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Was the Code Hero Kickstarter a scam? They claim it's not! But Tactical Corsets!!!

T

Tomat

Wanna hear a good joke? Waste your time helping me! LOL!
Corsets can be pretty sexy. I'm really not seeing the cons about making them bulletproof.
 
P

PedroPanache

Member
It's hard to have much faith in someone who only takes their time to respond when the villagers are at the gates and about to break down the door. If you're funding a project via Kickstarter, then one should always take the position of how they'd expect to be treated on the other side of that. It doesn't inspire much faith when updates are only forthcoming after a wave a negative press, potential litigation and demands for refunds. I don't think this reflects negatively on Kickstarter as a whole, but more it's a clear warning sign that you should take your time to assess the project and, with Google a mouse-click away, it's on you to make sure that due diligence has been done; particularly when the project starter is an unknown.
 
B

border

Member
The guy that kicked off this firestorm pretty strongly implies that Joystiq has dug up a good deal of dirt on Alex Peake, and are fixing to publish an expose in the near-future:

Dustin Deckard said:
And we're off! Seems like this has all come to a head today. I've found evidence of Alex Peake's scamminess dating back to 2008. He's had several failed projects like this one. Keep an eye on your favorite gaming blog for more details (might I recommend Joystiq?)
Click to expand...
 
V

VVIS

Neo Member
A lot of work went into that Alpha/Beta, whatever he called it. Not saying that he did or didn't drop the ball post-KS, but if anyone else played it, it certainly was working and seemed legit. You slowly learn to code by moving from room to room, with an open console. At the end, you
fight a "Boss" using fizzbuzz, which is a popular programming test. If you didn't learn much, you could try shooting the boss with single snippets of code, but you'll eventually get overrun. If you learned everything, you walk into the room and destroy the whole thing in a single keystroke.
. It was super creative and totally functional.

Compare that to a lot of KS's which consist of nothing but a video with concept art and a promise.

He should've made a tactical corset voxel-based f2p farm game on facebook.
 
A

Aquamarine

Member
We're testing a new second alpha release tomorrow to show what we've added since then and we're working towards a third more feature complete alpha that will be ready for general use as a complete learning tool.
Click to expand...

Well Alex, it is officially tomorrow. Where is the second alpha?
 
A

Aquamarine

Member
DGRE said:
Reading comprehension. They are the testing the second alpha release. Not Releasing the second alpha release.
Click to expand...

It's a poorly worded sentence that gave me the impression they would be releasing tomorrow.

"We're testing a new second alpha release tomorrow to show what we've added since then."
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Why would they be testing a second alpha release "tomorrow"?

Why would they "show us what we've added since then" when they test it "tomorrow" if they weren't planning a release?
 
O

onlyindreams

Banned
joystiq article

http://www.joystiq.com/2012/12/13/code-hero-the-dangers-of-a-kickstarter-success-story/

They didn't really expose anything (like that one guy implied they would) besides making him sound incredibly inept and unable to manage money responsibly, but holy shit is there some juicy drama in the comments.

It starts with one of Alex's former friends.. Ryan Martin:

I used to be a coworker and friend of Alex Peake, and this development comes as no surprise at all. His only desire is to gain exposure and financial assets. He will treat Code Hero as nothing but a talking point to increase exposure and secure funding until he can't find an audience, then he will rearrange his talking points until he finds something else that sounds about right. Talking ABOUT Code Hero is more important than working on Code Hero, developing Code Hero, or even preforming the most superficial maintenance tasks. He would, without hesitation, blow through every dime he raised with KS to book speaking arrangements and network. To him, that is WHY Code Hero exists.I worry most about the people he is very likely taking advantage of. I know he does it, as I am still friends and coworkers with his first intern. Alex brought this young man at the age of 14 across the US to be his 'intern' and then when he ran out of funds packed his bags and left him behind, at which point I adopted him. Peake will sing songs and talk forever, but he doesn't actually care about any of his projects. They are just stepping stones for him to further fame and glory, while trying to perfect the talking points to bring in more.
Click to expand...

When working on Empower Thyself, another previous project that was mocked up to look more complete than it really was in order to start using for fundraising, I watched Alex Peake stare at his Facebook feed for 4 months while other people worked on his webpage for him. He never compensated those coders, who were supposed to focus on superficial features like collapsible jquery menus and to ignore obvious gaping problems with the software itself.I'm sure the people he has put under his thumb to make his dream a reality are working around the clock. They had better, or they could be homeless.
Click to expand...

and then Alex himself shows up to defend his honor!

