On Questions From a “Journalist”

We get a lot of messages from female journalists, who ask inflamatory questions and then expect us to get angry. My personal favorite was the one that threatened to tell 4chan the truth so they’d ask for their money back.

If anyone figures out who sent these questions can you just ignore her instead of engaging. I don’t really care if people ask me questions, that’s what I booked time off work for.

But I do care on how she’s treated. All this project has taught me is that many women (But not all) try to get offended and expect me to change my opinion for their benefit. That’s not something I do for men, that’s not something I’ll do for women. Sorry this is the cost of equality.

Her questions are in bold

As stated when I contacted you earlier, I’m in the process of writing an article on The Fine Young Capitalists and would appreciate public statements from you on a number of matters I’m
still a bit unclear on.

None of the women submitting game design pitches for your contest has their full names listed, and I have been unable to find any evidence, anywhere of a single one of them attempting to promote their individual nominees.

That was by design, they don’t have their full name present, or a picture specifically so they can make the decision if they want to engage with the internet drama after the contest has been decided. Engaging with Internet drama and not winning the contest would seem like a penalty to ones career. And as the FAQ says

“Can the creator of the idea win the contest, but not participate in the crowdfunding stage and then make the game on their own and keep all the profits.

Sigh… Yes.”

The women had the option of engaging as little or as much with the public as they choose and can use the art to pitch the production on their own. If the crowdfunding failed they wouldn’t be responsible for any of the costs. If you believe the current climate in video games is negative to female developers you should respect that.


Firstly, for a project specifically designed with a goal of helping the women involved pursue future careers in game design, why would you omit any information that developers, publishers, and members of the press would need in order to contact them about any future projects they may pursue?

The information has been given to press members that have requested it, none has done any articles on the women. The women can promote themselves and after voting ends are given the option of posting any relevant personal information. Over the past couple weeks, you’ll see why we specifically set up the contest so this was an option to avoid the drama in the online community.

I would personally be quite interested in personally contacting each of them about their involvement with this project to date, and their thoughts on a number of details. Would you be willing to pass that along, ask them to get in touch with me via twitter, or some other method?

You don’t have press credentials and as such will not be receiving information for the same reason I don’t give out the personal information of my friends online. Anyone who contacts us through an established journalist website could get the contact information and have if they asked.

On a somewhat related note, the one thing I have found to suggest any of these women exist is an interview with Danielle, which you yourself conducted, and posted to the official page of your
project. Frankly, it strikes me as rigging the contest to actively promote a single contestant in this fashion, without simultaneously posting interviews with each of the others. Would you care to
address this?

Danielle spoke at her request, she felt that the press we had been receiving was bad and wanted to address that there were actually real women involved. If any of the other women had asked then could speak as well. The project guidelines specifically said they could interact as little or as much with the promotion of the product as they liked.

The current voting page for the project lists no deadline for the end of the voting period, no tally of votes received to date, and seems to have no mechanism in place to prevent a single individual
from voting repeatedly. Why is such an important component of the project being handled in such a sloppy fashion, prone to both abuse by voters, and giving no assurance that votes are being properly counted?

There is a system on the backend that tracks the votes and prevents the same user from voting multiples times. The system does not allow the user a second for the same game but does allow the person to change his or her vote. We have been monitoring the voting since the beginning and the results are consistent with no major irregularities during the entire process. We aren’t posting public result until the end because by the contest rules if the person think that there is too much drama they can step back from the project, or if their idea get’s so many votes they’d like to pursue the project on their own they can step back from it. By not listing the votes, we prevent public matters on this issue which the creator can choose to engage with on their own terms.

We wanted to announce the winner after the crowdfunding ends, we are considering doing it a week before, now no decision has been made..

I would also be interested learning exactly how the contestants were originally selected. Your website being a Tumblr blog makes it difficult to find any relevant posts on the subject, particularly
with the incredibly large volume of personal posts, you have made on unrelated subjects. How exactly were the entrants first selected, and how did they enter to begin with?

