Captain Hygiene posted:

It's true, not even the legendarily multi-layered systems in Breath of the Wild let you eat fairies to gain power. Looks like Nordic Raven finally does what Nintendon't!

AntherUslessPoster posted:

Upsides of being trilingual:

Downsides of being trilingual:
thread title

FirstAidKite posted:

I regret to inform you that the art may have in fact been done by an actual literal child and so now I feel somewhat bad for laughing at it.

LITERALLY A BIRD posted:

I'll change it, and don't worry about it because a lot of native English speakers seem to be mixing those two up recently

tuyop posted:

I liked the old thread title better.

AntherUslessPoster posted:

Yeah I liked the mistake how it was, its not 'your/you're'

LITERALLY A BIRD posted:

When we last rebooted the Funny Pictures thread I picked as subtitle the post that read "PYF Funny Pictures Thread: Now with less text walls!"

My only efficient trolling is through prescriptivism

AntherUslessPoster posted:

The Something Awful Forums > Main (moderated LITERALLY BY A BIRD)

Sorry I couldn't resist

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The man behind an alleged crowdfunding scam wants you to know he isn’t a scammer

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The agency claims Monahan took his backpack funds and spent them on “personal expenses,” including bitcoin purchases, ATM withdrawals, and credit card debt. The agency says he threatened backers who pursued him for their bags. The state of Texas is suing him, too. A lot of people want a piece of Monahan, but he’s not going down without a fight. He’s serving as his own lawyer to dispute the claims in court, and he invited me down to Texas to clear his name and reputation.

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I ask why he thinks the FTC is going after him. “I am the poster child for fraud and crowdfunding,” he says sarcastically. “You’re looking at the Jesse James, the John Dillinger.”

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Thousands of people bought into Monahan’s project, netting him nearly $800,000 to bring the bag to life. He shipped a few beta units, but the vast majority of people never received anything. They haven’t seen the backpack in person. They don’t believe it’s real, and they started a Facebook group to organize ways to recoup their money and get the FTC’s attention. As far as they’re concerned, Monahan’s a grifter, and the FTC lawsuit was long-awaited and necessary. They track the case in the group, too. “Clearly Doug is a snake in the grass and hopefully the Federal Trade Commission hammers him,” one member of the group wrote.

Meanwhile, Monahan says they just don’t understand him or crowdfunding, in general. He’s not a bad guy, he says. It’s just that businesses fail sometimes, which is what he invited me to Texas to prove. Poking at Monahan’s past, however, suggests this isn’t a man with a one-time flub, but rather someone with a trail of failures. Is he a con-artist? An irresponsible businessman? Does the difference even matter?

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At 63, Doug Monahan walks with a limp, and he’s on the shorter side, about five-foot-eight. He says he lost some height because doctors amputated an inch of his left leg after he broke it falling out of bed, the result of a diagnosis of deep vein thrombosis, or blood clots, and a subsequent hospital stay. He sent me a photo titled “NECROTIC LEG.pdf” that purported to show the wound that caused the amputation, but it’s not clear if it’s really his leg. I can tell he’s been sick, however, which Monahan reminds me of in our meetings. He brings it up in his court case, too. This is why the backpacks never shipped, he says.

The blood clots and hospital stay incapacitated him, as did the fall and amputation, and he couldn’t keep paying people or focusing on manufacturing. He got addicted to pain pills, too. At the same time, the batteries that were supposed to go in the bag represented a liability. The iBackpack drama occurred around the same time that Samsung Galaxy Note 7 batteries started catching fire, and he didn’t feel comfortable shipping lithium-ion batteries. Someone could have died, he says.

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“I didn’t count on batteries exploding,” he says. “When [the backers] started saying they were going to shoot through my house, and ‘gently caress you, Doug, you motherfucker,’ and ‘Give us our backpack,’ no, I’m not going to give you the backpack because they might explode.” (Monahan claims a backer threatened him first, which pushed him to threaten in retaliation, which the FTC mentions in its complaint. Monahan has not provided evidence that he was threatened.)
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But some backers spent $200 or more on the backpack, and they wanted their product — if it even existed.

