Vapourware Greed Monger Insider Thread (drama inside)

[Bubbles]

Hello Greed Monger Community!
A few weeks back when I left GM and then Jason signed everything over to Joel and My self we took over based on the promise of Guaranteed funding through to launch from an out side investor. Once we stepped into ownership of GM that out side investor bailed on us and we were left with no funding. We made the choice to try and develop a smaller scale game that we could get released in a much shorter time and use the funds generated to fund GM. Since those plans were leaked we have dealt with nothing but flack for it from a bunch of people. So we are faced with some choices to make. We are unable to get GM built with out funding and we are unable to get funding from developing another smaller scale game with out taking heat for doing so. Joel and My self decided to give everything back to Jason and allow him to get GM developed using his Investors he told us he had. He is refusing to take GM back from us. Therefore with no means of funding and Jason refusing to take GM back from us we are forced to admit defeat and Close GM down. The last 3 years were a great learning experience for me. I've learned a number of things about working in the Game Development Industry that I wouldn't have learned else where. This community has been great and it's been an honor working with you guys. MMOI will be back at some point and you guys will NOT be forgotten by us that is a Promise we made when I left the GM and it's a Promise I intend on fulfilling. I'm sorry things have had to end this way and will do everything in our power to make things right in the future.

http://www.greedmonger.com/forum/showthread.php?2078-Shutting-down-Greed-Monger&p=30121#post30121

Jesus Christ.

 

[Andnjord]

Or is it?

 

[Tzaero]

This thread just keeps on giving.

 

[DarKPenguiN]

This thread just keeps on giving.

The icing on the cake will be if we see Greed Monger T-Shirts o n Ebay =P

Now that would make my entire life worthwhile and I could die happy.

 

[Azrile]

see... I don´t get that quote. He said they had a promise of guaranteed funding...

but at the time, they never mentioned it.. and Joel Lumpy even went so far as to say he could self-fund the game if needed. Of course then he got on that Google Hangout and said he couldn´t send all the t-shirts out at the same time because he didn´t have enough money.... then he said he had conjuctivitis and couldn´t send out the t-shirts.. and then he said he needed money to buy the bags for the t-shirts...

Proctor and Joel just lie repeatedly, and they don´t even care if it refutes something they said just a few days ago... or stuff that is still available on their website. Last year, for instance, Proctor said that he started a new company called MMOI and Jason was on the board of directors.. flash forward a year.. and again.. Proctor is creating a company called MMOI... which by the way, still does not exist anywhere except in forum posts.

 

[Intrigued007]

The icing on the cake will be if we see Greed Monger T-Shirts o n Ebay =P

Now that would make my entire life worthwhile and I could die happy.

Quick, someone put cheap poly bags up on E-Bay!

 

[DarKPenguiN]

Sadly I know that wont happen though. But damn... I would buy one. I would buy a bunch. I swear.

 

[Azrile]

Yeah, I am still curious about the t-shirts. I mean Joel Lumpy was here and everywhere talking about the t-shirts and how he was going to deliver on the promise to send them out. But since then, it has been just one excuse after another. At one point in a chat he said he was going to be mailing them out ´next week´.. which was about a month ago. Then he started the priority shipping to people who request them because he doesn´t have enough money for postage.. then it was that he had conjuctivities... now he needs money to buy bags..

And how about those stress tests? This is the same thing Proctor has been doing for years.. always saying something is coming ´soon´ and then always making an excuse on why it didn´t happen. They got busted during the Google hangout because James had been telling us the stress test was cancelled because he had a headache and overslept, but apparently he had told Joel Lumpy that there were technical issues and they couldn´t get the game working..

These guys have lied about everything and just keep changing their story as it goes. They say whatever they want in the moment, and then totally disregard what they said 5 minutes later.

