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Mixnmojo: Is Paul Trowe of Replay Sabotaging Other Kickstarters?


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As Mr. Olsen just tweeted:

 

If you're not aware, Paul Trowe of Replay Games (the company who started the Leisure Suit Larry kickstarter) sent out a message to the press that he wanted to sue Wisecrack games for using Al Lowe's name and the Leisure Suit Larry name on their kickstarter. Al Lowe reponded to the message saying that he didn't intend to sue and that he gave his permission to use his name and wishes Wisecrack Games luck on Sam Suede.

 

However, some posters on the Adventure Gamers forums have dug up something rather concerning. According to this post by Adventure Gamers poster supaplex, a person called "gamespygeek" has been trolling the Sierra related kickstarters. There is a profile on Myspace also under the name gamespygeek that looks like Paul Trowe. Additionally, the name on the Myspace page "Jiminy Drambuie" is friends with Paul Trowe on Facebook, and both Paul Trowe and Jiminy Drambuie are listed as living in Austin, TX.

 

Also, an Adventure Gamers forum user by the name of Siddhi noted some similarites between Gamespygeek's trolls and Paul Trowe's own posts.

 

Gamespygeek wrote on SpaceVenture kickstarter:

 

I don’t know who the heck this guy Chris Pope is, but I believe in Scott & Mark and their ability to make a game after all these years. I originally dropped my pledge to $1.00 because of the technical screw ups but I don’t think that’s The Two Guys’s fault…I blame that on the Chris guy…he’s leading this effort.

 

Paul Trowe wrote:

 

Ask them why they didn’t join up with the folks at Replay Games to create Sierra 2.0 and instead chose some guy they’ve never heard of, Chris Pope, to run a company they don’t own.

 

All of this evidence does seem like Paul Trowe, or a friend of Paul Trowe, is trying to sabotage other Sierra related kickstarters. And if that is indeed the case, it's incredibly poor sportsmanship and reflects poorly upon Replay Games.

Of course, this is all circumstantial. But when he gets... tired and emotional... we know that Mr Trowe has previous. I'm sure this is another classic example of a misunderstanding.

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I posted about this here the other day but removed it as there is an investigation pending, I think only Rahul saw it. But to be honest this has haunted me since then.

 

On the other hand Gamespygeek was very supportive and ultra-defensive of the Leisure Suit Larry campaign. His comments there where:

 

 

I went to their website and sent an email through the contact us page and asked how much it cost to get LSL away from the big publishers they couldnt tell me cause it was confidential but they did say it cost more than the $500k they're asking for but they have 12 months to pay it back so they hope they sell more than $1mm worth of sales to make up for it cause it's a huge huge gamble for them. LSL FTW!!!

$75 to be a beta tester? Ummm...yes. I have no idea how much they pay their people, but somebody has to manage all those beta testers, input the bugs, keep track of them, collect input, ideas, etc. Maybe if you had like 10 beta testers you could manage that but when Diablo III opened up their game to beta testing they disclosed that they had a team of twenty (20) people managing that process. Granted it's bigger than LSL but I think it's obvious that it costs money to open up a beta program and in this case, it's probably not in their best interests.

Hey AvidGamer, if you don't want to buy the project, don't freakin buy it. If all you did was contribute the least amount possible so you can rant and rave then do us all a favor and STFU. This isn't a platform for you to get up on your soapbox and bitch.

Completely opposite. Seriously if this guy is not Paul Trowe I'll eat my hat. I don't know what caused his change of heart towards SpaceVenture, just hope the Two Guys haven't made a deal with him.

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If there's any truth in that article, it's very sad.

The stuff Paul tweeted during the Sam Suede situation was unnecessary and did no good to anybody.

And the disrespect toward Chris Pope, that's uncalled-for.

If it gets confirmed that Paul is gamespygeek, I will be very disappointed.

 

Anyway, Two Guys have one helluva community here, so let's keep this negative stuff off the kickstarter thread and get the project funded!!

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As a huge Larry fan (and Larry kickstarter backer) as well this would make me very sad if true. There's something very pantomime about the gossip/news surrounding the Paul Trow vs Space Quest scandal. I cannot believe all these moments when he's popped up to type something inappropriate in live chats or posted something fairly unsportsmanlike on public forums. It's just mind boggling.

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FYI I am a MOD on the Replay boards and there were accounts made by the same person IP address from Chicago, same city as Ken from Wisecrack games spreading the rumors that Paul Trowe was ironically creating acounts to complain about Widecrack games... SOOO the mods here might wanna look into all these new accounts posting about this story.

 

One thing I do know for sure is that people ARE trying to convince people this is a real thing and trying to get them to demand their money back.. We also know that already wisecrack games tried tricking people into thinking Al Lowe was part of their game.

 

Food for thought.

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Evidentally, this is getting quite ugly indeed. The best thing we can do is to stay positive and keep the discussion here clean, as well as keeping this subject away from the Kickstarter page.

 

Now, I don't want to draw any conclusions myself, but it is fairly obvious that something fishy has been, and is, going on, and no matter who the perpetrators are, they should face some consequences.

 

Till then, let's show them - no matter who they are - that we are the better people...

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We also know that already wisecrack games tried tricking people into thinking Al Lowe was part of their game.

 

For what it's worth, Al most certainly was part of that game, at least back in 2006: http://www.gamasutra.com/view/feature/2707/wedgies_not_bullets_leisure_suit_.php

 

I don't have the full details of the current situation, but from what I've heard, Al still supports that project, just isn't directly involved in making it.

