sabata2 wrote:PyTom, I think that the restriction placed here and in the original topic will be a great help to slow this down so it won't get so heated. As such I'ma start my 6 hours now.
Don't kill me boss, I mean no wrong! D: But I'm part of our group too and I don't want to stand on the sidelines when I can atleast play support.
As for what you have a problem with, I see it as a problem with the entrepreneurial business model.
We're trying to have our business take off. We can't pay our workers currently, that's part of the definition/situation of a Start Up.
We need backing, and support. We asked for it today and yesterday in the form of asking for peoples stories and art that they wanted published.
Our in house team is unpaid. We can't work 8 hours a day on our game and survive (in both business and health models).
You ask for something "we've done", and you expect something big. We have something big, just not right now. If you don't believe us, then say you don't and be on your way.
We have a working engine, that can do everything a VN/Datesim requires, it just doesn't have any fluff or pretty clothing (ie. image transitions). But that's enough reason to say we don't have a working engine? If you believe so, then say it and walk away.
If you have questions, then don't hide them inside mounds of snide remarks, or sarcastic statements. Be straightforward. You don't have to be rude, or blunt, or anything else when you ask a question.
Topa refused to prove this product exists. It's like Jake says. You might have a great bridge to sell us, but it looks shady as all get out if you show us a crappy bridge first and then say "we must prove trustworthiness by spending more time on the transaction if you want us to see the real bridge." That is scam-like behavior. It's pretty clear in this post. Scientology uses a very similar tactic, by speaking of great things, luring you in, not giving you details, and asking for "trustworthiness" in the form of payment before they can show you these wonderful things they claim exist.
It didn't help that Topa contradicted himself several times. This comparison was given to me:
If I'm going to buy shoes, and I see a pair I like that are unfortunately obviously messed up, and I say "hey, these shoes are messed up, why's that?" and get "Sorry, didn't fix them yet," my next question is going to be "why did you leave them out if they weren't fixed?" Likening this situation to Topa's responses, he'd've said something akin to "oh wait, we meant to leave them out and messed up like that, because we don't want to show you the really great shoes in the back until you like these messed up ones first."
I didn't hide a thing in a mountain of snide remarks. Again.
Topa responded perfectly civilly to my first few posts and I had no problem with him until he started throwing insults around. (Which oddly enough, his first snippy comment comes right after fortaat's post. Maybe he should have taken a breath and calmed down before throwing other people into his rage.)
As for "scam-like behavior", I'd like to know how you guys know what that is. Did you have some bad experience in life where you were scammed out of money or some item to make you particularly skeptical to ANY newcomer with a deal? Or are you going based off what you THINK a scammer would do/say?
Cause I can almost guarantee you that if someone's trying to scam you, they WOULDN'T get defensive or angry like Topa did. They'd get much MUCH nicer to you. Answer every one of your questions with a well fabricated lie to try and get you to relax. I know, I've run into people like that before. And to have people from the company I work with get related to (insert expletive here) scam artists... I'm surprised he hasn't raged out at you people.
Research, good sir, will tell you what scammers do and don't do. As a business owner, I read a lot. I make it -my business- to know how it all runs. You already said you made mistakes due to a lack of experience, knowledge, and research, so I would advise that you research common scam tactics. Several websites put up explanations of scammer behavior.
Some scammers are nicer. Other scammers are very harrowing and rush you to go along further into the transaction before giving you the proper details. Even other scammers attempt to garner pity. More scammers besides get angry quickly and then say "well you're the one missing out on this great product that tons of other people are going to invest in" to force your hand (which Topa does several times).
We hold honor and integrity in business very highly in our group. We start off showing everyone the same amount of respect we show everybody else. Only when we are disrespected do we show disrespect back. You claim to have done nothing wrong but I can pinpoint the specific lines that lead up to the blowout: (it all broke down by page 2)
"The service you offer is of very little value. Importing VNs to browsers isn't such a hard job as you make it out to be."
"It really isn't all that complicated..."
"30% for a professional product? You have no idea how much time and effort it costs to make such a product, which usually involves professionals too."
