Trials of Ascension, Shady Practices and the Big Crowdfunding Debate

[lawow74]

Wasn't he doing some knights/heroes related thing too?

I think so, but I don't recall. I do recall he made some Asteroids clone or something way back. It's been too long since GM was in the limelight around here, we've mostly been idling along watching ToA:Exile sputter. It's obvious he's trying to 're-brand' himself as Mr. Moral High Ground to legitimize his continued work on a project that still owes people promised rewards, and which squandered donations like someone tossing gasoline and a lit match on a pile of dollahs.

It won't work any better than trying 're-brand' GM by putting it in a new company worked. He still comes off as a self-absorbed man-baby who spends all his time attacking critics instead of doing any actual work. Great popcorn theater, but a complete and utter joke as far as business is concerned.

[Deleted]

You forgot to wish him a nice day Myobi, please be kind.

[Kyanion]

You know what... Your obsession with me really can't be healthy. You should really go see someone about that. Also anyone who really thinks I created fake accounts on my forum to talk to my self should really seek help as well. I'm NOT like that. I have no idea who the guy is but I've turned him down and I'm now just ignoring him. I WILL NOT take any money in relation to GM until I have a game ready to launch. I've already turned down a couple people who wanted to buy in now who was unable to back during our KS Campaign. So you know what... Leave me alone and then IF I ever attempt to take money for GM before I launch or IF I attempt to get any money from KS before having a Launched product then attack all you want. But as long as I'm not asking for money I'm doing no one any harm. That's all I have to say but of course you guys will do whatever you want and there isn't much I can do about that... I'll choose the high ground and not get into a debate with you guys. Have a nice day.

LOL my ass you had anyone that would give you a freaking penny for that bullshit. LOL why would people want to 'buy in' to someone who hasn't been able to finish a product EVER. You start so many projects and just abandon them it is quite amusing. You have no skill and it was shown during your GM 'video'. You are a scammer and just waste people's time. Your 'company' is as fraudulent as you are, because the only person in this 'company' (if it has ever been actually registered) is just you.

The only thing you do is seek out attention and announce new projects or revive long dead projects. No actual work gets done and you never have any proof. All talk.

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I think so, but I don't recall. I do recall he made some Asteroids clone or something way back.

If I remember correctly that was just more hot air from him. He referenced making one but I don't think any proof of the game ever materialized.

[Deleted]

I seem to remember watching that game he made, it looked shit and had no audio.

[Azrile]

The game he made before he started working on GreedMonger was basically a ´follow along´ course. They taught you completely how to make the game, you just followed along and did what they said. But he never finished the project and it got launched broken.

Then there was Rise of Heroes, which I believe came before GreedMonger, but it was only announced and never contained anything except some concept art. After Greedmonger, he did the ´typical for James Proctor´ thing of creating a new project in Unity, and then running around an empty world. He then Re-announced that Rise of Heroes game 2 or 3 times.

Then there was the Zombie Apocallpyse game that again, was nothing except running around an empty world, with some free graphics from the asset store

Then there was City Life, which was nothing except running around an empty world created from one unity asset.

Then during the entire time was Greedmonger, which again was simply Unity, UMA and Atavism. He just downloads other people´s projects, runs around in an empty world while making a video.

And yeah, like expected, everyone that was involved in the defense of him last spring has now abandoned him. He is starting over with new people. Apparently what has happened is that someone created a plug-in for Atavism that allows some decent progress to be made, so Proctor must have saw that and downloaded it and now thinks he can pretend again that he is doing something. But it is all just a single plug-in from Atavism.

What a developer he is..

[Taojnhy]

Well, Proctor states here that he and Hagel (Lumpy) are no longer working together and that Lumpy has allegedly stated that he won't mail the shirts since production stopped on GM.

Was this Hagel's attempt to hold Proctor's feet to the fire, leading to the "oh, we resumed production on GM months ago" announcement?

Also, by my scorecard here, Proctor is the only person running his fictional company now (if indeed Hagel ever had any real say in it).

[dextersmith]

And yeah, like expected, everyone that was involved in the defense of him last spring has now abandoned him. He is starting over with new people. Apparently what has happened is that someone created a plug-in for Atavism that allows some decent progress to be made, so Proctor must have saw that and downloaded it and now thinks he can pretend again that he is doing something. But it is all just a single plug-in from Atavism.

What a developer he is..

Is that why he's back to gm?

Well, Proctor states here that he and Hagel (Lumpy) are no longer working together and that Lumpy has allegedly stated that he won't mail the shirts since production stopped on GM.

