Monday, May 18, 2015

The New Mesozoica

A lot went down on the front of Mesozoica. Starting this Friday in fact. I was not at home that day, so I found out about everything after it had already happened. You see, our project lead, Max Wood, decided that we needed to forget about KickStarter and not talk about it at all for two months. Two of our other members, Mak Bucalo and Jonny Shaw, misread this statement and took it as us restarting KickStarter in two months. This led to a dispute between the three, ending with them departing the project. A third, Jimmy, who is very close to Mak and Jonny, was removed form the project thereafter. Max has apologized for this incident numerous times.

I find it very unfortunate that this happened all because of a misread. It is life, though. We win some. We lose some. While I always felt comfortable working with Jonny, I rarely ever communicated with Mak, working with Jimmy I always found to be slightly difficult. They are all fascinating workers and phenomenal developers. However, while Max told me not to respond on our forums, which after a hacking have been placed under maintenance, I will respond here.

Jimmy posted what happened to him on the Prehistoric Kingdom forums. If you want background on that, Prehistoric Kingdom is a game similar to Mesozoica, but aesthetically different and with different endgames. You guys can read Jimmy's post here and read it thoroughly. Jimmy is not a liar, but he is certainly omitting some details. I want to start this portion of the post by saying very early on, Jimmy writes about Slack, stating that he was unable to check the 200 notifications that were left there. This was because, as aforementioned, Max, out of fear of reprisal, did eject Jimmy from the team. Then Jimmy posts a link to a picture, a screenshot of a forum post that he made following his firing that contained information privy only to somebody who would have been able to check information on Slack. Let us analyze that post, though. In it, he claimed that the game would like The Stomping Lands, because Max is being mentored by Alex Fundora. I have known for a long time that Fundora's game was considered a rip-off and that Max worked on it. It became clear through Slack that Max was a marketing intern under Fundora, but that the two have not been in contact since the compromising of that project. He stated that there would be a coverup of that thread... well, of course there was. Here is where it gets great, the next screenshot shows somebody refuting the idea that Fundora and Max are currently working together (not that they have not had any past history). Jimmy believes that to mean Max denying having had worked with Fundora in the past and posts another screenshot... of Slack. Of a message that had to be one of the 200 notifications he missed that day. How do I know it had to be one of those 200? Well, it was actually around 160 and I did not check Slack that day either. How did Jimmy get information to this? I've no doubt that while his story is true, the parts that matter anyways, he did get to see all of those messages and was booted after that. Then Jimmy criticizes Max for praising Fundora's Kickstarter? Why wouldn't you? Yes what happened afterwards with the project was horrible, just downright terrible, but the Kickstarter was a huge success! The Kickstarter Pary reveal on Facebook. Look, as long as Jimmy was there, I always felt as if I was getting told stuff later. I found out about that reveal late and about the cancellation of Kickstarter late. I don't know why, but with Jimmy gone suddenly everything seems more open. His other example, when Max tried to merge us with The Isle... I don't know, again. I found out about that after Max decided to stick with his integrity and keep us afloat. Then came the idea of giving shoutouts to other projects like Prehistoric Kingdom. I was actually the one who came up with that idea, Jimmy did push for it, I will not deny, but it was my idea. Then Jimmy claims that Mesozoica was created out of spite. Well, a lot of things are. I'm not sure if Mesozoica is one of them. I knew beforehand that Max had previously worked on Prehistoric Kingdom, at what capacity, I'm not sure. I've heard multiple things. However, Mesozoica, if created in response to Prehistoric Kingdom, was created to accomplish one thing: be different than the other project because clearly it is not trying to go for the same goal as Max wanted. It is like saying Infinity Ward does not want their Call of Duty: Ghosts II to be at Battlefield 6 or whatever.

I needed to say that. Thank you anybody who read it.

1 comment:

  1. I Would like to put this message in perspective since it only covers one side of the story.

    Jimmy woke up one day with him locked out without a single warning, after he posted a goodbye messageon the forums it wa deleted very fast together with his account to preveent him from doing anything. Jonny also got censured and robbed of his free speech.

    After that people started asking questions, the forums have been taken down by max himself after he posted a message blaming all the failure on jim to even his bank account being hacked.

    Various people on the facebook page have been blocked as well , inlcuding me for asking questions about it. Anyone who wants proof can just PM me, i got screesnhots of most of it.

    Jim's reputation is being ruined by a lying dev-leader and i would like this story to be placed in perspective.

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