Creating The Means For The Production — On Zoe Quinn - Our last statement

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On Zoe Quinn - Our last statement

Zoe Quinn contacted us last night. For those people that have been trying to contact me since that exchange, I’m sorry for not getting back to you. We had to discuss many things internally at TFYC in the time between then and now. 

Many people don’t understand how much I did not want to be the voice of this production. I normally do not deal with the public, and I do not do PR, I know I can’t spell, and I have a very large fear of appearing on camera, which is why I have not done any webcam interviews. My friends did not know my politics on women’s issues. This was a part of me I did not want to share publicly. And I thought, which has been proved time and time again in the coverage around this project, that a man was not supposed to speak about women’s issues. 

I wanted to support someone else’s idea, and when the whole Twitter storm happened, we were in the process of hiring an individual to replace me so I would never have to speak to the public at all. We did not feel that the person who was to assume my role would be treated fairly, and so I assumed the role. This was in part because a backer of the original production stepped out because of the drama. 

Regarding our grievances with Zoe Quinn, an associate of hers, posted my Facebook information. Zoe did not add any information to the post, nor did she post my phone number or email. The subsequent death threat I received via email was not orchestrated by Zoe. Nor was the DDOSing of our website or the banning of us from Twitter. She was simply the most famous voice in a choir of people that did not understand the project. 

Zoe and I come from completely different worlds. She has fans and speaks with them regularly as part of her life and her profession. The line between who is a friend, who is a fan, who is a supporter, and who is a colleague sometimes blur. I enter companies and few people even know my name; I leave companies and I am quickly forgotten. I get paid by the hour, or by the job with each task itemized. The friends I do have are deeply personal, and none of them I contact on social networks. I do not wish to be a celebrity, even if it is just online. I am a visitor to his Indie game world and I will eventually take my leave. 

I do not feel Zoe understood the ramifications of what she associate was posting or how it would affect me professionally and personally. Arguably speaking, many people would have killed for the Internet publicity I recieved due to the attention her presence called to the post and my subsequent failings to control my anger about the issues by posting to reddit. I had no idea it would go viral, and for that I am sorry for the people that I hurt. 

The fallout from the posting of my info costed me around $10,000 dollars, as a business partner walked of the production because of the negative publicity and a sponsor refused to come on board with production being deemed transphobic. I have paid this money and it has not affected my standard of living. The fallout she is receiving, from what she personally described to me, is.

The subsequent conversations I have had with the community have affected me deeply and your support has been very welcome and I feel it has made me stronger as a person. 

I honestly think at the time, everything she said about the project, she thought was an appropriate way to deal what she perceived as a threat to woman in the industry. This immediate reaction is reflected in the coverage of the project. 

As such I no longer wish to discuss her role in this fiasco. I apologize to any reporter that may be interested in this story but if asked I will simply say “I do not recall exactly what happened.” So the conversation can end. 

I feel anyone can redeem themselves, I am still critical of many of her policies but I assume many of you are critical of some of mine as well. 

We may never be friends, but we are no longer enemies, and she will not be involved in TFYC. Your opinion of what she did is your own, my opinion is that it is no longer worth mentioning in regards to this production. I am sorry if this causes you to lose respect for me, but in the end this is something that I must do, for the good of the project. Because perhaps by getting past this issue journalists will finally cover not only what TFYC is about, but also the incredible achievements women have accomplished in the industry, instead of a narrative that only points them as victims.

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No one asked us about Gamergate for its anniversary. We aren’t sure if that is a good thing or a bad thing. But Koretzky didn’t know who we were so it’s not surprising. The Canadian division of the company would like to make our official opinion on...

No one asked us about Gamergate for its anniversary. We aren’t sure if that is a good thing or a bad thing. But Koretzky didn’t know who we were so it’s not surprising. The Canadian division of the company would like to make our official opinion on the matter the image above. Stolen and modified from (http://kurkoboltsi.deviantart.com/art/Enter-Lil-Slugger-319228232) the nerds will get it, and that’s more or less who we were trying to reach with this whole thing anyways. Despite popular opinion you gamers are the people that are helping minorities make games, both through us and other projects.

Danielle isn’t involved in the Gamergate conflict and Autobotika quite franky is so far away from it’s silly to ask their opinion.

The project while not finished is at a state where TFYC no longer needs to be involved. And while Twitter is fun, we really feel that most of the people using it to contact us would be best helped if we no longer responded. The store is now closed for poster and what not, although if you have a personal request we may be able to meet it. We’ll be Open Sourcing the code in the next 30 days and licensing all the art under Creative Commons as per our arrangement.

