Hi Jeremy.
Interesting thoughts but I'll just point out one thing.
You mention "punching out a demo in an afternoon"
The speed at which you personally can program stuff is frankly unnatural! In
fact given the wrate you create games, roughly one every six weeks to two
months, you could nearly have enough to live on just from game sales alone,
eg, if each game sold at 20 dollars each sold 150 copies, that'd be 18
thousand dollars a year, ---- as I said almost! enough to live on.
However, most people cannot "just punch out" a demo that quickly.
I'd guess for most developers, creating a demo of a game like airik would
take at least a fortnight of work, maybe more, and if your prepared to work
a fortnight for a scam of a thousand usd or so you might as well go further
and make the bloody game, ----- in fact as far as I've gathered from
developers like Phil and Tom's work, the initial physics and engine creation
is the hard part and making extra levels, objects etc is relatively simple
(and a lot more fun), thus the Scam would, for most people be less trouble
than it was worth, pluss of course, if I were such a scammer, why would I
make an accessible game in the first place?
There are many sterriotypes about visually impared people, but an idea that
we all are all wealthy enough to be tempting scam targits is not one of them
I'd ever heard.
Myself, were I inclined to pull such a preorder scam, I'd put it out as a
standard graphical independent game, and thus generate a good bit more cash
with the same amount of work.
Btw, as I said, I stil do not think Airik is a scam, for all we know Jake
has been run over by a bus and is in hospital, has won the national lottery
and is sunning himself in the bahamas or has been kidnapped by aliens!
there are imho many more logical reasons the game could be delayed than
scamming.
Beware the Grue!
Dark.
Beware the grue!
Dark.
----- Original Message -----
From: "Jeremy Kaldobsky" <jer...@kaldobsky.com>
To: "Gamers Discussion list" <gamers@audyssey.org>
Sent: Monday, June 13, 2011 4:07 PM
Subject: Re: [Audyssey] Airik the Cleric a scam?
Well I have not pre ordered the game, and I wasn't around for any of the
past trouble makers, so I have remained completely quiet on this topic. I
don't want to try guessing whether it is, or is not, a scam.
I just wanted to comment on the idea that $1000 or $2000 isn't enough of
an incentive to scam the community. Please remember, this is only
theoretical, and I am not trying to link this to any of this Airik the
Cleric business!
If the guy is sighted, people are correct who have noted, he probably
wouldn't have realized how small it is. I, myself, am sighted and I
imagined the community here was much larger when I first showed up. I'm
the first to admit I'm poor, and man, a thousand dollars is a huge
incentive to do something, though stealing that from people is not how I
would want to obtain it. Yes people have bills, and car insurance, and so
forth, but a person running a scam would be making this money on the side.
There would be no reason to believe the guy actually had to support
himself on profits from a scam, he presumably has a day job that does
that.
Yes, to some it seems like releasing a demo, and bug fixes, proves this is
not a scam, but I believe when we theorize about what a real scammer would
do, it seems logical. I know how I would have done it, if I had a
different sense of morality, and I certainly would have released a demo to
"prove" to people something was coming. So you take an afternoon, or a
day, and you punch out some type of game demo. That's really quite simple
to do, and you can then write about all of the amazing things the game
will have. I wouldn't have to cover the cost of sound libraries, since I
could just steal them from other sources. If someone is scamming the
community, why would they feel the need to pay for sounds?
I think the low pre order price is another thing that actually makes
sense. It's all about balance, of course. Since this would all be "free"
money to the scammer, this is not the time to be greedy. Offering a lower
price means more people will be willing to pay in advance. This is also
the reason I, if I put myself into the mindset of a scammer, would push
back the release date several times. The longer things delay, the more
people will wander in and pre order. Even with all of this Airik
debating, I'm sure some people have still placed orders after the first
release dates came and past. In the end, the scam artist, using a fake
name, could invest little more than a few days work to pull off the scam.
Now I'm sure a sighted stranger would have expected 3 or 4 times as many
pre orders, but as I've said, a thousand dollars is still more than enough
money to make it worth it.
Boy, when I got near the end of what I wanted to say, I felt like I had
just written a "how to scam the audio games community" manual! Sorry if
that's what it sounds like, and it wasn't my original intention. I
suppose the lesson to take away from all this, is that you should probably
trust a developer before you're willing to hand them money early. I also
want to end this by, again, reminding everyone I am not trying to say
anything about the current Airik the Cleric situation. I don't feel it
would be fair for me to guess on that, either way.
---
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