"...you're blowing the coding efforts way out of proportions."
"But that's kind of irrelevant if you're not offering anything like Ren'Py. Didn't you say that you basically had as much functionality as the Phoenix Wright games, only without the courtroom segments? Well, just for an easy example, Monele wrote an emulation of the courtroom segments in Ren'Py ages ago; Ren'Py is incredibly flexible, both with built-in functionality and the option to script in Python."
Every single one of those quotes degrades the person it's directed at.
Not valuable. Not hard. You don't know this. You're exaggerating. We don't need you, we have this.
Mind you, I never made any of those quoted comments. Reading back, no one associated with this name made any of those comments either. In fact, most of those comments are made by fortaat. Why should I be insulted despite not making those comments? Topa's first mistake was to treat everyone who didn't automatically agree with him as one entity. I personally explained my comment of "what is special about your service that I could not get for free/cheap?" because I actually wanted to know what was completely unique to your service, and further explained that I tend to speedread and might've missed the information if it had already been given. There was a lot of "excuse if I was unclear". Topa had no problems with the first few posts I made to him, and then slowly started insulting myself, fortaat, and Jake all at once, when most of your angering comments listed there were
not made by all three of us.
Treating three completely different people as some kind of joined entity when none of us know each other got the turn it deserved, a painting of Topa, the project, and all of you. I am not fortaat. I am not Jake. Insulting me for anyone else's comments is going to piss me off the same way you felt pissed off.
Every single one of those quotes is EGGING for a fight, seething disrespect, and hardly justified.
The second he got defensive, you defended the people he got defensive against. And now, here we are in a topic where you outright say, not four lines into this topic, "avoid this person and his business".
I read Jake's initial comments. They were not rude by any stretch. So yes, I defended him. I actually did not read fortaat's original comments until Topa left a pissed off comment to one of them.
You have a right to be wary. You have a right to your own opinion. But you do not have a right to degrade someone else or their work because you think you should.
Again, my personal comments were explained. Stop forcing the responsibility of other people onto me. People who don't agree with you don't all agree with each other, even if I DO agree with fortaat.
No, we don't have perfect professionalism, because we're LEARNING. Does that mean that when we react to disrespect, we HAVE to be treated with outright revulsion?
*gasp* He's barked at that person stating their opinion, let's argue with him to the point where we're saying he's a scam artist and actively trying to have people avoid him.
EVERYONE'S at fault here. So cut the crap. Let it go. AND LEAVE WELL ENOUGH ALONE.
Topa's already said he's MORE than willing to do all that. It's YOU GUYS who seem to be hell bent on destroying anything and everything of us.
If I was hell bent on destroying you, I would not bother to post any amends to this, and leave it exactly the way it was.
You received revulsion from me, not only for the rabid insults and refusal to show viable work, but for lumping me in with comments I didn't make, according to the ones quoted above. From my perspective, you rabidly attacked and didn't pay attention to a lick of anything I said. If you have problems with other people, you address those people. You don't assume people who disagree with you but agree with each other are a hive mind without individuality.
Furthermore, if you want to react to perceived disrespect, avoid going into business. You cannot act that way in business, in public, even if the person insults your mom. Even if I want to include the fact that you're "learning", the first thing you need to "learn" is that attacking a group because of a piece is not only just as rude and disgusting and you probably felt you were being treated, but liable to get you raked over the coals.
The first comment I made that was in defense of something fortaat said, I explicitly said "fortaat isn't nice", acknowledging the OP's feelings. I also tried to give several pieces of hard and straight advice "do research, fix your site, fix your marketing strategy". I then get "oh aren't you high and mighty", and Topa goes into a few posts that sound very "oh maaaaan all this work I am getting, it's like soooooo much and i don't even have time to answer all these stupid questions anymoooooooore" This came off as a very huge "fuck you in the ear for not loving me, because I am so awesome", and I responded that he sounded just as high and mighty as he was blaming me of being, and the very relevant advice of "in business you DO have to prove yourself; that is how business works." You can look back, it's all there.