Was this Hagel's attempt to hold Proctor's feet to the fire, leading to the "oh, we resumed production on GM months ago" announcement?

Also, by my scorecard here, Proctor is the only person running his fictional company now (if indeed Hagel ever had any real say in it).

Does anyone else see a self esteem problem? He's bff with all these people; they defend each other vehemently when there's any possibility of money to be made, and they all leave him holding the bag in the end. He wanted to be the lead developer for a team of one and Jason still says no!

He pairs up with that publicist who didn't do too much outside or inside of forums. That guy who couldn't stop rubbing his nose and scalp, or be bothered to sit up to solicit money with the camera rolling, while James couldn't stop giggling. That guy who promised to take feedback to some nonexistent team in an unregistered company. That guy who agreed to send out t-shirts then spewed excuses like there's no money, and now this apparently. Who would touch t-shirts from a person who couldn't stop playing with his nose and scalp?

Is the approval of internet strangers so important that he has to repeatedly announce these games?

[lawow74]

I think he wishes he could be a game developer, but his personality and his lack of drive/ability to make something happen preclude it from coming true. So he tries to get his dream validated by playing pretend(and may tell himself this time he's really gonna do it each time he tries), attracts people who fall for his claims/go along on the promise of easy money, then those people see him for who he is/realize there's no real prospect of getting anything out of it and leave him.

Meantime he places more value on how people see him via Internet forums than on actually producing anything, or just takes that as the easy road thinking it'll work when his development attempts continually flop. Why that is, who knows? For me it's important it remains documented what he's done to try and keep as many people as possible from having to suffer his problems, or worse lose money trying to support him.

[Deleted]

http://trialsofascension.com/news/ar...8#.Vp0rnVLLrmE

New update, have fun!

[Kelimbror]

Our Creative Director and one of our Co-founders, Barry “Varl” Smith has resigned from the team. He’s been a part of the Trials of Ascension team for over 15 years, so the decision did not come easily.

So many things that could be said, but um...so this happened.

[Taojnhy]

So many things that could be said, but um...so this happened.

Surprising, to say the least. Supposedly he may post his reasons, but if he does I rather doubt he'll publicly state all of them.

More importantly though: who will pilot the Raknar along very specific waypoints in a cave now?

[dextersmith]

So many things that could be said, but um...so this happened.

So they lost that Creative Director who didn't create or direct much of anything, and co-founded ........... what exactly does that group do? He's leaving the monies?

lol

[...] so if you think you have the chops to work with us [...]

Nobody has the chops to........

[lawow74]

And the churn continues. Can they keep slapping people on top faster than they slide out from under the bottom? Also, testable by end of first quarter? Of what, their 20th anniversary of 'development'?

[Azrile]

Do not worry, next week Brax is going to announce that his mom has joined the team, and she also has 10 years of programming experience.

Their test will be exactly what Proctor does.. it will be a character running around an empty world doing nothing. In other words, what most people can do in an hour in Unity. It will be a fraction of what they had on demo island.

[Exerionx]

Man I haven't checked here in months now, what's new? Any major goss or shenanigans lately?

EDIT:

http://trialsofascension.com/news/ar...8#.Vp0rnVLLrmE

New update, have fun!

Jesus, that is just 'lol'-worthy.

[Kelimbror]

Do not worry, next week Brax is going to announce that his mom has joined the team, and she also has 10 years of programming experience.

Their test will be exactly what Proctor does.. it will be a character running around an empty world doing nothing. In other words, what most people can do in an hour in Unity. It will be a fraction of what they had on demo island.

It's amazing that everyone posting on their forums are programmers with 10+ years of experience. It would normally be difficult to find experienced people in a high tech profession that are willing to work for free, but somehow ToA forums are 100% these people.

Like....ok. Real talk here. This has gone past the point of being a scam (which in hindsight looks more like a scam from negligence and ignorance than intention) and into the realm of really awkwardly bad. They really need to just go away, get whatever people they think they need, and stay under the radar like an indie team until they have some form of a product.

When like...1 or 2 people can make games like Terraria on their own, I really don't want to hear status updates over a decade from a group of people trying to make an MMO and not producing a single piece of playable content. At this point, I'd love to see ToA actually become a game(weirdly enough)...but it seems like it will take everyone originally associated with it to leave and let people who actually work or strive to work in the industry manage it.

I can't tell if the people in charge are sociopaths or just the dumbest people on the planet. They say that trying the same thing and expecting different results is the definition of stupidity. Well...

