I was NOT scammed: 2 weeks of dialogs with Darth Smut
Aug 4 at 1:36pm
Hello everyone,
I want to continue from here the previous post where I claimed
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.
First, I want to
thank you all for your comments and your votes to keep me motivated with SCREW WARS. It’s really encouraging seeing all of you by my side.
I want to use this post to reply all the comments you’ve shared with me in the last post, but before that,
you need to know Darth Smut contacted me and we exchanged mails for the last 2 weeks.
Far from what I’ve expected, I have to say that
he’s been quite reasonable and he exposed some arguments that made me understand him a little more and see his point of view.
I’m going to play the devil’s advocate and I’d like to
share with you some of the things we’ve discussed, so you can decide for yourselves:
“He never scammed me”
I have to admit that when I wrote that last article I was very furious, and maybe I was too harsh with some of the claims.
He says that, when he approached me, his intention was never to harm or stole from me. You may think “well, this is what he says”, but now that I’m not in the berserk mode from the last article, and after speaking with him re-reading all our mails, I don’t think that either.
So maybe I was too harsh when I said he was a scammer.
“He never stole anything from me”
This is something tricky, because he indeed never stole anything from me. I just simply gave those assets to him. As some of you in the comments on the other article have already said, we didn’t sign any contract, and he never paid me for those assets.
In fact, I cannot even say that those assets are mine because the kind of games we’re both creating are just parodies, but the copyrights of lots of things we’re using are not ours.
So… Ok, I admit it. I freely gave away those assets.
Why? Because I needed to render some scenes and I didn’t have enough time to do it, and he offered me to render the scenes in his computer. I never gave him permission to use them in his game, but that was a risk I decided to take.
“He already paid for those assets”
The way he puts it, he invested time processing those assets, rendering them and so… this consumed his computer hardware and also electricity. And he also provided me a service that otherwise would have delayed some versions of my game even more…
This is why he says he “paid” for them. He never gave me money, but all those things are valuable, and I have to admit he never asked anything for it.
And… Probably, if he told me he was going to use those assets before launching the game, sharing with me his point of view, I wouldn’t even have reacted like I did.
“He’s never told me he was going to fix the game”
During our discussion, he told me that and he even dared me to quote him in any of the old mails we exchanged when he was collaborating with me…
And he, somehow, is right.
How is that possible? Well, when he approached me, he was very curious and he start asking a lot of questions about the game, its development and so. At some point, I asked him if he was a programmer and he told me he had some skills with a few programming languages, and if I was in trouble, he could take a look at the project and see if he could fix it.
And that’s all. He never promised to fix it, he only told me that he could take a look, and I misunderstood him and I thought he was looking it to fix it, not to “mess with it”.
I have to tell you that we had a hot argument about that point, because at that time we both took for granted some things we shouldn’t. He was expecting me to have security copies of the project (which I was stupid to not make) so he could test stuff, and I was expecting that, at the end of his tests, he was going to give me a fixed project.
When he started asking me about the 3D Art, I also put a lot of time and effort to show and teach him about it, as an act of gratitude because he was fixing the game… but he never thought it that way.
This kind of misunderstandings sometimes happens. They start as a little stone that rolls down the mountain and when it reaches the bottom, it’s a big pile of dirt. And this is one of the reasons that I felt wrongly “scammed”.
“He offered to remove the borrowed assets from his game”
I was very insistent with the fact that he used two of my characters in his game, but he apologized for it and it was more like a tribute than a rip off.
He told me that if this was troubling me a lot, he could remove those girls from the game. He only used them because he needed two “cheap whores” to use them in the intro and never show them again and those girls were very starwars-ish, but he can change them.
In fact, he even told me that if his game was successful enough, maybe I’d like the idea of having those models placed in other games, because it could promote SCREW WARS.
And I’m still considering it…
“His game is original and has a lot of potential”
This is going to sound weird, because it seems just the opposite of what I said in the previous post, and also because he’s publicly saying that he’s doing a “clone” of Something Unlimited and Akabur. But let me explain.
Before speaking with him I was 100% sure that he ripped off my game, but when we spoke, he told me he programmed it from scratch and he even suggested to show it to me. So I agreed and we planned a skypecall where he showed me (with screenshare) the “bones” of his project. He created the whole Death Star, scene by scene, in a smart way that can grow bigger and better as the game grows.
In fact, I have to admit it’s a very impressive job. I thought my GUI was complex, but I “hate” to say he did quite a good design.
This is what I mean when I say that his game is original.
Not because he created something new that you may have not ever seen before, but he got some of the best ideas from great games and he’s working hard to put it all together.
I can say that there were some mechanics that I could identify from SCREW WARS. For example, the Start Scene is practically the same, and the main menu too, but he even told me that If I was uncomfortable with them, he could change it.
And one of the things that he was most annoyed is that now everyone is thinking that he’s incapable of doing anything, but again, playing the devil’s advocate… he may be using the same engine and plugins from SCREW WARS (or other games), but he created more models, a whole core architecture and some interesting concepts.
In fact, he may have solved one of the major issues of my game, which is the lack of adult content.
The way he put this, one of the things that he didn’t like from SCREW WARS (and I’m aware a lot of you complain about that too), is that even in the v0.7 version the game still lacked a lot of sex.
However, with that trainer idea that got from Akabur, the users can go to the girls’ rooms, interact with them and enjoy a low paced corruption story… but at the same time, if you wanted to enjoy a quick adult scene, you can go to the bar and see those girls doing adult stuff.
And this is what I mean, like it or not, when I say that this death star trainer may have a lot of potential…
“so… what now?”
I know this is article may sound very confusing… two weeks ago I was very infuriated and claiming I was scammed, and now I’m saying that I might have been wrong.
When I found about this game I felt attacked. It came by surprise and I thought the worst of it, so I fought back. But, after publishing that article, instead finding myself in an open war as I expected, what I’ve received was a private mail trying to calm things down and establishing a dialog.
He also told me few tips about the plugins we’re using to improve SCREW WARS and maybe fix some of the performance issues that some of you experience during your gameplay.
Two weeks ago I felt threatened and betrayed, but today I see this new star wars game as a competitive and approachable rival that I can even use it as a motivation to do my best.
In any case, the outcome has been better than expected. Now I see that I have a strong and amazing community around me. After the poll results, I’m even more motivated to put my efforts on the v0.8 update and keep developing this game you all love and support (but keeping an eye to that star wars trainer).
Said that, I hope you didn’t carve your opinion from darth smut in a stone. Not asking you to love him, but maybe you want to give him another chance. I did it, and he surprised me for good.
Thank you all for being here, and may the cock be with you!
SkullYakker