It only got worse when Topa made his dissenters an entity, and even went as far as being rude to Ren because she had the nerve to agree with us ("You're not trustworthy because you agree with them.") and basically shitting on her and the help she gave you as far as beta testing. So yes. It reached a level that only got worse and worse, and while I will take responsibility for the personal part I played, I will NOT do so for anyone else's part, including Topa's very large, huge, massive part.
This post was deserved, well, based on those actions. A smear campaign is not made up of truths, or opinion based on truths.
This is getting really exhausting and boring, so I will say once more so that it is clear: No, I am not going to use your service, paid, or free. That is my personal choice; the choice of MY company. However, I do not have some personal stake in the entire thing being torn to shreds because I personally won't use you. I dislike the way I was treated, but others were also treated poorly. I am not in the business of lying about people for laughs, no matter who they are.
In that vein: fix the website, put out a working prototype, work on business manner and professionalism, and the product itself (despite putting down the "pretty" that current VN engines use, VISUAL novels are called VISUAL because pretty is what makes them sellable. It's something you need to consider heavily), change your marketing strategy to focus on why your engine is different from existing engines, possibly by adding a lot of extra "pretty" that people can do only with you, research your potential clients and customers, and come back in a few months when this has completely blown over and you have the components to sell, sell, sell.
Topagae wrote:Stated up front eh? Let's break it down because you seem to have not read. You know, my very first post. Or the name of the thread topic. Strange.
What you say I didn't state up front:
"We're trying to have our business take off. We can't pay our workers currently, that's part of the definition/situation of a Start Up."
Where covered:
"My name is Topagae, and I run an indie game company who is trying very hard to make it easier for regular folk to play visual novels here in the west."
Indie game companies are startups, they usually can't pay their workers to the point of being a stereotype. The only way you could claim I didn't state this up front is if you don't know what an indie game company is. You seem to, so I'm going to move on.
Aaaa. I didn't think I'd point out an derailing argument so quickly.
Breaking an argument down into its parts to prove a point clearly not meant by the original post in its entirety is called a derailing argument.
"I am an indie company" does not equal "we do not pay anyone and our work is not refined."
As part of an indie company that DOES pay, and refuses to put out sub par work, I'm going to say now that the definition of indie does not mean "run without business sense." Companies that plan to make it up always have a budget, have something for possible expenses. Sure, we don't hand out full-time salaries, but we make a price and stick to it. Even going beyond that.
What you say I didn't state up front:
"We need backing, and support. We asked for it today and yesterday in the form of asking for peoples stories and art that they wanted published."
Where covered:
Seriously? This was the topic name of the thread, the name of the thread and the entire subject of the post was that I am asking for backing/support from people in this forum in the form of letting me port their content.
"Backing and support" are not what you were looking for in that title. "Looking to buy/license" is not "asking for support". It's asking for a business deal. You wanted people to give you games to sell. You later changed your mind, but your original post was with intent to sell and hopefully make some kind of profit back.
What you say I didn't state up front:
"Our in house team is unpaid. We can't work 8 hours a day on our game and survive (in both business and health models).
Where covered:
"My name is Topagae, and I run an indie game company who is trying very hard to make it easier for regular folk to play visual novels here in the west."
Derailing argument. The point was not that you were being untruthful about "not being able to work all day on the project". It was that you didn't let us know that DUE to that, your product was less amazing than purported.
What you say I didn't state up front:
You ask for something "we've done", and you expect something big. We have something big, just not right now. If you don't believe us, then say you don't and be on your way.
Where covered:
This requires a little thought, but nothing a reasonable person shouldn't be able to see immediately. Now, the entire post was claiming I had the engine (Something big), and we claim that it is big (The engine is nice!). Those are pretty prevalent in my first post. As for the "Just not right now part" that should be OBVIOUS. If I already had a bunch of great games, I wouldn't need to be asking anyone in the forums for them would I?
Again. No one is saying that you had great games already. Please read carefully. Wintermoon states that you claimed to have a great engine. I mentioned that if your engine was amazing, even a crappy game should have worked smoothly. The people who tested it made it very clear that the game did not worth smoothly. You were not upfront about the quality of the ENGINE, games completely aside.
