The Safehouse

Not too long ago I managed to get a little leverage on a certain Safehouse forum administrator. Coincidentally, I discovered that said admin was planning to visit the folks at Sigil. Never being one to let opportunity go unanswered I invited myself along for the visit.

After a bit of wrangling, I was officially invited and given a time and directions, with instructions to memorize them and eat the email. So on a fine San Diego morning I set out to see what the hoopla was about. My first challenge was navigating north county, which anyone will tell you is an uncivilized and generally dangerous place to be. After several near misses from people who clearly learned to drive in a demolition derby, I found the parking lot described in the now digested directions. After parking I made my way to a non-descript unlabelled glass door. Pushing the button next to the door I peered inside to see if I might catch a glimpse of someone or something that indicated I was in the right place. Imagine the horror when the first site I behold is my long time nemesis Glip the Gnome standing in the lobby pointing at the door and laughing while shaking his head from side to side. Luckily he was wearing pants, or I might have lost my nerve and fled the area.

As I stood there, unsure whether a glimpse of gaming future was worth the predications of a demented gnome, another person came into view. Thankfully, it was the kind and gracious Cindy who opened the door for me and sent Glip back to whatever hole he'd crawled from. Cindy welcomed me to the office, asked how my drive was, and made general small talk while surreptitiously taking my fingerprints, blood sample and retinal scan. After verifying that I was who I claimed and generally non-communicable she offered me a deal I couldn't refuse (I think there may be some rogue in her after all). If I'd signed this tiny little document in blood, she'd show me nirvana. Last time I got this offer I woke up in a Tijuana bathtub short a kidney, but hey you only live once.

About that time, the lovely Fricka was seen pulling through the parking lot so we waited patiently for her to park and come in. Cindy announced that we were going to be doing lunch before the actual tour. That seemed like a fine chance to chat with a couple of the Sigil crew in a relaxed setting. Little did I know that Sigil only feeds their programmers, designers and artists when they have visitors. Our small lunch gathering turned out to be over a dozen people taking up the majority of the dining room at a Chinese restaurant. I was introduced to everyone there, but the be frank it went in one ear and out the other for the most part. The only name that really stuck was Matt, mostly because of the hilarious and embarrassing story of his first day at Sigil, which I won't relate here.

After lunch was completed, we returned to the Sigil offices. We were given a quick tour of the office and introduced to the few people who didn't go to lunch. This tour was an eye opener for me. I always considered the aliens, lobsters, koalas, and random electronics on my desk to be highest quality junk, these guys put me to shame. I'm going to have to get a bigger desk AND budget to even be in their league. During the tour we got to see some programmers programming, some modelers modeling, some artists ummm drawing, and Glip reading message boards. Apparently (this is rich) that's his JOB, reading the boards.

To cap off the day, I sat in while Fricka got an interview with Steve Burke. Well, when I say sat in, really I mean sat in and interrupted occasionally with my meaningless jabbering. Being prepared and somewhat professional, Fricka had a notepad and took notes on it which I'm sure will make a fascinating article regarding what Cindy allowed Steve to say about Vanguard. Did I not mention that part of the interview? Yes, Cindy sat in also, thoughtfully nodding or shaking her head to let Steve know if hewas straying into dangerous territory with his answers.

In truth, I think I learned more about Steve the gamer than Vanguard the game during the interview. That's ok with me though, because the guy sitting there talking about his characters in other games and what went right (and wrong) in those titles seemed to honestly want to make the game I want to play. When I said I wanted a game that engaged me to the point where leveling was a byproduct of gameplay rather than a goal, I swear I saw his eyes gleam. I'm not going to write about the specific mechanics we discussed for two reasons; I'd probably misremember some detail and get crucified for it, but more importantly mechanics aren't the point. History, environment, character development, a sense of wonder and excitement when entering the game world, those are the point. Be it class based or skill trees, 3rd person sprite or first person 3D, twitch or auto attack, boats or teleports, the mechanics won't make the game they'll only support the game. Hopefully a game that has the ability to capture my imagination the way another online RPG did 5 years ago.

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