Green Monster Games (Curt Schilling)

[Vekruul Shuth]

/shill on

I heard you on Dennis and Callahan the other day...Sox didn't give you an offer on the spot (silly IMO, but hey...I'm no GM).

Will this in any way effect you actually putting a game out? Or where your headquarters is located?

Cause if I see you fucking this up...I want to come knocking on your door!

Like the above poster said...PLEASE don't make the same mistakes VG did. Yeah Yeah...Not his fault, but his company.

[Dis]

Originally Posted by Ngruk

Spring continues to roll along, things are progressing and this team is looking rather good at the moment. But then there are about 20-25 teams saying the same thing and most of them aren't in the AL East or Central.

Just thought I would add this, I go to quite a few stros game, I will almost garuantee you that when you pitch you will be doing so to a sell out, and when the Juice Box is sold out, I have to say it is the loudest stadium in baseball hands down. We bust ear drums. Ask Clemens, or Backe (Backe pitched what in my opinion was the loudest sporting event I have ever attended, and I have attended quite a few).


As far as the MMO, when you start feeding us some info, I will take a closer peak at it.

[Cadrid]

Originally Posted by Ngruk

I had a great opportunity to sit and talk with Brad McQuaid a few months back, right before Vanguard launch.

He was exactly what I expected, dead tired and incredibly passionate about players and his people and his game.

The 'mistakes' he made, alot of them, are not of his own doing, but he accepts full responsibility and I admire that.

Regardless of your opinion he's one of the 2-3 main reasons MMO's are what they are today as far as the market and the industry, in a good way.

The amount of time and effort he's put into his company, his people, his games, is pretty staggering.

Aside from a few bad apples, I think most people were on Brad's side during Vanguard's development. For those select few folks whose metaphorical dog Brad ran over, it didn't matter what he did or wanted to do, they were embittered to the end. However, most folks on this forum, as far as I can tell, feel bad for Mr. McQuaid; once again it seems as if the SoE suits have pushed one of his projects out the door too soon and he's the one taking all the heat for it.

Perhaps the most unfortunate thing about all of this is how Brad left SoE to pursue his own idea of MMO utopia and yet, in the end, he is at their mercy once again. I don't mean to sound like an anti-SoE conspiracy theorist/shill/insurgent/whatever, but it was conceded by Vanguard developers that Vanguard wasn't ready for release, yet had to be shoved out the door regardless.

To stay on topic, both in terms of the thread and my post, does GMG have a publisher backing them already, will you be looking for a publisher, or will you self-publish?

[Frax]

Originally Posted by Ngruk

Spring continues to roll along, things are progressing and this team is looking rather good at the moment. But then there are about 20-25 teams saying the same thing and most of them aren't in the AL East or Central.

Everyone is an undefeated champ in spring training/training camp, right? As a rockies fan, june is about where the season ends for me, i've usually had any hope of playoff nonsense beaten out of me by then due to their constantly inconsistent pitching. :[

As far as the gaming development, don't promise the moon when you know you can't deliver it. Vanguard fell short of expectations for many, especially with the 800LB gorilla of WoW still dominating the MMO market. However you and everyone else knows that no matter what you say you will or try to do, some jackass will point out something different from a post you made three years previously. There are still message threads bouncing around on USENET of people absolutely thrashing Brad McQuaid over the Everquest five promised v. three delivered continents issue. It is just going to happen no matter what your intent is, someone, somewhere, is going to scrutinize every detail of every post you have made...

[Erronius]

Originally Posted by Cadrid

Aside from a few bad apples, I think most people were on Brad's side during Vanguard's development.

Sure, over a year ago before the rumor mill kicked into gear. But then the rumors came out of closed beta, Sigil tapdanced around addressing concerns and later segued to their "We'll fix it by release" line. Once they couldn't keep a lid on the problems anymore, THEN many of the less-optimistic players (or naive, depending on your pov) had had enough and chose to be anti-VG rather than to trundle up to the propaganda slop-trough yet again, and trumpet the virtues of VG in the hope that some day the game would live up to it's billing when often it didn't at the time. And for every hater that didn't want to give it a chance after a while, there was a vanbois willing to wait until the second coming of Christ for the game to pan out so they could say "See? We told you the game would be ready!".

