Howdy, Stranger!
It looks like you're new here. If you want to get involved, click one of these buttons!
Quick Links
[Column] Pantheon: Rise of the Fallen: Its Just Fallen
SBFord
Former Associate EditorMember LegendaryPosts: 33,129
For those of you that are now wondering, “What’s with the Dr. Doofenshmirtzesque back story,” it serves to set up this. Having met Brad I got the impression that he was a decent designer and an okay guy in a general setting. Because of that it was with mixed feelings when I saw Pantheon pop up on Kickstarter I knew it was dead on arrival.
Read more of Rob Lashley's Pantheon: It's Just Fallen.
Comments
Somebody, somewhere has better skills as you have, more experience as you have, is smarter than you, has more friends as you do and can stay online longer. Just pray he's not out to get you.
Currently Playing: ESO and FFXIV
Have played: You name it
If you mention rose tinted glasses, you better be referring to Mitch Hedberg.
The idea behind kick starter is great.
However, brad is just one more example of why kick starter needs to either be shut down or have rules and regulations put in place to govern it.
I fear that kick starter is going to have a negative impact on crowdfunding in general. Artists have been using it for a long time to do things like fund art exhibitions and finance projects makes sense to me. Using it to raise tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands, or even millions of dollars for something as risky as a video game just seems irresponsible, when the people raising the money aren't obligated to actually return any of that investment.
very true
EQ2 fan sites
Twitter Facebook RantOnRob Youtube
Turns out they just might be held responsible. The state of Washington's Attorney general is suing a successfully kickstarted company that has failed to deliver on their project.
http://seattletimes.com/html/businesstechnology/2023508032_crowdfundinglawsuitxml.html
Twitter Facebook RantOnRob Youtube
Final nail in the coffin for Brad, guess he thought he might as well go out with a bang lol.
I lost €30 but hey wtf is €30 when taking a gamble lol.
I was in ESO beta for quite some while but i didn't buy the game, instead i put 130 something on AA and am having a ball.
You win some you lose some, such is life.
Oh boy, I'd expect this is going to give quite a few people (in other Kickstarters) sleepless nights.
"Hell hath no fury like a gamer scorned"...
Like the LFGComic.com creator/artist. Literally it was one kickstarter after another after another where most failed and LFGComic.com came under some scrutiny mainly because there was a successful kickstarter for the LCD I think its called version of the comic that was still to be delivered and then there were numerous more kickstarters for various things like a video game version that looked pretty bad. Thankfully those subsequent kickstarters failed. Problem it seems like people with zero business mentality think they can sell something just on ideal alone and have nothing else to support or show how it could be done. At times people are using it for any and everything and in some regards out of control.
Granted all one has to do is not fund it but still...
There is one flaw in this story that Mr.Lashley fails to realize when asks why not SOE.
SOE is not even developing their own game,they are trying to do the whole shebam using other people's money that is the EXACT reason they split Landmark and Next up to find a quick way/gimmick to start drawing in funds to develop next.
SOE has been failing on their own for quite some time now,that has nothing to do with Brad but more to do with the President/CEO.
Anyone that knows anything about gaming should realize that Vanguard was a brilliant game,much better than most games out there,it's ONLY draw back was bugs,so an unfinished product>well how is that different than anything we have been seeing since that time,either inferior products or once again bugs and rushed out products.
Point is that anything Brad can be blamed for is easily curved towards all the other developers as well.For it's time Brad was trying and DID succeed in advancing the genre even if only slightly,every game since aide from FFXIV has put out low level developing skills and horrible graphics,so in other words LESS than satisfactory efforts.
I am not at the point to determine if Brad COULD advance the genre again but i am more than certain,he could not do it on a skeleton budget,but then guess what,neither can anyone else.
Of course it is my opinion but there has not been one good game either than perhaps FFXIV [and only slightly] since Vanguard,nothing i would give a Triple A rating to, all sub par efforts.
Never forget 3 mile Island and never trust a government official or company spokesman.
Im not sure what the 45k, Brad and kickstarter has to with eachother. Brad did not take the funds from the kickstarter campaign for personal use. He took money people gave directly to him, from the pantheum fundraiser at the pantheum website, after the kickstarter campaign failed.
Kickstarter was not involved there. It wasnt a failing of kickstarters that Brad was able to take the money and go; NDA prevents me from disclosing why I stole 45k.
What I am saying is that people threw money at him, didnt read the fine print (that they were donating to him) and then act surprised that he took the money.
Sure we can discuss what needs to happen with kickstarter in general, but lets not confuse this particular issue. It wasnt funds raised through kickstarter that got displaced.
He is a douche, no doubt. But seriously though, that man has got to have some issues when he sells whats left of his clout in the industry for 45k. - Thats just sad.
The problem is Brad and SOE as a whole and goes back to EQ days and many of their projects, SWG etc etc they are like used car salesmen who want you to buy you the car but don't sell you the engines or tires and want you to have those only after they have made a profit.
