Brad’s Blog

Back to Work!!!

Wed, 16 Jun 2010 00:23:16 -0700

I am pleased to announce that I am a co-founder of a new company based here in the San Diego area. We’re starting small and growing as needed. Our focus is going to be on bringing some sophistication to casual/social gaming. At some point we will also return to developing MMOs.

After a needed 3 year break from 11 years of working on massively multiplayer games with the large teams, budgets, and 3-5 year development cycles I think this will be a nice change of pace. I’m also very excited to be involved in a genre that is relatively new to me. I look forward to bringing MMO design principles to casual/social gaming.

And we’re hiring. If you or someone you know fits the job description below, please email me at aradune@hotmail.com. Also feel free to ask questions, although I must say up front that we’re not ready to reveal much.

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Position: Senior Designer
Classification: Employee (Salary+Bonus+Equity)

We are looking for “plank owner” team members of our new San Diego studio. The company, not yet out of stealth mode, is a new game studio focusing on the next generation of more sophisticated casual and social games.

Overall Responsibility

We are seeking an experienced Designer to join our team creating the next generation of sophisticated social games. Candidates may have worked on console and/or PC games but must have experience with casual and social games of the past few years. Candidates must be fluent in game design practices and overall game development. The new team member will contribute to building the next wave of games incorporating exciting game mechanics new to the casual and social genre.

Key Tasks & Responsibilities

• Create or adapt leading casual & social game features to work with an emerging game concept
• Pitch new ideas to the team & hold brainstorming sessions
• Tune and model complex systems using Excel
• Write design documentation and narrative elements of the game
• Analyze feedback and metrics and adjust game designs accordingly
• Work with programmers, management and artists to oversee the implementation of new features and systems
• Describe user experience stories and create wireframe screens and flows
• Maintain records of design documents
• Any and all other duties as assigned

Skills & Attributes

• Proficient with game related math and formulas
• Experience designing game system mechanics
• Strong knowledge of game balancing and pacing
• Proficient with MS Word, PowerPoint, and Outlook
o Adept with Excel (spreadsheets)
• Familiarity using databases and custom apps that interact with databases
• Demonstrated interest in fantasy worlds, RPGs, and Social games
• One or more shipped games
• Excellent written & verbal communication skills
• Record of professional, solutions-based “team player” attitude
• Organized, multi-tasking, and detail oriented
• Excellent interpersonal and people skills

Experience Requirement

• Bachelor’s degree and casual game design experience
• Or significant casual game design experience on successful titles

Additional Preferred Experience

• Game design leadership experience at leading casual or social company

Location

Currently living in or available to move to the San Diego area. (There may be a relocation allowance for qualified candidates)

Opportunity

The successful candidate will joining a very experienced “brain trust” including a few very well known leaders from multiple game industry backgrounds, joining our team at a early stage of the business – a rare opportunity to see how a company runs from the inside out, contribute a significant part of its entire growth, and acquire a founding equity stake. There will be significant upward potential for a candidate who is very capable and driven.

Vanguard Write-Up

Tue, 25 May 2010 20:57:11 -0700

MMORPG.COM did a great write-up on Vanguard a couple of weeks ago. Go check it out: http://www.mmorpg.com/gamelist.cfm/game/147/feature/4209

There are a lot of great comments -- so please read those as well.

So give it another shot and see what you think!

Hopefully SOE will continue to support this game, and maybe even re-launch it. I may be biased, but I don’t think I’m the only one who thinks a re-launch would mean great things.

Answers

Sun, 16 May 2010 23:22:31 -0700

Sweet! A lot of great questions! Here we go….

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Aaniadyen : It's always been apparent that you can't please both casual and hardcore players with the same game easily, possibly at all. A lot of crazy systems have been invented to try and cater to both at the expense of realism. Something I've always noticed in your games is that you've always tried to adopt a very "hand-off" system that allows the players a lot of freedom. My question is, from your experience in VG and EQ, what is the best way to handle catering to a wide audience. Will you allow it to sacrifice the sense of freedom and realism in your game worlds?