Personally the state of the game wouldn't have bothered me nearly as much, if at all, had they been upfront with issues and concerns rather than trying to be slick and sneak in under the wire for release/openbeta without anyone being the wiser. As it stood, I ended up feeling like you couldn't believe anything they said, as they had been doing nothing but spoonfeeding spin to the gaming community for some time.

For those select few folks whose metaphorical dog Brad ran over, it didn't matter what he did or wanted to do, they were embittered to the end. However, most folks on this forum, as far as I can tell, feel bad for Mr. McQuaid; once again it seems as if the SoE suits have pushed one of his projects out the door too soon and he's the one taking all the heat for it.

Of course, I'm sure many do feel sorry for Brad, I know I do - but many who do aren't about to excuse him from any blame in this whatsoever. I won't cast him as some sort of super-villian, but he's still a guilty party regardless of whether or not SOE should bear the brunt of the blame or not. Besides, SOE was just doing what it felt it needed to do - before people run around blaming SOE for all of Vanguards problems, I would point out that they only got involved after things got to the point that it was even a consideration. People can complain about SOE setting a timeline, or about restricting funding all they want, but the fact remains that it was the decisions made BEFORE SOE got involved that are to blame. Had things been handled differently early on, I imagine that the whole SOE thing could have been avoided.

[KharzaWHA?]

Biggest mistake I can see in regards to Vanguard is over-reaching, and trying to create too large of a world with too small of a team in too short of time. Whether you want to blame Sony/MS for pushing Vanguard out too soon, or McQuaid for biting off too much, well, I'm far too removed to speak accurately there.

As for how to avoid that, I'd imagine there's some triage that could be done in advance. Such that the game can be considered reasonably complete without feature X fully implemented. I suppose WoW would be an example of this done properly. The raid game, and even the support and structure of 40-man raid groups at the start of WoW was far from adequate. My own class, paladin, had to deal with both buffing being ridiculous, and in some cases certain spells completely inable to work on raid members because they weren't part of my 5-man group. I know atleast Divine Intervention (back when you had to be good to use it) did not work properly in raid groups, and I'm unsure about BoSalvation.

Even with problems like those, and I'm sure there were others, WoW was largely complete on release, and I gather it was pushed out by Vivendi, in probably a similar manner to Vanguard. I cannot really vouch for Vanguard, because my computer is far from the capability to run it. I may be projecting more problems onto Vanguard than are really there.

So that's something I hope GMG can do, that Vanguard didn't seem to do right, or do enough of. Plan to be late, and to have to cut things. And plan your design so that if you have to cut some features and content, then you can do it in such a way as to still have a playable, reasonably complete game.

[Aethn Anvel]

Originally Posted by Ngruk

Regardless of your opinion he's one of the 2-3 main reasons MMO's are what they are today as far as the market and the industry, in a good way.

.

I have no ill will towards Brad and Sigil at all, I was actually hoping for a good showing from them out the gate. I fully understand Brads role in MMO history and appreciate the things he has done to keep me entertained for nearly a decade and thakn him for that wholeheartedly.

I was pulling for VG, I am just as disappointed as everyone else is and actually do hope they can turn this around and pull off an "Any Given Sunday" miracle and make VG what he hoped it to be sooner rather then later.

[Vetiria]

Good luck with GMG and the upcoming season, Curt. Go have a fantastic season and finally get that CY. I look forward to seeing Soriano, Lee, and Ramirez tee off of you in October, though (nothing personal )

[Regime]

All I got to say is Curt has his mending skill maxed and likes to feign death IRL

[Kazgrim]

I'm sympathetic to brad's situation but you must admit that Brad is 100% responsible for it. He overshot it, overdeveloped and tried to do too much. When MS saw the state the game was in and how much more money it would take to get it ready they pulled out, and brad had to spend the rest of sigils development budget buying back the rights to it, leaving the game 1/4 finished with no funding. If it wasn't for SOE the game never would have seen the light of day. You can't really blame them for not wanting to push VG into the #1 spot for most money spent developing an MMO ever, which is what it would have taken for VG to have been released "when it was ready" considering it wasn't ever going to be the financial success that WoW is.