Someone told me you were here attacking me, and my hesitance to even respond was to avoid inciting you into stalking and harassing me further. I didn't expect you to admit you're an astroturfer and try to cover it up and get caught doing it with screenshots of you saying "I actually taught a class on astroturfing to Alex at one time" before you deleted it. The Internet has a long memory and you're not going to do your reputation any favors by trying to trash mine.

I'm not going to get in a trolling fight with you Ryan. You're going to harass me if you want to, and and anything I say about you or your past is just going to encourage you to sling more mud.

I've never done anything to harm you. We tried to work together and we didn't make a great development team, it didn't work out. I funded all the work out of pocket and you had a full time job so at most you lost some free time but I never did anything to hurt you.

I was mentoring Freddy and paying his bills out of pocket because his mom was in financial dire straights and could barely pay her own bills. After I ran out of money and had to return to California, his mom paid you to host him. We both care about him and I'm glad you mentored him in some useful life skills. I give you props for doing that. That's one of the reasons I respect you. If Freddy thinks I was somehow selfish in paying his food and rent and trying to help him with programming and school, let him say so here. We were all friends once, and I've tried to stay friends with you.

I'll never forget getting to know you and like many people I found you alternate between charmingly brilliant and creepily scary. As you said it yourself, "What do people expect, for me to walk on water?" You're a complicated human being, not a saint. I think you generally try to do good things.

You have a dark side that makes many people uncomfortable, but you also try to find a way to do something big for the world with your intellect despite limited resources and setbacks. I'm not going to stalk your projects and post lists of problems people have had with you out of bitterness about it. I wish you the best and hope you find success.

Whatever you may claim about me, everyone who knows me can attest that what I do with my time is teach kids programming for free and work every day to make a game that teaches programming. It is funny hearing you call Code Hero when we've spent 2 years building it and there's an alpha already out. Making games costs money to pay programmers and requires fundraising to reach that goal. I've gone to work every day when I was in a wheelchair and in daily physical agony because that's what you do to make something you care about happen. Your accusations that I'm motivated by greed or power are off-base and reflect a personal animosity that I find hard to understand.

I don't know why you hold such a grudge against me when I tried to work with you and spent only my own money to do so. I keep rooting for you to find a way to use your great intelligence and potential to create something positive and constructive, and not to try to tear down what I'm trying to build to help teach people programming.

When you succeed, I'll be rooting for you. When you stumble, I'll be rooting for you. I may be nieve to think you can reciprocate and treat me the same way, but I wish you luck and I'm not so petty that I'm going to hold your venting against you. Saying angry things on the internet is a reflexive part of your personality that you find hard to restrain. I believe some day you'll build something awesome on the Internet that people will like you for instead.
Click to expand...

so Ryan replies again:

My first instinct was to call out that you've managed to finally appear to a casual discussion about Code Hero! Many people in this thread have asked good questions and reasonable requests, and I hope you take the time to re-read what has been posted by them. I can tell you didn't actually read any more than necessary to get into writing your response by mentioning a post that I deleted, but did not!; I know when you see a screenshot like above you think 'Oh, someone must have got caught deleting something'. It's a simple mistake when speed reading through to get what really matters, which isn't Code Hero but ME! You are mistaken though, I have as long a memory as anyone. You should know that, which is why you should know that I don't hide that I've spent some time learning some basic sociometrics and apply it on occasion. You should know, you asked me to write articles for you about exactly that subject. I'm somewhat flabbergasted at why I deserve more word count than your funded project that is the subject of this news article, but I assume your boilerplate on the Primer Labs page is as much typing as you are going to do about the "Trolls that want to know where I've blown 170k bucks fundraising for a thing they already fundraised". In fact, since you called and asked me to be 'professional' and stay 'discrete' about our historical interactions we have in no way communicated. Not even the messages I've sent asking "WHY DONT YOU JUST SEND THE TSHIRTS WHAT ARE YOU DOING?!". Well, as I said before I say again, 'no, that isn't my definition of professional'. I'm not one for censorship, and you have done things that deserve to stay on your record. I kept my mouth shut all this time, years!, so that I couldn't be blamed later for your inevitable dropping of the ball on this project or some other. At least you haven't killed anyone by neglect!As for what I lost, well. You abandoned people who depended on you NUMEROUS times forcing me to intervene, secretly asked people I had introduced you to for investment capital without mentioning it (I do believe that was the last straw), made promises to numerous friends of mine and completely disregarded them after you had got what you wanted, and gave no notice to any of the volunteers and staff you had me put together for you that you were leaving under cloak of night. I don't stalk you, I'm told stories by mutual acquaintances about you skipping out on paying gas money for rides places (I assume kickstarter has you covered for this kind of thing now), throwing temper tantrums at conventions, and creating a cult of personality style labor pool of young people that ultimately you are laying the responsibility of your projects onto. Just as you laid the blame of Tactical Corsets on 'the staff' you will lay the blame on those that you are employing now, an employment that I assume covers room and board and the exciting opportunity to intern at Primer Labs! Hell, that opportunity is listed at rewards in your Kickstarter!So, here it is. It's been 10 months and the public is murmuring for their game. Have you found someone yet to take it over? Some foundation or another? Have you found someone to buy it from you and maybe keep you on as a spokesman? I've seen you work and we both know that your beta, no alpha (it plainly says beta in your kickstarter, why an Alpha now?), was cobbled together in the easiest to find framework so you could create a proof of concept and use that to network your way into enough money to 'make it all fix itself, with me as the figurehead'. Well, how's it goin' Alex? As for this claim that you teach children to code for free, well, release the spending logs from the KS why don't ya. Don't respond to me, Peake. You are in the slow process of accidentally ripping off thousands of people. You should probably work on that instead.I really don't want to hog the spotlight here, you've left enough victims in your wake that it is inevitable that many will eventually pop up here and there. Damage control young man, surely you saw this all coming. Me? I'm not your problem here, buck-o.
Click to expand...