Danielle still has time left with the programmer, after he recovers so if you have any suggestions for the game submit them on the Steam Community page and we’ll implement them into her game. Before we hand over all the rights.

If you are a backer we will be contacting you about your reward and you can always contact us a support@thefineyoungcapitalists.com with suggestions.

At some point, you get tired from doing work for no money, and we passed  that point month ago. And quite frankly I don’t think when either side writes the story of what happened in the game industry for the last year we’ll be mentioned.

To those asking if we’ll do it again… that depend if we can find a way to raise the money in the end the limiting factor is always money.

But on the topic of crowdsourcing and to address all the criticism that we’ve got… it’s difficult to take your criticism seriously… when your project still hasn’t been completed. When it’s finished we’ll be happy to bow to your superiority.

You can get it here, but please play the demo first.

http://store.steampowered.com//app/367710

We are paying to use your computer

We can not replicate the OpenGL error on any system, we’ve tried on multiple systems, and hardware configurations and we can’t replicate the error. I.E. it works here and not there.

If you are having this error, I.E. that the game is telling you that you need OpenGl 3.1, have a high speed internet connection and have either installed the Afterlife Empire Demo, or the Afterlife Empire Full game we will pay you 20 dollars an hour to have remote access to your system to diagnosis the error.

If you are interested contact support@thefineyoungcapitalists.com

On Updates

Since Friday we’ve pushed 5 separate updates for capability. If you were unable to run the game before (I.E. It gave you an OpenGL error or just loaded with a black screen, could you please try the game again. If you are still having problem it will help to diagnosis the error.

On Modding Text

Somone was asking to edit the text in the game. Since it support modding you can install these zipped file at http://www.thefineyoungcapitalists.com/DavidText.zip in your Mod directory, (You can find it by Right Clicking on file in Steam and go to Properties and Local Files to find that folder, work in both the Full Version and the Demo version.)

Edit the JSON file and you can change whatever text you want.

Feel free to create incriminating screenshot, change everyones text to “Fart,” or you know create a constructive work.

The programmer wishes for me to write out that the OpenGL version I got are wrong…

The current version is OpenGL 4.5

The version installed with Windows varies but OpenGL 1.1 is the most common

He plays games on his PC (Master Race Represent) and the games run on his fine.

The code that is causing the error is 

if (!_vertexArray){
       glGenVertexArrays(1, &_vertexArray);
   }

He’s added code to make sure all the openGL function he is using are actually installed and it will now warn you properly instead of just quitting or crashing.

He mostly does IOS stuff where this isn’t a problem.

With a heavy heart we say

From Danielle and Lola

Hello everyone!

We want to thank you for being interested in Afterlife Empire. We want to provide the best game possible, so we’re going to be delaying the launch a bit so that we can do so.

Most of our team is working on Macs, so we haven’t had as much bug testing as we’d like on PCs. With our backers having the early access keys we are getting a lot of support and reports on potentially game-breaking bugs we need to fix before we release the game.

For our backers, please email us at Support@TheFineYoungCapitalists.com with reports of any crashes or bugs you experience so we can fix these as quickly as possible. Screenshots are welcome, along with as much detail as you can provide.

For everyone else waiting, we hope that you understand that we want to present a polished product for you to play. Thank you for your patience and understanding. We’ll be announcing more details on the new release date soon!

Stay spooky!

Current Developments

image

First of all Afterlife Empires Steam Greenlight page is up. Greenlight is our prefered way of distributing the game so if you have a moment feel free to vote it up at 

http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=370251965


Second of all, we offered a scholarship for STEM through a partnership with the Porn Charity. Well we are happy to announce the winner, for the first year.

Jordan Newton who is studying Computer Science we’ve included her essay so all of our backers have a better understanding of what we saw in her.


