Mixnmojo: Is Paul Trowe of Replay Sabotaging Other Kickstarters?

[Tawmis]

You live on your own with a wife? :) (Yes, I have clearly picked up on the main take-home message from that presentation...)

 

Well, despite my best efforts - no one lets me borrow their wives!

 

Is any wife truly in the possession of the man? Harldy ever. And not in this case. She kindly lets me live under the same roof and shoves me in my man cave with my Sierra games, D&D books and comic collection. Me? A nerd? Whatever gave you THAT idea!

[drdrslashvohaul]

Hey, no possession intended or implied. I just like the idea of living alone with someone. :)

[Frede]

Oh, in these Kickstarter days, I think more than a few wives and girlfriends are living alone with someone!

[Irishmile]

I have no clue what's going on.. But it seems to me like there is definitely a behind the scenes tug of war going on to tarnish a public image.. Paul obviously has no problem saying exactly what is on his mind publicly so I kind of doubt he made fake accounts but that WAS his picture they used.. Then there is the multiple uses of ip addys from Chicago so there is some underhanded things going on against replay trying to get people to ask for their money back... Its possible someone used Paula pic made posts and then said "oh look what I found" the only people motivated to do that is wisecrack games who are blaming Paul's public statements about their game... Wisecrack who in my opinion already has been pretty sleazy in their presentation of their product.. But who really knows... honestly

do we care? This was all on my phone excuse any mistakes

[Spikey]

Classy response from my old friend Paul. :huh:

On the Wisecrack thing, I don't know how many people have followed the AdventureGamers thread:

http://www.adventuregamers.com/forums/viewthread/172/P90

 

Steve Ince from Wisecrack has been highly professional regarding the Wisecrack/Replay thing, which cannot be said for Paul. I doubt he's invovled in any underhanded stuff.

 

 

Anywho, I'm sick of reading about this. This guy needs to disappear until there's Larry news to come out.

 

On the wives and girlfriends thing, I think Tawnis, Drslash and Frede are all 100%.. Tawmis's comment about being stuck in a man cave feels awfully familiar!

[Raiden]

I'm not sure whether it was wise for Mojo to publish that article. It's fine for forum debate, but the claims are too speculative and unsubstantiated to warrant an article on the subject.

 

I find it quite hard to maintain objectivity on this issue, because of my personal dislike for Paul Trowe that has grown after watching his behaviour over the past few weeks. I backed Leisure Suit Larry, and I don't regret that, nor do I want my money back, but he's making it hard for me to remain as excited about the project as I once was. I find myself almost wanting to believe the worst about him when claims like this surface.

 

If we look at Gamespygeek the evidence is rather damning. The Myspace page had a photo of Trowe on it. The name "Jiminy Drambuie" is clearly a pseudonym. The style of writing is the same as Trowe's. He seems to have the same beef with people as Trowe does, namely the Two Guys / Chris Pope, and Wisecrack. The whole Myspace page mysteriously vanished as soon as the story broke. Now people have said "why would he publicly support the Two Guys and secretly undermine them at the same time?" Well I think it's quite plausible that he's merely being two-faced to protect his public image. He was almost forced into apologising here for his behaviour in a thread about the Two Guys, because people were turning against him. The sincerity of that apology is questionable, he could still be pissed off at them, and we know from Twitter/Facebook that he's an angry man, so the only outlet for his true feelings is via an anonymous account, and people are always at their most honest when they're anonymous. While that's going on he can publicly play the nice guy urging people to support them, and hope that no one is any the wiser. Of course, none of this evidence amounts to solid proof, it wouldn't hold up in a court and could be argued either way, so it comes down to our personal feelings to dictate which conclusion we believe. Personally I can't escape the feeling that Paul Trowe would be more than capable of this, just judging by his past actions and comments as an indicator.

