May 15
‘The Right Thing’ Would Be To Go Down With the Ship
Update: It’s official now. Smedley’s post on the forums gives up most of the details. The official press release says that the game sold about 200,000 units since launch.
So. F13 has the news:
At approximately 4:30PM [April 14th], Sigil employees were told to meet outside. At which point they were terminated. On the spot. By whom? Doesn’t seem to have been Brad McQuaid, if it was, nobody is talking. But that doesn’t seem like something he’d do. But I suppose the executioner is irrelevant since most folks secretly want it to be SOE and it wasn’t. As it stands, people were told to come back tomorrow to do their paperwork and some may get hired by SOE.
Actually, we know for sure the McQuaid wasn’t the one to do it. Grouchy Gamer reports that lord-and-master of Vanguard Brad McQuaid hasn’t been in the Sigil offices since last year. You know, since before the game shipped? Just in case you think that’s some crazy guy on a website, I’ll go on record as saying I can verify most of what he’s saying. I too have heard from ’sources’ who say that the hard workers, the guys on the ground at Sigil, were fucked over by a gent who tipped his toe into the ‘running a company’ pool and decided it was a wee bit too nippy for him.
One of these ’sources’ has been suggesting I look into this further, talk to some of these guys and write it up. And I will say: if there’s any ex-Sigil employees looking to talk my email address is right here on the site. Update: F13 has a talk with one of the ex-devs and lays it all out.
But the reality is, I haven’t dug very hard because the whole thing depresses the hell out of me. How can a guy like McQuaid, who was there at the very beginning, care so little about the project he started? This wasn’t some green schlub out of college: he helped to make one of these things when ‘catass’ wasn’t even a term yet. Hell, he helped make the game that spawned the term.
Krones has a few insightful things to say about this over at Plaguelands, but the last words go to Grouchy:
10 commentsI should tell you that I’m pissed that I wasted 2 years on developing a community at my site for a game that is nothing more than a steaming pile of shit. I’m pissed that the good people (and good developers) that I care about at Sigil are now in the street, and Brad still has millions and Jeff Butler a job … In the end, this game may someday be good. Tomorrow, when this news is announced a lot of the SOE haters will just jump ship, whether SOE had anything to do with this game failing or not. Fact is, it has (failed.) And fact is, it’s not SOE’s fault. The blame for this one falls squarely at the desk where the buck should stop. The CEO’s office. The empty one in the corner.
10 Comments so far
From where is this image taken?
http://www.mmognation.com/wp-content/themes/k2/styles/birch3.jpg
Foton took it. I bugged him about using some of his (really awesome) screencap work for headers, and I figured LOTRO was a good theme for this month.
You can see the rest of his stuff here:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/afkgamer/
Awesome (re Flickr), I have always wondered where the “Jungle” picture for your header came from (it is a great shot). Now I shall poor over your screenies…
Catass came from UO newb.
http://www.mmolexicon.com/index.php?title=Catass
“The origin of the [word] stems from several years back in an interview (believed to be about EverQuest) in which one of the interviewees had a cat and whose apartment smelled like a litter box, or a cat’s ass. It is further said to have become coined by Lum the Mad, a.k.a. Scott Jennings, who in his coverage of the article stated that his place smelled like catass, and its use became more widespread thereafter.”
This is always how I’ve remembered it; I remember reading the actual article at one point, and I swear it was about EQ. Despite my Googley best, I can’t find it now. So.
Here’s the original article.
http://www.metroactive.com/papers/metro/06.01.00/cover/onlinegames1-0022.html
I’ll go repost it on my blog for perpetuity (or at least until a database wipe and bad backup).
I think the word Catass comes from even further back. The first I saw of it was in a Xanth novel by Piers Anthony. He used it in a pun about a wooden plaque on the wall of a home with the back side of a cat adhered to it.
The plaque was described as a Catasstrophy.
Abalieno; that image is from Thorin’s Hall in Lord of the Rings Online.
One of my characters is a metalsmith. She lives there, pretty much.
There are actually two separate entomologies that I am aware of for the term. One is the “Catass” discussed above, and one is a much older “The cat’s ass,” which is used as a term of appreciation. God definitely got it right when he designed the cat’s ass, meaning that it seems to be practically self-cleaning, and has no external working parts. Lots of engineers I’ve known used that term to describe a item that was exquisitely engineered. “Damn, Dave. That new self-closing hinge you designed is the cat’s ass.”