 

[DarKPenguiN]

Yeah, I am still curious about the t-shirts. I mean Joel Lumpy was here and everywhere talking about the t-shirts and how he was going to deliver on the promise to send them out. But since then, it has been just one excuse after another. At one point in a chat he said he was going to be mailing them out ´next week´.. which was about a month ago. Then he started the priority shipping to people who request them because he doesn´t have enough money for postage.. then it was that he had conjuctivities... now he needs money to buy bags..

And how about those stress tests? This is the same thing Proctor has been doing for years.. always saying something is coming ´soon´ and then always making an excuse on why it didn´t happen. They got busted during the Google hangout because James had been telling us the stress test was cancelled because he had a headache and overslept, but apparently he had told Joel Lumpy that there were technical issues and they couldn´t get the game working..

These guys have lied about everything and just keep changing their story as it goes. They say whatever they want in the moment, and then totally disregard what they said 5 minutes later.

As far as the shirts- Idk. I dont expect anything to happen with them. Salvation Army? maybe in 5 years we will be watching the Discovery channel and some little African kid will be running around with a "greed monger" t-shirt. That would be epic.

Realistically I would say the T-Shirts will never be seen again. But a Penguin can hope.

Maybe they can get a Rap Star to endorse the shirts and market it as a clothing line. The whole "Thug Life" could be replaced with "greed Monger".

All I know is that I want one badly.

I think if there was hope of the T=shirts being sent it would have happened prior to the shut down. At this point its money they dont have spent for a game that no longer exists.

EDIT- They do exist though and seeing one was more than I ever thought would happen.

 

[Intrigued007]

They had enough money to purchase more Unity Store Assets, though!

 

[DarKPenguiN]

They had enough money to purchase more Unity Store Assets, though!

James used his own money for that in a desperate attempt to try and get something going for funding. I dont think that was so much 'buying unity assets" than "investing" that money for a hopefully quick turn around.

I'm being honest when I say these guys were scrambling and trying their asses off to figure out anything to salvage this. They didnt just quit GM to get the assets, ive been harping on them to give it back to jason or get rid of it since pretty much the start. Once their funding apparently fell through there was no fixing this (not sure this was fixable anyhow) but they were ready to wash their hands of everything (assets and all) and give it back to jason who (smartly) wasnt going to touch GM again with a 10 foot pole.

They really didnt have many options. The other game wasnt meant as a slap in the face to the backers (even though it looked that way) but was desperation and stress and the knowledge they were pretty well fucked with GM. they needed money rolling in as quickly as possible.

As far as them using the assets now in a future mmorpg- They are stuck with them. they were stuck when they tried to give everything back and were trying to wash their hands and they are the ones out there in the front right now (until jason got brave) so I see nothing wsrong with them doing whatever with the assets.

At this point anything with James and Joel is on the backers to deal with in whatever way they want to or are able to. I know they tried and I know they had no intention of failing to the point of hardheadedness and i know this wasnt something they wanted to do. I dont expect nor care who believes me- its the truth as I see it.

Unless these guys were playing me like hell -this was all a legit and misguided attempt with good intentions/. And honestly I just dont see them capable of playing me.

And yes, taking GM wasnt only done for the backers but for the assets as well as a benefit for taking over the doomed project. But their intentions were good. IMHO they should have closed it down a long time ago So,for what its worth- I know they tried. Thats either enough for the backers oir it isnt- But I know what I saw and think.

 

[EJoe]

MrSmiles - see page 18. I wrote about how to write a MMO.

I was part of two MMO projects. The first one, was in a studio that paid me and another freelance...

I'm not privy to state which studio, since I don't post info. about my past here.
Several server developers and several artists who worked on the project... They are still on my Skype list as of today.

The second MMO project, they are not active in the Unity forums,
I know them as I was hired as freelance artist to do art for a project.
They did overcome and become successful, only that they don't trumpet their achievements on Unity forums.


For a single person to attempt to write a MMO, you shouldn't and it would be very foolish and stupid.
The hardest part is below. Everything else is easy.