I have no respect frankly for either company or man. I distrust 95% of anything they say or do and frankly Brad is worse then a snakeoil salesman, he is just beyond untrustworthy. He is a no talent hack who is a repeat failure and a criminal. Also Rob as a friend of mine you should be contact me for MTG advice
True, but that was a successful kickstarter, Pantheon failed its KS and took the money via direct 'donations' on its website from the "chosen" few that gave.
Granted this is all pretty shady, but I'll ask you, whats more shady A) taking money like this from your start-up's coffers, or
promising for months that no more progression wipes would occur so buy into our Landmark closed-beta; only to have "surprise full progression wipe is in now" slip in with the water patch yesterday?
Did Brad teach the ppl at SOE the shady tricks or vice-versa? heh.
Brad is a brilliant designer; always has been. But design and management are two different things.
It is bad enough when we get idiot MBAs in charge of system development (any kind of system) when they have no understanding of the technologies behind what is being developed. An MBA is, for that matter, a business degree and not a management degree (although they arrogantly refuse to acknowledge the difference) and prone to make their own mistakes (like trying to do five years worth of work in three years or trying to do $50M of work with $30M).
Take a techie, an expert in his field, like Brad, who understands neither management nor business and you have a disaster waiting to happen. Unfortunately, very few of us techies ever learn the basics of management. Take an MBA who has no clue about technology and you have a disaster before the program even starts.
That is the problem.
Every industry needs technical experts who are also competent managers. They are damn few and far between.
Vanguard: SOH was a good game. I enjoyed the heck out of it. I can only imagine what it would have been like with Brad as the chief designer and somebody competent (non-MBA) actually managing it. I suspect there wasn't anyone around with those qualifications (presuming Brad's ego would have let the guy get the job done).
If this was a great idea they could have done the same thing with P:RotF as they are doing with EQ:N Landmark and H1Z1.
Twitter Facebook RantOnRob Youtube
Sorry but totally incorrect.
Vanguard failed because the dev team did not understand game engine design at all and tried to build a game engine as they went.
These things happened because the 989 team were NOT software engineers, and had zero understanding of engine design.
Any monkey can use a tool set to flesh out a game, but it takes brains and skill to develop a game engine.
When you steal an engine instead of build it or lease it, you do not realize just how critical it is to an actual game.
If you just start tossing together a bunch of fluff and then try and force it to work together without an engine, you get Vanguard.
This game did not fail because it is a genre that few people want to play. The exact opposite is true. There are millions of people waiting for a game like this, with ideas like that.
The reason it failed is because McQuaid is associated with it. Period. No one trusts him. As soon as their kickstarter video launched, people scratched their head. The game looked like some sort of money grab, and that is what it turned into.
The guy has no business running a development team. The rest of us knew this YEARS ago. Why has it taken you so long to figure this out. Instead, we get to read a few paragraphs on how it is playing Magic with him...
Those rumors are not rumors by the way. I am not talking about the 45,000$ dollars. I am talking about the other stuff. It is true. We know it, we KNEW it for years and guess what.....you cannot run a company like that. It didn't work with DeLorean in the 80s and it doesn't work today.
Keep the same game, put in a better kickstarter video and remove this guy from the equation and I bet you see a totally different result.
Stop blaming other people for this guy's problems. People are fine with this type of genre, in case you have not noticed the sudden boom in sandbox games recently. What they are not fine with is this guy running a company.
Agree with the author completely. I saw this coming a mile away and I'm no Ms. Cleo:
http://www.mmorpg.com/discussion2.cfm/post/6103970#6103970
Except they cant, because they are already working on EQN and H1Z1.
Brad *will* get his chance to design an MMO again (probably Pantheon) and it *will* be with SoE. SoE simply doesnt have the resources atm.
This is called crowd funding. Its not new.
Then explain how it was so unpopular after the bugs were mostly squished but before SoE stopped development?
Oh, that's probably because the bugs were never mostly squished. From my experience I'd be suprised if even 1/4th of the bugs were even worked on. Believe me I played it off and on until they announced the cancelation. It was still great albeit a total bugfest.
Just to question the philosophy. Army of Socrates.
VG was amazing, and had tons of potential.
It literally needed another year to bake. It was poorly optimized for the time, and even high end PC's had issues running it. Who wants to play a game with shitty framerate issues on their BRAND new computer?
I went back and replayed it about 2 years ago and it was a ton of fun, it was just unfortunately TOO late. Everyone knew there wouldn't be an expansion. I waited patiently for character remodels that never happened either. The game itself was a great PvE experience either way. It did exactly what I wanted it to, reminded me of EQ in terms of hard PvE content that was group based and not a fully solo-able game with modern graphics.
I was hoping for another round of this with Pantheon but I guess it'll probably never happen at this point. Shame, Brad is a great visionary but I put him right up there with Curt Schilling in terms of his inability to act as a businessman. That's not what he went to school for, that's not what he did as his job for the majority of his life, and it's simply not something you can just pick up and decide to do.