Growing up, I have always loved video games, and it’s been the general consensus that I would always go into the field myself. However, it wasn’t until just recently that my aspirations were more refined to the grand vision of the future that I see now. I want to completely revolutionize the way we think about the union between education and technology using the awesome, enthralling power that video games have. Inspired by my younger brother and his struggles in traditional classroom settings, my dream is to work in the game industry making educational games that are actually both fun and functional. Because my little brother has so many learning disorders, he developed a severe anxiety towards books and reading. However, his love for video games has made me realize that he loves great stories as much as any avid reader does, and that his voracious appetite for games has actually helped him dramatically improve his reading skills. After this startling revelation, I began to research the link between “gamifcation” and education, and have shifted my career goals to making games that teach not just for people like my brother, but for gamers of all ages. After studying and experimenting with “gamification”, there is absolutely no reason that gamers—regardless of age, gender, race, sexuality—can’t learn things of merit from games. If Minecraft can teach kids about digital logic and basic circuitry, why can’t we teach any other subject? I also believe that I deserve this scholarship for my work in promoting diversity within the field. I am a National Center for Women & Information Technology Aspirations in Computing winner, an award given to young women who serve as inspirations for both young women and women who have long been in the industry. I am also one of nine young women worldwide chosen to be a She++ Campus Ambassador, a position that gives college-going women the resources needed to help alleviate some of the specific problems that plague their campuses in regards to being both accessible and hospitable to underrepresented demographics. I also teach weekend computing workshops for middle school girls, volunteer with GEMS clubs, and mentor several FIRST robotics teams. Ultimately, and hopefully through developing my games, I hope to become a positive inspiration for girls wanting to become computer scientists and game developers themselves. I feel that many of the women in the industry spotlight give an overall negative impression of the field, and are actually pushing aspiring young women away from the field rather than encouraging them to pursue their passions. I want to set a positive example for women everywhere that you can be both kind and successful in a field that has for so long been telling them that such a feat is impossible. Financially, these dreams are a long shot. Annually, my FAFSA EFC is the absolute lowest it can be, and I have had to take out private loans and borrow to be able to pay for my education thus far.

gamergate

On Pointless E-Drama

So we sold about 27 posters. Which in one case is really cool but in a more accurate case, did not cover the cost of creating the posters, printing them and purchasing the Shopify account. All in all we made exactly $50 bucks, which we are using to purchase a framed poster of Lizzy as Zelda to ship to her. We are going to write an email to her so we can get her physical address, something that we find vaguely ironic, as her reason for leaving GamerGate was that information was placed online. We will be still selling posters for the next weeks so feel free to purchase them at

http://the-fine-young-capitalists.myshopify.com/

And the funds will go into the scholarship fund for next year.  Apply at

http://www.thefineyoungcapitalists.com/Scholarship

I feel that the reason for the poor sales is of course out fault. It’s difficult to promote these kind of things, and even with awesome designers, it’s hard to attract attention, especially if you don’t want to engage in the normal sort of E-Drama.

We’ll contact the design idea winners privately and work out how we can illustrate design for them for a smaller cost.

As for the rest of it…

When we started the women in game design project what we really wanted to do was two things.

1.)  Get women more involved in game design.

2.)  Show that the gaming community wanted to support them.

Everyone feels that we have accomplished that goal.

But Matt literally wanted to work on the project with the goal that he just handles the money, and the planning and not have to deal with the public. So far he’s had not one, not two, but three writers from top online publications call him a scam artist, he got death threats, and multiple people from an Online Anti-Harassment Task force have openly attacked him.

All of this was expected; in point of fact we had multiple meeting on the topic before we even started the Indiegogo. This is why Lola is the only person in the video, and why Heather presented the project. But none of that really matters and Matt was the person who made the comment on the Reddit and now it’s “his” project for some reason, despite the fact he is nether getting paid or directing the production.

The fact that no one is talking to Lola or Danielle shows the deep sexism that is present in the gaming issue.  And the fact that the supposed moral majority in the gaming press hasn’t contacted them for their side of the story further expresses that point.

A man by the name of John Bain once said that the best thing for people that were interested in improving the gaming climate was to not focus on Internet celebrity drama. And it’s with that comment in mind that we will be moving our webpage TheFineYoungCapitalists.com to focus on the scholarship fund in the next couple days and not Afterlife Empire

Afterlifeempire.com will be hosting the majority of the updates on the project. And you can contact support@thefineyoungcapitalists.com or support@afterlifeempire.com if you have any question on how the money is being spent. But for the good of Danielle and Lola we feel we should separate the two projects.

In the end no one cares about the drama involved in creating the game, and everyone cares that the project actually be delivered. We feel dealing with the E-Drama and these smaller projects distract us from that goal.

We’ll update people sporadically on how the game is going Via Twitter and Tumblr but I don’t think we’ll be dealing with anymore of this E-Drama. Which includes not making silly post to gather attention.

It will be interesting to see how that works for us. I think it will make it more difficult for us to get through Greenlight in the future. But in the end all we did was give women the tool to present their ideas and rely on the Gamer community to support us in creating them.

Thanks for that Gamers, but to make you proud, we really have to stop following the endless drama that is Gamergate and actually finish the game that you paid for.

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