Vanguardian Philosopy: The Continued Philosophy

Well, it sure has been a while since I sat down and started to write one of these... To give a bit of background before I actually get into the topic, I'll explain a little bit about this column. First off, when I first started at WarCry I was a columnist where I wrote a column entitled "Vanguardian Philosophy", updated every Monday - although Sunday seems just as good for this time around. However, as time went on, I eventually was promoted to the Assistant Site Manager and my responsibilities went in other directions. While I kept the column going for a while, eventually it slipped. Yet, ever since I obtained the position of Site Manager, I'd been considering picking up the column again one day. Today happens to be that day.

In this column I have, and will, talk about the design of MMOs and the various philosophies in use behind them. Of course, this is a column and thus an opinion piece, so I shared some of my own thoughts as well. Also, as this is a Vanguard focused site, I looked primarily into it during its development time, to see how I felt about the direction it was going in, and deducing what the thought patterns of the developers were. Luckily, I'm now presented with a wonderful opportunity: in the past, I was able to talk about a game in development; now I am able to talk about that very game in its released state.

So, onto the topic of the week. Now, the title of this column is 'The Continued Philosophy', which works as a wonderful dual-topic. First of all, I am reintroducing the column, but I will also discuss the current situation with the acquisition of Sigil Games Online by Sony Online Entertainment.

The Risk of Acquisition
Of course, there are plenty of people who'll declare there are many risks presented by SOE acquiring Sigil - whether or not many of those opinions are truly something to worry about, I won't bother discussing here. Instead, I would like to talk about one particular risk that is presented by this sort of a situation, regardless of whatever companies or games happen to be involved.

Whenever a project is obtained by another company, the creative control that once exerted its force over it is replaced. Even if the same people are working on the project, they will still find themselves under different pressures by different managers. Vanguard's development was once guided by Sigil Games and Brad McQuaid, who, for better or worse, controlled the creative course that the game was taking. This control has now shifted over to a different project lead, David Gilbertson, and a different company.

This could have substantial impact over the development of the game. With another company in control, the 'vision' that the game was originally developed under would be compromised by the ideas of another company. This could cause the game to go down an entirely different path of development, and we could see the introduction of systems that we never would have before, along with witnessing existing systems being altered.

To some, this may not be a concern, seeing the chance for a fresh start as a positive thing. Others, however, will have purchased Vanguard due to the original goals of the development team, holding a genuine interest in the current gameplay of Vanguard (minus bugs, of course), and who were looking forward to what Sigil had been planning for the future. These are the people who the risk truly presents itself to.

Games have changed in the past. Some will mention Star Wars Galaxies of course, although that's a particularly extreme case. However, many MMOs on the market have experienced change, including the old classic EverQuest. Whenever something changes in a game, some people are often put off from the product, finding it less enjoyable. Yet, even in these cases, often times other people are drawn into the game due to those changes. Larger, sweeping changes could cost a game dearly, though - particularly well shown by Galaxies.

Due to the acquisition of Sigil Games, Vanguard now finds itself facing a possible future of change, that could move it from the type of gameplay currently presented toward an entirely different type of a game. It could be made easier, it could be made more difficult, or any numerous other major changes to the game.

What is the Risk?
Now, whenever investigating something that involves risk, one must evaluate how much risk there actually is. There have been people who have been put off at the very idea of SOE taking over Sigil. Some people are put off of SOE specifically, while others are simply worried about another company taking creative control of the product. Yet, are these worries necessary?

Well, of course the potential is there, it always is. Even when Sigil was in control of the project, there was always the potential for change. In fact, we've seen it: The rifts, item decay, and other various changes to the game. However, when looking at the overall direction of the game, is it likely that SOE will change it?

I don't really think its all that likely. Why? For few reasons.

The first of which is SOE president John Smedley has already publicly stated that they had no desire to change the game from its current direction. He also stated that the NGE for Star Wars Galaxies - the event that caused such dislike for SOE - was a mistake, and one they learned a great deal from. It seems unlikely that SOE, a company in the business of making money, would repeat that mistake once again.

Of course, they are in the business of making money. Thus, the more people who play the game, the more money they receive. One could then be afraid that SOE would take Vanguard and create a 'World of WarCraft clone' with it, in an effort to gain a larger audience. These changes would likely put off quite a few current players.

To understand why this is unlikely, one has to understand how SOE is trying to run their MMO business. SOE's business plan is to get as many people paying for Station Access as possible. The more games they bring into the pass, the more likely people are to purchase those passes. That is rather, the more different games they bring in. If Vanguard were brought into the pass, but tweaked to fit the EverQuest 2 model... why would an EQ2 player get the pass to play Vanguard? Why would a Vanguard player wish to play EQ2? Vanguard was described to be Sony's most 'hardcore MMO', and from the sound of it, they want to keep it that way. From a business standpoint, its likely they would indeed want to do so.