The relevant portion is repeated here and is on our website

The Proposals will be judged by a panel, consisting of at least 5 nominees of TFYC, including the Bondsman, and other people previously involved in the game industry or in software design and development, and awarded points out of 80 on the following basis:

The Originality of the idea as related to game play, use of the medium, story and aesthetic, as determined by a group of experts to be chosen by TFYC - 10 Points

The Financial viability of the game as related to audience, expected revenue, and the ability to continual monetize the property over time, as determined by a group of experts to be chosen by TFYC - 10 Points
The level of immersion or fun the user will have by playing the game, related to the interface, gameplay, progression and community involvement as determine by a group of experts to be chosen by TFYC. - 10 Points

The presentation of the game as explain in the proposal related to the aesthetic of the game and any sound assets as determined by a group of experts to be chosen by TFYC - 10 Points

Feasibility: The proposal will be judged on the feasibility of the game to be produced on a budget of $50,000 in a 6 month time frame. Factors including the length, graphics requirements, music and sound requirements, networking, back end server support and programming complexity will be used to determine this score. This score will be determined by an experienced video game programmer chosen by TFYC - 40 Points

The point categories described above are for guidance purposes only for the judges and shall not be necessarily determinative of the panel’s final decision, which shall be in its complete discretion. The panel may vary the weightage given to different characteristics. The panel or TFYC has no obligation to maintain records of its deliberations or to provide any such records to Participant or any third party.


A quick glance the website of Autobotika lists The Fine Young Capitalists as an apparently completed project, where their input was to create the promotional materials for the game pitches included on your website. No mention is made anywhere of plans for them to personally an oversea development of the game, nor does anyone have any apparent experience in game design at any level other than providing concept art. Further, statements from Lola Barreto suggest actual game development will be handled by a third party as yet to be determined. Exactly who, to the best of your ability to state, will actually be developing the winning game?

I assume you are excluding the fact that Lola is listed as the director, Giovanna is listed as the produced and Laura who is to be the head animator for the production. Lola has made no statement that Autobotika will not be doing the production. Current plans are for Autobotika to be involved unless medical matter prevent one or more of the listed individuals from working on the project.

Frankly, you seem to be making a number of promises about the game to eventually be developed which cannot reasonably be kept. You have promised both that the final game will be completely open source. You state that the creator of the chosen pitch will never forfeit ownership. You state that you will license everything related to the game to them. Finally, you state that anyone donating $2000 or more will have a character designed by you, officially owned by them, and if I am not mistaken, you have promised that any such characters will be included in the final game, which does not appear to be a clause in the original contest rules. Even assuming you intended to say all intellectual property would be licensed from the creator of the pitch, not to, it would seem logically impossible to fulfill all of these promises
simultaneously. Care to explain?

Code will be open source, art will be licensed under creative commons. Open source code is owned by the creator but licensed to other users under specific guidelines. We have not negotiated it with the creator, but the art will probably be licensed under Non-Commercial use. The art created for the pitch is not owned by the creator but licensed to creator for their use in promoting their project. On this point, I do agree it has been made unclear but considering the laws differ from country to country there may be different agreement based on the creators location. Everyone will control ownership of their original product, but there will be licensing agreement so the can use them on their own project.

The women will keep her idea, license it under creative common, the art will be licensed under creative commons. People can own thing and license them. A person does not have to place their character in the game, 4chan chose to and we said that was fine, and they chose to make Vivian James public domain so there is no issue with that transaction. The other people purchasing the perk can do whatever he wants with his character, and may place it in the game if he chooses.

You have also stated that any profits from the final game released at the end of this project will be granted to the charity “of the donor’s choice. I have seen a poll posted of charity options for the bulk of your donors, which begs two questions. Were the options found on this poll chosen by you, or an unrelated party? Additionally, are all profits to be donated to a single charity, or have you surveyed each donor individually, with the intention of donating profits to the percentage of the initial funding each contributed?

We have created no poll and will endeavor to work with each backer to make sure their profits are donated to the charity they like. Anyone can suggest a non-profit and we will engage with, not for profits in the tech sector so they can promote their brand to our backers. Otherwise, we will just make a donation, after contact the not for profit to make sure it is accepted. The majority of them accept credit card transaction as donation so it’s not that complicated.

In an earlier, quite spontaneous comment made to me via twitter, you stated, and I quote- “Everyone that is getting paid is a woman… Their listed on our webpage.” However, you have also posted a video with interviews of those involved in the project, which clearly seems to contradict this. What exactly prompted this statement from you, and do you still stand by it?

You’re going to have to say which Video, but so far Samantha Walsh was paid to write the videos, Autobotika was paid to design the web, Autobotika was paid to design the pitches. And Heather was paid to appear in the first video, as was the cameraman, makeup artist and model for promotional content. Nothing currently contradicts the statement everyone has been paid.

The woman who presented the idea gets to keep her concept art which will be licensed to her to promote her game. We consider that profits for submitting her idea.


