Trials of Ascension, Shady Practices and the Big Crowdfunding Debate

[Pizzaman199]

That clip is pretty much perfect for the situation that's been presented over there.

But here's another question to bring up. The two new 'programmers' that were hired on have been there for almost a month now. I'm curious what sort of progress they've made or what changes they've brought about. Because outside of their introductions, I don't think we've really heard anything in the vein of development news and the only real postings from FC that have gone out on their forums are all from Elyssia.

[Azrile]

Why do some people think if one mismanages a project and admits to making mistakes it somehow negates the claim of something being a scam? One doesn't automatically make the other untrue.
Just an general observation , no idea what is the case with GM.

The answer is just the reasonable expectation of common sense. All of these devs are adults. You would expect that by now their common sense would just tell them that they are not who they claim to be. There is nothing wrong with some teenager downloading Unity, jumping on the forums and saying ´I am going to make a MMORPG´.. but after awhile. common sense should just show you that this is all a lot harder, in fact impossible, for you to do.

It should be common sense that if you never made a game before, have no skills at all beyond basic HTML, that someone else is not going to give you a million dollars to make your game.

Step 1 - Download Unity
Step 2 - Find investor to give me a million dollars

Is not a viable business model, and anyone with common sense would know that.

This debate has always been.... are these guys really this stupid? or are they scamming. The way Proctor and Brax talk about ´mysterious investors´... it has to be a scam.

Or maybe I caused the confusion when I sent Proctor an email from IreallyamBioware@yahoo.com and told him I was the owner of Bioware that wanted to fully fund his ´game´.

[Taojnhy]

Appleton is a slimy piece of work, but clever.

In a nutshell, Appleton corroborates what Proctor stated about having recently seen "proof" that the rest of the $100+k was spent on GM-related stuff. No real details though. Appleton basically pops up to say "Proctor is telling the truth about having seen this proof". DarkPenguin is trying (a bit too hard in my opinion) to engage Appleton in a conversation about letting a third party review this proof.

At this point it doesn't seem like Appleton really has anything to lose either way. If he doesn't allow anyone else to review the records, I doubt anything else will come of it. If he does, and the records are found to be accurate, then Appleton is pretty much scot-free since he can show sufficient faith in attempting to produce GM and fulfill backer rewards. If the records aren't found to be accurate...I just don't see that happening; Appleton would just refuse to allow them to be independently reviewed.

Which comes back to Proctor and Hagel, who agreed to fulfill KS backers rewards in exchange for the GM licenses and software. We know Hagel has the t-shirts and MMOI has no one they can pass the hot potato off to since Appleton called "no-tagbacks!"

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Or maybe I caused the confusion when I sent Proctor an email from IreallyamBioware@yahoo.com and told him I was the owner of Bioware that wanted to fully fund his ´game´.

...WHAT?!?!

If that is true, that is just...

No words. We need a poet.

If you're making a joke, then well played sir.

[Kyanion]

So I've been coming back and forth to this thread for a while, just reading. I didn't know about any of this, but having seen how well put the opening OP was, I decided to follow through reading. I've legitimately read all 332 pages, on and off for like a month. I even saw the Google Hangout video of the foreign guy and "Mr. Lumpyman's" dick poke at him being foreign. This has been a rather interesting development... I've never backed a kickstarter, never planned to either. This dilemma hasn't influenced me in any way, I just haven't come across something worth giving money to in it's early stages. Nevertheless, I don't frown on those who choose to and see the beauty in crowdfunding.

Now this in my first post on this topic and I gotta ask... why? Why would anyone fund this? Having seen all the "concepts" that they used to show off whatever it was they were working on, why would anyone choose to fund this "game". What they showed looked like poop. Maybe I've been spoiled by the nice graphics of today's modern games, but nothing about Trials of Ascension looked appealing. There was no wow factor, nothing eye opening or stellar about what they presented.

I don't mean to come off as a jerk or anything, I'm aware we all have different tastes, but in today's market of games, ToA hit absolutely no bullet points. I'm just having a hard time understanding what it is that I might have missed. I see no redeeming values on what ToA had to offer in contrast to the see of endless games flooding the market.

