SimCast – How a bad business decision can destroy your dreams…

This is a terrible thing Prong. I am very disappointed that a scripter would just walk away from the project after they drained you of all your money. Understanding the nature of the project and the amount of money all ready paid, I would have thought they would have at least finished it off under the condition that it remains their property until the balance was paid off. That would have allowed you to continue forward and they would then collect the balance.

I agree with Apotheus in that I would NEVER hire a scripter in SL on a per hour basis. Especially at RL rates. In RL I own a printing business and we do graphic design. I would never get any work if when handed a layout, I was not able to give a price to create it. We have learned to estimate the amount of time required and price accordingly. At times this has bitten us in the ass, but we have also learned to estimate a little high to help make up for such situations. Once the initial work is done, if the customer decides they want major changes, we slide to a per hour basis, and estimate the time required for each major revision. Also, the graphic design that we do is 100% owned by the customer in its native file format with all supporting files.

Prong, I am really sorry this happened to you. If it is any consolation, your lesson has been one for myself and others also. I will never commission a scripting job in SL without putting in the safe guards that Apotheus has mentioned. If there is anything I can do to help, IM me.

Carnildo, this software was not created for Prong. It was created over a year ago. It is available for licensing to whoever wants to license it. Heck, it even used to be open source, but the creator decided to close the source and assume full control of it since nobody seemed keen on lending a hand.

Apotheus, AFAIK the hourly rate was for support and some minor tweaks, the software was already fully developed before money ever got into the picture.

I whole heartedly disagree Eggy... The current revision of this product evolved so many times over the past few months, it barely resembles the open source it was based on from the beginning. Many new subsystems were added, like a full blown security grid and self contained automated update system. Those items never exsisted in the product until I requested them. They were created out of necessity, with money that I invested to make that happen.

May I ask a question? How would you know what I have implemented? You were not on the development team, and I really dont recall ever seeing you in SimCast. If you are going to make comments like this, please have all your facts before doing so...

Let it be known that SimCast CAN and WILL survive this.

Despite the fact that this has set us back quite a bit, I honestly feel that we will ultimately end up with a much better product in the end. I absolutely refuse to accept the fact that this is norm, and prefer to view it as the exception.

The ability to adapt and overcome any obstacles is a prime ingredient in any large scaled project. But how does one accomplish such a thing when the source remains closed?

Simply stated, something bad needs to happen… Something that makes you open your eyes and identify your short comings. Sometimes the losses are small, sometimes great, but nonetheless, those losses WILL occur.

I hate to admit it, but by making one bad business decision, I alienated my team members and stifled its creativity. What used to be the very foundation of this project began to resemble a bottleneck, preventing great ideas from ever being heard or implemented. This is a horrible way to manage a project….

And I have paid that price dearly…

Told you ((edited to remove name)) was bad >_<



((edited to remove calling out of names to keep thread on track))

Please, please, please!

Please refrain from posting the name of the programmer in this thread. It is important that this discussion remain open and honorable. Having this thread shut down because someone named names will not do SimCast or the Second Life Community any good at all.

It is important that others learn from my losses, and the only platform I can do this from is here in these forums. I can understand that some may want to thrash this thread, and others may feel inclined to name names, but I cannot help but feel that this is to important of an issue to be lost to a locked or deleted thread.

What difference does a name make? It's pretty obvious who we're talking about. It doesn't matter that their names aren't mentioned, it seems obvious that their reputation is being damaged.

I'm not entirely sure what the goal of this discussion is. You didn't negotiate for a copy of the source code, and now you're regretting your decision.

Nit: Open source refers to code that is published, allowing everyone the ability to read, redistrubute, and make derivative works. It seems to me what we're talking about here is a closed-source project, where the customers were never granted any rights to the source code.

Main Entry: rep•u•ta•tion
Function: noun
: overall quality or character as seen or judged by people in general within a community

As with any business owner, a reputation is earned. After quite a few rounds of beta testing, we began to see that the current combat system had issues. I stopped selling combat components and started asking some hard questions. The feedback from our customers using this product had a direct impact on our decision to remove these items from our vendors. Isn’t it logical to ask these questions considering our reputation was also at stake?



I did ask to purchase the rights to the source numerous times. But by then, a lot of money had been invested, and countless man hours we spent on other areas of the project. Not only did I help finance the creation of the new modules, I spent a fair amount of time hunting down the bugs with every new revision.

For the record, I was offered a cut from every base kit sold, but ultimately I declined that offer. I placed my full trust in the fact that if I took care of my programmer, my programmer would take care of me… I even went as far as generating a secondary sale!



Now that I fully understand the ramifications behind my decision, I find myself in an almost impossible position. I was left with programming costs in excess of $2,100.00 USD, a closed source combat system that I cannot use because of existing issues, and an entire project that needs to be recreated from scratch.

The success of a business is based on the quality of its product… I was the customer in this case. The cost of doing business in this fashion, and the manor in which you treat your customers is the very foundation upon which a reputation is built.

