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The Vilification of Brad Mcquaid
sludgebeard
Member RarePosts: 788
Am I really the only person who is willing to step up and defend this man?
Let me get one thing straight right off the bat. I don't think Brad is the greatest guy ever, I also don't believe every complaint about him is unwarranted. The man has most defiently made mistakes and payed a heavy price for himself and others due to those choices.
However is this man really the monster people make him out to be? Is he worthy of the constant berating, blame, the 83 page sub forum on a site I won't name that is literally dedicated to destroying his current and future projects. Is he really THAT bad is my question, or is he simply the victim of an internet escapism, or people who are so spiteful that they will blame anything and anyone vehemently; to the end. Just so that they have a reason to hate.
I for one think the man is just that, a man. And he's made lot of great things and a lot of bad. But he's just not worthy of the blame people place on him, not completely.
There are far worse people in the industry than Brad Mcquaid, and real issues that could have dedicated time spent on them.
Comments
Brad is a brilliant game designer but he sucks at economy. As long as you pair him up with a realistic guy who takes care of the money and a few good programmers things are peachy but putting him in charge of everything will just make SIGIL repeat itself.
He is hardly a monster because of that, even if I still wouldn't put a dime into a project he is leading unless someone else hold the money.
I'm sure he never sets out to screw people over. He's probably full of good intentions at the beginning. He's become such a villain in the mmo world because of how he acts and treats others once the ship springs a leak.
But isn't that when you really get to see someones true character ?
He is a visionary and one of the few in the business that really sees the potential in the MMORPG platform. He is just piss poor at executing them.
He's the guy to hire for ideas but keep him away from any leadership roles.. also keep him away from opiates while we are at it
So many people on this site are visionary about mmos.... Should we set up a slush fund so we can give them free money for ideas?
No because they don't have the technical experience to back it up. Brad knows how to program on top of being a big thinker. I agree he should never be in a management position.
Indeed.. We will never know the reasons why he did what he did, trust is a hard thing to regain.
I think the vilification is completely justified.
He created a Kickstarter project with so low funding goal it was unlikely he would have been able to fulfill the promises even if the Kickstarter had funded.
Then he created his own website to get funding, and if you buy through it you'll agree to terms of service like "Items included in Pledge Packages may be substituted, changed or eliminated at any time for any reason or no reason at the sole discretion of VR"
And it also looks like he's used large amount of funds meant for production of the game for his own personal purposes.
He's using other people's money on a project that has no chance of being completed because it doesn't have the funding. I don't think it justified to even call it crowdfunding. It's a scam. He completely deserves all the vilification he gets.
He deserves everything he gets. Sorry sack of nothing. I feel sorry for anyone who gives him money.
Don't ask me why but I was walking out of a Baskin Robbins with an Oreo™ & cake batter waffle cone in each hand. In order to leave this fine establishment, I had to back into the door to open it because my hands each had a cone. Once I got outside, I began to turn my body around & tripped falling flat on my face. Both of my cones strewn about the walkway in front of Baskin Robbins.
Then I heard a chuckle. A chuckle I will never forget. I looked up & it was Brad McQuaid. He spit on me & said L2walk, noob.
Brad had tripped me.
And even if he didn't, he might as well have. I'm not really sure it was him, but it might as well have been.
Brad McQuaid ruined my life & I will use all of my internet power to destroy him!!!
Damn you, Brad! Damn you to hell!!!!
I like Brad as a game designer but also agree that he is not very good as the lead man.
However if people are going to flame him then look no further than Blizzard ,their big shots raked in 100's millions,something Brad has NEVER had the luxury of doing.Has Blizzard stolen that money from the gamer's who made it for Blizzard,most certainly they have because imo they have not come even remotely close to putting back a fair share into the game.
So how is Blizzard's operations and different than anything Brad has ever done?You think Blizzard tells all it's employees where the money is going?You think when Blizzard deposits 500 million into the bank they are thinking about the little guy making 40k a year,while the big shots live in mansions and travel the world?
How about EA?They were ripping off their employees for several years until finally someone backed them up and sued EA and of course won but still did not get what they rightfully deserved.
How about Hasbro and their price fixing ,who also btw were sued by the government and of course lost but again never paid their dues but instead made an agreement to keep it out of the public's eye.
Point is that Brad imo has done far less than any of these big shots who have enormous bank accounts and couldn't care less about any of the gamer's.
Never forget 3 mile Island and never trust a government official or company spokesman.
This is the greatest thing ive ever read in my damn life!
+420
So because my neighbor has stolen more then me, makes him worse them me ? i dont think so, either you're a thief or you're not and to me he is a thief. If i could put him in jail i would.
When the ship sprang a leak (that is, when Microsoft changed CEOs and the new one had no interest in making an MMO, and cut Sigil loose), he spent 6 months pitching the ship to about 60 different repairmen, and only one stepped up, and offered about 40 planks of wood when the ship needed about 100 to float.
You've got to wonder what someone died to get this kind of reaction, so many years after the fact. The man basically invented the modern MMO, so saying he can't execute his ideas is just stupid. Especially considering most people loved the gameplay in Vanguard, and only stopped playing due to engine issues or lack of development.