First of all this whole thread has been an amazing read. I re-read the whole thing through again like a month ago. As to why people would fund GM? I've no answer to that one. That game looked like trash but I imagine it was Azrile said, feeding off of Ultima Online nostalgia and the land aspect.

As for ToA? Why did people donate 69,000? If we assume that much was REALLY donated then it is the same kind of thing, nostalgia for games of the past. Though my problem with ToA is that it was trying to get made before WoW was even a thing. So they were mad at UO and EQ1?

[Azrile]

...WHAT?!?!

If that is true, that is just...

No words. We need a poet.

If you're making a joke, then well played sir.

It was a joke.

As far as the origins of GreedMonger. I actually understand how people could have got caught up in the craze. Appleton was pretty believable and down to earth in those first few videos. He had Markee Dragon on board, who was an old school UO famous person who had ´the´ most famous fansite for UO... and lastly, unless you played UO, it is hard to imagine how much demand there was for housing space. I guess imagine if Garrisons were not instanced and it was first come, first serve for a spot for your garrison... and if you could guarantee a spot by giving money pre-launch and then sell that spot after launch for real money, ingame. UO had at max 250,000 players and on black market websites, castles were going for over a thousand dollars... if you have a game with a few million players all fighting over limited land for housing...

[lawow74]

I've said it before, I'll say it again. Human beings have this need to believe in something, some ideal or concept, no matter how big or small. It helps us to frame the vastness and complexity of the world in a way our minds can comprehend. Other human beings can use this need for good or for ill, and do. People who have not been hurt in some way because of that need are more susceptible to it. Some people are naturally easy to exploit with it. The old term for tricking/exploiting someone like this was gulling them. Hence the term, gullible.

[EponyxDamor]

Azrile, I completely agree with most of what you've said. I've followed this thread for a while now, and have been following Greed Monger's development for at least 2 years. I have always heavily suspected that James Proctor was a scam artist, and still hold that to be true. James and Jason still haven't provided any sort of financial proof for the assets given to them through KickStarter, and until they do, I hope the internet never forgets the part James Proctor played in this scam. I still wonder, though, how much guilt Jason Appleton should truly bare for this debacle; after all, it was James who was leading the project and demanding funds. Jason didn't really know any better.

I very much want the thread I started on MMORPG.com to stay active, as a warning to potential customers who might see his work pop up soon for funding or other developers whom he might seek for employment; however, I tend to stray from personal attacks on forums that frown upon them. Multiple forums posts on the topic of Greed Monger have been locked and buried, because of people's insistence on resorting to personal attacks. So please, I implore you, don't continue resorting to personal attacks on the thread I worked so hard to produce; I'd really hate to see it get locked and buried like all the others.

I'm not above personal attacks, though. James Proctor is a pox upon both internet society and American society; leeching money from disability, only to spend hours claiming to be "working" on internet forums, with money provided to him by the very people who pay his internet bill. It is appalling. In fact, it's essentially a self-feeding human centipede of absolute debauchery; it makes me sick.

James Proctor is a scam artist, a liar, and a thief; regardless of his level of intelligence, religious background, or innocent naivete, he is a con artist. Anyone with half a brain can surmise he was a leeching scumbag from looking at the first two months of chat logs he posted, as you've already pointed out. He asked for multiple, expensive assets, later claimed they were useless, and referred multiple people who insisted on upfront pay, who left shortly after joining. He jumped from engine to engine, as he quickly realized there was no "Easy MMO-Maker" software. He also managed to get banned from the Atavism software forums after he bad-mouthed the engine for not being what he needed to create Greed Monger; this was after, of course, he had agreed to pimp Atavism through Greed Monger.

He strung along backers for three years with lies and misinformation, continuing the charade that he was developing Greed Monger. However, the entire time, he was busy making videos about the Ferguson protests, police brutality, and religious freedom laws. Most of these videos he took down from his YouTube, however, you can still find many of those posts on his personal FaceBook page. He also spent time developing games other than Greed Monger.

