sephfire
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Posts posted by sephfire
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Yeah, we're definitely going to make sure everyone get's the rewards they donated for. If we find ourselves unable to offer a particular reward (Publisher's club, t-shirts internationally, etc), we'll think of something as good or better.
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This week's episode is live at our new channel!
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Hey Dan. I just lost a long response, which works out well cause you are probably tired of reading them anyway.
Quick anecdote from today at work in the kitchen. I mentioned I liked a busboy's Zelda shirt and we got to talking about gamers on the Internet. When I mentioned that you guys fell into contractual trouble with the Escapist he was really bummed about the news too. He not only knew of your show, he cited how much he loved your comparison of God of War to a Greek Tragedy. He got really passionate about how great of a show EC is, and I didn't even know the guy was a gamer.
I'll keep it simple. I, like many, am behind you 100% and anxious to know if there is ANY way we can positively respond. Energy, time, money... our individual resources... any way we can pitch in.
I know I'm not alone when I say you guys are like heroes to us. You're giving us gamers a well-spoken voice, an important message. You've been making us all THINK, and your considerable time and effort has not been in vain. It STILL isn't. Please let us know what can do. Seriously.
Thanks, that's quite uplifting after a day full of drama.
I really don't like seeing this kind of thing happening to anybody for any reason, and I really don't like to point fingers, so I'll try to be objective. However, as I've been reading through the facebook messages and forum posts between James and the management from The Escapist, it becomes more and more apparent (to me) that discussion of what to do with the excess funds was made without inclusion of feedback from The Escapist until the announcement to develop an indie company, which at that point, exposed a bevy of unresolved conflicts between everyone."He said that; she said this" and so on. Basically, James was upset at the unreliability of payments from The Escapist and The Escapist was simply wanting compensation for materials and expenses encountered for providing the bonus content for donations. If the long-distance communication between all parties had been more fluent, I don't think any of this would have happened. I still hope that both Extra Credits and The Escapist can work things out.
Addendum: As far as I understand, The Escapist did come through with donating some money to Allison's surgery/recovery initially post haste and have made no effort to recollect it per se.
I see where you're coming from. There's definitely a "he said" vibe about everything that's come out over the last 24 hours, and I'm certain some of the frustration can be chalked up to miscommunication between The Escapist and ourselves. I kind of wish the whole situation hadn't turned into a drama storm, but oh well.
The lack of payment isn't the main reason we decided to leave, but money issues did set things in motion. I've not been nearly as involved with everything that's happened, but I can try to explain the basics.
We'd gone for a year with very little in the way of payment, and the Escapist guys had been open and honest about the hard times they were going through. Totally understandable, times are tough, etc. We were happy to cut them a little slack. But Allison still needed to be paid for her work (the show takes way too long to animate for us to ask someone to do the art for free). So James was paying her himself, and by the end of the year, he was personally 20k in the hole, and some family issues combined with Allison's injury put a lot of strain on that situation. Like I said, the Rockethub thing was a desperate last-resort thing, and the Escapist offered to contribute with the Publisher's Club memberships and t-shirts. They later backed out on that, but that was later after some other stuff happened, so it wasn't anything sinister.
After the Rockethub thing was a huge success, we eventually came up with the Publishing Fund idea (like I posted earlier). But the whole affair had made us a little concerned over the lack of payment for the show. When we approached them about the possibility for working out a deal for getting our IP back in exchange for some of the debt owed (so we could make a little money through other means), they countered that they were contractually entitled to a large percentage of the Rockethub donations, which would cover the debt they owed and then some. This came completely out of the blue for us. At no point had they ever mentioned that before. Even if it was true, it seemed in very bad faith to pull that sort of contractual thing on us after a year of us cutting them slack when they failed to meet their end of the contract. Yes, the Rockethub donations were meant to "save Extra Credits", but only in so far as it was to help save Allison's career. It wasn't at ALL intended as a "help The Escapist pay for more Extra Credits episodes" fund. It was at that point we got the feeling we weren't really on the same team here. It's possible it was a massive miscommunication, it felt like a huge dick move, and we were getting pretty fed up.