 

With the issue that Irishmile raised on the Replay forums, having two people posting from the same IP address is always suspicious. The people did have a plausible excuse though, that they work together. People naturally befriend their work colleagues, discuss their interests and opinions. It's foreseeable to me that two people who formed a friendship via work would back the same project and share a similar opinion on events. I know that I told all my friends about the campaigns I was supporting, in order to get them to pledge too, and typically when I discuss how I feel about something with a friend it's because I know they will agree with me. The fact that they come from Chicago, as does Ken from Wisecrack could also be seen as a little suspect, but Chicago is a big city, so it's hard to draw much from that other than co-incidence without something more substantive. Again, it's a lot of speculation, but I feel the argument of sabotage is much more of a stretch to make here, and I'm more willing to extend the benefit of the doubt towards everyone in this instance.

 

I think it's a shame that everything got so blown out of proportion here. Wisecrack were misleading in their original approach, but had someone just politely messaged them and asked them to change the wording of their campaign then things could probably have been cleared up easily. The fact is that all the media involvement, threats of lawsuits, and mudslinging across social networks, all done by Paul Trowe, merely made Wisecrack look like the victims, and tarnished Paul's own image. Had Wisecrack refused a reasonable request, then I wouldn't be inclined to support them at this stage, but it's in fact Paul's unreasonable behaviour throughout that has really turned many people, including myself, against him, and made me more inclined to support Wisecrack. At the end of the day I want to see a positive, inclusive, adventure game community, where as many projects get funded and games get made as possible. There needs to be camaraderie and mutual support amongst small developers, and not in fighting and sabotage. In my eyes I feel that Paul Trowe is going to have to go a long way to redeem himself. Whether some of the claims about him are true or not, he's already done a lot of damage to himself without the help of anyone else.

 

 

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...

 

This annoys me a little. All the campaigns seem to support the idea of "Kick it Forward", yet because they all decided to launch in such a small period of time, it means they can't take advantage of this. I can understand the eagerness to capitalise on what they see as a shimmering new opportunity, but had they waited a year then they could have received a helpful cash injection from one of their former colleagues who had already produced a successful finished product.

[Frede]

Welcome to the forums, Raiden. You certainly kicked off with a well-written post that raises more than a few very valid points.

 

I think you are spot-on in everything you write. So let me just add another smoking gun to your conclusions on this whole charade. Apart from the concerns raised by Mixnmojo, there was an incident a while ago where someone trusted by the Guys delibrately misled them into thinking the "Space Quest"-IP and the rights for the "Two Guys from Andromeda"-name resided with Telltale, and not Activision and they previously believed. It took around two weeks of phone calls and voice mails for them to find out that the rights in question were still owned by Activision, and had been so all along. Meanwhile, however, they had lost about two weeks of press because they didn't want to face the legal troubles they would get themselves in, had the rights been with Telltale. Adding to that, it's a fairly open secret that the Kickstarter has seen some quite odd activity apart from the negative comments.

 

I'm somewhat sure that the perpetrator for all this stuff is known by the Two Guys. But obviously, since this kind of behaviour might do more harm than good for their project, they'd be keeping the identity of the person confidential in any case. But this goes to show that there is definitely more to this mess, and that it's certainly not getting prettier.

 

Us "Space Quest"-fans are just grateful that the Kickstarter seems to be on the right track now and some of us are quite content with this discussion being brought up, as long as it's kept on a civil level.

[rogerxy]

I totally agree with you Raiden. In the end of it all it's only speculations and the only thing it will do is to stir shit up.

[Irishmile]

I think the only thing we can say for sure is that there will not be a super Wisecrack + Replay super teamup any time soon.... Its also very possible everyone is just looking for a conspiracy from both sides that actually isnt there... I mean I bet if we tried hard enough we could tie anyones posts to another person.. its like 6 degrees of Kevin Bacon.... Do you Non-Yanks know or play that game?

[rogerxy]

Irishmile: Yeah I know that game :)

[mjomble]

Its possible someone used Paula pic made posts and then said "oh look what I found" the only people motivated to do that is wisecrack games who are blaming Paul's public statements about their game...

 

I'm all for considering different theories, even ones I don't want to agree with. It is indeed possible that someone's framing Paul. It's possible that this someone is Wisecrack. Although there doesn't seem to be a reason for them to troll SpaceVenture, it's possible they did it anyway to make gamespygeek look even more like Paul Trowe, since he does have a motive to sabotage tgakick.

 

Disclaimer: "possible" does not imply "likely".