I agree with you – it’s hard to appease both casual and hard-core gamers. With Vanguard we tried to appeal to everyone in-between, the ‘core’ gamers. With EverQuest, we were just making a game that we wanted to play, hoping there were other people out their with the same tastes.

In my mind I still believe an MMO that appeals to all three groups is possible. I know you’ve heard this before from me, but had we the time we needed with Vanguard I really think we could have achieved it. Instead, when we knew we wouldn’t have enough time we had to cut back on a lot, including a lot of the effort to make it appealing to a broader audience.

Simon : You don't have to say which (if you don't want), but do you play any current MMOs? How about any that you've worked on? Thanks for updating the blog, good to hear back from you. Look forward to what’s coming!

Believe it or not, the MMO I played most recently was WoW (and before that, Conan). During Vanguard development I wasn’t able to play it much at all, so I depended on other people’s opinions and analysis. Playing WoW more recently really gave me a greater appreciation for the game and what it has accomplished. I also played with my daughter and she’s still playing – she really loves the game. Crazy to think she was born when we were crunching on EQ.

Anyway, the reason I stopped playing was simply that it was too easy (and therefore, for me, boring) to advance. I think what clinched it was when the guild I was in went to the Stockades and a higher level guild member killed everything in the dungeon with ease, as we sat back and watched our exp go up and up. I just stopped getting any sense of real accomplishment, especially at that point.

All that said, please believe that I have the utmost respect for the game. I’ve learned a lot as both a developer and player of MMOs in the last 14 years. And one of the things I’ve learned is that a game can be great even if it doesn’t appeal to me. In the past I’ve been too Brad-centric.

Dave : Your blog is made on a Mac.

Whats your take on the future of Mac Gaming? Do you feel that the influx of xCode devs from the iPhone SDK will open up the (mostly) untapped Mac gaming market?

I think its silly that I have to run Cider / Wine / Crossover to play games I like on my Mac Pro.

I love my Mac-mini – I bought it about a year ago. Way back in the day, my first computer was an Atari 800XL. It had a lot of great games. I also messed with an Apple IIe at school, and it was on that platform that I first encountered Ultima 2, the game that would inspire me to enter this industry. After the Atari, I bought an Amiga 2000 and programmed my first game on that machine.

It wasn’t until these computers died out and the PC became the premiere gaming machine that I finally switched over. I bought a PC for home gaming, but then I used a NeXT at work. I became a fan of the NeXT and how nicely it put a great GUI on top of a robust UNIX OS.

Fast-forward to recent times. The PC in my home office was both my primary gaming machine as well as the computer I used for email, web browsing, etc. Then I bought an IPod. Then I bought an IPod Touch. Then one day reading up on the Mac, I was reminded that it too has a very nice GUI over a robust UNIX OS, and that OS was a descendent of what was used on the NeXT, over a decade earlier.

So I decided, why not, I’ll buy a Mac-mini. I started using it a lot and loved it. The UI is fantastic and the platform very stable. Everything is simply more intuitive (although Windows 7 is getting there). So I use the mac for email, web browsing, Word, Excel, Itunes, IWeb, etc. The only thing it doesn’t do is play most games, but I have 3 PCs in my game room at home where I play, say Modern Warfare 2, and where we do LAN parties, etc. (I did play WoW on my mac though, and now I’m enjoying the Starcraft 2 beta on it as well).

So I guess if there’s a point to all of this, it’s that I’m no longer the type of computer user that swears by one platform, and one platform only. Oh, and I really enjoy my IPad too :)

How do I feel about the future of gaming on the Mac? Probably a bit pessimistically. It just hasn’t caught on over the years. But then I hear, for example, that Steam is coming to the Mac and I think, maybe this will be it. But, ultimately, because I have the opportunity to own multiple systems, it doesn’t bother me either way. I use the Mac when it makes sense, and I use the PC when it makes sense. I realize everyone doesn’t have that luxury and if I could only own one computer, it would definitely be a PC. Bottom line, I’m a gamer and always will be.