Re-examining our contract, we started finding a lot of stuff we weren't too happy about, and after weeks of trying to push them on the issue and negotiate for the rights to our IP back, we were only feeling less and less sure of our working relationship. And that more or less brings us to now.
I really, really don't have any hatred for The Escapist as a site, and have no ill will for the people running it either. This is not at all the way I hoped our working relationship would go. It's not about the money for me (I don't get paid for this show anyway). I just began to feel that I couldn't trust the people in charge, and that's an unpleasant feeling when they hold all rights to your IP.
I still really wish our departure hadn't turned into a drama mess, but here we are. I really hope both parties can leave this on more-or-less agreeable terms and go on to great success. For whatever it's worth, I know I'll still be watching shows on The Escapist well after this is all over.
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I've created a new youtube channel called ExtraCreditz to post shows for now. I may put them on the original "kirithem" channel as well. Haven't decided for sure.
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Sorry I've been out this whole time! Siggraph is happening up here and I've been a bit swamped. James is a lot closer to everything that's happened, but I can definitely say: the show isn't stopping. We'll just post on Youtube every week until we land elsewhere.
As for the donation thing, I can try to help clear that up a little. Like some of you have said, we never, ever expected the response we got to the Rockethub thing. We didn't think we'd even hit our goal. It was a pretty desperate move for us and we hadn't planned for that (incredibly inspiring) scenario.
Once we'd shot passed the goal and the donations were still piling in from people just showing their support, we spent two weeks trying to figure out what to do. We had originally estimated low for the cost of Allison's surgery, so a good bit of the excess would go to her procedure, follow-up therapy and such. Some would help to pay the guest artists. But we knew we had a lot left over anyway, and we weren't sure what to do with it.
People were clearly giving it to show support, so just giving it back and saying "no thanks" didn't feel right, but we felt uncomfortable just keeping it for ourselves too. We briefly considered passing it on to Child's Play. But then we considered what the donation drive was about: helping a talented person to be able to continue doing the thing they loved. And we thought "maybe that's how we can pay it forward." The publishing fund thing is what we came up with: a way to give some indie developer a chance to keep doing what they love, and hopefully do the medium some good while we were at it.
I totally understand the complaint that we hadn't announced that sort of thing earlier. If we had foreseen this amazing donation outcome, we would have. Again, it was a pretty desperate measure at the time. "Hindsight" and all that.
I'll try to pop in an answer any questions I can!
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A lot of James's talk with the guy was off the record, and the rest of the time the guy seemed to just tow the party line. His main point seemed to be that "they had no way of measuring the negative effects of ad campaigns like those" or some such.
So, sadly, not as much impact as we had hoped. At least he got to talk to them about it, I guess.
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Agreed.
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I tried that the other day and GameStop isn't taking collectors' edition preorders anymore. I called a buddy at the store I used to work at to have him hold one for me if they happen to get an extra one in. All those little goodies make me really want it, if only for collector purposes.
On another note, GameTrailers posted its review today. It adds to the inconsistency of this game's review scores, but it seemed like the most honest assessment. It gave it a 7.8, praising the story elements, pointing out some minor flaws with the controls, and essentially saying that if you're looking for something different that delivers a great experience, this is right up your alley.
Looking at Metacritic, the review scores are all over the board. The game's average is 8/10 (which, by the way, makes it one of the best reviewed games releasing this summer so far).
Much as I love their reviews, Gametrailers' scoring system is pretty wonky. In general, I'd advise ignoring the score entirely and looking for common threads in the reviews themselves. From what I'm seeing so far, I think we're in for a solid game.
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Gonna buy it, crank it back to Easy and bask in the Atlus-brand weirdness. Can't wait.
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Man, I wish I had seen this much earlier as I would have jumped at the opportunity. Sephire, if you guys still need help, I'd be glad to lend a hand. I can't even imagine how I'd feel if I was in Allison's position....
We've got a pretty decent-sized crew put together so far, but I'm not sure exactly how long we'll be without Allison. I might have underestimated. If that's the case, you'll be hearing from me.
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At some point we'd love to get both you AND Tweex on the same show, so you can be goofy together. Tell us all about your early experiences as friends. Possibly expose some kind of homosexual scandal, iunno. Whatever you think works.
