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How long could you fake out the gaming world?
TheLizardbones
Member CommonPosts: 10,910
I've seen a couple games that ended up being vaporware and a couple of games should have been vaporware.
How long do you think you could keep the gaming public going on a game that never actually gets developed? How would you fund the ongoing deception? How far would you go?
A website would be a minimum requirement for sure. To start with you wouldn't have forums, but you could add them later. You would have people register right off the bat to get information about the game though, then have them register again under a different ID to get into the forums.
After that, you would post partial game design documents with features that everyone likes. You could even flesh them out a little bit...giving out supposedly 'secret' development information. I think some commentary from the 'developers' on a Twitter feed could flesh that bit out some.
You could probably get some high school students to do up a presentation video or three demonstrating the features you're putting into the design document posts. These aren't game play videos, though you could skip some of the rendering on the videos and have it look like actual game play. Even better, have short five seconds or less bits of video at a lower resolution showing some supposed game play.
That's pretty much it. You would periodically introduce something controversial to generate some discussion on your forums and you would pop in to the MMORPG forums and other sites around the internet for some free advertising.
How long do you think you could keep it going? Factor in your own interest as well...would you get bored after a week and call it quits? :-)
I can not remember winning or losing a single debate on the internet.
Comments
I'm not sure about the funding so I didn't post anything. Maybe write a really cheap Android game off of the theme of your vaporware game and ask for 'donations' to fund future development. Who knows. You might even get an actual investor. :-)
I can not remember winning or losing a single debate on the internet.
Well its happened. For instance Star Gate Worlds by CME. 5 years of nothing then bankrupt, and the fps part of it shut down.
So yes 5 years before that one was finally showed to be fraud, I don't think anybody going to beet that record.
That's a lot longer than I think I could do it. They did make a big mistake in signing contracts though. They also made some mistakes in that they actually wrote code and spend money on something other than their personal expenses.
I can not remember winning or losing a single debate on the internet.
Didn't the FPS version just release in the past year? I hadn't known they had closed it already. It looked pretty crap anyway tbh.
That was over a year ago, and in February due to the lawsuits by cme to get the source code back the courts shut down the fps version. That was the last I have heard anything.
There was an indie game supposedly in development I followed for several years. If I remember right I think it was called Trials of Ascension. I actually fell for it and thought was real for a while but eventually came to the conclusion that it was just some guy who wanted to be a game developer playing out his little fanstasy.
Toward the end there it sort of felt like the whole thing was just this guy and maybe a couple of his buddies who created a website and then sat around getting drunk on the weekends talking about----HOW GREAT IT WOULD BE IF........but then never actually doing anything. Maybe occassionally making a halfhearted stab at writing some code but mostly just dreaming and basking in the glow of the forum posters who believed in them.
Before they gave it all up I don't think anyone who posted in their forums still believed in the game but they kept going there just for the forum. I know I had some fun on their message boards agruing about game design and so on, so it's not like it hurt me any that the project was never substantial.
Was it really shown to be a fraud, though? Just because the game never made it to the shelves, doesn't mean it was a fraud.
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Go Gaben Go!
This thread is now about HL2 - Episode 3
Well there were several lawsuits claiming fraud. Lawsuits from folks like the landscape guys, investors who tried to petition the court not to let cme have bankruptcy protection. I don't have the time and energy there's a lot of write ups about all the different law suits.
It might have not been fraud but it looked a lot like a ponzi scheme.
The last I heard CME had petitioned the bankruptcy court saying that the sky-fire had stolen intellectual property, and that's how the RTS part of the game came to an end as sky-fire had to return the rts code.
That was the last of the legal wrangling I have heard. The one fellow who was giving us all the blogs about the blow to blow seams to have dropped off the map.
Does anybody else have any current info on how the proceedings are going, and if cme has emerged from the proceedings?
All I can say is the investors lost millions of dollars, sad for them and worse for us all the broken promises, broken contracts. One thing is for sure it was a huge disaster.
I don't think my intention would be to bilk people out of a lot of money if I was going to create a fake game. Unless you actually get to keep the money it seems like it's a self defeating activity.
Sufficiently advanced stupidity is indistinguishable from malice.
I can not remember winning or losing a single debate on the internet.
You only have to pay consequences/give back money if you still a little bit. Heck, if you steal enough, not only will you not suffer any consequences, you may even get the government to bail you out.
Ah. That's long haul kind of bilking. I'd have to find an existing software/game developer and manage to take control of it to get to that kind of level.
My actual goal would be to get to something like a 7 or 8 on the hype meter at mmorpg.com and articles on Massively without ever actually writing any game code at all. If the goal were to make money, I'm sure there are less risky ways to steal it.
I can not remember winning or losing a single debate on the internet.
DAWN
nuff said