The lesson to learn from VG is don't shoot for the moon unless you have the resources to reach it.

[Ngruk]

Originally Posted by Vekruul Shuth

/shill on

I heard you on Dennis and Callahan the other day...Sox didn't give you an offer on the spot (silly IMO, but hey...I'm no GM).

Will this in any way effect you actually putting a game out? Or where your headquarters is located?

Cause if I see you fucking this up...I want to come knocking on your door!

Like the above poster said...PLEASE don't make the same mistakes VG did. Yeah Yeah...Not his fault, but his company.

No and No to the two questions.

[Ngruk]

Originally Posted by Cadrid

To stay on topic, both in terms of the thread and my post, does GMG have a publisher backing them already, will you be looking for a publisher, or will you self-publish?

While our focus is on developing this IP and building the company today, and over the next few years, the ultimate goal is to become a force in the world of publishing.
We have every intention of becoming an 'entertainment' company. Our focus, and our strength, will be games, but there are alot of other things we can and will do when the time is right.

[Ngruk]

Originally Posted by Frax

Everyone is an undefeated champ in spring training/training camp, right? As a rockies fan, june is about where the season ends for me, i've usually had any hope of playoff nonsense beaten out of me by then due to their constantly inconsistent pitching. :[

As far as the gaming development, don't promise the moon when you know you can't deliver it. Vanguard fell short of expectations for many, especially with the 800LB gorilla of WoW still dominating the MMO market. However you and everyone else knows that no matter what you say you will or try to do, some jackass will point out something different from a post you made three years previously. There are still message threads bouncing around on USENET of people absolutely thrashing Brad McQuaid over the Everquest five promised v. three delivered continents issue. It is just going to happen no matter what your intent is, someone, somewhere, is going to scrutinize every detail of every post you have made...

That's why you aren't seeing now, nor will you likely see in the future, detailed IP and game specific posts. It does no one any good.
The only thing that can happen if you hype something in a forum like this is bad. You either meet your hype, which rarely if ever happens, or you don't even put out the promised feature, or everyone has months think 20 different ways about your promise and find something in it at launch that is 'missing'.
It's a lose lose.

[Dis]

Originally Posted by Ngruk

That's why you aren't seeing now, nor will you likely see in the future, detailed IP and game specific posts. It does no one any good.
The only thing that can happen if you hype something in a forum like this is bad. You either meet your hype, which rarely if ever happens, or you don't even put out the promised feature, or everyone has months think 20 different ways about your promise and find something in it at launch that is 'missing'.
It's a lose lose.

Have you taken a look at what Bioware is up to, do you see them "changing the game" in much of the way that Blizzard "added polish to the game" so to speak? IMO Bioware (as far off as it maybe) is what has got me all giddy inside, they are definitely a top knotch dev when it comes to RPGs. I want to see what they do with an MMO.

[Ngruk]

Originally Posted by Dis

Have you taken a look at what Bioware is up to, do you see them "changing the game" in much of the way that Blizzard "added polish to the game" so to speak? IMO Bioware (as far off as it maybe) is what has got me all giddy inside, they are definitely a top knotch dev when it comes to RPGs. I want to see what they do with an MMO.

How can you not like Bioware? Awesome company run by what I hear are great people. They've got an awesome track record of great games. Been a fan and a customer for a long time.
As far as 'taking a look' I am not sure what you mean.
We follow what they are doing, like everyone else, and pay attention as well since they are so damn good, but when I switched hats from gamer to founder I think I lost the ability to head up there, meet the guys and check out what they are doing