 

And given the information I have, it seems more likely that gamespygeek is PT and not just someone trying to look like him and hurting other projects (SV) as collateral damage. Occam's razor :)

 

PS. If you're doubting PT's motive for sabotaging the SV kickstarter, consider that:

1. He originally wanted the Two Guys to join Replay, but was turned down.

2. He publically expressed his anger over that.

3. He recently tweeted that if the kickstarter fails, Replay may swoop in and "save the day", achieving his original goal.

[drdrslashvohaul]

Do you Non-Yanks know or play that game?

 

We do, but it's called 8 incarnations of Sir Patrick Stewart.

 

That was a lie. I lied just then.

[metafx]

The theories claiming PT is being framed seem to ignore the fact that Gamespygeek started posting early on the Leisure Suit Larry campaign, with posts that were very defensive of LSL and Replay. His first post on the LSL project comments is dated April 4.

 

The negative posts started only with SpaceVenture, with the 'opening salvo' made in the update of May 21.

 

Sam Suede only launched their Kickstarer on May 30. How could Wisecrack predict the developments that followed and make those posts under Gamespygeek's name so well in advance? IMHO if they could do that they'd be funding Sam Suede from spare change coming out of their stock market investments...

 

For reference here's a list of Gamespygeek's posts prior to the Mixnmojo article: http://pastebin.com/APpNyyPZ

Of course all those comments are still on KS too if you wish to dig there.

[Spikey]

Yeah, I could post further opinion and hearsay, but it's been said.

 

What needs to be said.. Great post Raiden. You were posting on the AG forums, which I linked to. I agree with what you said, it was jumping the gun to post an article, although from my Sierra contacts I've heard Paul Trowe is very much in damage control over it, so it's unlikely if he is involved with any of this that there'll be incidents anytime soon (from what I hear)

 

Only thing I'll add to mjomble's Paul Trowe motives is that he posted also on Facebook that because US Activision wasn't going to give the rights to Space Quest, whether the UK division would yield better results (or words to that effect).And that research neded to be made into that avenue. that tells us something, given he wrote that AFTER his conciliatory posts on these forums saying he was 100% behind the Two Guys and regretted his actions, and all that.

[Ohverture]

Paul has the benefit of the doubt from me. He re-tweeted my fan comic ( and I can't draw), so until it's proven otherwise he's ok in my books. :)

[Frede]

One thing I think we should keep in mind is that if Wisecrack are actually staging this and it backfires, it will hurt their project financially. Pledges will be withdrawn, word on their actions will get out there, Al Lowe might take action - the whole nine yards. Basically, being caught with their fingers stuck in the cookie jar here would mean the death of their project.

 

Again, I'm not after a Paul Trowe lynch mob here, but as I, like drslashvohaul, find the discussion very much worth having, let me ask you guys this. Do you think that Wisecrack would be able to stage all this crap and then suddenly forget that they're actually the ones at risk? Sure, they'd have sabotaged the 2GFA Kickstarter, but their own project would be as much in danger.

 

Like it or not - objectively speaking, the projects that are secured financially are better candidates for this.

[Raiden]

I'll quote something I just read on AdventureGamers, as it pertains to this topic:

 

I have taken this information from a thread on reddit, so I can’t take the credit for this one.

 

On IGN there is a user “gamespygeek”, who has that account since Dec 7, 2009:

http://www.ign.com/b...pygeek.3330496/

 

The only review that user has posted is a 10/10 review for an obscure game developed by Replay Games.

The review: http://readerreviews...4354057/116403/

The game: http://www.replaygam...s-animal-rescue

[KenSentMe]

Paul Trowe's done very bad moves/word choices in his announcements/tweets.

People are already turning against him and this gamespygeek thing points at Replay Games.

This makes me a bit worried:

 

 

I have a bad feeling this is going to turn ugly..

Two Guys already made it clear they are not interested in joining Replay games.

Unless something's changed, this looks like bad news.

[MusicallyInspired]

Whatever. The fans will respond to this. If Replay ends up getting Space Quest then it doesn't matter. I will not support it without the Two Guys and neither will many others. He may try to play with words to make it sound awesome, but the best way to combat this is to not support it without the Two Guys. If they don't want to join with Replay then I don't care what they do with Space Quest. It's not Space Quest without them. I'd rather see SQ solely in the hands of 2GFA, myself. I'd also rather see new games anyway. I wouldn't mind if another Space Quest never came out, as long as the Two Guys are still making games.