At the end of this, people who throw money mindlessly at every Kickstarter campaign should really think about how likely that project is to succeed. Greed Monger was clearly not going to succeed, based solely on their original ask of $30,000; I'm fairly certain no game can be developed at that price. It should also be a warning to these self-proclaimed MMO "News" Sites, that insist on posting every Kickstarter and praising it for their copious use of buzzwords and pretty pictures, rather than doing actual journalism and looking into the project/creators themselves. Greed Monger was quickly given front-page coverage on many MMO "News" sites, and thrown around like it was going to be the next best thing; all the while, people who warned against the project as a scam were called haters and stupid for "not knowing how much it costs to develop a game".

I am proud of Gloria Victis, though. Out of all this, they managed to stay classy and positive, offering victims of the Greed Monger debacle free access to their game with proof of funding. This is fantastic, and every "indie" MMO developer needs to take a page from the Gloria Victis handbook.

(EDIT: Your write up on ToA is fascinating and immaculate, by the way.)

[Taojnhy]

I am proud of Gloria Victis, though. Out of all this, they managed to stay classy and positive, offering victims of the Greed Monger debacle free access to their game with proof of funding. This is fantastic, and every "indie" MMO developer needs to take a page from the Gloria Victis handbook.

Yeah, the folks at GV have been awesome about all of this. GV isn't my kind of game, but I appreciated their generosity enough to simply donate to them and encourage everyone else to do so as well.

[Azrile]

yeah, I am going to avoid MMORPG.com, I don´t want to derail your thread. But I disagree with you. The fact that he is collecting disability for mental issues does matter. He is a borderline pathological liar who will contradict himself 5 minutes after saying something.

[EponyxDamor]

I do agree that it matters. I just didn't want to bring it up in fear that it would get locked.

EDIT: For the lols ...

"Yes as a matter of fact I was because I dared to speak out against the way they were advertising their framework. They were saying it already had features that were yet to be implemented. I suggested to them that they might want to be up front with potential customers and instead of saying it already had those features say they they were planned features."

-James Proctor

So, because you failed to realize it couldn't be used for MMO Framework, you were banned.

Got it.

Funny, seems you kind of did the same thing with Greed Monger, didn't you?

"I'm a programmer!"

-Me

[Azrile]

Yeah, I already commented on that, but my posts there need to be moderated before they show up.

That quote from Proctor is about Atavism and why he was banned from them the first time. The irony of all this is that incident is when I first ´met´ Proctor online, I agreed with him. Even today, Atavism sells itself as a complete MMORPG solution for Unity, when in fact it is just some random crap systems thrown onto a very bad networking solution. The real meaty stuff isn´t included, and I dont´t think is even on the roadmap yet. Like ToA and GM, they add all the fluff features that makes it look real, but the important underneath stuff hasn´t even been started. It is basically a con game that targets idiots that think you can just install an add-on and have a MMORPG. There are dozens of people every day who post about ´I want to make a MMORPG using unity´.. and Atavism is just basicall a way to get $90 out of some of them. It will never make a real MMORPG.

[EponyxDamor]

I still find it comically ironic.

[Azrile]

I still find it comically ironic.

my quote, waiting for moderator approval was ´ pot calling kettle black´..

[Kyanion]

Yeah I'll read some of the posts on those other sites but won't bother to make an account due to moderation of posts and stuff. I find it laughable that on the rpgcodex some people seemed willing to defend any of the 3 idiots involved in scamming people with GM.

[Azrile]

Yeah I'll read some of the posts on those other sites but won't bother to make an account due to moderation of posts and stuff. I find it laughable that on the rpgcodex some people seemed willing to defend any of the 3 idiots involved in scamming people with GM.

There isn´t, just that one guy.

It really is like a comedy of errors. Six guys with no game-making skills at all ( unless you count James´ Space Invaders clone) raise $200,000 to build 2 MMORPGs from their homes..... ready.... Go!

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(EDIT: Your write up on ToA is fascinating and immaculate, by the way.)