And there you have it. Everything you specifically say I didn't say up front. I did in fact say, and all I had to do to prove it was read the name of the thread and the very first post of said thread. You can't get more up front then that. And since you claim the whole thread shouldn't exist if I HAD done what I just proved I did, I'm guessing you must be wrong about that, because the thread DOES exist but obviously for a different reason.
You didn't prove anything except that you have trouble reading the information actually provided and not warping it to suit your tastes, which is another massive problem I have with your MO.
I suppose this thread is a logical extension of bullying me and destroying my credibility. That saddens me a lot. I expect better from this place and people. I watched you all for a year. There's so much good in here, a place of people all very helpful and understanding. So many people from so far away, not caring about this at all when I walk around and I see NEIGHBORS that hate each other. And hear I sit. Forced to explain to a person that I'm not lying by quoting the name of my thread and FIRST sentence of said thread.
Am I really that bad? Why do you hate me so? I'm no saint, but it seems like people want me up against the firing squad for speeding. Sure it'll piss off some people but jeez, you going to kill me for it? I'm truly trying to understand how I could accrue so much hate from people that generally are some of the most understanding I've ever seen.
Do you think we just picked you out of the blue of "noobs" to bully? You can see my joining date. I joined barely two weeks ago. No one cares that much. Trust me. I didn't post this to be all about you. This was for the actions you made. Actions equal consequences, whether you like it or not, and you clearly are not willing to work anything out by your sob story pity party instead of "wow, you know what, I acted badly. I'm sorry. Let's stop this." When you made comments that bettered your situation, I made note of them. You didn't even throw an OUNCE of acknowledgement at how easily and quickly I was willing to rescind things in this post for your benefit when I felt you were making an effort. Instead, you completely bypass that and make several offtopic, idiotic comments to Aleema who also made quite a spectacle of herself with Jake.
Are you that bad? I don't know you. Did you ACT that badly? Yes. Absolutely. 100%, you acted that badly. You launched your claws willy nilly and you got burned for doing so.
I'm even getting VERY long hate mail from people who couldn't bother to read my entire thread, or even just SKIM it a little. Among other things they claimed I never apologized or admitted I was wrong about something
These people are not me. I'm sorry that people are doing that, but I've never made those claims, and I'm not personally going to take responsibility. Furthermore, they likely mentioned that you didn't apologize for being a DICK to people. You treated her like garbage when she agreed with something YOU didn't like. You apologized later, but you were still nasty to someone for no other reason than them agreeing with someone else. I went and posted an edit that I felt was fair for you, to zero recognition. I've been lumped in with fortaat because why? I agreed that fortaat made a relevant point? I got upset when you called me high and mighty for agreeing with a relevant point and asked you to kindly "please not be offended" because I really thought that the information was relevant to your project? These things piss people off. It makes them mad. If you want people to understand why you're upset, you should share and share alike in that kindness, and had you done so, the questions that arose the very odd scam behavior might've been answered quickly and everyone might've been fine and dandy.
Seriously. I am responding to a post I can disprove is completely false with the first sentence/name of my thread. I then got SEVERAL pages of criticism from someone who can't bother to SKIM my text in a thread. I'm getting ALOT of this and I'm pulling my hair out wondering if I'm just some kind of horrible terrible monster that should be put to death because my mere existence is a crime against humanity. Cause seriously, that was two of about a dozen examples.
You disproved nothing, as I've shown you. Stop the pity party. There is something seriously off with a person who thinks that the proper response to an internet blow out is to assume that people want them put to death. You make several comments about "taking this as a lesson and moving on" and then DON'T MOVE ON. Just do it. Do it. Don't say it. Actions speak louder than words, as a lot of us have tried to make clear to you about your empty business promises. Muling on and on about "everyone hates me, I'm just going to leave, the moderator better come in here and tell me how I shouldn't leave!" is just...poor form in every way. Please spare yourself and do take this emotionally. I am actually worried for your personage right now because this is ALARMING BEHAVIOR.
Also, report the emails or PMs you have received if any, if they are actually volatile enough to be reported and not simply basic critique.