Waaaaah F***** Waaaaaaaa!!!!!!

Just messin witcha Prong , mad love kid!!!!! Love the whole idea man!

Now as you've stateted a few times now, "You made a f*d up business decission". Now, me to you, suck it up kid!!!!! You have continued support from your team, other artist and residence, and as stated by someone else, (but differently) pick yourself up, dust that scripter's crap off that he so graciously pooped on you, let everyone know "The Champ is BACK!" and rock n f*n' roll!!!!!

My $2L pep talk is over I know you wanna hear me ramble suh-mo

Issue at hand: This is an extremely unfortunate inccident that I am possitive that you have learned from and are now much the wiser for. (bad thing?) We'd all rather not go through it, but when it happens take the learning experience and grow from it.

I don't have a clue as to how the legalities of things work here in SL!!!! Since my arrival I've seen some unbelieveable sh*t, with apparently no end in site.
Still haven't figured how the Lindens address TM/CR issues, one guy get's jumped on bout "this thingy by Mattel", yet I see Budweiser beer cans everywhere!!! Some one can make racial slurs and direct physical threats and just "chills", while someone buys a gun, which are heavely promoted and yes Seburo kicks major ass!, accidently shots some one, on thier own property mind, and KA-SHHHWAAP, suspended!

I am a 3D character modeler/animator. I've seen these issues go both ways. My suggestion to you is, considering that the only "laws" here seem to be the short stubby arms of the Lindens, is that you must
a) protect yourself and your interests, propably contractually, before anything takes place. Even to the point of having RL legal type assist, dude your putting a lotta time and money in this.
b) Me personally, obviously a lot less popular and whatnot, would only engage individuals based on my own reputation system. Remeber you have to be more comfortable when working with people her in SL. As you see, you don't get much "legal" advice from the Ls and here someone can, screw ya, make and alt, giggle and run away.

I've been blessed with great friends here in SL. When I started and needed stuff I tapped into my friends network, and thier friends, and..... Each person I met could basically be vouched for by someone else I knew well, insuring that I got good help and everyone in the chain is boosting thier reputation, hopefully for the better.

I with you on the reputation thing Prong!! I'm an ole school Northeast beast straight out da hood, all a man has that is truely his, is his word!!!

Quicky, I took on a job in SL for some one as a Production Assistant. Excellent oppertunity to really get "in world" and see how stuff works. My employeer asked of me some minor, yet important to them, things to look up and aquire. Now, I had RL gigs come up. This project is kick ass, but I realize that this is extremely important to all involved and if I wasn't able to give my 100% to the effort it would be unfair and possibly detrimental to thier project. Would I want someone to do that to me?!!! NOT!!!
So I promptly returned payment I had recieved, along with $100L for good faith, and still gave him the object I was able to aquire. Needless to say the only "real" thing that was on the line, MY REPUTATION.

Enough already *crawls back into hole from whence he came*

We need people like you to stand strong and fight the go fight brother!!!!

Gee, I dont know, maybe because I'm best friends with your developer and in fact I am his partner on other ventures? And maybe because I was there back when he coded the MMOG toolkit and in fact I even had a copy of it?
Maybe because people talk to each other and I've been following his progress over the course of these few months.
I have the chat logs. You didn't seem to be acting reasonable. You seem to not be acting reasonably now. In fact, I've had to put up with many clients who had the same attitude. Waah, waah, I bought an engine and it didn't come with a full-fledged ready-made game out of the box. A game engine is where the development starts.
Plagiarizing the engine you acquired will not help your project succeed. In fact, if you want to do an MMORPG, SL is entirely the wrong place to go about it. I still contend that anything you can do in SL, you can do better outside it. Starting with creatures that actually animate themselves in a realistic way.
Also, have you ever stopped to think that maybe pouring thousands of dollars into one of the most obscure MMOs in existence wasnt such a good idea?
The developer *IS* a good developer. The engine *IS* a good engine.
There was no need for this and I have to agree with Francis here. This is all about you venting drama on the forums. There is no issue to be discussed here.

Well, I guess that you and your business partner don't see anything wrong with charging thousands of dollars for a product that doesn't live up to what it's supposed to do. And if that is how you and your partner choose to do business, I guess thats your way of making a living off of other residents that place their trust in your product.

Here in the states, we frown upon these types of business practices...

I took the main core of this wonderful system down today, and noted an increase of almost 600 FPS in the debug panel stats. That in itself speaks clearly about the quality of product I purchased, and your replys here reflect the type of support one can expect if your product is questioned.

Can you please enlighten me on what part of this situation I should be happy about?

Thanks for the wonderful, expensive, and enlightening lesson you have taught me...

This has spiraled into a conversation that should be taken off the forums. Please don't use the Second Life Forums to discuss personal issues or attack each other in personal ways. There are many other more appropriate places for discussions of this type. As such, I'm closing this thread.