[Frede]

Spot on, Brandon. Doesn't matter if Paul is guilty or not - this fan is fighting for the Guys doing an indie game, and I definitely won't accept lesser than that.

[drdrslashvohaul]

Agree with both of you. It really is pretty much irrelevant whether Paul Trowe and/or his group are "really" "guilty" of the things their accused of. What's most important is that the Two Guys get their project funded.

 

Getting the SQ IP is irrelevant too. Without a company to do anything with it, it seems rather pointless. And if it doesn't go to the Two Guys (or at least the Two Guys aren't employed to create the new game) there's more than enough people who will make damn sure everyone knows that it's not really SQ.

 

Basically, it will backfire majorly on Paul if these rumours have substance - and it will be pointless for Paul to acquire the SQ IP unless he enters sincere dialogue with the Crowemurphyists.

[metafx]

I agree, at this point what matters is getting the project funded and fully in the hands of the two guys.

 

However I'd be extraordinarily disappointed if we found that gamespygeek was only the tip of the iceberg and those initial problems Frede mentioned in post #32 also came in the "package".

 

Those left the kickstarter with almost no media exposure for two weeks and we, the fans, could only do so much to help during that time. I think we'd be in much better shape now if things had started off at full speed as they should. As it stands we'll be glad to make the bare minimum.

 

Now, any developer knows that $500,000 isn't really much for a multi-platform, complex, new game like SpaceVenture. I think Rahul himself confirmed this in the comments. Unless they find additional funding, budgeting all costs, business expenses and rewards will no doubt require some heavy trimming.

 

So my concern is that - because of those two weeks in that tar pit someone planted - SpaceVenture won't be as good as it could have been.

[Raiden]

Paul Trowe's done very bad moves/word choices in his announcements/tweets.

People are already turning against him and this gamespygeek thing points at Replay Games.

 

This makes me a bit worried:

 

http://pcj.bz/PTroweSQ.png

 

I have a bad feeling this is going to turn ugly..

Two Guys already made it clear they are not interested in joining Replay games.

Unless something's changed, this looks like bad news.

 

 

I don't think Paul Trowe really understands business (surprise, surprise) if he thinks a development studio subsidiary is going to have any control over the intellectual property owned by the parent company, Activision.

 

Activision already owns another studio in the UK, FreeStyleGames, and has done so since 2008. They also own three studios in Canada, and one in Ireland. Regardless of whether he thinks they might be more "reasonable," he could contact all of them and each one would tell him the same thing: "We just develop games, you'll have to contact Activision management in head office to discuss IP licencing."

 

I think we can rest safe that he won't be getting the Space Quest IP any time soon, and the whole thing just serves to highlight his ineptitude and underhandedness.

[Frede]

I agree, at this point what matters is getting the project funded and fully in the hands of the two guys.

 

However I'd be extraordinarily disappointed if we found that gamespygeek was only the tip of the iceberg and those initial problems Frede mentioned in post #32 also came in the "package".

 

Those left the kickstarter with almost no media exposure for two weeks and we, the fans, could only do so much to help during that time. I think we'd be in much better shape now if things had started off at full speed as they should. As it stands we'll be glad to make the bare minimum.

 

Now, any developer knows that $500,000 isn't really much for a multi-platform, complex, new game like SpaceVenture. I think Rahul himself confirmed this in the comments. Unless they find additional funding, budgeting all costs, business expenses and rewards will no doubt require some heavy trimming.

 

So my concern is that - because of those two weeks in that tar pit someone planted - SpaceVenture won't be as good as it could have been.

Don't worry - everyone here knows that the manipulative "someone" was lying through his teeth. Chris and the Two Guys know too. There are no rights issues to speak of with SpaceVenture, fortunately.

 

As for insufficient funds, there'll be a PayPal donation phase after the Kickstarter has ended. And if that crosses into July, I think we'll see a moderate increase there - there must be other people like me who aren't really able to pledge more till after payday, but would gladly chip in with a little more if they get the chance.