Vanguard Designer Responds to Gamespy's Slam

Gamespy recently handed Vanguard the dubious "honor" of being the Biggest Disappointment of 2007. In response to that article, Vincent 'Teclisen' Napoli (one of the game designers) responds to Gamespy in this forum post:

The game that exists now was designed in a single year by people with 0 experience. If that sounds too vague think of it like this: about 1 year from release we had 0 quests in the DB because the tool didn't exist yet. When I decided to split the team there was over 30,000 quest object entries. Yeah, explains a lot doesn't it?

What a huge let down indeed.

Oddly enough, the whole situation was probably a bigger let down to the designers than the consumers. I accepted a position thinking I was going to work with a bunch of experts - Masters of their craft - and really learn the ropes of game design. Instead, my fellow design associates and I were unwittingly tasked with trying to fix a failed video game that had literally been canceled twice before any of us were even hired. So in retrospect, despite everything, I guess I'm still pretty proud of vanguard. Every team member should be proud in spite of a truly pitiful and pathetic waste.

There's a whole lot more to this letter and it's quite worth the effort to read if you're a Vanguard fan.

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