I'm going to explain what I THINK has happened over the past few days and that's it. I'm not going to go into a full blown explanation of the game, how it ended up here or point fingers. This is the only time I'm going to chime in here and I'm walking away for good. After agreeing to give GM to James and Joel (our contract came from a legal service, not just made up on a whim) I simply washed my hands of this and moved on for an endless list of reasons. A few days ago, James messaged me asking me to show where the funds went. Going back years into my financial records was a very mind bending task and at first I declined. Simply because I didn't have to. However, they brought up some discrepancies that I explained they were far off about and just flat out wrong and of course it turned into a "prove it" argument. So I spent about an hour with them finally showing them screenshot after screenshot of not only what they were directly wrong about, but many other things to show them how the money was used, which was to a lot of developers, graphics guys, assets, licenses, etc etc, a lot of which James had apparently forgotten about entirely. But I had to go and left it at that.
What I think this boiled down to was simple. They did what they did to take over Greed Monger expecting to have funding to see it through from where it was (although I wasn't aware this outside funding was even an issue or a must have for them to complete the game as I was under the impression they had a full volunteer team to finish everything) and when that funding apparently fell through, they panicked and James figured he could launch a smaller game to generate some revenue to then use to finish GM. Some images were leaked from people on his FB and all hell broke loose once again. They then came to me asking about where the money went, I assume now because they wanted to make sure that if they closed the project and any form of legal action came about, I was at least able to show that the money wasn't squandered or used to buy a fishing boat or something. It wasn't, I showed them that (at the time I just wanted to prove I wasn't lying and to prove them wrong about their personal claims) but they wanted to be able to close shop on the game until they got their ducks in a row without worrying about recourse, as is my opinion.
I know this was all a mess and I wont go into details about how or why things worked out the way they did. We did work for years to create an MMO game for $100k. I even had outside investment help toward the end. When we launched the KS the game was originally supposed to be much more simplistic. A cross between Salem and Ultima Online. James and I were a team, though I was the front man for everything. I took all of the hits so he could stay away from the madness and focus on results that I figured would ultimately clear my name in the end when the game was done.
I used the money for development, plain and simple. I had them agree not to publicly release the screenshots because I dont need mine or anyone elses financial information all over the web for obvious reasons.
To call this all a scam is just an easy way to drum up negative support against what we attempted to do and I get it. But the fact is, we certainly tried to do what I now know is impossible. Build and MMO with a lot of community involvement on a small budget. I learned the hard way that unless you have the funds to hire a team working out of your office that you can observe, monitor and have direct control over full time, you're already dead in the water. We had a sizable team for a while, but from my experience, everyone was out to take what they could and deliver little in return and to be honest, the community blasting us from inception all over the web not only put undue pressure on the team members but was ultimately cause for the game being a failure. It's difficult to find the help you need, paid or otherwise when everyone thinks badly about what you're trying to accomplish. I dont mean that to sound like excuses, but the community didn't help.
I'm sorry things worked out the way they did but I honestly did everything in my power to see this game through and never gave up on supporting James until the very end when I finally decided to give everything I had to James and Joel. It was my last ditch effort to see the game get finished knowing I would never see a dime for everything I had personally dealt with, suffered through, all of the stress and trials I had to contend with over the past 3 years. IT was either James and his newly resurfacing friend take their ball and go home, or I give them everything and let them finish it for all of the glory. I figured I'd rather see the game done, whatever it took.
I am simply done. They own everything and what they do with it all is up to them. I'd like to think they will get their ducks in a row and continue working on GM as I don't see James just walking away. I think they would rather the community think they are done and let things die down so that they can work on the game without all of the pressure put on by the public. But thats my opinion. The MMO forum community is a very big cross to bear, especially for James as I've told him COUNTLESS times to stay off the forums and focus on finishing the game. Showing the public a completed game will say all you will ever need to say to them and until then, everything else is just BS or troll food. But James can't help himself when it comes to forums for some reason.
I doubt this will clear anything up for anyone but I wanted to try.
Be well.
