Vapourware Greed Monger Insider Thread (drama inside)

[InnitBruv]

If GreedMonger can safely steal peoples money like that, do you think Star Citizen can do the same thing ?

 

[Whiran]

If GreedMonger can safely steal peoples money like that, do you think Star Citizen can do the same thing ?

To be fair at least Star Citizen has its dog fighting module out that people can play and many people really like it a lot. For them, that's already enough of the game delivered.

 

[Hobo Elf]

If GreedMonger can safely steal peoples money like that, do you think Star Citizen can do the same thing ?

Are you saying that they won't do the same? Star Citizen is never going to get finished with even half the promised features.

 

[Angthoron]

If GreedMonger can safely steal peoples money like that, do you think GODUS can do the same thing ?

 

[InnitBruv]

It seems there are some news on the Greed Monger issue, Jason posted this on the project's kickstarter page:

Creator Jason M. Appleton (F&AM) on July 15
I see complaints and people asking for refunds. It's been 3 years. I've done everything in my power to get this game built. I didn't have a million dollars and every decision made cost money and if that decision wasn't a fruitful one or we had to change things, it was more money. After taxes I had about $90k to build an MMORPG.
By the 3rd year I was spending my own money and outside investment money from a close friend. Electric Crow Games, LLC is Bankrupt and soon to be dissolved as a company. There is nothing to sue. Now, after 3 years of dealing with the uphill battle that was the worst decision of my life, I ended up being put in an even worse position by James as he decided to take his ball and go home or give him everything to finish the game with his new business partner.
I decided that even though I'd get nothing out of my time and money invested, it was better to see the game finally come together if that was in fact possible.

I believed James was capable of doing it based on the latest clients he had released and it was those clients that convinced me to give them ownership of everything. We signed agreements that explains they take over all responsibility to the backers and they I am indemnified of any future potential action should they fail to complete the game. In exchange, I gave them EVERYTHING. Including the Greegmonger.com domain, all assets and licenses, etc.
I personally wasn't impressed with Joel, Jame's partner but he had convinced James to walk away and James for whatever reason trusted him.

As such, I figured it was best to have the chance of seeing this game happen once and for all. Their reasons for not continuing the game are unknown to me as I discontinued all communication with them. I saw the article about the FTC coming down on a guy who took 100k from Kickstarter and paid his rent and other bills with it. They did nothing to him. A. these are donations to support a goal for someone to create something. Not a retail purchase.

Once the money is used it doesn't magically reappear if the project fails. B. I didn't use the Kickstarter to pay my rent. I saw someone say I bought a house. Just because I got married and bought a house doesn't mean I used the Kickstarter money to do it. What kind of house can you buy for 90k anyway? I have a job and my wife is a realtor. We aren't wealthy by any stretch but our house was 180k, our mortgage payment is $1,500 a month. Do the math. We didn't use KS money for our house. I understand everyone is upset about this. Some of you are pissed you donated $20 and the game didn't launch.

I lost thousands and dealt with 3 years of having my name blasted everywhere, long before there was any real reason which ultimately made it much more difficult to attract developers willing to help on the project. A couple of people started a brush fire and nobody wanted to get hot. I fought against the flames for years to achieve my dream and goal of getting GM done and for a million reasons, it didn't work out. I'm sorry.

I tried like hell but I am done. I wish you all the best in the future. If someone came to me with an old MMORPG that they would let me license and change to suit the needs of Greedmonger and it was within reason, I'd gladly jump at the opportunity. So, if any of you actually care as much about seeing GM happen as I did and honestly still do, try doing something helpful instead of just constantly trying to beat a dead horse. I'm all ears. But in the meantime if all I see is hate, spite, threats and other assorted garbage, I'll just forget about all of this and move on entirely.

I added the break lines as he posted as a long ass wall of text.

So, what you guys think of this?

To be honest, he escaped from a lot of problems and the threats of lawsuits on their page was hilarious. But sadly the old kickstarter terms prevail for the older projects, if this was a new one, he would have been sued to the moon!

 

[Whiran]

So, what you guys think of this?

To be honest, he escaped from a lot of problems and the threats of lawsuits on their page was hilarious. But sadly the old kickstarter terms prevail for the older projects, if this was a new one, he would have been sued to the moon!

James took over the project in its entirety.

If anyone were to be sued at this point it would wind up being James since he owns the project.

While I think Jason involved the wrong people for the project initially which means he is at the root of why the project failed those who were supposed to make the project happen were directly responsible for its failure.

There is plenty of failure to spread around here.

 

[EJoe]

Dunning Kruger effect

The Greedmonger over-confident, over-(whatever).

In reality, there were development n00bs, artist n00bs, modeller n00bs.

 

[Blaine]

↑

Apparently, I already Brofisted this post months ago. I vaguely recall reading all this Greed Monger shit before.