There is no MMO controller server, which represents terrain (without using Unity on server) and all players inside the terrain and models within it, simulate physics, colliders, read/write data to database and echo it to all players.
For this reason, you are doing all fuck-work because all publicly known MMO servers (you can buy with sources) used by big companies uses Mesh terrains for the ground, while you show all your demos using Unity terrain.

DarKPenguiN if you are so desperate for a GM T-shirt, I could design one... LOL.

Then you can take the design, put it on CafePress or any T-Shirt shop and order it.

I gave you an estimate. You might want to run that by James.

 

[EJoe]

DarKPenguiN - you shouldn't trust compulsive liars.

Both Joel and James are compulsive liars. They set-up this imaginary dream land in their heads and Jason played hook, line and sinker into their imaginary dream land.


I dunno how to say... I think James is the compulsive-liar developer. He's like the rest of the idea guys on the Unity forum... no ability to code, no ability to draw, no ability to model. Not that James could code, in the sense make wholly original work not slap small snipplets of lines of code ontop of a library.

When an idea guy gets something from his victim modeller/artist/developer, he then posts on forum, claiming as his own work. This was what all James was attempting to do with his failed MMO projects. The developers, artists and modellers didn't want to co-operate with an idea guy who bossed people around and did little or none of his own work.


It's like an idea guy hit it big time bonanza - by getting an investor to fund his MMO! 3 years later... no MMO, latest screenshots look like trash, no unique IP, no unique artwork.

Now James is looking for yet another investor to fund a MMO. Good luck.

 

[Azrile]

James used his own money for that in a desperate attempt to try and get something going for funding. I dont think that was so much 'buying unity assets" than "investing" that money for a hopefully quick turn around.

I'm being honest when I say these guys were scrambling and trying their asses off to figure out anything to salvage this. They didnt just quit GM to get the assets, ive been harping on them to give it back to jason or get rid of it since pretty much the start. Once their funding apparently fell through there was no fixing this (not sure this was fixable anyhow) but they were ready to wash their hands of everything (assets and all) and give it back to jason who (smartly) wasnt going to touch GM again with a 10 foot pole.

Sorry to say, but you drank the kool-aid. At some point you have to stop taking everything they say at face value. Lets start with some facts. First off, they could have done what they said they are going to do, and just develop GM. I know people don´t know this, but you CAN develop a game without outside funding at all. If James really could program or do anything in Unity besides buy assets from other people, he could have been working for 3 years to make GM. The video produce in January, and shown again in your Google Hangout... was laughable. It was like the Indian guy said... that is garbage that anyone could throw together quickly. It was basically just Atavism ( $90 on Unity asset store) and UMA ( free on Unity asset store).

You said they were scrambling? For what? money. You are exactly right, James used his own money to buy something from the Unity store to trick people into investing in his new game... to make it seem like a real game. It was nothing but 1 cheap asset pack from Unity and the 3rd person controller that comes with Unity. He was doing in the past week, EXACTLY what he has been doing the past 3 years in GreedMonger.. buying and downloading other people´s stuff and making it seem like he was really making a game. You can´t buy a $40 asset from the Unity store and then brag about making progress on your game.. that is all James did for the past 3 years.

Stop talking about these two clowns like they are game developers. They are two grown men who live with their mother´s and do nothing except play games and post on forums. The only thing that makes James different than any other gamer who posts on this forum is that he learned how to download and install other people´s stuff from the Unity asset store and take screenshots.

I don´t understand why you consider it a heroic effort for James to throw together that zombie video.. it is one unity asset and an hour of work.... and for that.. he wants funding??? You don´t see how that is a bad thing?

 

[EJoe]

but apparently he had told Joel Lumpy that there were technical issues and they couldn´t get the game working..

These guys have lied about everything and just keep changing their story as it goes. They say whatever they want in the moment, and then totally disregard what they said 5 minutes later.

What's the technical error?

Care to do long-distance debugging?
Can you post the stack dump?


I have a feeling all the delays was because James is not a developer...

For coding Atavism plug-ins, you have to code both ways - on server and on client. If you have no experience coding, you will find it very hard.