Alex never replied again after that, but then the kid Alex had abandoned shows up!

the selfish part was when you packed your shit in the night and bailed with skye estes, dropping me flat out in a foreign land. It's fortunate ryan found room for my punk ass. I've known you longer than anyone here, bore witness to and personally experienced your careless consumption of individuals and their inspiration fueled efforts. I personally harbor little resentment because your stranding made me who I am today.

I hope you succeed if not for your own sake, for all those you've inspired to lend time and capital. it's one thing to bail out on a couple of homeless hacker dudes and some fuckup kid you can leave by the side of the road, thankfully the internet forgets things like the empowerment, but this kickstarter deal is making a fucking ruckus, hell I try to ignore your shit and it crawled into my news feed.

Good Luck Peake, I hope you can deliver.
Click to expand...

Ryan also posted this about Alex... amazing.

Alex Peake was once confronted by his roommates because he refused to do house chores. "They aren't fun enough!" he said to the obviously frustrated crew. "If we start using a software tool to make a game out of chores with points and scores THEN I'll do dishes!", he said. So they started using chore wars to make him help around the house. He didn't do more dishes, but it WAS a learning experience for everyone involved.
Click to expand...

really feel sorry for anyone who supported this KS. what a disaster...
 
J

Jackpot

Banned
Ryan said:
I know he does it, as I am still friends and coworkers with his first intern. Alex brought this young man at the age of 14 across the US to be his 'intern' and then when he ran out of funds packed his bags and left him behind, at which point I adopted him. Peake will sing songs and talk forever, but he doesn't actually care about any of his projects.
Click to expand...

Alex said:
I was mentoring Freddy and paying his bills out of pocket because his mom was in financial dire straights and could barely pay her own bills. After I ran out of money and had to return to California, his mom paid you to host him. We both care about him and I'm glad you mentored him in some useful life skills. I give you props for doing that. That's one of the reasons I respect you. If Freddy thinks I was somehow selfish in paying his food and rent and trying to help him with programming and school, let him say so here. We were all friends once, and I've tried to stay friends with you.
Click to expand...

Freddy said:
the selfish part was when you packed your shit in the night and bailed with skye estes, dropping me flat out in a foreign land. It's fortunate ryan found room for my punk ass. I've known you longer than anyone here, bore witness to and personally experienced your careless consumption of individuals and their inspiration fueled efforts.
Click to expand...

Pretty conclusive. Classic con man.
 
D

dock

Member
Alex Peake strikes me as the most dangerous sort of businessman; a driven entrepreneur and someone keen to regard themselves as mentor, often stepping on so many people in the process. I hope is an unfair impression painted by the series of events, but I've met many people like this.

The concept of crowd funded projects divulging their expenses is an interesting one. If the funds are being frittered on speaking appointments and 'business trips', with little money being spent on full time developers, it would become apparent pretty quickly.
 