The original OP was just a rant about the $500 buy-in to see the demo. Myobi did all the hardwork and formatting and linking. I am far to lazy.

[Taojnhy]

I love how in this poll, Proctor wants to know how many GM backers want him to continue working on GM. 65% of the responders state they want the work on GM to be continued and no one in that thread is happy to hear about Proctor's latest prototype zombie survival game that will end up being abandoned alongside every other project Proctor has been known to work on.

Two days later Proctor announces GM is dead because they have no funding.

What in the world was the point of the poll then? Using it as an easy out if that 65% instead voted to shut GM down?

Seriously, I imagine if Proctor ever wrote a "Hello World!" program, he'd stop working on it after "Hell.

So, here's a thing: RoH's Facebook page. On Jan 6 of this year Proctor announces that RoH is back in development while he was still ostensibly working on GM.

I just can't wrap my head around how some people still try to defend him.

[lawow74]

I get the impression these guys aren't being calculating scam artists, more just taking advantage of those who backed them by dent of their personality faults. They feel they're owed something cos they came up with the idea and people are supposed to support them and hold them up as the creative and special people they believe themselves to be. And when they can't live in the feel-good echo chamber of the Internet, they get pissy.

And when they try to justify how they feel through 'reasoned' argument and get their points of view undercut by others, they get pissy. And eventually, they get tired of feeling like they're being picked on and called names for what they see is no good reason, they play along and pretend to be sorry and recalcitrant, while either looking for another venue to feed their egos or trying to continue on the same venue in a different angle.

It puts me in mind of what I call the serial relationship seeker. Someone who continually seeks out someone to talk to and get that initial 'rush' of good vibes from someone in starting a relationship, then ditches it the moment it starts demanding actual effort and seeks out someone else to do it to all over again. Sadly, my RL best friend did this for a few years after two failed marriages, before he met his current wife and finally found a real and lasting partnership with someone.

[Kyanion]

I mean I dunno about the scam thing, the person that did the KS and got what was it 100k? He got a lot of money that does not seem to show up in the assets purchased or the one worker they had. There were supposedly some other people that worked short term but that still does not account for all of the money.

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No doubt James Proctor on the other hand fits exactly into what you described. Tons of excuses, clueless, gives up on every project he works on but spends plenty of time arguing with people on various forums. I view that dude as a world class idiot who is scamming the government while getting paid to 'work' on GM.

[Azrile]

I mean I dunno about the scam thing, the person that did the KS and got what was it 100k? He got a lot of money that does not seem to show up in the assets purchased or the one worker they had. There were supposedly some other people that worked short term but that still does not account for all of the money.

Appleton posted in the Unity forums that he ´bought everything´.. You can´t really go by what Proctor showed in the videos because he was simply too clueless to get the bought stuff into the game ( the dragon, the priest, the hogman etc) they did buy a ton ( literally almost all) of the artwork from the Unity store including almost all the creatures and all the major landscape packs. That stuff only goes for $50-$100, but there are a lot of them. Just guys like Manufature4k has like $1000 worth of landscapes and Profactor has like $1500 worth of creatures along with Dex for another $1000. They also bought the Unity license, probably for more than one person at $1500 a pop. Then you had all the software that Proctor asked for, the voxel crap that he never used.

I think the biggest expenditure though was the team he had working during the kickstarter, there was at least a handful of people who were all paid right after the KS ended ( and all promptly quit). If you have 5 people working 3 months for you... As soon as Appleton got the $100,000 from KS, he probably paid at least $15k to $30k to the people who worked through the KS. Then Proctor got $4k and a computer..

Appleton was really stupid about the money early on. And the reality is that it happens a lot when it is other people´s money. Similar to the 3 stoogies wasting that $67,000 on basically nothing. When Appleton got the $100k, he was probably more than happy to pay $30k of it to those employees because he needed them.

[Kyanion]

Yup exactly, I'm sure a lot of money got used on assets and some went to people who got them through the Ks. But like you said there is a nice chunk of money unaccounted for and it'll never be accounted for.