My gut feeling, is that the whole Greed Monger has not progressed further than the default stock Atavism MMO plug-in... All the other promised plugins are naught.

Also same, using uLink (google Unity PNet as uLink is derived from PNet), the game has not progressed much since uLink is only networking and loading/saving XML data onto terrain is very messy.

 

[Azrile]

if you watch their Google hangout video.. there was a ´gotcha´ moment. Joel Lumpy was talking and at some point he said the stress test was postponed because there were tech issues. I may be wrong, but I think it was Dark who jumped in and said ´but Proctor said it was postponed because he was sick´.... and then Proctor suddenly had microphone problems and couldn´t explain it.. so Joel asked him to type the answer.. but the answer was never read.

I agree completely about this project, and I´ve been saying it for over a year. You cannot ´Frankenstein´ something as complex as an MMORPG. Yes, you can buy artwork and creature models.. and a few scripts that do minor things.. But you can´t just buy Unistorm, Atavism, UMA and 15 other assets from the Unity store and default install them and expect to make a MMORPG that is playable because you bought ´all the pieces´..

 

[GM_JamesPro]

Joe, IF you really know so much about Atavism then you seem to be forgetting that I was one of the very first developers to get access to Atavism's Plugin Framework... I wrote a number of tutorials on how to write Plugins for Atavism... The very first Crafting System implemented officially in Atavism was MY crafting System that I coded. Neo's Land used MY Custom Day/Night Cycle System for their first couple Alpha Tests. I gave them MY Audio Controller I had Programmed for GM. So yeah just keep on spouting off about how I don't know anything... In the mean time I have a Prototype to work on so catch ya later.

 

[Azrile]

woohoo.. another prototype of a game that will never get finished. Why don´t you work on one of your other 13 prototypes... people keep listing them.. including your space invaders game that is still incomplete, maybe RoH? Maybe one of your many ´frameworks´ you downloaded from various places.

Atavism? Wasn´t that the place where you got thrown out of and banned from their forums until Jason begged them to let you back in. And let´s not forget, none of the stuff you did for Atavism actually worked right, and I don´t think any of it is even available anymore. Certainly there are not any games out there using your stuff. So it is about like your other 13 projects.... never finished, never worked correctly, but you will still take credit for it.

 

[Intrigued007]

Weren't you also one of the first people to be banned by Atavism?

 

[GM_JamesPro]

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.

 

[Intrigued007]

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!"

 

[Azrile]

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.

haha, that has got to be the biggest case of the pot calling the kettle black I have ever seen. For 3 years you have been telling the backers about all the great progress you were making.. then when your are finally forced to show a video in January, it is something out of a Unity Middleschool project.

But hey, we are all waiting for your next kickstarter!!

 

[EJoe]

Intrigued007 - James is all rubbish.

James writes bad against a vendor because he bumps into certain limitations and then lashes out against Atavism vendor for being slow to implement features he need.

Greed Monger licensed all 3 - Voxel Farm (see Kick Starter), ATVoxel (See Atavism forums) and (probably any other voxel solution) and ... still, no game because it doesn't work according to how James understands it.


It's expensive waste of money pouring down the drain.

 

[Azrile]

Intrigued007 - James is all rubbish.

James writes bad against a vendor because he bumps into certain limitations and then lashes out against Atavism vendor for being slow to implement features he need.

Greed Monger licensed all 3 - Voxel Farm (see Kick Starter), ATVoxel (See Atavism forums) and (probably any other voxel solution) and ... still, no game because it doesn't work according to how James understands it.


It's expensive waste of money pouring down the drain.

And that is the problem with not being a real programmer and thinking you can make a MMORPG by buying stuff on the asset store and installing it. For the past 3 years, everything has been everyone else´s fault because what Proctor bought couldn´t be installed in 5 minutes and work correctly with every other part of the game.

 

[Jigawatt]

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.

Oh my god this thread. Every fucking time