Just checked the thread again, saw this, and laughed like a braying donkey for about thirty seconds. I'm still wheezing as I type this, thanks for that.

 

[Angthoron]

Wait, what, Aenra has been deleting his posts here?

 

[PoppinBy]

So... Where to start...

Firstly, I am one of the original backers for the tune of $506. It's almost hard to believe that it's actually only been three years, it feels more of a distant memory than that.

I think I spent the first month or two being quite enthusiastically engaged on the Greedmonger forum, speculating alongside everyone else about the things to come and adding my opinion here and there to the specifics of certain mechanics. I think the first alpha test had been slated to come in April, roughly five/six months after the Kickstarter, and so after the initial fervour I decided to set it aside so that I could revisit it all anew once they'd got the first build up and running.

I recall checking in around April only to find delays. I dipped in to see what they were saying specifically on the forum about it and it seemed unfortunate but not entirely unexpected for them to encounter setbacks and so I set it aside once more, keeping an idle eye on the headline threads to see if anything noteworthy was being said.

Come early October I think it was I had concluded that it was highly unlikely for the game to ever be realised, at the very least not in a timely or worthy manner, and largely stopped paying any attention to where it was going. I messaged Appleton on the forum politely asking for the money back (I think my request was more along the lines of can I resell my pledge to someone else, rather than just get a refund since asking for that would be dumb) but as I expected I was denied. It's not in their interests to transfer assets rather than just sell new ones after all, even assuming they did have integrity.

Over the next while I think I took a look at the forums to see where things had gone maybe once or twice, but since they'd basically gone nowhere (if anything the forums always seemed to be emptier than the time before) I just left it alone and moved on to do other things.

Then last Saturday someone mentions crowdfunded MMO's in the corner of the internet that I dwell which reminded me of GM and so I decided to check the forums again - only to find that 'Apache is functioning normally'. Naturally this heralded a significant change in events and so I started googling to find out what have happened. I subsequently spent most of the weekend and yesterday evening reading through several large threads that covered what had transpired, most notably THIS thread which took forever to plough through, what with all those chatlogs and the video of Lumpy's Debut, and so here I am to hopefully give some insight into what a backer (apparently a somewhat rare and elusive creature, judging by all the calls on assorted forums for them) makes of it. There was already a backer who's voiced their mind on this all in this thread which pretty much summed up my thoughts, but I wanted to add a little extra and can't be bothered to find that post amongst all the pages again.

I think I'd first like to address the matter of why I ever pledged in the first place. I've seen a lot of posts by people ridiculing the backers (far moreso on mmorpg.com than here) and whilst I agree that had I taken more time to investigate more deeply into the plausiblity of it all I would no doubt have stayed away the majority of these posts nevertheless cite events that transpired AFTER the initial burst of activity that the Kickstarter saw. I think the most common one was along the lines of "hahah, the game changed engines twice and they still pledged?" which is obviously a stupid thing to say but many of the other telltale signs were, at the earliest, toward the end of the month-long Kickstarter.

The incident with Appleton making waves on other forums when accused of being a sham and in turn accusing of trolling came after I had already pledged, and I'd pledged after many of the largest backers already had (who for the record WERE real people, or the majority were at least, as I saw many of them fairly active on the forums at the beginning and chatted to at least a few of them). It's difficult to say whether I'd have still pledged had I not already before the cross-forum mess took place, because from what I saw of it (mostly stuff people were saying on the GM forum) it legitimately DID look like a bunch of people just trying to discourage everyone for their own amusement. Of course, Appleton was moderating the forum heavily whilst that took place so it's always possible he left the more asinine comments undeleted for longer. Either way I saw little reason to dive into the mess since it was too late for me to change my mind and so I didn't come across those wurm threads and the like.

That's another thing I wish to iterate. I wasn't someone who used any of the relevant forums besides the GM one itself since I don't tend to play MMOs on the whole. Similarly I didn't make regular use of the Unity forums. Despite what was apparently plenty of people giving irrefutable arguments against the project I didn't see what they had to say. I guess that's one to chalk up to games 'journalists' (who as you've noted were perfectly happy to hype it) and Kickstarter (for not providing a platform that allows the realists/naysayers to voice their opinion and possibly expert knowledge based facts about the projects that it hosts). I imagine this applies to many of the other backers as well.