Anon : Could you elaborate on VG's original combat design? I never got to play the game before it was changed but early reports of the reactive and almost turn-based combat got me interested. From what I understand you could see what skill the mob was going to use its next attack (with a perception check) and then pick your skill accordingly. Also, why was the combat system ultimately changed?

Yes, it was more reactive in early beta. The idea was that you could see the mob making a certain move and then counter it. To be honest I really liked that system better. Why was this changed? There’s no simple answer. Part of it was we were rushed on time to perfect it and therefore temped to go back to a more traditional (safe) combat system. Part of it was that there were some employees who didn’t like it and they complained. Part of it was that those of us who did see its potential, especially me, were ripped away from the development process and had to put the vast majority of our time into desperately looking for funding, which involved a lot of traveling around and being absent from the office.

Loampounder : VG was not released with the original vision that the community (as lead by you) discussed. There was take of restrictions on changing clothing, travel without portals, need for cooperative spheres, emphasis on localized adventuring, and other such details that were more hobby-focused than game-focused. In your view today, is a hobby-focused, community-driven game world still an economic viability or is it simply too much of a niche market to survive, thus by nature of the market driving games to be less immersive and simpler?

A great question and something I’ve thought about and pondered for several years now. (Also a popular question – by answering Loampounder I am also answering 10+ other posts on my Blog).

Anyway, here’s how I feel: I still believe an MMO could be created that appealed to casual, core, and the hard-core. There is the danger of trying to please everyone, but I think that could be mitigated. The problem, though, is that it would be a monumental task. I think it would take a lot of time, a huge and experienced team, and a LOT of money. This would be the game that would challenge WoW, and anyone who thinks they could do this without at minimum spending what was spent on WoW is kidding themselves.

The other approach, and a more realistic one IMHO, would be to make a niche game on purpose. Target, say, the hard core players and make a game in which they’d thrive. The problem here, of course, is that the expectations would still be high in terms of quality and polish. The game would still take quite a bit of $$ to develop.

So here’s my crazy solution to this problem: charge more. If the plan was to make a game that would appeal to, say, 250,000 hard-core players, and not a WoW rival that could appeal to millions, the hard truth is that the game would need to bring in more revenue per player. And before you flame me for being greedy or some such, really think about it. Let’s say a game like EverQuest came out today, but with modern tech, with challenging game play intact, but with unnecessary tedium absent. Let’s say you are a more hard-core player, and you loved the challenge of EQ. You enjoyed travel, you enjoyed class interdependence, you enjoyed a healthy fear of death, and this made the game more exciting and meaningful to you. I’m talking about those of you who while reading this start dreaming of a game like this, and how you’d make it, and how it would be new but built on the foundations of MMOs you fiended on in the past… Yes, you, I’m talking about you

Would you pay 25, maybe 30 bucks a month for a game that caters to you specifically, the more hard core player? Taking off my developer shoes and putting on my gamer shoes and really thinking about it, I know I would.

So I think those are the two main choices out there. And, for the record, I’d love to work on either or both. They each have some serious challenges to overcome and I thrive on that sort of thing.

Gardel : Not a flame, a serious question:

Why did you ignore you're own blog for over half a year? The fans deserve more then that don't you think? I understand you don't want to deal with flame posts but when you say you're going to update a blog once per month then disappear for 8 it kinda makes the flame posts well founded don't you think?

I apologize for this. Doing the Vanguard post-mortems was important to me. I needed to write them for myself, and also for both my fans and detractors. That said, it was difficult and took a bit out of me. As much as many of you out there were disappointed that Vanguard didn’t live up to the hype, it was that much more painful for me, putting 5 years of blood, sweat, and tears into it.

So I took a break and now I’m back. I’ve also been talking with people about re-entering game development, which has made me busy on and off. That said, I should have been more communicative with all of you. I will endeavor to manage expectations much better going forward.

telo2 : MTG:

Do you still play MTG, and did you ever play MTGO? My questions are about that.

