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Greed Monger Cancelled; $100,000+ in Kickstarter Funds Unaccounted For
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JamesP was just as much part of the scam as Jason Appleton. After three years, JamesP continued to lie and charade of Greed Monger's development, instead of coming clean and admitting nothing was truly being done. JamesP was warned that it was a scam, but continued to play part in it anyways.
JamesP is just as much to blame as Jason Appleton.
Jason Appleton wasn't even part of the public eye for the past 2+ years, it was all JamesP. I have no idea how you can say JamesP didn't play a significant role in this.
I am not saying he did not play a role, i said the exact opposite. He played the role of the patsy, the front man, the public figure of the scam while Jason Appleton sat in the background counting the money.
It's pretty clear from the information we have that JamesP is a very naive and unskilled individual, i don't mean this in a derogative way, not everyone has the skills to be a game developer, it's just very obvious that he over estimates himself, his skills and the reality around him.
"It's pretty simple, really. If your only intention in posting about a particular game or topic is to be negative, then yes, you should probably move on. Voicing a negative opinion is fine, continually doing so on the same game is basically just trolling."
- Michael Bitton
Community Manager, MMORPG.com
"As an online discussion about Star Citizen grows longer, the probability of a comparison involving Derek Smart approaches 1" - MrSnuffles's law
"I am jumping in here a bit without knowing exactly what you all or talking about."
- SEANMCAD
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You're right, I misread.
I do agree that James Proctor is very naive and unskilled, and certainly suffers from Dunning-Kruger syndrome; however, stupidity/naiviety doesn't refute guilt.
I agree with MrSnuffles on that one. James is a victim of his own ignorance, but ignorance as history has shown man, comes with a heavy price. Ignorance is no excuse.
Alibaba is sued because it provides a PLATFORM to sell counterfeit goods.
Silkroad was closed down because it is a PLATFORM to trade contraband.
Being a platform is not a defense if it enables fraud.
... No coding skills?
Before I joined GM here is a small Prototype I spent a day or 2 on:
You can play it here:
http://www.kongregate.com/games/JimP14/earth-defense
Yes it's unfinished as it was only a Prototype. And it's a fairly simple game but all code was done by me... The only asset store thing in that video are the explosions.
Company Owner
MMO Interactive
James, pretending you have "coding skills" is laughable at best; I'm sure any high school level coding student could have produced that "game". You certainly don't possess the skill set to see a large scale project like an MMO or multiplayer game actually completed.
"Yes it's unfinished ..."
I suggest you go finish it. It's the only half-way playable thing anyone has ever seen from you.
I'll see if I can find anything about this through the court records.
Kickstarter is like playing against the house in Poker. You have to understand that you are funding the company, NOT getting ANY product what so ever. If you put money into Kickstarter, think about how much you are willing to just throw away and put that in.
People don't complain when they lose money gambling, they shouldn't complain when they lose money in Kickstater - it is exactly the same thing.
I was wrong in my first post on this thread. During this thread a new low was hit. After all is said and done the developers shows up to tell the people who got taken 1) You're all wrong because we can account for every penny being spent on the game, and 2) don't bother suing me because I'm broke and therefore judgment proof and 3) don't worry because we're going to work our tails off and start a new project to make sure we make good on our previous promise to our previous donors.
The first assertion is actually irrelevant to the question at hand and a purely self-serving statement that we only know is true because the person it serves the most told us it was true. Ever hear the expression "fool me once ...?" Better yet, its the definition of hearsay. You know, an out of court statement offered to prove the matter it asserts. This ain't a courtroom but there are some hoops to jump through before you can assert this statement (i.e. the documents you refer to are an out of court statement under the law) in a court of law when defending a lawsuit.
The second assertion is again is irrelevant to the question at hand and, more importantly, collectability is NOT the only reason to file a lawsuit and also bear in mind that any judgment obtained will be good against the defendant for somewhere between 15 to 20 years with post judgment interest clicking away at the rate of about 10% a year. By the by you might want to check with your legal team about the applicability of certain Federal laws since you're engaged in interstate commerce.
As for the third assertion, I'm think for the first time in a long time I'm amazed at the depth of stupidity behind this statement. First, do you really expect anyone to believe that? Second, did you really just tell the world you're going to rob Peter to pay Paul?
JasonP, in all seriousness do yourself a favor and just stop posting. You can't dig your way out of a hole and anything you say can and will be used against you. You've been convicted in the Court of Public Opinion and nothing you can say will ever change that since you will always be judged by your actions, which in this case were 1) promising more than you could deliver and 2) pissing away the money people gave you in reliance on your promise to deliver more than you were capable of. Paint it any color you want, but that is the unvarnished truth here and its been laid bare for all to see.
A smart person would hunker down and wait out the storm. A dumb ass tries to tell people they're wrong, insults their intelligence with spurious arguments to prove they're all wrong and then wonders why the roof fell in around them when all hell breaks loose because the people they took for a ride are now pissed off at being told that not only did they lose out, but they're stupid as well. Odds are in two weeks this would have been a footnote. Instead you chose to come here and stir the feces maelstrom.
You can't fix this with words. All you can do is make it worse, so just shut up. Or better yet keep talking and making the case against yourself on a public internet forum for all to see.