[lawow74]

I think of this scene from My Cousin Vinny:

This is what ToA is doing, has done from the beginning. They care more about how it all looks than they do about producing anything. It's in how they present everything they have done, are doing and will continue to do. They shine it up in the best possible light imaginable, they make mountains out of molehills, because they are afraid if they do anything less, the thin tissue of support they have will vanish.

Look at how much interest dropped off after the second KS, when people who had been rabidly supporting them turned and fled to other games. They're terrified of this happening again, cos they know this time there won't be any recovery. They want as much support, as much attention as they can grab onto, to hope beyond hope that if they can reach a playable state, push the game out for some kind of sale, they can keep holding on to the dream.

Otherwise they have to admit to themselves they spent 15 years on something that went absolutely nowhere. That's a hard admission to make, IMO.

[Kyanion]

Otherwise they have to admit to themselves they spent 15 years on something that went absolutely nowhere. That's a hard admission to make, IMO.

Yet back when the project started 10+ years ago they pretended to be a team that was working together producing a game. Then they did that magic vanishing trick for a number of years. I mean outside of talking a good game Brax and Co has hardly ever 'worked' or spent time on it.

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It's amazing that everyone posting on their forums are programmers with 10+ years of experience. It would normally be difficult to find experienced people in a high tech profession that are willing to work for free, but somehow ToA forums are 100% these people.

Like....ok. Real talk here. This has gone past the point of being a scam (which in hindsight looks more like a scam from negligence and ignorance than intention) and into the realm of really awkwardly bad.

It is funny how they keep finding these 10+ year experience people that are also clueless when it comes to Unity and other programs though. I also love how they gloss over one of the Co-founders leaving and just continue like nothing happened.

It may not be a scam anymore (I still feel it was 10+ years ago and think some donation money might have been...used up in wrong ways). So moving past the scam state into...tragedy is pretty sad to watch. It is funny looking at their forums from last year and this year how things have changed. So many less people and no more rapid new posting fanboys popping up either. Youtube videos and posts on their forums have pitiful view counts when last year it was all inflated.

The problem is they dug their own grave, even if they do get to the point with releasing something even remotely playable I think they buried any hype/attention they would have gotten. Now everything they do is sub 500 views and no hype at all. They would have been better served staying quiet and working on their project but as you say, they are attention seekers and they go about it the wrong way.

[Kotori125]

I still think that they're are terrible at word choice. It is one thing to say you have 10+ years of experience programming, and another to say you started programming 10+ years ago. Heck, I started programming HTML as a freshman in HS, which would be about 10 years ago; do I have 10ish years of programming experience? No, I say what it really is: started 10ish years ago, dabbled a bit, began again in college a few years ago, dabbled a bit more; I am a novice at most. I tinkered with the SC2 editor, does that make me a programmer? I downloaded Unity (and here it sits with nothing done for over a year), does that give me a year of programming experience. I made a basic HTML website with some CSS a few years ago, does that make me a professional?

I'll just say, that there has been a particular person that has plagued my family...just about all my life (23). She lies, and deceives, puts blame on others, has poor word choice, and lies, and deceives, and lies some more, and just overall is a terrible person. For instance, she said that she has considerable experience in a particular program that goes with her job. Well, she refused to actually do the work with that program and had someone else do it, but still states that she is the one with experience. Worst part is, the next company she worked for, has my mom (that other person) and her, and she actually has the nerve to ask my mom about using it (when my mom knows explicitly that she knows nothing but still claims to know, well, everything). Or changing her own personal 'logs' to better fit her agenda, than, you know, reality (and what system logs and program logs and security tapes would actually show).

To me, it all looks like exaggeration and bragging, with little to no humility. Because word choice coming from a (supposedly professional) company/business is very important. And I don't just mean this for just ToA, but also for Greedmonger stuff, and in general for just about anything as well.

[lawow74]

To me, it all looks like exaggeration and bragging, with little to no humility. Because word choice coming from a (supposedly professional) company/business is very important. And I don't just mean this for just ToA, but also for Greedmonger stuff, and in general for just about anything as well.

Unfortunately, people tend to believe what they're told unless given good reason to question it. Even then, if others around them believe it, the 'Emperor's New Clothes' phenomenon kicks in often as not. So it generally ends up being more about faith than about facts.

Certainly some of their supporters have faith that ToA is going to be a real playable game just as the devs claim, just like there are people out there who believe Donald Trump's really going to build a wall along the Mexico border, or Hillary Clinton's going to make sure everyone gets free college educations.