I should also note that when I pledged it was with full knowledge that there was an unsignificant chance I'd never see the money nor the proposed product. Whilst I wouldn't say that it was money I toss around without a care in the world, not least because it comes across as both highly arrogant whilst also painting me as coming from a far more priviledged background than I am, I would say that it was money that I could spare. It wouldn't interfere with my living expenses or my capacity to live a lifestyle I enjoy. (Hell, currently that money would only go as far as one month's rent)

Moving on to address what people have said about how the backers are prepared to sling money into a hold but not to pursue legal action. I myself am not a US citizen (britfag to be precise) and so I don't even know how I'd go about doing that even if I wanted to. If memory serves many of the other backers were fairly spread across the globe as well. That aside, however, is the matter of the effort and hassle involved in actually doing so. Pledging doesn't require someone to spend their time, chasing someone with lawyers does. Even if I wasn't too laid back/easy-going/lazy I simply aren't willing to use my spare time to try what will I suspect not end with anyone getting any money back. Proctor's practically destitute (though having his gaming pc liquidated would admittedly be hilarious) and I actually think that in a court case Appleton WOULD be able to show that the backer money (from the original Kickstarter at least) went towards financing the game and as such would not be held accountable (although I suppose he'd probably be required to reclaim the shirts from Lumpy and finally send them out). Moreover, I work 40 hours a week (and before that was in fulltime education) and struggle to get all the things done that I want to as is. I'm a fairly creative person, something I imagine a good number of the other backers are too considering the premise, and I'd much rather put my time and energy into furthering my own endeavours than going in circles seeking recompense for theirs. I know reading that will disappoint you Penguin but that's just how it is.

And now for my perception of the three Js: who was scamming, merely incompetent, truly repentent, just giving the backers something, anything?

Having read and watched everything that is in the public domain (since apparently SOME penguins people are privy to more information) and with it all in context of itself thanks to the massive binge I personally believe that:

- Appleton never intended for this to be anything other than what he sold it as. I think that at the beginning he wanted the same game that everyone backing it did (although that did still entail 15% land ownership transferal cuts, so I cannot say it was purely the gameplay he desired). In the early days he contributed his fare share to hashing out the intricacies of the varying systems the game would have alongside the players and sounded as genuinely eager about them all as the backers. Moreover, as most people have noted, he's a pretty sharp crayon and were this a scam I find it hard to believe he'd have gone about it in the way that he did. For starters, why would he even bother spending profits on behind the scene software and tools if he had always intended to walk away? Indeed, I believe he was as taken in by the dream as much as the rest of the backers were. It's almost comical how much his activities portray him as the stereotypical scammer what with the plethora of get rich quick schemes and readiness to threaten dissent with lawsuits but I believe the latter to simply have been a product of his inability to keep his cool when too many people rag on him, instead going on angry tirades which sunk his credibility enormously each and every time he did it. With all that said, I do not excuse him from the fact that he nevertheless lied about the readiness of the project in the Kickstarter pitch, failed to communicate adequately (in terms of both frequency and truthfullness) throughout the years, failed to realise quite how shoddy some of the work the people he was paying was and moreover didn't own up and shut things down when he must have inevitably realised it was never going anywhere about a year in. He is guilty of mismanagement and miscommunication and has demonstrated himself, as said before, to have what seems to be an overly narcissistic and unpleasant personality.

- Lumpy is denser than a sack of rocks filled with cement. If he could do so much as rub any of those rocks together he'd have realised that there was no point stepping in to assist Proctor in accumulating those assets because he of all people should have been able to see that Proctor would never make anything worthwhile with them, having been his friend and confidant for god knows how many years. Over the span of two hours in that video he went from "I love negative feedback, it gets straight to the point of how we need to improve!" to "c-concrit only please guys... t__t", all the while passive agressivly saying that he'll tell you what he really thinks of you. But whatever, he's not a major player. I'd say I hoped he's learnt his lesson but if he's stuck around Proctor all these years we can probably assume that he hasn't and never will. Which brings me onto...

- Proctor: the retard without the handler. I was more realistic than this delusional hack back when I was eight years old and secretly hoped I'd get a letter from Hogwarts on my tenth birthday. It's kinda funny, back when I was an active participant of the GM forums I actually regarded Proctor as someone who was not only competent and good at engaging with the backers but also someone who could actually coordinate and pull the game together. Guess that's just how it is when someone speaks authoratitively about technical matters you don't have a particular grasp of. Having read the chatlogs it became painfully clear just how much this guy was dropped on his head as a child, if nothing else for the fact that he was actually willing to SHARE them. "Hi guys, it's totally not my fault, these extensive records of my ineptitude and unwillingness to work on the game and keep tabs on the other devs whilst I get hounded by Appleton for not doing what I'm supposed to will CLEARLY demonstrate how much of a bad man Appleton is and how it was nothing to do with me all along!". Still, I can forgive mentally handicapped people behaving as they do. What I can't forgive is his complete and utter lack of respect for anyone, lying through his teeth with nearly ever breath save for the few scraps of truth that he let slip because he is not a clever man. Cap it off with the way he 'pulled a fast one on Appleton' in order to retain the $20k worth of software and assets for a full idea of just how remorseful he is of this whole affair.

I know you've said time and time again that you don't think he is as reprehensible as people make him out to be Penguin but I think your judgement is clouded (though I guess one might say that's a bit rich coming from someone who lost out in this). Honestly though, you're too much of a nice guy and too eager to see the good in people (in my opinion it's the weed, it has that effect). You'll say that you're not but I'm pretty confident that half the reason you keep insulting the backers is in the hopes you get a rise out of them that leads to lawsuits, just as you were slandering Proctor initially to draw him in.

