Brad McQuaid on an All-Star MMO Team

Posted July 13th, 2009 by Martuk

Brad McQuaid is talking about the pros and cons of building an All-Star MMO team in his newest blog, "Vanguard: Post-mortem Part 2", Brad talks about his time with Sigil and how sometimes when you bring in All-Star talent you also get All-Star egos.

All-Star people sometimes have all-star egos.  And while these egos may or may not be justified in some abstract way, they don’t work at all when building a team.  And that’s the key thing to keep in mind:  you are building a team.  And just like a soccer team full of egos who will only dribble the ball and never pass it, the inability to play well with others will almost always result in a dysfunctional environment.  MMOG game development is ambitious no matter how you approach it or with whom.  It demands a high degree of collaboration.  Ideally you want that all-star team to consist of people with a variety of backgrounds, perspectives, and preferences.  And the magic occurs when this group gets together and creatively comes up with something that is greater than the sum of its parts.

Brad received quite a lashing from some of the posters on the blog attacking him from everything ranging from drug abuse to affairs and bad management. An exchange between Lazaretto and TheRealVGPlayer went a little deeper.

"Thankfully we in management only made a few of these blunders, otherwise who knows what could have negatively occurred."  Wow...  Let's see what actually occured.  Everyone got fired in the parking lot after pouring their heart and souls into development.  The game tanked only to be semi-rescued by SOE and was improved very gradually over time by a dedicated yet skeleton crew.  The vision was never realized and will never be realized due solely to the product shipped out the door.  Failure by management to address egos and to establish solid leadership led to all of these things and there are only a few people responsible.

• You can read the new blog here.
• Discuss this and more on our forums.

Original page: http://www.tentonhammer.com/node/71143