It's also why I suspect their upcoming game will be PvP-based, but that's totally a different topic!

Of course, another reason why it is unlikely that to many changes are made, is simply because a large portion of the development team is still on staff. SOE brought on a fair number of the original Sigil employees to continue on the project. It's also being managed by a fellow from Sigil - for better or worse on that one again. While SOE could still force changes to be made, having that staff in place does help to ensure that a lot of the creative control still rests where it had been before: in the hands of the people actually working on the game.

In any event, even if you are reluctant to believe the worlds of the SOE President - which is fair - and simply having a fair chunk of the Sigil staff still working on it isn't quite enough, by understanding the business scheme of SOE, you can see that it is unlikely they'll make any serious changes to Vanguard.

Feeling Safe, but a Good Lesson to Learn
Now, I do believe that Vanguard will be safe from any serious changes with this acquisition. Yet, there is still something to learn about the whole situation. Sweeping changes sweep away paying customers. There are a lot of MMOs out there, and each of them appeal to certain players. The ones that try to appeal to another game's players starts to fail pretty spectacularly. When games start to alter themselves from their original focuses, games start to fail.

This isn't always the case, of course. SOE was able to change EQ2 in just a way that it gave it a revitalization and turned the game around. Hopefully a similar attention will be paid to Vanguard, giving the game a new breath of life, without costing its primary focus.

In the time being, I look forward to the future and I hope to see the game improve steadily over the coming months. Now, off to do some adventuring in Telon for me!

-- Arrakiv

Permalink

Great post Arra. I agree with you in many counts, although pretending Sigil/SOE have not deviated from the original 'VG' vision is not exactly true. The first change that comes to mind is travel. Previously, Sigil had stated that they wanted travel in VG to be meaningful. They wanted you to feel like you were in a vast world; a world that would take a couple hours to run all the way across. I was pretty disappointed when they non-chalantly added riftway shards throughout the world, and even more so now that I see renting flying mounts.

I know this isn't a large game mechanic, but it could be a rather bad omen for future alterations.

Hope TSG is doing well :)
Ismaris

Well, the riftways were a needed change. If the servers had 1000s of players on them, they would not be needed. Not enough people, and you have all of the newbies too spread out to even group.

Actually, I stated that the original team did stray, using those as an example, along with item decay and and such. :-)

While I would love to agree with your analysis, I can't quite, for a couple reasons. When a company shifts hand, whether its a game company or a widgit company, it is extreemely common that their first move be to reassure everyone that they have no plans to change things. This is often true because they don't have any plans whatsoever. If the company is prosperous and it's customers happy the managers are usualy sincere in their commitment to not change things. I mean why change things if they are working. If things are not going well, you can count on change. When they say they have no plans to change things, it typically means that they just haven't got a clear plan yet, but you can count on change. In the case of Vanguard, that change could be just as Brad described, no sweeping changes to the game, and more changes on the marketing level. With SOE in charge it may be easier to convince players it's not the hardcore grindfest rumor had it to be.

If I recall, Smed also indicated that changes would be in the hands of the developers and that they would be made in response to the community. I even recall the phrase "we've made that mistake before" used in conjunction with listening to the community. When it comes to SOE, my experience has been that listening to the community means that if there's a vocal enough segment that shares SOE's views on game development then that segment will be who they listen to, regardless of how large or small that segment may be with respect to the opposing viewpoint. In theory, listening to the community is a fine idea, if it's tempered by the devs weighing feedback against their idea of the game and it's target audience. No doubt that will be the case here. However, we don't know what the devs vision of the game is. Based on dev posts over the years, it was clear that a division existed in Sigil with regard to The Vision. You can see hints of that divide in the f13.net interview where the employee indicated management was particularly inglexible and believed Brads mistake was in thinking other people wanted to play the game he wanted to make. You can be sure similar sentiments existed in the company.

So the question comes down to this: what is the mindset of those who remain. Currently, there's no way to tell. However, there have already been indications that SOE and even Brad thought they had underestimated the size of the audience that didn't want another EQ. That would lead me to believe that there was already broad consensus at the top of the company that they needed to target a new audience. There's no reason to believe that consensus will now change.

While I can see the argument that it would be a good marketing move for SOE to target a more hardcore audience, and therefor broaden the appeal of the Station Pass, I can also see that they already felt there were problems in the market direction of the game. As much as I'd like to think the people that remain won't go in an entirely different direction, all the signs are there that they may very well do so. I think it is hoping against hope that the game will retain much of it's hardcore edge. I think the changes to travel are quite sweeping, and an indication that they aren't adverse to sweeping changes. So, while I would love to think you are right, the pessimist in me says "they've already departed from the original vision in major ways, there's no reason to think they won't continue to do so."