Truth be told a certain part of me wonders how likely Proctor even would be to actually lose his benefits if someone reported him. Any investigation they did would almost certainly find him incapable of holding down a job, and not just due to his social anxieties and inabilities.

Anyway, time to wrap this novella up. As I said before I've long considered the money gone and the project a failure and so finally finding out what was happening behind the scenes and catching up on all the dramatic fallout since has been a thoroughly entertaining experience. Makes me wish I had a t-shirt to commemorate it by. I wonder if Lumpy's technically stolen them through his actions?

That aside, I've seen it mentioned here and there in this thread that The Codex is an unwelcoming place to new people, filled with abject human misery or some such, but honestly this place seems pretty comfy in my opinion. Posts like the 9th one in this thread are particularly promising and if I had the time, or indeed anything worth saying, I'd probably come squat here a while.

And now to bookmark this thread for I have little doubt that even now this isn't the end.

 

[Angthoron]

Wow, a "wall of text" post that is actually legible, must be a first one for this thread. A pretty interesting read, too, thanks for sharing the backer side. I should point out though, most of the "backers are horrible creatures" posts here carry a very high likelihood of being sarcastic, since the notion is a little, well, ridiculous. Naturally a "buyer beware" thing should be going on, and I do remember discouraging a few people from taking part in that Kickstarter when it was first a thing, but the blame is certainly elsewhere.

Out of curiosity, how'd you jump on the hype train originally, PoppinBy? You mentioned that you don't normally read MMO-related forums, so how'd it happen?

 

[PoppinBy]

actually legible

Hahah, I try. The least I could do if I wanted someone to read all that.

posts here carry a very high likelihood of being sarcastic

Yeah, perhaps I wasn't too clear, but it was primarily the mmorpg.com threads that contained ones which struck me as being posted sincerely. From what I recall the was little of it in this thread and even then it was mostly Penguin (which I've already noted to be him just trying to drag backers out of the background). I guess something I forgot to mention in conjunction with that was what I thought of the name (since there were a good number of "Who pledges to a project named 'Greedmonger' anyway?"). As a name it struck me as being perhaps unfortunate for its context - a gamer that sought crowd funding - because of both its connotations and for sounding a touch daft, but when Appleton came to ask the opinion of the early backers on it I said best to keep it. The mess that changing a name in the middle of a Kickstarter would incur aside, I just felt it kinda fit the game coming from humble roots and also acts as an amusing preamble for how the players would no doubt face off when playing it.

how'd you jump on the hype train originally

Honestly, I can't really remember. Lord knows it wasn't by keeping up to date with gaming news outlets. If I had to guess then it was from via someone making an offtopic thread on the Blacklight: Retribution (an online FPS) forums at the time, since I think that was my typical haunt around then. After roughly a week or so of handwringing and excitedness I finally concluded that this was an occasion that I wanted to believe in it and made my pledge. My reasoning also included the fact that naturally if people chose the safer path and simply opted to monitor its progress then, well, naturally nothing would come of it. I pledged with the hopes that the act of it would attract more pledgers as they saw that other people were prepared to do so (sorry guys, lol).

At the end of the day I'm actually quite a cynical person but it just felt like one of those times where being blindly optimistic could pay off in a big way were the game to be a success and as I said before the money I put into it was something I didn't ever expect to see return on, merely hoped a lot.

 

[Scroo]

- Proctor: the retard without the handler. I was more realistic than this delusional hack back when I was eight years old and secretly hoped I'd get a letter from Hogwarts on my tenth birthday. It's kinda funny, back when I was an active participant of the GM forums I actually regarded Proctor as someone who was not only competent and good at engaging with the backers but also someone who could actually coordinate and pull the game together. Guess that's just how it is when someone speaks authoratitively about technical matters you don't have a particular grasp of. Having read the chatlogs it became painfully clear just how much this guy was dropped on his head as a child, if nothing else for the fact that he was actually willing to SHARE them. "Hi guys, it's totally not my fault, these extensive records of my ineptitude and unwillingness to work on the game and keep tabs on the other devs whilst I get hounded by Appleton for not doing what I'm supposed to will CLEARLY demonstrate how much of a bad man Appleton is and how it was nothing to do with me all along!". Still, I can forgive mentally handicapped people behaving as they do. What I can't forgive is his complete and utter lack of respect for anyone, lying through his teeth with nearly ever breath save for the few scraps of truth that he let slip because he is not a clever man. Cap it off with the way he 'pulled a fast one on Appleton' in order to retain the $20k worth of software and assets for a full idea of just how remorseful he is of this whole affair.

From what I learned while this thread was still going actively is that imho most of the blame should be on Proctor's shoulders. Sure, Appleton was naive for actually believing he could do the game he promised with one programmer and 200k $ (lol) but well, at least he actually believed in it... or smth.