1) How do you feel about it these days?
2) What do you think about them mass producing new sets (SoE style...), so that the average "Standard" player's deck ends up semi obsolete unless they buy a whole new bunch of cards every few months?
3) Have you Played MTG: Battlegrounds, and what did you think?
4) Do you still think it would be nice to have an MMORPG that borrows a lot from MTG? MTG is such a slow game, and MMORPG combat is so fast paced. Do you think it's even possible to somehow blend the two?

I’m still an M:TG fanatic. I just don’t get tired of that game. I’ve been playing since 1994 and it’s still a total blast. WoTC has made mistakes, sure, but overall they’ve done a fantastic job keeping the game interesting.

What about new cards making old decks semi-obsolete? Well, they have to do that to some extent. It’s the same in MMOs, where new expansions offer more levels, skills, cool items, etc. I have to admit, though, that what I mostly play is Type 1 Vintage multiplayer FFA, and then less often Elder Dragon Highlander. I’m just not a duelist. So the new sets really give me more ways to make interesting multiplayer decks.

I haven’t really played M:TG online or Battlegrounds. A big part of what I like about multiplayer is the politics. Making deals with one player to gang up on another… that sort of thing I need that group of people around me playing to experience the dynamics of the game I really enjoy.

Lastly, yes I do think that many of the principles in game design and mechanics found in M:TG would translate very well to an MMO. We tried to do something like that with Diplomacy in Vanguard, but, and I know I sound like a broken record, we ran out of time.

Hargrar : Hello Brad,

My question isn't particularly related to MMO's, although they are a huge interest of mine. But rather about starting your own company, by yourself.

I have always wanted to have my own company and website, but I lacked the coding knowledge to make one myself. I told myself for a long time that paying for someone to make a website for me was an easy way out. And now after much growth as a person I deduced that was a silly outlook on it. Some people have the skills and traits to be coders others don’t, plain and simple.

So this leads to my question, do you think that starting your own business with your own assets is a smart move?

I mean I have the passion and the ideas for it, I have always been a leader that's good at getting a large group of people to hone one idea. But what about the hardships of running a company? I’m sure it wont be easy to start off, and it could lead to disaster, so is it worth it in the end to still try for that dream?

Thank you so much for reading my questions.

It’s tough. What I ran into, as CEO of Sigil, was the difficulty in splitting my time up between the business side of things and the game development and design side. And the bigger the company grew, the more it was hard to balance the two. I know going forward that in future companies I am going to focus much, much more on the design and development. I’ve tasted the business side, and while I can do it if necessary, I really don’t care for it. Far better to have another person who thrives and excels in business take on that part of things.

And you’re absolutely correct – some people were born to be coders, others to be artists, others to be designers. This is something you have to embrace if you start your own company. Team building is extremely important. Getting that team, with all of the different skills and quirks everyone has, to work together like a well-oiled machine is most certainly easier said than done.

Whitetalon : Welcome back Brad!

What ideas do you have to remove the "Ground hog day" feel to MMORPGs?

One thing that puts a lot of people off is the static nature of these games, which is often solved by PvP areas.

It would be nice to hear ideas on PvE solving this issue..

Thank you for the welcome :)

You’re right that PvP can help a lot in this area, but then there are a lot of people who prefer PvE. Will they ever get to play a more dynamic game, or are they doomed to Groundhog Day? An excellent question and one that I’ve thought hard about since my days playing MUDs.

I won’t go into too many details, because I think some of my ideas need to be kept under wraps for now. But briefly, here we go:

1. Multiple Data-Sets. What I mean by that is, let’s take a given zone or region in an MMO. Now have the designers make several data-sets for that zone. I remember in the MUD I played the most (Sojourn/Toril) there was the Jotunheim zone. Much of the time it was filled with the same mobs and loot. But sometimes, when the MUD would reset, a special data-set loaded and the mobs were different, more difficult, and the loot was really good. And, of course, because Invasion (what it was called) didn’t load that often, the loot from that special data-set was extra rare and elite.