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My bet is that if it's anyone who's being an asshole is someone at wisecrack.

From the very start their campaign was fishy.

Al worked on this project, but not anymore. This is not what if first said on their Kickstarter page, though, which started with "Al Lowe presents...". That's removed now. Then there was that obvious jab at Replay games with "We own all the rights". They removed that too now. And that photoshopped picture of Al doesn't do well for their reputation either.

 

Paul Trowe might be too jumpy, but if he had the intention to sabotage SpaceVenture why would he post an update on the Larry Kickstarter page encouraging their backers to support this? There was a huge jump in backers that day, don't forget that when you're thinking about asking for your money back from them, based on random internet detective work.

 

OK, now I guess some internet detective will deduce that I'm an alt of Paul Trowe too, because I defend him.

 

Anyway, not saying it couldn't be him. It's just weird. But, if it's about accusing anyone of cheating and misleading, I'd put my money on Wisecrack. They already showed they're capable of that. While the only proved thing about Paul Trowe so far is that he's very belligerent and doesn't think too much before speaking.

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For what it's worth, this is not the first fishy sabotage attempt against the Two Guys. The whole rights issue that prevented them from doing press for two weeks did reportedly have a perpretrator and this happened before the Sam Suede Kickstarter was launched.

 

We can only speculate about who did that. It may not even be the same person. Still, make of it what you will. The Sam Suede Kickstarter may have reasons to go after Trowe, but as far as I can tell, less so for attacking the Two Guys.

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Conspiracy upon conspiracy, eh?

 

I'm not going to - nor am I interested in - drawing conclusions at this point. This is, after all, gossip fuelled by, at best, circumstantial evidence. It would be remiss not to bring it up, however, given that it is clearly a live topic.

 

It was not my intention to sour the Kickstarter thread by posting that someone had posted about someone posting about a rumour that someone had posted about. But if it's going on it's better to discuss it rather than allow rumour and counter rumour to brew under the surface, chock full of healthy innuendo goodness.

 

Whoever it was who split the topic did the right thing. But providing the discussion doesn't get libellous, I do hope it remains an open topic for discussion.

 

I'm a "warts and all" kinda guy. I don't see negative issues as detrimental to any campaign, providing they're dealt with and explained in a mature manner. Indeed, this has been one of the most refreshing thing about the Crowemurphyist machine so far. They have been open about past disagreements, issues with people and the confusion caused by certain mistakes made early in the campaign process. If the world had more people like that we'd have much better and much more trusted products, services and elected representatives.

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It was not my intention to sour the Kickstarter thread by posting that someone had posted about someone posting about a rumour that someone had posted about. But if it's going on it's better to discuss it rather than allow rumour and counter rumour to brew under the surface, chock full of healthy innuendo goodness.

 

Whoever it was who split the topic did the right thing. But providing the discussion doesn't get libellous, I do hope it remains an open topic for discussion.

I just split it because it was increasingly off-topic :P

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Well no matter who is behind the shenanigans, the SpaceVenture kickstarter is at $346 so I think it is likely that this game will get funded :) Noone can stop the Two Guys!

 

I think it has more than a mere $346 dollars...

 

(I kid, I know what you meant just trying to lighten the mood!)

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I am about as broke as someone can be right now.. I have $155.42 invested in this thing.. I have NO clue how I am going to eat for the next few weeks.. Or pay a few of my bills.... I KNOW many or MOST of you are doing the same sort of thing.

 

I support the Kickstarter campaign as much as anyone, and I was able to pledge $500.00, because it was money that I had free to spend. However, I would take my money back if I needed it for myself in order to survive. You should too. This campaign is a big deal, but not that big of a deal.

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I am about as broke as someone can be right now.. I have $155.42 invested in this thing.. I have NO clue how I am going to eat for the next few weeks.. Or pay a few of my bills.... I KNOW many or MOST of you are doing the same sort of thing.

 

Yeah, I still wonder if it was a particularly smart move to do all those Sierra-related KS-campaigns back-to-back.

You can only pledge everything you got so many times...

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On Twitter, Paul is putting the blame for this on Wisecrack games. Check out this exchanges with Twitter user @gbfan:

 

@ptrowe I donated to the Sam Suede Kickstarter partially because of this article: http://mixnmojo.com/...er-Kickstarters

@gbfan well then it looks like the guys from Sam Suede conned you too! We traced their IP number.Good luck believing everything you read.

Thoughts? Do you guys think it's Wisecrack or..?

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Yeah, I still wonder if it was a particularly smart move to do all those Sierra-related KS-campaigns back-to-back.

You can only pledge everything you got so many times...

 

There's been very little over lapping. LSL ended first (Jane's was going at the same time). Then Jane's was coming to an end, and Two Guys started theirs. So it's not like all three ended at the same time. There was about two weeks between each one ending (and even more, if I am not mistaken between Jane's and Two Guys). It makes it difficult to donate $1,000 dollars - sure - but I don't think most of us can afford to donate that much anyway. But dropping $100 for each one, and having two to four weeks between each one ending, was not difficult for me (and I live on my own, with a wife, rent a house, pay all the bills, etc). So I have plenty of bills - but this seemed nicely spaced out between them. And as for doing them all around the same time (relatively speaking) - I think it's the best idea - because you're riding a hype of "The Glory Days Of Sierra Games Coming Back!" Wait too long, and the KickStarter fever decreases (many are already sick of hearing about it, which I will never understand) - so I think it was done nicely.

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