Many a small thing has been made large by the right kind of advertising.
Wow he's right, you don't have any programming skills. You probably shouldn't post that to showcase your abilities.
I won't comment on the Prototype. Let me just say this:
Please JamesP don't take this personal but game developer is just not your calling. I have 3 degrees, Computer Science, Science and Information Technology Management and Business Administration. I have over 25 years of work experience including working on game engines like UDK engine, Crytek and Torque3D and i would not think in my wildest dreams to start developing an MMORPG. It's just not possible for a single person or a small group to succeed in that. It takes years of experience in C/C++ and x86 assembler to write a decent network layer for an MMO that will not buckle under load or has more loopholes and exploits than Microsoft Windows 3.1.
Please, take my advise and try to start small. Make a mobile app puzzle game or a even just a card game and move up the ladder from there. Starting with these highly complex game designs is not going to get you anywhere.
Most importantly: FINISH something. Even if it is that Prototype.
"It's pretty simple, really. If your only intention in posting about a particular game or topic is to be negative, then yes, you should probably move on. Voicing a negative opinion is fine, continually doing so on the same game is basically just trolling."
- Michael Bitton
Community Manager, MMORPG.com
"As an online discussion about Star Citizen grows longer, the probability of a comparison involving Derek Smart approaches 1" - MrSnuffles's law
"I am jumping in here a bit without knowing exactly what you all or talking about."
- SEANMCAD
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Please, I'd be very interested in what you find, if anything. I've read about that case, but I didn't really do any digging to see if I could find any more information on how it's proceeded.
Since they are all liable for the KS funds isnt it more likely they got together to get their story straight? Lets be honest, James has already claimed he took less than $5000 and other than some assets and a unity license what else did they buy? Did Jason charge the company $50,000 to host the GM website?
My guess is that maybe $25,000 is actually accounted for and now Jason is starting to sweat so he is trying to close up loose ends by gathering the team and telling them they are all responsible to scare them. If the games lead only made $5000 the whole time, how could $100,000 possible be accounted for? Let me answer that, made up, marketing and hosting fees that went right to Jasons wallet. Just because Jason showed you some paypal receipts to his scam companies does not mean that money was not funneled back to him.
I cant wait for you to actually finish a product so I can come to your forums and show people your history. I'm actually toying with the idea of creating a "Why James Proctor sucks" website with quotes from you about how much you care for the backers as you walk away from them leaving them high and dry. I'll bet your future investors would love to see that.
James, from one human being to another you just need to stop posting and fade into the background for awhile. Seriously..
Come back around when you actually have something worth showing. If you are working on other game projects then good for you. When something is complete or at least almost complete then come and show what you have done. Showing all these projects that arent even halfway done, or even in a demo state, dont do you any favors.
I have no faith you will even heed this advice as your judgement so far has been lacking. But once again, let this drop, go to work on something and actually get it done. That is THE ONLY thing that may give you at least some credibility in the future.
Either way good luck to you.
What jdnewell said. You're winning your way from nasty little Footnote to forever shamed Front Page Banner Headline.
Many a small thing has been made large by the right kind of advertising.
I don't have the answer for that, unfortunately. I really wish I did.
It's obvious that the game video shown certainly wasn't worth over $100,000+ of software licensing, assets, and development time. It wasn't even an entry-level design. James Proctor has claimed multiple times that he was the only developer working on Greed Monger while Electric Crow/Jason Appleton was the owner. So I doubt it was spent on payroll for other team members.
I'll hold that it's a lie or cover up until a list of how all the assets were used and spent is posted. Until then, the "I saw it, but can't post it, you just have to trust me" method of "proof" doesn't exactly seem very credible. Especially when, just days prior, James Proctor claimed that Jason Appleton refused to speak with him and/or show him how the funds were used.
Even at the time of posting that game (Nov 11), James Proctor couldn't even figure out how to properly code a score tracker into the game. One year later (Nov 12), Jason Appleton made him Lead Programmer for Greed Monger. Surely Jason Appleton knew this is who he was hiring if he looked into any of James' past work. He obviously picked James for a reason, and couldn't have picked a better or more willing pawn to use to run off with the backer's money.
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Have flask; will travel.
You're completely right.
Only two weeks after successfully reaching funding, the entire development team fell apart. Obviously, they knew the signs as well, and chose to not partake. However, at the time, Kickstarter was still a relatively new idea for many people, and it was very easy to convince new onlookers that they already had a working game. After all, the video they showed during the Kickstarter seems pretty much complete, and Jason Appleton claimed they just needed funding for servers and bandwidth to host the game. Multiple gaming sites also took up the torch to spread the news of all the infamous buzzwords Greed Monger had used at the time, making it seem even more credible to people who didn't know better.
Going forward, people really should be cautious of donating to games like this. The probability of losing out on money is very high when you don't properly educate yourself on the project and it's possibility of succeeding. I mean, the original goal for their kickstarter was only $30,000; that's enough warning alone to warrant avoiding a project of Greed Monger's scope and capacity.
___________________________
Have flask; will travel.
It appears Jason A. has left a final statement here: http://www.rpgcodex.net/forums/index.php?threads/greed-monger-insider-thread-drama-inside.98177/page-18
Quote from Jason A.
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.