Deep concerns about this whole project after doing some research.
For starters look at who is the about for this game.
https://www.ashesofcreation.com/the-team/Literally almost no one has any experience in the gaming industry. I have no idea where they're getting those logos from because they sure aren't acknowledging them in the bios. The only exception is one artist.
Now lets look at the the Creative Director. The guy running this whole thing.
He worked with Xango, a multi-level marketing company.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/XanGoThe company itself is questionable about it's legality in operations. Making claims in the past about the product doing more than what it actually can do. It's a juice and the claims were that it can basically cure you of multiple ailments.
Here he is doing the ice bucket challenge for the company.
John Oliver did a show on it, explaining how these companies operate.
Now let's look at their referral program.
https://www.ashesofcreation.com/referral-program/Sound familiar?
Comments
https://www.linkedin.com/in/eqpaladin/
https://www.linkedin.com/in/jeffreybard/
https://www.linkedin.com/in/michael-bacon-a453571/
https://www.linkedin.com/in/trystansnodgrass/
https://www.linkedin.com/in/davidthornfield/
https://www.linkedin.com/in/jon-arellano-61b181ab/
https://www.linkedin.com/in/keith-kovach-a1904820/
https://www.linkedin.com/in/jeff-delierre-58942342/
Nothing for Peter Pilone or Matthew Reynolds
The referral thing has been discussed to death. It's not MLM because there are no levels. You refer a friend and if that friend spends money you get a portion back. That's as far as it goes. It doesn't matter who your friend refers because that is not at all connected to you. They don't even track it that far. All they track is the link someone used right before signing up to the website and the credit goes to that one person. That's it. You're also free to not use it. I don't bother using mine.
Are you seriously blind or just willfully ignorant...or just trolling? If you literally look at the EXACT SAME PAGE you linked and scrolled down you'd see these are all veterans from other companies and worked on numerous games.
Even I knew these people's names because I've played their games before (Everquest and Star Wars Galaxies). Please stop trying to spread false information.
Then tell me who worked on what and in what capacity. Did you bother to actually read their bios that lack specific information or did you just look at the logos that say their 'team' has experience in?
거북이는 목을 내밀 때 안 움직입니다
LOL okay.
거북이는 목을 내밀 때 안 움직입니다
For every minute you are angry , you lose 60 seconds of happiness."-Emerson
As much as I dislike MLM companies it's hard to say this game is a MLM scheme. Yes they have a referral program. No it's not an MLM scheme.
Question the veracity of the designers all you want. There past work speaks for itself. Either you like it or you don't.
Full disclosuer: I'm not backing the game on KickStarter. But then again most people that know me could have probably guessed that already.
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Like has nothing to do with it. I question the influence/experience they had at those companies. They could be quite talented individuals (the artists obviously are from what I've seen.) I believe there's a certain amount of resume padding going on and they are parsing language a bit. 40 years of MMORPG experience counted as being a gamer, instead of perhaps actually designing MMORPGs? Or perhaps it is for game design. The main point (like other things IE- MLM backing) should be information people talk about, even if it's not a deal breaker for many.
I mean there are people whom swear up and down that there's nothing nefarious about MLM either. Of course those people usually have a great new investment they'd love to tell you about joining, all for a low entry cost of monthly $100s of dollars investment.
I will say the Kickstarter offerings are definitely more reasonable than some of the backing crowd forging games I've seen.
I think it's cute you think I'm worked up about it. What I find interesting is no gaming journalism site is asking the creative director about his MLM experience, when people getting scammed before on Kickstarters are certainly a thing. But if people want to pledge, by all means. I wouldn't dare tell someone or the devs they have to change something or leave something out simply because I don't like it. I'm not like some other people on this site.
What was his reaction?
Is being tied to MLM something to be worried about?
It seems like everyone on the internet more or less takes it for granted that MLM is evil. I guess a majority of people work in flat organizations?
As long as you have an actual product on your hands, I don't get why it's demonized any more than a brick and mortar franchise. You have levels of executives profiting off of the work of many there also, not to mention additional overhead for retail space.
"The simple is the seal of the true and beauty is the splendor of truth" -Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar
Authored 139 missions in Vendetta Online and 6 tracks in Distance
I think you might have taken my post a bit to seriously ...... WHo was telling anyone they had to change or leave anything? What is that even pertinent to?
For every minute you are angry , you lose 60 seconds of happiness."-Emerson
https://www.reddit.com/r/AshesofCreation/comments/68pbmv/a_friend_did_some_background_checking_on_the_team/#bottom-comments
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I've heard positives about the team but then I was approached with this:
"ok, just linked in their CEO... no games experience. Their CFO, no WORK experience at all. This is his first job out of college. Lead Game designer was at SOE for 6 years... most of that time in customer service (!!!), Their tech director was at SOE for 10 years in at least an engineering role so there's one. Their lead environment artist is a contractor. but also spent 10 years at SOE. The senior level designer has less than a year of actual games experience (Blind Squirrel) though has had other design roles in non-game companies. The "senior" environment artist has less than a year of employment experience (only 3 months at Daybreak as an intern, then 9 months at some other studio I never heard of). The senior character artist has been a freelancer for 9 years (no in-house team experience anywhere). Their concept artist has only 3 months of in-team games experience (Behavior Interactive). Four years of freelance... never held any position internally longer than 1 year. Their two final "senior" game designers have ZERO linked in profiles or don't exist."
