Introduction
Just north of San Diego, tucked away in an unmarked building just a few miles from the Pacific Ocean, the developers at Sigil Games Online are hard at work. Founded in early 2002 by the original minds behind the smash hit EverQuest, Sigil is preparing for the winter launch of their first title, Vanguard: Saga of Heroes.
In the past four years, we have grown from a modest dozen initial employees to the current count of just over 100. Sigil is comprised of, 33 artists, 30 designers, 13 programmers, 13 customer support staff, 7 production staff, 3 community/marketing staff, 1 very, very angry and slightly off balance monkey, 3 administration staff and management (not to be confused with the monkey).
As you can see, it takes a big team to make an MMO and we´ll have even more by the time we ship. Sigil employs a wide variety of people - young guys just starting out, old folks who have had a lot of experience, and even people over 30. When undertaking a project as massive in size as an MMO one of the challenges in managing a team this large is being able to actually find the right people. Some positions we get more applicants than we know what to do with, and others it takes quite a bit of patience and looking around to fill. With this article, we hope to give some insight into the way MMO developers work and how to become part of one. We´ll take a look at the art department, the programming department, the design department and quality assurance, customer support and community - so stay tuned! |