I like this idea.
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Oh hey, I'm being mentioned!
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I should be there.
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That's actually a pretty decent analogy. Well done.
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Was Tweex on board at one point to do Song of Memories?
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This week might be a bit disappointing for you then.
The next week is a bit more up your alley, though. And the week after that definitely will be.
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This is one of the most beautiful things I've heard on OCR in some time. It's like we've all been given a present.
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Haha, you betcha. I'm skipping the titles just to save time, but let me know if you need them!
001 - "Super Buck Jazz" by Estradasphere
002 - "Oil Ocean (WT-40 Mix)" by Planetskill
003 - "Everything Remains Jurassic" by posu yan
004 - "Virt's Castle of Inspiration" by Tackle
005 - "Pipes" by Seventh Epic
006 - "Manoria Cathedral Revamp" by Robotaki
007 - "Frame of Mind" by SGX, Aurora, Destructo
008 - "White Feather in the Storm" by CarboHydrom
009 - "Still Alive" by Jonathan Coulton (the only non-remix in the bunch)
010 - "Suco de Melancia" by Red Tailed Fox
011 - "Pickin' Out the Fleas" by Sixto Sounds
012 - "Quick Fix" by Dj Redlight
013 - "Lucca" by Danimal Cannon
014 - "Monstrous Turtles!" by Zircon
015 - "The Passing of the Blue Crown" by Sixto Sounds, Steppo, Zircon
016 - "Space Cowboys" by bLiNd
017 - "Flash the Funk" by Gecko Yamori
018 - "Consent (Make Me Dance)" by djpretzel
019 - "Fortuna Favors the Funk" by djpretzel
020 - "A Meal for a Whale" by SGX
021 - "The Ballad of Sir Kibbles" by Suzumebachi
022 - "Super Mario's Sleigh Ride" by The One Ups
023 - "C.H.E.E.T.A.H." by PrototypeRaptor
024 - "Tunnel" by Stemage, Chunkstyle, goat
025 - "Evening Edition Jam" by Daknit, Bard of Tarot
...and I think you've already got the rest. Thanks for putting together the sweet list!
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It's more of a broad look at the future of security and the need for trust and communication between companies and customers.
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Considering Sony's recent problems with it's online services and the likely outcomes to occur, how important is a game company's responsibility to protecting a user's personal information, especially when the industry is abuzz about metrics?
An episode on this very topic is forthcoming. Probably be out in a couple weeks?
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So about thirty seconds of our Gamification episode was shown on Al Jazeera today. We weren't credited and it was just their web stream, but still. Cool.
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I will always hold that White Lion's cover of Radar Love is more interesting to listen to than Golden Earring's original.
Cover (can't find a good version without the music video).
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I've heard some negative opinions of Full Sail's curriculum from industry folk. I don't know how much of it is just opinion, but I'm a bit wary of the place.
That aside, there are some careers out there which pretty much require passion for the job. If you go into a field like game design expecting to have a job handed to you right out of school and coast by on minimum effort, you're guaranteed to get nowhere.
If you're looking for same basic '101'-style tips on game design, we've done a few Extra Credits episodes on the subject. Maybe those can be useful.
http://www.escapistmagazine.com/videos/view/extra-credits/2443-So-You-Want-to-be-a-Game-Designer
http://www.escapistmagazine.com/videos/view/extra-credits/2713-Playing-Like-a-Designer-Part-1
http://www.escapistmagazine.com/videos/view/extra-credits/2738-Playing-Like-a-Designer-Part-2
The Extra Credits thread!! EC is amazing!
in General Discussion
Posted
My response is more or less the same as before:
With an added addendum: the reason we didn't close the Rockethub drive after we hit the mark is because we couldn't. Rockethub's policy is to keep the drive going until the target date is hit, at which point donations close and the money is paid out. It wasn't our choice to make. Again, in hindsight, 60 day was far, far longer than we needed, but we never anticipated generosity on this scale.
And we did ask fans what they thought of the publishing fund idea. We posted the idea on our twitter and facebook feeds and got lots of positive feedback. We've still got an episode lined up in a few weeks to explain the plan in more detail to everyone, but we definitely haven't been keeping the publishing fund a secret.