Hay I never meant anything by the messages I sent yesterday.
I was never involved in the james north
crazyness, sertainly I never sent a bad mail to my knowledge to him personally.
I never meant to annoy him i or any other dev I
was just musing on events thats all.
I didn't mean to bitch really all devs are doing
a good job and yeah releasing stuff in advance
before you are ready could be a bad thing its your choice really.
At 01:36 AM 5/4/2013, you wrote:
Hi Tom, Shaun, and all,
Once again, after telling myself I should quit
dealing with this list day-to-day, I find myself
responding to a message. I will never learn, apparently. LOL
Shaun: It is messages like yours that makes devs
like myself not want to support the blind gaming
community
at least not this segment of it.
Adding to what Tom has said
I know only a little more of the story with
James than does Tom, and I don't really feel
comfortable airing it out here. I didn't agree
with how James handled some things, but in the
end, it is the community, more than anything
else, that is at fault for his exit from the space.
It was the situation with James, in fact, that
led Draconis to adopt the policy that we do not
announce products in advance, do not take
preorders, that we do not share publicly what
we're working on, and that, except for times of
releases, we pretty much withdraw from the
community entirely. If we didn't, it would be
tough to have any desire to keep going. I
honestly don't know how Tom does it, and you
should all be incredibly appreciative that he is
as open as he is. Frankly, I think he'd be
better off not doing it, but it is his hair to lose. *grin*
A lot of devs from the early days have
withdrawn. How long has it been since BSC was on
this list? GMA? I don't post except when we have a release.
You would think this community would have learnt
from the mistakes of the past. It never does.
We got a lot of angry messages when we released
ChangeReaction and SilverDollar for Mac before
Windows. Where are all those folks now? I don't
see many of them supporting this Windows
release. I think people like to have something
to get riled up over. They like drama. There's
been far too much drama in this community.
The next time you want to send a nasty post
about James North's history, or Tom's seemingly
changing his mind, or how Draconis doesn't post
updates as often s you want
think twice before
hitting send. Ask yourself if that message is
going to help move the industry and the
community forward, or do anything positive at
all. If not, please close the window and pour
yourself a drink
assuming you're over the legal
age to partake in your jurisdiction.
Lord knows, some of you have driven me to it, from time to time.
On May 3, 2013, at 12:47 AM, Thomas Ward <thomasward1...@gmail.com> wrote:
> Hi Shaun and all,
>
> I'd prefer not to rehash all this crap again, but since the topic came
> up here is what happened as far as I know.
>
> 1. James North had started up Alchemy Game Studios and got Raceway
> back from Josh intending to complete that game.He also started two
> other projects, Montezuma's Revenge and Max Shrapnel, and took
> preorders for all of them.
>
> 2. He developed a very early beta of Raceway, but for some reason
> decided after developing the beta to start over from scratch in VB
> .NET. He also wrote the demo of Montezuma's Revenge that was released
> to the list, but it was buggy and only four levels was ever completed.
> So regardless of what people think James North was getting something
> done.
>
> 3. Sometime after he began all these projects he became sick, I don't
> know from what, and he stopped developing for a couple of months. He
> also had a death in the family and was rightfully upset and needed
> time to grieve.
>
> 4. Not surprisingly while all this was going on being sick, dealing
> with a death in the family, this community hounded him, flamed him,
> and it upset him. Since James didn't make it known the reasons why he
> had slowed on production, why release dates were not met, I think most
> people assumed he was just screwing them which he wasn't, but short of
> a full confession of his personal life I don't think it would have
> phased them one bit.
>
> 5. Finally, he had enough of it all. He turned Montezuma's Revenge,
> Raceway, and the mouse demo over to me, and quit. He rightfully had
> enough of this communities bitching, moaning, and groaning when he was
> having personal problems which this community knew nothing about.
>
> Now, that the true story is told can we move on? I know people are
> upset, they are angry, they have made up their minds to hate the man,
> but he is only human. He has good days and bad days like everyone
> else, and while I don't agree with the way he handled the situation I
> know from firsthand experience that sometimes life, real life, throws
> us a few lemons and it is bad enough getting through life's problems
> without several hateful, spiteful, vindictive people emailing you day
> in and day out wanting to know when this or that game will be done or
> they are going to sue you etc.
>
> Cheers!
>
> On 5/3/13, shaun everiss <sm.ever...@gmail.com> wrote:
>> well it would be actually interesting to find out what happened and
>> to find out the full story on what actually happened in the first place.
>> We may go on on what we think happened but how did it all start.
>> We know a few facts.
>> 1. he did not release in a while.
>> The industry was growing only just born and growing fast, who knew it
>> would normalise itself to a slow easy strole in about 10 years or so.
>> maybe even less.
>> 2. james got a new company and was trialing a preorder system.
>> 3. release dates were made but in this case james was not able to
>> meet the dates.
>> This in itself was not normal but up till then every dev had been
>> making dates maybe everyone was lucky.
>> Though pcs had started the trek stuff before gma did same with lone
>> wolf both were dos initially.
>> 4. this is where at least from my standpoint it gets a bit misty.
>> We know that for ages there was nothing coming out at all and people
>> were wandering.
>> At that time we hadn't had anything not come when it was supposed to
>> so people were concerned.
>> However it suddenly looked after a lot of big announcements that
>> james publically went quiet without explanation and people started
>> wandering what was going on.
>> Maybe his life caught up with him but we will never know now or till
>> the end of the world.
>> 5. we know now that the pre order system and release dates really
>> were not a good thing and that james took cash for something that as
>> far as anyone cared never made it out the door but he had a date that
>> couldn't be met I don't recall them being reset so obviously there
>> musn't have been a release date reset I don't have records at all.
>> bar a few demos evewrything seemed to have stopped.
>> And that stayed like that for about 5 years maybe more like 2-4 years.
>> And thats where it officially ends.
>> at least from what I remember.
>> After that there were messages bandied over that people complained to
>> james, even flamed him that whiny blind people made him quit, other
>> messages said he screwed us over!
>> Ofcause it can be assumed that offline life caught up with him and
>> although I don't expect a dev to tell of his offline life, its the
>> only thing I think that makes sence.
>> How much is true?
>> For that only james can know.
>> Some truth does exist.
>> we have people that like to complain to devs I am not one of those
>> that would go hard out.
>> We know he kept accepting cash after he couldn't make the release
>> date and got flack for it.
>> We don't know though what happened, not fully.
>> Shortly after the start of the 5th year the flamewar started.
>> And then james quit obviously his system had malfunctioned and he was
>> not able to or was not aware of it till it caught up with him.
>> The last email I had was james was in one of the stupid years when I
>> fired off over things in general.
>> I forgot what it was about.
>> He swore at me, and seemed to be completely burned at the stake.
>> this was shortly before he quit.
>> So what happened?
>> I know what happened via list mail, but if thats all via list mail is
>> it the entire truth.
>> Nowe we are mostly wiser, maybe its safe to revisit the mystory.
>> I am in 2 minds about getting james back should the opertunity arrise
>> again though.
>> That is unless we can actually find out what going on.
>> All I know is whatever happened to get things to not go to plan it
>> must have been a monster thing in deed.
>> We may never know what that is but if there is a way to resolve this
>> mystory I'd be interested in that.
>>
>
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