But that’s just an example of 2 data-sets, one being more rare than the other. What if there were 5 or 10 data-sets, some of which would load randomly, while others could load based on an event in the game (say, a quest being completed), or the weather, or the date, etc. The challenges with this, though, are as follows: you don’t want too much dynamism lest the game feel random (which is btw why I loathe procedurally generated content). You still want players taking the time to learn a zone or region. The opportunity for them to master a zone or region and the sense of accomplishment that comes with it is important to retain. Also, the more data-sets, the more work for the designers and content generators. Which leads me to my second idea:

2. User Generated Content (UGC). I think it is vital that future MMOs figure out a way to harness content created by a subset of the playerbase. If you had, say, 30 full time designers overseeing hundreds (maybe thousands) of players who had the skill and commitment necessary to create content for the game, well, I think that would kill the Groundhog Day syndrome. The trick is how to do this. I’ve got some ideas, but I’m keeping them to myself for now – sorry.

Ghostchild : Vanguard has come a long way since launch - less lag, hitching, and crashes, and overall many of the bugs have been addressed.

Do you think if Vanguard had been released today, as it is now, it would have been successful? And what do you think is the overall future for Vanguard? There is still a huge divide in the MMO community - many people believe Vanguard is the best game on the market despite it's ongoing problems, while others believe it is only a matter of time before SOE pulls the pin on it. Is it possible for Vanguard to pick itself up off the canvas and become the successful game that it should have been or are the underlying problems to huge to be overcome?

I’m not going to critique SOE’s handling of Vanguard. Some of the decisions I’ve liked, while others didn’t do it for me. That’s about all I will say about that.

But, like you said, there’s now less lag, hitching, crashes, etc. Also, graphics cards and PC systems in general have become that much more powerful in the last several years. If you look back at my post-mortems you’ll see that the majority of new Vanguard players quit by level 2 or 3. I think it’s pretty obvious, therefore, that the majority did not quit because they didn’t care for the game itself, but rather they couldn’t even play the game. Lag, hitching, and crashes ruined Vanguard for many (most?) players before they even had a chance to like or dislike the game.

So, yes, I truly do believe that Vanguard, were it launched today, would do a LOT better. That said, being rushed on time not only allowed lag and crash bugs to prevail, but we also had to cut down on a lot of features (features that I had been promising on message boards for a long time). So I think Vanguard as it is today would do great if somehow magically re-launched, but I also deep in my heart still believe that the Vanguard we wanted to make, were we able to launch it today, would do even better.

Harakiri : Do you own a CD with the complete copy of the original eq1 source code incl. database etc?

I’m curious if a lead designer/producer would be paranoid enough and would make backups of the code once in a while, keep it closed down at home, etc.

No I don’t. First, it’s a no-no – that code and data belong to SOE. But also remember that I was only a coder on the game for only a few months. So I was never in a position where I was tempted to hold onto code that I’d written. Same with the data.

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Whew, that was fun! If you guys enjoyed it too, feel free to post more questions (new or follow-ups) and we’ll do this again in a week or so.

Thanks all!

-Aradune

Q&A

Thu, 29 Apr 2010 19:42:08 -0700

Well, I’m back :)

Being done with the Vanguard Post Mortem (at least for now), I thought before I start something new that a Q&A would be good. I’ve been busy and I’m looking into some gaming opportunities. Nothing I can reveal, but I am excited!

Anyway, post comments below for the Q&A. Please keep the questions short and succinct. Obviously, flames and/or questions of a personal nature (me personally, or anyone else) will be ignored. The idea is to answer questions related to MMO development, EQ or Vanguard specifically, etc.

Vanguard: Post-mortem Part 4

Tue, 22 Sep 2009 11:45:08 -0700

We wanted a huge world at launch. We knew we were going up against other MMOs that were already out there, several with expansions already released. Also, with our goals of a seamless world and a view that went on for miles we knew the size of the world would be key. We also wanted to lay out the majority of the world, including what would be released as expansions.

The game designers used map making software and produced this huge world. It was crazy big, although it was hard to tell exactly how big because we were just looking at a map. We hadn’t tried to create any of the world in-game yet. The art team needed time as did the graphics engine (taking the Unreal 2.5 engine and making it seamless world capable took some time). We then decided on three major continents, Thestra, Qalia, and Kojan, and then what races would start out where.