After reading the court case and hearing from backers about how this bag isn’t real, I am surprised to see the backpack in front of me at Pappasito’s. How could it be here? Monahan slides the bag out from beneath the table and props it up on his lap. It exists, and it comes with a whole demo, which involves Monahan pulling out lots of external batteries (at least five). He keeps piling them up on the table. It seems an entire accessories line was stuffed into the bag: a flashlight, a car charger, and many external batteries, which he places next to his Texas-sized sangria and bacon-wrapped shrimp.

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Monahan unpacks the bag and shows me the Kevlar plate, which he says comes from the “Chinese military.” After my visit, he told me to send a video crew to Texas to prove it worked — by shooting him in the back. (We declined.)

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onahan’sMonahan’s story, at least the way he tells it, makes him out to be an entrepreneur who hit the big time, was told he had two years to live 12 years ago, ended up living longer than expected, and ran out of cash. He started a company called Sunset Direct in the ‘90s, a marketing database company, that he says sold for $6 million. (On a subsequent call with a fact-checker, he upgraded that figure to $20 million.) A Securities and Exchange Commission filing shows that it sold for $3.5 million and around 3 million shares to a company called Rainmaker. He loves his own mythology: how he started the business with his credit cards, $25,000 in cash, no loans, and absolutely zero crowdfunding. He says he attended and graduated from West Point on LinkedIn, even though the school says he dropped out after his freshman year.

An old friend of Monahan’s, Neil Ochs, tells me that he really did once live a lavish lifestyle, although he mostly spent his money in pursuit of women. When told about the iBackpack story, Ochs says Monahan worked hard to produce the bags. He says it’s “unfortunate” the FTC is suing Monahan.

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“He bought laser eye surgery for girls,” Ochs says. “He bought boob jobs for girls. He put girls through college.” He says Monahan would charter jets and fly women to New Orleans to take them shopping while he drank wine.

His mansion, Ochs says, featured “hundreds of thousands of dollars” of stereo equipment, a margarita machine, a tanning bed, and Jet Skis. He makes Monahan’s house sound like a Texas version of the Playboy Mansion located right on Lake Austin.

Ochs remembers in the early 2000s, when Monahan first learned about Segway tours, Monahan wanted one for a party he was hosting but was told he’d be put on a waiting list. Instead, according to Ochs, he wrote a blank check to get one delivered to his house and paid two or three times what it should have cost. “It was a disgusting display of wealth,” Ochs says.

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Nothing about his current living situation seems enviable, except for maybe his 2005 red Mercedes 500SL. His one-level Houston house smells like cigarettes. He says he quit opioids, but he clearly has other vices. He keeps margarita mix and wine in bulk. He pours one glass of wine while I’m there but then leaves it somewhere and pours another. I can’t tell if he has a bad memory or just can’t be bothered to fetch his glass. An ashtray sits next to his dozen or so computers, which he owns so he can “communicate with the world.” (Monahan mentions he used the dark web to purchase drugs in the past.)

He keeps lots of snacks around, too, like Reese’s, various cookies, trail mix, M&Ms, bagels. He also has bottles of Pepto-Bismol and Pedialyte out in the kitchen, as well as lotion for diabetic skin and tight socks for his blood clots. He can barely walk and needs to sit often. He installed handles on the walls for him to grab for support. He says people come over to take care of him, rub his back, cut his hair, cook, and clean. The windows behind his computer lab are blocked, so no natural light shines in.

But then, there again are the reminders of his past. Monahan dedicates a room to awards and press clippings. He shows me his “founding fathers,” or the credit cards he used to start Sunset Direct. He keeps his past business cards out alongside old, framed checks, like one for $6 million made out to Sunset Direct from Compaq, a settlement Monahan says the company paid him after he sued Compaq for allegedly not delivering business on a signed contract and supposedly stealing an idea for a discount program. Monahan wasn’t going to let a dollar go unpaid to him.

“I don’t need to make a shrine to myself in my own house,” he says, despite having built something akin to it.

