirely voluntary and no hard feelings, especially in this current environment of so much opportunity.

That's all I can say without going beyond more than I can disclose. Hope it makes sense.

- Scott

[Pren]

Originally Posted by Gallenite

- Scott

I just want you to know that it's because of your handle that I pronounced the Gallente race from EVE Online wrong for like a year.

[Sean]

Originally Posted by Gecko

Were you caught with one of the board members wives or something?

Give the guy a little credit, I've seen him with the ladies. It'd have been all of their wives.

[Cadrid]

Originally Posted by Sean

Give the guy a little credit, I've seen him with the ladies. It'd have been all of their wives.

Which begs the question:

Does he screw them, or unscrew them?

EDIT: God, that was a horrible pun. If I didn't like this place so much, I'd ask for a perma-ban.

[Gecko]

Originally Posted by Gallenite

What I'm not is the guy to take it in the new product direction they're heading, and more than one cook in any kitchen wouldn't be a benefit to anyone.

That answers it and pretty much every professional here has seen that situation. I'm sorry to hear that.

Originally Posted by Gallenite

Entirely voluntary and no hard feelings, especially in this current environment of so much opportunity.

You seem a nice guy, but that's a bit too much spin. The current environment of very little lending and almost 10% unemployment and the worst recession in 50 years I'd guess would limit opportunity. Especially at startups.

The question which would lay this thread to rest is given the good changes you did in EQ2, why did you never fix the combat system!