Proctor tho? He had to know that his programming skills are next to zero, a guy who taught himself a little C# with the help of the interwebz, and yet he lied and lied and put together assets to make it seem as if he has anything on hand. Sure, he's delusional but still, imho most of the problem is with him. His lying and aggressively denying he has a clue was what upset me more than everything Appleton said. And the fact he took over the project after it already failed instead of just letting it die and THEN after a few weeks saying "ok guys lol I decided that GM is dead now anyway and now we'll do a zombie survival game" was just... bah. And said zombie survival game was just a few assets thrown together without a single line of self-written code, it's ridiculous.

Too bad none of these scammers will get prosecuted for the GM debacle but well, at least it gave outstanders like me some entertainment ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

 

[Angthoron]

Honestly, I can't really remember. Lord knows it wasn't by keeping up to date with gaming news outlets. If I had to guess then it was from via someone making an offtopic thread on the Blacklight: Retribution (an online FPS) forums at the time, since I think that was my typical haunt around then. After roughly a week or so of handwringing and excitedness I finally concluded that this was an occasion that I wanted to believe in it and made my pledge. My reasoning also included the fact that naturally if people chose the safer path and simply opted to monitor its progress then, well, naturally nothing would come of it. I pledged with the hopes that the act of it would attract more pledgers as they saw that other people were prepared to do so (sorry guys, lol).

At the end of the day I'm actually quite a cynical person but it just felt like one of those times where being blindly optimistic could pay off in a big way were the game to be a success and as I said before the money I put into it was something I didn't ever expect to see return on, merely hoped a lot.

Ah, that makes sense. To be fair, to me the alarms were ringing from them offering so much for so little. Wasn't the base amount that they wanted something like 30K? I'm somewhat familiar with MMOs and MMO kitchen, and the 30K wouldn't really even start covering the basic hardware and software needed for a demo launch, and that was without salaries to the staff. Hell, even the recent KS titles asking for 1 mil plus to simply finalize an MMO that's been in production for years feel somewhat fishy to me, and then there were these guys asking for 30K to build a sandbox MMO on Unity.

Okay, let's rewind that a bit. It was "MMO on Unity" that made me go nope nope nope nope.

Still, it's a shame it turned out the way it did, while I doubt any of the backers ended up living in a cardboard box or feeding their families with soggy noodles as a result, it's still kinda a shitty experience.

 

[Whiran]

My reasoning also included the fact that naturally if people chose the safer path and simply opted to monitor its progress then, well, naturally nothing would come of it. I pledged with the hopes that the act of it would attract more pledgers as they saw that other people were prepared to do so (sorry guys, lol).

At the end of the day I'm actually quite a cynical person but it just felt like one of those times where being blindly optimistic could pay off in a big way were the game to be a success and as I said before the money I put into it was something I didn't ever expect to see return on, merely hoped a lot.

I hope you don't mind my asking. If you do, feel free to ignore or inform me that it is none of my business.

Why back for such a significant sum?

I realize that the amount wouldn't cause you financial hardship and the like but it's still a fair bit of coin to throw at a kickstarter.

Why not a lesser amount like ~$100 USD? Was it in the hopes that the amount itself would prompt others to also back? Basically a momentum building value? Or was it just getting caught up in the hype / excitement of the moment of pulling the trigger to back and going, "I can afford it so why not?"

Note, I have backed projects on Kickstarter so I have no issues with the actual backing of a project even one that went nowhere like this one.

 

[gestalt11]

You will never be able to untangle the craziness of Appleton from the craziness of Proctor. They may be two different types of crazy but its the nature of crazy to blend together and enhance each other.

Was Proctor inept? As a professional dev I would say yes. But guess what? I have seen inept devs get canned or "mutually agreed to leave".

Proctor and Appleton are two sides of the same coin. One a narcissist who will blame anyone and everyone for his poor ideas and ineptness that leads him to hire inept people and manage them ineptly and Proctor the passive/aggressive delusional who shifts all blame and muddles everything he is involved with but always wants to come out as the "nice guy".

Seriously don't even try to break it down. You won't be able to separate it out. They are both nuts.

 

[PoppinBy]

To be fair, to me the alarms were ringing from them offering so much for so little. Wasn't the base amount that they wanted something like 30K?

Yeah, $30k was what they asked. Looking back it's a laughable sum but at the time I had far less understanding of what was really involved. My thoughts at the time were that the art, hardware and salaries would be the more significant aspects of the budget. Appleton said that he had servers already good to go ($50k's worth, which from what's been mentioned seems to be true - they were admittedly outdated, but hell, not like they were even necessary in the end anyway), my limited knowledge of Unity suggested that the asset store was an affordable way to quickly populate your game with basic content that could then be expanded upon when they had the game rolling and people playing and trading land parcels and as for the salaries I guess I just assumed that all the major people working on it were doing it for free under the promise of a share of the revenue at the end. So I figured it was a reasonable sum. I think he had also said that a significant amount of work had already been done on it.