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The second explanation for iBackpack’s existence, Monahan says, was realizing that crowdfunding could offer him lots of money to fund an idea. In fact, he took hints from one of Kickstarter’s most notorious feature-stuffed gadgets: a cooler with a Bluetooth speaker, USB chargers, and a built-in blender. It raised over $13 million on Kickstarter.

“I saw the Coolest Cooler, and I’m thinking, ‘Jesus, if people are going to give $14 million to a cooler for crying out loud that they only use every weekend, maybe, then what do they need?’” he asks. “They need a backpack. Everybody uses backpacks … I never in my wildest dreams thought I’d get $800,000 and have the FTC breathing down my neck calling me a lying, cheating, scumbag thief.”

What Monahan perhaps didn’t see coming was that Coolest Cooler wouldn’t ship to all its backers and would officially shut down its operation five years after its Kickstarter campaign went live. Its backers are also angry, as evidenced by comments on its Kickstarter page. They, too, operate a Facebook group, and the Oregon Department of Justice investigated the company.

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The team relied on video conferencing software GoToMeeting to stay in touch, which both Cruz and Justes mentioned. Justes says Monahan often looked unkempt in the meetings and would wear dirty shirts and boxer shorts in an old apartment during video calls.

“What are you doing, man? We’re supposed to be having a professional conversation about this up-and-coming business, and you’re sitting here in your underwear that’s dirtier than hell with two handguns?” Justes says.

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What frustrates Monahan is that other businesses fail, and the executives don’t have to respond to the FTC or State of Texas about why they did. He operated in that same realm until recently. He doesn’t fully understand why the FTC and the backers are so angry about iBackpack. He notes that $800,000 isn’t much money — not even enough to warrant a scam. Instead, he sees himself as someone who did what was necessary to make his business run. And because of circumstances outside his control, his business failed, just like any other tech company. For the first time, however, Monahan has to answer to angry customers, government lawyers, and a reporter for why he lost all this cash.

“The thing is, Ashley, I like myself whether anybody else in the world doesn’t,” he says. “I care about what you think of me, and I care about my really close friends, but the rest of the world? They don’t know anything about me, nor do they care.”

Monahan believes the entire ordeal is overblown. It’s almost inconceivable that a backpack could be his downfall. He says he did nothing wrong. He was just himself.

“All they want is their paycheck or their bag — it’s a transaction, and it’s not my job to be nice to people, either.”

quote:

What about copyright?

The game is being developed in a country that does not recognize copyright. On top of that, the product will go live on the Tron Network, whose administration has promised the game will be safe from getting taken down since it will be secure on their decentralized blockchain.

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Are we biting off more than we can chew?

When you think about an MMORPG you probably think of enormous games like World of Warcraft, Eve Online or TERA, in which you have an endless array of possibilities
(raids, guild wars, infinite quests, enormous dungeons, a never-ending realm…) and our vision for Pokemon Worlds is similar to that. The core idea behind the game is to build a classic adventure world with a focus on the story campaign, but with online elements added
around it. Combining all 8 generations of Maps and Pokemon is surprisingly inexpensive. Upgrading the graphics to unreal engine standards, and then integrating new original features will be the brunt of the work load, and is what majority of the investment will be used for.

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Pokemon will also have rarity levels. Sick of rattatas and zuebats? You won't be when a legendary 1/400 limited edition rattata and a 1 of 33 existing shiny zuebat attacks you and your friend at the same time. Yes thats right, when you're running around with your friends, you can encounter 2 different pokemon at the same time, in fact, we've even made it so a group of 3 could encounter 3 different wild pokemon at once and have an epic 3v3 battle!

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Risks and challenges

Releasing an online Pokemon game with all 8 generations of Maps and Pokemon is the easy part. Integrating completely new and original modes and features will be our biggest challenge, which is why most of the budget will be used to speed up the creation these new features. We already have a solid network figured out that the game will safely reside on. Since it will go on a decentralized network, it will be fully protected from being taken down or censored in any way.

Pokemon World posted:

The in game currency will be primarily earnable through through the main quest line, side quests, and daily quests. However, as you play the game, more opprotunities to make pokegold will arise, as we have many options planned in this free to play game. Below is a list of features to be implemented by Christmas this year for our Alpha Launch. This list represents about 50% of what we have planned for the full version.