We knew that those three large land masses would accommodate a lot of people. Travel time could be an issue, so we made sure we’d offer vehicles at a relatively low level (we used the term vehicles loosely and to include horses, ships, etc.). On message boards and in the FAQ I let people know about the size and, although we were not fans of teleporters, I posted that they may be needed to some extent and that we’d determine that in beta testing.

This led to two major errors.

First, when it became time for the artists to start building these land masses, it took longer than was expected and hoped. The easy solution at that point would simply be to shrink the world. But when this problem occurred to us, when Thestra was already mostly done and Qalia in progress, it wasn’t an easy fix. People were saying ‘let’s shrink Kojan’ or ‘let’s just cut Kojan completely’. But shrinking it too much would make it much smaller vs. the already built Thestra and Qalia. Cutting it completely would mean we didn’t have a home for the races that started there. So we ended up cutting parts of it away, and the game launched with Kojan being smaller than the other two major continents.

Then, the art team went back and polished Thestra. The tools were a lot better at that point, and the artists better versed on how to build a good looking world. And even with re-visiting Thestra, if you really look, I think Kojan is the best looking continent by far. But the bottom line was that we spent too much time building three continents and making them look good. We should have had fall-back positions, enabling us to make a smaller world with more starting areas in fewer continents.

The second major error had to do with under-population.

It’s hard, perhaps impossible, to launch with exactly the right amount of content and world size. With EverQuest the problem the majority of the time was over-population. There was only a certain amount of content, of dungeons, of outdoor areas. When the game took off being a much bigger hit than we had assumed it would be, over population was the big issue. Too many people per server meant too much fighting over limited resources. Players grew frustrated.

The fix for EverQuest, though, wasn’t all that hard to implement. We came up with an upper limit in terms of server population during peak hours. If a world server was exceeding that limit, we’d launch another world server and then encourage people to migrate. We also would split servers if necessary.

What happened with Vanguard, however, was very different. Under-population is much worse than over-population. As mentioned, if a world server was over-populated, you can add another server and/or split a server into two worlds. And until you did so, people would complain (and rightfully so) that the world was two crowded and the fight over limited resources (zones, items, etc.) would grow too intense. That said, players usually would not quit the game.

But under-population creates an empty world in terms of other players. A big part of Vanguard (and EQ, for that matter) was about grouping. If we were going to push grouping, then people needed to run into other players. They could then group, get to know each other, and feel part of the world. Obviously, there was a certain population density needed for this to reliably occur. And, even with the game offering soloable content, players still want to feel like they are part of a living world. They may prefer not to group, but they still want to see other players, duel them, trade with them, etc. And, unlike the case of over-population, people would indeed quit because of under-population.

So if we knew because of our bigger world that we would need to support a larger number of players per world, what went wrong? Server performance. With EverQuest the world server would become over-populated in terms of resources and crowding before the actual server would become overloaded. I think this gave us a false sense of security and when, during beta, we discovered that the software and hardware limited us to too few per world, we really didn’t know what to do.

So we launched with a huge world and unparalleled in-game views of that world, but with hardly any other players around with whom to share that world. Adding teleporters helped, but not enough. Community, which is an important glue when it comes to MMOs, didn’t build because of under-population. The world seemed empty, it was hard to find groups, etc.

Looking back I think it would have been a lot better to make the world more modular. The design, the content, and the racial starting areas should have been laid out such that we could shrink the world without it interfering with our plans. And then we should have created test areas much earlier on that would have allowed us to artificially populate a region with lots of players. This would have revealed a population cap lower than what we had assumed. Then we could have reduced the world size accordingly. I think the fact that we correctly and relatively easily dealt with EQ’s over-population lured us into a false sense of security. We were simply so ambitious that we were blind to a lot of this, and by the time we realized what these problems were it was simply to late to go back and conduct a major overhaul, especially given that we were short on development time anyway.