Take it as you will. The friend just did some searching on linkedin. You should do the same.
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Here's Steven's response about the team:
Jason our Technical Director has spent over 15 years in the gaming industry as an engineer, mostly for Sony.
Jeffrey our Lead Designer spent 6 years at Sony, he is an avid blueprint designer and very passionate about MMORPGs
Michael Bacon started back on DukeNukem! and has spent over 20 years I believe as an artist.
David our animator, has been in the industry for several years and worked on gears of war, and call of duty.
Trystan is a level designer who worked with 2k prior to coming to our team.
Please dont rely on Linkdin as your "accurate" source of info for the team Not everybody uses it really.
Also, we have no contractors. Everyone on our Team page is full time developers in our studios and for the company.
Furthermore, As far as myself. You are right. My experience is playing MMOs for 25 years. And judging by the current market of available MMOs, that is the way I'd prefer it. Thank you for stopping by our Reddit!
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Further down people mention the MLM and that his mother was the one that worked with him on it. The CFO is apparently his husband and has zero experience other than MLM at the same company and just graduated college (if reddit is right /shrug.)
I have a master's in international business; I don't need it drawn out for me. As I intimated in my above post I can think of plenty of legitimate reasons one might go for a MLM approach over traditional brick and mortar (overhead being a big one).
The guy in an office building is profiting from the actions of someone two levels beneath him. MLM is no more guilty than this provided there is an actual product or service being disseminated.
"The simple is the seal of the true and beauty is the splendor of truth" -Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar
Authored 139 missions in Vendetta Online and 6 tracks in Distance
TBH There seems to be as much or more experience on this team than on a lot of these kickstarters/indies.
If I remember correctly even Brad's team right now is made up of mostly amateurs in game development. His employment/success record wouldn't look much better post EQ either. The real question comes down to how skilled these folks will be at running a business. Which if news about their overall funding is true, they seem to be doing okay on that front thus far.
Still it's always safer to just wait and see what becomes of these projects. IF they get made, great, you can always just buy in then.
For every minute you are angry , you lose 60 seconds of happiness."-Emerson
If in fact you do have a master's in international business you should be well aware that in many jurisdictions MLMs are illegal and even where not are regarded as being shady practice verging on pyramid marketing schemes that are illegal.
I like what the Federal Trade Commission has to say about it:
"Not all multilevel marketing plans are legitimate. If the money you make is based on your sales to the public, it may be a legitimate multilevel marketing plan. If the money you make is based on the number of people you recruit and your sales to them, it’s probably not. It could be a pyramid scheme. Pyramid schemes are illegal, and the vast majority of participants lose money."
https://www.ftc.gov/tips-advice/business-center/guidance/multilevel-marketing
So one thing to look for is whether the target market is the general public or simply additional distributors. I understand there are blurred lines and I'm all for questioning everything; however I'm not for assuming guilt based on alternative business structures.
"The simple is the seal of the true and beauty is the splendor of truth" -Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar
Authored 139 missions in Vendetta Online and 6 tracks in Distance
So if the Ashes team relocates to Brazil we should be worried?
"True friends stab you in the front." | Oscar Wilde
"I need to finish" - Christian Wolff: The Accountant
Just trying to live long enough to play a new, released MMORPG, playing New Worlds atm
Fools find no pleasure in understanding but delight in airing their own opinions. Pvbs 18:2, NIV
Don't just play games, inhabit virtual worlds™
"This is the most intelligent, well qualified and articulate response to a post I have ever seen on these forums. It's a shame most people here won't have the attention span to read past the second line." - Anon
The KS now makes a lot more sense with how its so light on MMO mechanics but full of eye candy and lofty ideals. Its all all about hype! positivity! change your life! Fix the genre! EXACTLY like how a MLM company operates.
Complain all you want, but so far it's working much better than previous KS campaigns -- which have come full of information on their MMO mechanics, but light on eye candy and visual progress.
KS is simply about raising money in order to fund a project. If their MLM experience helps them do that, then more power to them.
You honestly don't care if the game is designed well as long as it looks good? Once they actually start talking about mechanics a lot of people are going to be upset because the initial scope wasn't clear.
KS projects run by industry veterans who have actually delivered games in the past have not exactly had a smooth ride.
If you want to fund an industry noob who got rich scamming people and a college grads first job go for it.
I'm not saying I'm satisfied with the amount of information about the game that has been released so far. I have a lot of questions that need to be answered before I let my credit card get billed for the KS package I've chosen...
I'm just saying that the simple fact that the President of the company has a previous history in MLM doesn't automatically mean it's a scam.
Games need money to be developed. MMORPGs more so than others. If their past business experiences help them get that funding, I don't see the big deal.
It doesn't have anything to do with whether the game mechanics will be good or not. That is a completely separate topic that's unrelated to this MLM one.