And hey, Appleton had said the project was going ahead from his personal funds even if Kickstarter wasn't a success. A natural question in the face of that is "they why Kickstart now and not after you've got something playable?", but I optimistically took it to mean that as it stood they would be able to finish a tidy little game but were seeking extra funds in order to grow the scope of it. In conjunction with the allure of the close communication at the start and the supposed ability to help steer the direction of the mechanics involved and so on, it had me pretty eager.

From my vantage point of today it's a preposterous sum. I now work as a junior JavaScript developer on browser based slot gambling games for a large company and the cost of the code for a new one (we aim to churn out six in a year) is £16k. That's before taking into account any art or music and it's also using the libraries that can comprise of most of the game, only the game specific extra features are developed with that money. Hell, I'm omitting the testing process as well from that figure.

Okay, let's rewind that a bit. It was "MMO on Unity" that made me go nope nope nope nope.

Hahah, indeed. All I knew of Unity at the time was that it was a comparatively cheap game engine that has a lot of potential. I was aware that multiplayer was possible with it, thanks to having played a small game called Waiting For Horus (which was largely made by one guy in his spare time) and that with the asset store there was the ability to use premade stuff to avoid reinventing wheels and the like. Again, this was before the slurry of games that are ready made assets passed of as someone else's work that have spilled foully forth.

I hope you don't mind my asking. If you do, feel free to ignore or inform me that it is none of my business.

Not at all, go right ahead. I'd say that it should be simple enough to assume that I wouldn't have made my presence here if I wasn't prepared to answer questions, but then again the Three Jypps all posted in this thread...

Why back for such a significant sum?
Why not a lesser amount like ~$100 USD? Was it in the hopes that the amount itself would prompt others to also back? Basically a momentum building value? Or was it just getting caught up in the hype / excitement of the moment of pulling the trigger to back and going, "I can afford it so why not?"

It was a mix of the reasons you suggested and one more. I think I already said above that when I backed one aspect of it was in the hopes my largish pledge would encourage the same of others, because I really wanted to see this game be a thing. The exhypement was of course omnipresent all the while and a small aspect comprised that curious tendency to go all in when they're uncertain, as if by showing your gumption you might cajole fate into giving you one on the house.

The extra reason was that backing more offered greater returns. I'm not sure how familiar you are with the way the game was supposed to work so I'll give a quick synopsis:
- Players can build houses and shit on land they own
- This land costs real money, $20 per parcel I think, but backers were given parcels based on the value of their pledge. The $500 pledge offered 26 which would be bundled as a 'small city' and a couple other goodies
- There is a limited amount of land available and so once there is no more fresh stuff to buy players can get it by selling to one another, 15% cut of transaction taken by EC which was to support the running costs, pay people and develop more of the game

I backed in order to reserve a tidy, coherent plot that hopefully would form the basis of a guild in the game. At the time I was a member of a large clan that spanned many different games and knew a bunch of people somewhat from the couple games I played with them. They weren't people that I knew intimately enough to be comfortable pooling finances together with to split this initially, and moreover doing so a couple years in advance could get messy if people found they were no longer interested down the road and so on. I also figured that if when the game came out and I was no longer able to play it (due to lack of time or continued interest for whatever reason) I should be able to sell my virtual stake on and leave without regret and sunk cost fallacies holding me back.

And finally, the unspoken dream that after the game had really got going and kicked off properly I would be able to sell them at a premium and make a tidy profit all of my own. Greed Monger was an apt name in more ways than one. Simply calling it Greed would allow people to point and laugh at how the owners were greedy, but calling it Greed Monger? A dealer, trader, promoter, spreader of greed? Bam, now the name also describes the backers wanting grandeur or profit (or hell, a decent game; wanting one of those feels kinda greedy nowadays).

It honestly makes you wonder why Appleton settled on that name. Perhaps a part of his subconscious always knew the impracticalities of the project, a part that always considered it just another plot to make mint.

Note, I have backed projects on Kickstarter so I have no issues with the actual backing of a project even one that went nowhere like this one.

Yeah, I don't hold any great animosity towards Kickstarter. They just do what they do.
Which should be better, allowing for people to express their opinion be it positive or negative. Maybe an upboat system to better sort the more thoroughly reasoned arguments out so at a glance people could get an idea what people who knew their stuff had to say on a project.
Perhaps a willingness to return their cut of the money to backers of a project that failed to deliver quite so thoroughly as Greed Monger.
Because as it stands it makes people question their integrity, and by extension the integrity of every project that is hosted there. Valid for some but devastating for many other worthy pitches that never garner the interest they perhaps deserve because too many people have been burned before.
But they just do what they do. They're hardly at fault here.