Sigil was, without a doubt, mismanaged. But the odd thing is, most big studios have been mismanaged since 2004, and Brad has since gone on record about a dozen different times, going into detail about what went wrong, what the mistakes were, and how he plans to fix them, yet everyone acts as if he's learned nothing and that he sabotaged his own ship.
And then there's the moronic rumor started by a fucking Vanguard fansite admin, that he has a drug addiction. No basis, no facts, not a single person backed it up, and yet the rumor flies around at the speed of sound.
So the answer, why is he villainized? Because people want him to be, in spite of the actual facts of evidence.
Did Blizzard take a bunch of customer money for a game that never launched?
Yes, Blizzard has made a bunch of money off of WoW--and vastly more than they've spent to create and maintain the game. That's how it's supposed to work. If you make a hit game, you make a bunch of money. If your game flops, you lose a bunch of money.
If companies weren't allowed to make money on successful games, then they wouldn't invest money to make games at all because of the risk of losing money if the game flops. In that world, games would mostly be limited to what people could put together in their free time. We'd still have simpler games like Tetris, Minesweeper, or FreeCell. But for games with a budget of $1 million or more would be exceedingly rare if they existed at all.
You can't just say, we'll only fund the good games. You have to invest money years before you know if a game is going to be successful. That's a big risk, and the only way to justify it is if there's a prospect of making a lot of money if a game is successful.
Brad is a great man and a poineer of this genre. We need to support Brad and give him more money so he can make great games.
Ask yourself this, let the first gamer without sin to cast the first stone. Go on... Go on. That's what I thought.
Blizzard wasted hundreds of millions on the next MMORPG and then canned it. Brad only took $45k. Blizzard wasted over $100 millions and had to start over.
How about FFXIV? Wasted millions and had to start over.
IF BLIZZARD AND SQUARE are willing to waste millions and continue on, then I say we need to give Brad millions to make the next great game
I don't think you understand how crowdsourcing works....
If you would actually go to the website, it was very clear what the money was going to. That is, paying the developers for the prototype, and then shopping it around to investors. The rest went to the website. There were literally no surprises.
Don't attempt to make sense!
Yeah, FF14 was a massive disaster. They took a ton of customer money and then shut down for 2 years. Yet people seem peachy with it because there's no NAME branded on the game.
Exactly and when I ask people to provide links to proof of these claims, what do they do?
Post a link to an article from some unknown website that is basing its info off ANOTHER Un-named website.
Even with the recent Pantheon debacle, the developer that went on KTAM Radio said he had statistics, charts, graphs, etc proving that Brad stole nearly 65k and not 40k. Yet he never provided the graphs or any other info and hasnt been heard of since.
On top of that, What is KTAM, its a website with roughly 40 members, a radio show that gets 100 hits max a week, yet everyone is so ready to accept that Brad stole the 40k because a guy with no actual proof went onto that J-List Website and said he did.
Its like you said, people just want to hate him, thats all there is to it.
I'm certainly one of the people who goes out of my way to put a "warning" tag on anything he puts his name on. I was guardedly optimistic about Pantheon, because he has at least had games released in the past - despite whatever issues he may have. I'd say I was hopeful for the game itself, but cautious about trusting him running the show. I have one post here in a positive light for Pantheon, countered by several doom and gloom posts on the board of a game I cannot mention on these forums. Any project he's involved with now is indeed doomed. It isn't 1999. It isn't 2006.
If he's hired by a company to work on a project I would likely be guardedly optimistic again, since there would be others involved - some of them above him in the food chain. But getting that job opportunity is a challenge, based on his own mistakes.
After the Pantheon money issue things have changed. Nothing he does on his own, with his name out front, should be taken seriously. I do believe others should warn people and cite that, so they don't waste their money. If he can get investors, or enough people to donate after that? Great. No matter how many mistakes he makes he has the right to make a game, but it SHOULD be a more difficult road based on the speed bumps and detours he himself has created.
His games being accepted by the public should be just as difficult as Brad getting hired by a MMO developer. That's really the bottom line for me. He shouldn't get a free pass just because his ideas are a bit less of a rehash than what we usually get, or because he was involved in making a good game and a decent one that could have been good.
Hey, maybe he can be in Iron Man 4.
- Nellus
Exactly that. I just don't understand it. He's one of maybe 3 developers that have attempted to bring back the age of MMOs that so many people have been missing over the years, and he's hated more than EA.
Brad, I am sure, is not a bad person, but he has let his fans down multiple times and the results of his efforts usually result in failure and or a big screw over.
I think the biggest issue with Brad has already been said in this thread, he is not a leader. Great for ideas but to run a business and or have final say in matters is a role he should be kept far away from.
You use words like "usually" and "multiple times"... what big "screw over" happened, exactly? People were let down by the state of Vanguard, and every squarely pinned the blame on his shoulders, despite it being more to do with Microsoft than anyone else.
What other times did people get "screwed over"?
1 its their money. They can do whatever they want with it. 2 if you are talking about Titan its still in development. They said they wouldnt have Titan compete with WoW which sounds like WoW will have to be dead before they produce it and they shut it down.