Somewhat tangentially, you have stated on multiple occasions that Zoë Quinn has both “doxxed” you and made DDoS attacks against your site. You have also made public statements specifically correcting this, and admitting that in your interchangeable use of these terms, what you in fact were referring to was a different individual publicly posting a link to your readily available public facebook page. You have also since deleted this clarification and reverted to your original statement when publicly questioned. What, exactly, is your current stance on the matter?

Zoe Quinn specifically wrote the statement that was posted online. We have information and email threads to show that. There was an implied agreement that she would take some responsibility in the exchange if the statement was published. She did not engage in practices related to the agreement and she refused to contract us for further clarification on adjacent issues. As such we retracted the statement as she wrote it and made it clearer to our specifications. This information will be provided to any journalists with press credentials.

Both statements don’t contradict each other, Zoe Quinn did not post our information, her PR manager which is hired to represent her did. She was one voice in choir of people, but she certainly encouraged them more than anyone else.

It’s also important to mention that Zoe Quinn was contacted on 5 separate times before the crowd funding started and was asked to make any changes. Similar emails were sent to her PR manager and they were contacted on Twitter and responded so they knew they could make any changes to t. We have records of this.

Moreover as her not for profits ORGANIZATION WAS CONTACTED, and was specifically told they could run the project and receive the share of the profits and “declined” before TFYC has a name. We don’t really see what more we could have done to make sure that Zoe was aware of the project.

More broadly, you seem to make a habit of making these sorts of contradictory statements, often within a single conversation or published document. Do you have any explanation for why you seem to do this so routinely?

There is no correct answer to that question and the majority of our statement have only been contradictory to the people who choose to believe something regardless of the evidence presented.

Moving on to the elephant in the room, there is a loosely organized group of semi-anonymous individuals with which you are clearly familiar, whom you, they, and others, have referred to at various points as 4chan, /v/, #gamergate, and The Cathedral of Misogyny. Obviously, all of these terms, with the exception of the last, can also refer to various larger groups than those in question, so for the sake of clarification, note that I am specifically referring to the individuals you have thanked and endorsed publicly in updates to your Indiegogo page, who unquestionably have been waging a campaign over the last month to “fight for journalistic integrity” by spreading lies and private information about a number of women involved either in independent game development (which your project alleges to support), or journalistic coverage of gaming.

In light of the evidence which has surfaced tying the group in question to a number of possibly illegal activites, and an unquestionably immoral campaign of hate which has put many lives at very real risk, so severe that even 4chan.org and similar sites are making efforts to distance themselves, do you stand by the statements of support you have made in their favor, dismissing
those who object to their actions, and thus indirectly denying the damage done to these women’s lives? Such as in the posts made on your tumblr as recently as September 15th or so?

Similarly, if you’d like me to include an official statement from you condemning the actions of those directly responsible for the various threats and compromises of confidential information
directed at these women?

It’s difficult for us to think that any statement we make will have

And would you care to offer up any sort of formal apology for any such incidents which may have been committed by individuals who were acting on information you personally put forth publicly during this period of general high tension, either in the form of the aforementioned misleading statements on your blog, erronious claims about game developers, or private e-mail addresses which may have been seen by unstable individuals after passive aggressive picture-tweeting in the aftermath of unflattering articles?

I will consider giving a formal apology when I receive one from the person that has affected me. The cognitive dissonance that requires me to apologize for actions that were instigated by another party against me are incredible. We have worked with every person to try to make them happy, and they have all asked us to lie on their behalf about their involvement. We won’t lie, and as I told Kotaku I think she didn’t understand what we were doing, I would have been happy if the statement read.

“Zoe didn’t understand the production but now realizes we aren’t transphobic or exploitive, but doesn’t encourage her users to engage,” and we would have posted that to our site.


Finally, is there anything you would like to say to the many people who have made the mistake of believing money contributed to your indiegogo would be donated to feminist charities, or directly
funding a woman’s effort to design her own game?

Please read the website, and Indiegogo campaign where this information is clearly listed. If you are completely in error consider requesting a refund through support@thefineyoungcapitalists.com


I realize there are a number of unflattering implications behind several of these questions, and hope you are not too offended by my asking them. What information is currently available to me paints a very unflattering picture, and I would like to stress that I am seeking clarification and correction so as to be sure nothing I print causes you harm by way of speculating on any of these matters without fairly presenting your take, if any, on these subjects.

Of the interviews I have done that have not been published the majority of them have actually be done by women. Your tone is delibrate, I don’t care. If someone wants to address these points on a Podcast where they can ask direct question I have asked for this at multiple times. We have been very transaparent about everything we have been doing. And the production was set up to create controversy and protect those that would be the most affected by the fallout.

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