There is actually another project I've tossed $40 at, an RTS some guy is putting together in its entirety I think by himself. If memory serves this was actually since Greed Monger that I pledged, but either way he's already released an alpha for backers to play.
I was busy at the time and never got around to it but things were looking impressive in the various vids he's made over time.

You will never be able to untangle the craziness of Appleton from the craziness of Proctor.
Seriously don't even try to break it down. You won't be able to separate it out. They are both nuts.

As futile as it might to attempt it is nevertheless highly entertaining to speculate on what was going through their heads and when.

For example, one might consider what made Appleton put Proctor in charge of directing the team. At a glance it would be reasonably to assume that whatever his initial intentions Appleton had by then come to realise the project was doomed and so set up the scapegoat to not only do all the work in communicating with the backers and holding the team together as everyone pretends to still be doing what they're meant to, allowing Appleton to then distance himself and spend his efforts on starting his next great adventure. But those chatlogs tell a different story, for he was seemingly perhaps still the MOST invested of the team in keeping everyone on top of things and moreover continued to buy game related stuff under the dubious notion that it would get the game working. So then did Appleton have Proctor assume that role believing that he was actually the most fit candidate for the job? (Afterall, Proctor no doubt assured Appleton that he knew about all the facets and how to put them together)

We will probably never know.

 

[DarKPenguiN]

I know you've said time and time again that you don't think he is as reprehensible as people make him out to be Penguin but I think your judgement is clouded (though I guess one might say that's a bit rich coming from someone who lost out in this). Honestly though, you're too much of a nice guy and too eager to see the good in people (in my opinion it's the weed, it has that effect). You'll say that you're not but I'm pretty confident that half the reason you keep insulting the backers is in the hopes you get a rise out of them that leads to lawsuits, just as you were slandering Proctor initially to draw him in.

.

Good post. I've pretty well walked away from this mess and just looked at this thread for the first time since forever... This wasnt one of my proudest online moments not only for acting like an asshole (and you're right, I was trying to provoke- 100% ) but for not accomplishing the provocation to the point of someone actually starting a lawsuit. Of not even being able to get the pitchforks readied and torches lit in a meaningful way. I has failed.=(

So much shit happened throughout this entire drama, much of which will never be known to pretty much anyone.

My opinion on what I thought happened, who was responsible, who was being willfully shady, etc...has changed about 1000 times throughout this whole ordeal. However, as ive said, I totally had an agenda and being objective was never my agenda. In the end, I give Jason credit for attempting to right somethings and I stand by the position ive always held that Joel and james should have never taken GM off of jasons hands and I think once that went down, it took the wind from the sails of any potential consequences for Appleton and placed the spotlight on james.

I still am of the opinion that james has tried to do right as he saw things. My judgement very well could be clouded but he and I have really become friends and hes just not that way... hes a hardcore christian and strikes me as an all around good person. I know quite a bit now about his life,his struggles and his character. I know about some of the things he does for other people which are pretty damn selfless and the more I get to know him,the less I can see him being shady at all. Hes a really good guy. A hell of a lot better than I am in regards to morals and such.

I'm pretty certain this is one of many crowdfunding scams (or insane incompetence and misuse of other peoples money) that will come to light. I pretty much will never crowdfund anything, ever again after seeing things behind the scenes here . Kickstart is proof (to me) that the corporations are less greedy than most of those who scream about the greedy corporations but would be 100 times as greedy if they had the opportunity.

I think some far bigger kickstart drama is heading our way soon- greed Monger was a prelude and will be forgotten. Appleton will move on to the next 'get rich quick' scheme and the assets , artwork,code and whatever that was signed over to joel and james will rot on a hard drive . I'm back to my real life of just being a cannabis smoking penguin.

Anyhow, I'm sorry you got burned. really. I'm sorry all you guys got burned.

take care man.

 

[gestalt11]

At some point if you are truly moral you will say "I am truly and humbly unable to do this" and the most moral things to do is to simply beg forgiveness. You can have the best intentions in the world and if you are unable to do such a thing you will behave, functionally, exactly like any scam artists would in your mad scramble to "make things right".

In the end there is only one solution for others, nuke it from orbit its the only way to be sure. This is why reputations work the way they do. A good reputation does not mean you are a good guy. You can be a terrible guy and simply be known to deliver 99% of the time. And vice versa there are many stellar people who are genuinely nice/good who have bad reputations.

 

[Hobo Elf]

I can attest that James is a nice guy. I only briefly got to know him and DarKPenguiN in Tree of Life before the devs ran the game (quickly) into the ground, but from the times I hung out with them they were both fun people. Hopefully there will come a new game that I can play with the two bros again, eventually.

 

[Angthoron]

I can attest that James is a nice guy.

Most people are actually nice. That doesn't stop them from doing, you know, things.

 

[PoppinBy]

I can attest that James is a nice guy.