Kennel posted:

What about copyright? 

The game is being developed in a country that does not recognize copyright.

Remora posted:

Pokemon Worlds: Now you can brag about violating intellectual property law... with all the security of the blockchain.

I want to be surprised that the listed location is Miami, but I can't. Bonus, the comments section is probably going to get pretty spicy soon.

Where the hell do these people get the idea that you can make a gigantic MMO for 160k without doing any of the work yourself?

muscles like this! posted:

Also the whole thing about trying to make a game about a property you have no ownership over.

Also also someone else has already made an MMO Pokemon knock off.

Remora posted:

Pokemon Worlds: Now you can brag about violating intellectual property law... with all the security of the blockchain.

I want to be surprised that the listed location is Miami, but I can't. Bonus, the comments section is probably going to get pretty spicy soon.

Where the hell do these people get the idea that you can make a gigantic MMO for 160k without doing any of the work yourself?

muscles like this! posted:

Also the whole thing about trying to make a game about a property you have no ownership over.

Also also someone else has already made an MMO Pokemon knock off.

multijoe posted:

zuebats

quote:

Releasing an online Pokemon game with all 8 generations of Maps and Pokemon is the easy part. Integrating completely new and original modes and features will be our biggest challenge, which is why most of the budget will be used to speed up the creation these new features. We already have a solid network figured out that the game will safely reside on. Since it will go on a decentralized network, it will be fully protected from being taken down or censored in any way.

Alan Smithee posted:

quote:

Then Monahan goes in again with the question he thinks will pin the whole story on them.

“How come I’m the poster child for bad crowdfunds,” he asks. “What did I do wrong, other than everything?”

The lawyers pause. Monahan waits. He’s ready for me to hear the truth.

“The basis for our lawsuit is that you took money from 4,000 or so people, about $800,000 worth, and that you made representations to them about what you were going to do with that money, and that those representations were not true,” the lawyer says.

The Lone Badger posted:

Awful Kickstarters vol 2: What did I do wrong, other than everything?

Collateral Damage posted:

glossing over how he has no qualifications for making a game in the first place

Collateral Damage posted:

My favorite part of that PokeMMO campaign (disregarding "blockchain" and the ton of copyright bricks falling towards his head) is how he goes into detail of how various tiny aspects of the game will work while glossing over how he has no qualifications for making a game in the first place.

He reminds me a lot of logansryche.

e: Actually I'm starting to think this might be another logansryche idea. There's a lot of similarities.

Hub Cat posted:

This is like Super Dunning-Kruger level 2.

AntherUslessPoster posted:

How do laws in USA work for that case that the guy is in states, but the copyright violating product is somewhere with no USA jurisdiction?
Is it something like 'we can't take it down but we know you did it so we sue you, write the check now'?


Ah, the endgame title for this thread

Paladinus posted:

With projects like this, there are three options: a literal child, someone mentally ill, an incredibly brazen, yet stupid scammer. With this one, I feel it something between the first two options.

Kickstarter Comment posted:

Why would Chinese investors with 80 grand to blow have you, who is essentially a nobody with zero project management, business, software development game design experience, or a working prototype go to you to gauge interest in a project?

KS Creator posted:

I'm not sure Matt. Why do we add toxic chemicals to our food and water supply that are banned in most other countries? I hope since you're so passionate about being negative to someones first project that you're also super passionate about actual important things.
It's only a problem to you and a select few sad/angry individuals. Are you constantly flaming PokeOne and Pokemon Revolution as well? I'm super curious lol.

AntherUslessPoster posted:

How do laws in USA work for that case that the guy is in states, but the copyright violating product is somewhere with no USA jurisdiction?
Is it something like 'we can't take it down but we know you did it so we sue you, write the check now'?

Waffleman_ posted:

Kickstarter is based in the United States and so the campaign itself falls under US jurisdiction, since KS themselves can be found responsible for hosting the campaign. KS also takes a cut of what a campaign makes, meaning they would be directly profiting off of the infringing material.