Great. He's a nice person, as shown by his demeanour when playing games.
Supposing he went and did something extra reprehensible, like murder someone for no reason, is he still a nice person as his attitude when playing would suggest? No, of course not. So where do you draw the line between truly heinous acts and what he's done in the context of Greed Monger? - namely, being grossly incompetent at the role he has a duty to perform whilst taking no action to rectify the situation but instead preferring to dwell in the delusion and all the way being what taken at face value must be a pathological liar as he reassures everyone around him that things are TOTALLY gonna happen!, just need this one asset... (Did I remember to mention the twenty kay's worth of stuff?)

There's a term typically used when referring to someone's capabilities as a friend, 'fairweather', which I feel accurately describes Proctor's personality. It's easy to be nice when things are going well, a lot harder to be nice when they're not. Has anyone actually got their t-shirt yet? Having those sent out despite all the problems, that would have been a testament to him being nice (Sure, it wasn't his responsibility for most of these three years, but after his wheeling and dealing at Lumpy's side it sure as hell is now). Has he ever actually sincerely apologised to the people he's messed around this whole time..? And no, the blame game bullshit doesn't cut it. I maintain that someone so bereft of a willingness to actually do something he doesn't want to cannot be described as an overall nice person. You gotta attach all the caveats before it becomes even remotely accurate.

And I write all this as someone who doesn't consider theirself a nice person. Sure, I'm plenty capable of holding an amiable conversation. Of making sure a good time is had by all when playing games. I'm capable of recognising my skills and their limitations. I'm capable of admitting both to myself and others when something I have been tasked with exceeds that. I have the self-awareness not to agree to do something I blatantly can't. If I somehow wind up in a situation where I am unable to meet expectations that have been placed upon me I will predominantly make this known to the relevant people in an honest fashion. If I get into a difficult situation and someone else is in deep water alongside me I don't try to shift the responsibility and send them down the creek.

But I wouldn't say I was a nice person. I'm generally too disinterested in other people's troubles to go beyond offering suitable advice and wishing them well, it's rare that I'll try and actively solve their problems. Not all the pleasant words that come from my mouth are genuine.

Yet compared to Proctor? My vague level of integrity alone puts me on a higher notch of the 'nice scale' than he is.

I know my constant berating of him must come across as somewhat petty by this stage but I just can't help it when I see people defending what I consider to be a preposterously long string of indefensible actions.

Anyhow, I'm sorry you got burned. really. I'm sorry all you guys got burned.

Nah, don't be, people made their judgement calls and should at the very least have known that the money they were putting in had a very real chance of never coming back in the form of a product. I know full well that I have nobody to blame but myself for shirking on more extensive investigation in the practicality and plausibility of the plans and claims that Appleton was making. My talk of who is responsible is more aimed at the internal aspect of where the fault lay for the various setbacks the game suffered, rather than who I can point a finger at and demand satisfaction my money back.

That said, I wholeheartedly support any endeavours to escalate this in a legal manner simply by virtue of the fact I think that people who make as monumentally poor decisions as the three Jewges (geddit? It's a play on 'J', 'jew' and 'stooges') did should have to face repercussions of an appropriate magnitude. Though I agree, the moment Proctor took ownership was the moment that the situation had transgressed into being at best VERY difficult to pursue court action against anyone.

 

[PoppinBy]

I should add that I personally don't even consider the t-shirts to be that important. Like, at all. I think I even went as far as saying not to send me one all the way back (though I still paid an extra $6 for international shipping fees).

The reason I mention it at all is two-fold:
Firstly, after all that's happened sending them out is the smallest token gesture they can do to try and show even an inkling of goodwill and would at least put some extra closure on the whole affair. Hell, it would probably even let them dodge some legal bullets by virtue of having fulfilled all physical product obligations.
Secondly, when Lumpy and Proctor were talking about how MMOI was going to save the world one of the biggest things they kept going on and on and ON about was sending these t-shirts out and yet the moment they got ahold of them and realised Appleton essentially called their bluff (probably without even realising they WERE bluffing) they suddenly aren't prepared to do jack all about them. They MADE the t-shirts into a big issue and bloated it further when their proclaimed efforts to right things was shown to be such an insipid farce. The t-shirts have now come to represent just how unable or unwilling they are to actually back their big talk up with anything more than longer winded and more rambling big talk.

And... Having seen the design on the t-shirt was a fairly tasteful logo rather than what I imagined would be the unity asset banners, with what seemed to be a semi-decent cotton t-shirt too... It's enough to make me kinda want one to commemorate this saga.

 

[Hobo Elf]

I know my constant berating of him must come across as somewhat petty by this stage but I just can't help it when I see people defending what I consider to be a preposterously long string of indefensible actions.

I'm simply giving him the benefit of doubt. I can prove that he's a nice person. Can you prove that he's a swindler? If you can, I'll believe ya. Until then you're just another person rattling the cages for more drama.

 

[Angthoron]

Are you fucking kidding me.