D

Deleted member 20920

Unconfirmed Member
dock said:
He has surfaced, and posted an update on the Kickstarter page, as well as his company site:
https://primerlabs.com/developmentcontinues

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects...me-that-teaches-you-to-make-games-he/comments



GamebridgeAlpha2Screenshot.jpg

Along with a really ugly screenshot.
Click to expand...

Lol...That cube on the left looks like it was shopped in...
What is supposed to be going on in that screenshot anyway...?
 
B

border

Member
It's pretty easy to make fun of Tactical Corsets, but purely from a business standpoint I thought it was a pretty good idea. Yeah, nobody is ever going to use them for military ops, hunting, or even paintpall. Yeah, they are never going to be fashionable or appropriate for everyday use (as if a corset ever could be). But those things would probably sell pretty well if you took them to DragonCon or ComicCon or a Renaissance Fair and appealed to the admittedly niche community that's interested in corsets and wears them on a regular basis. It's not good to sell them on the internet, because from what I gather you really need to try on a corset in person to get a good fit.

They remind me very much of Utilikilts, which were a pretty big fad among con-goers some time ago:

Utilikilt--djwudi.jpg
 
N

Night_Trekker

Member
Whoa. Been reading the thread for about an hour... shit just (recently) got real.

Sorry for everyone who donated to this scumbag. I've backed a single project so far because I am a fan of the guy's work and I know him to be a professional, but the idea that someone could take KS money and never deliver is pretty scary.

EDIT: lol @ the tactical corsets. The one in the photo is just photoshopped on the model, right?

A lot of angry guys with weird fetishes were left in its wake, I am sure...
 
A

Aaron

Member
Just don't be naive, and look into the people you're backing. The fact that this guy had a string of failed projects makes it obvious you shouldn't trust him with your money.
 
B

border

Member
Aaron said:
Just don't be naive, and look into the people you're backing. The fact that this guy had a string of failed projects makes it obvious you shouldn't trust him with your money.
Click to expand...


Like I mentioned earlier, Tactical Corsets hadn't "failed" at the time the Kickstarter was run. He claims the refunds were issued to everyone that ordered one, but just looking at their Facebook page it's difficult to tell if that actually happened.
 
P

Perkel

Banned
onlyindreams said:
joystiq article

http://www.joystiq.com/2012/12/13/code-hero-the-dangers-of-a-kickstarter-success-story/

They didn't really expose anything (like that one guy implied they would) besides making him sound incredibly inept and unable to manage money responsibly, but holy shit is there some juicy drama in the comments.

It starts with one of Alex's former friends.. Ryan Martin:





and then Alex himself shows up to defend his honor!



so Ryan replies again:



Alex never replied again after that, but then the kid Alex had abandoned shows up!



Ryan also posted this about Alex... amazing.



really feel sorry for anyone who supported this KS. what a disaster...
Click to expand...

i died. It's simply amazing. Internet drama at its best.
 
A

Aaron

Member
border said:
Like I mentioned earlier, Tactical Corsets hadn't "failed" at the time the Kickstarter was run. He claims the refunds were issued to everyone that ordered one, but just looking at their Facebook page it's difficult to tell if that actually happened.
Click to expand...
These comments and stories have exposed that wasn't even his first failure.
 
V

VVIS

Neo Member
entrydenied said:
Lol...That cube on the left looks like it was shopped in...
What is supposed to be going on in that screenshot anyway...?
Click to expand...

That's a bird's eye view of the end of the game, once you've "won". It's some sort of hero's temple, heroes being programmers of old. The cube is in there I think, it's simply a representation of the Unity icon. The player only sees the very center of this scene, walking around down in the center of the circle. Everything is very tron-like in code hero, thus the giant spinning digital lines and floating doodads.

Overall I was willing to give him the benefit of the doubt, but now it's obvious that he is the scamming crackhead that he appears to be. Thankfully I only spent 10 bucks and actually got some enjoyment out of the damn demo.
 
K

kliklik

Banned
It doesn't even matter at this point if it by some miracle manages to come out. Who would want to learn programming from a developer like this?
 
A

Aquamarine

Member
December 12, 2012 - 4:47pm -- Alex Peake

We'll be putting out a more complete update tomorrow detailing more Q&A and showing all the things in the current alpha and what we're building next.
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Lies! All lies!

This just proves you should never trust a tactical corset salesman with anything.
 
H

Htown

STOP SHITTING ON MY MOTHER'S HEADSTONE
Holy crap. This is some top tier e-drama right here.

I'm on my phone, but just pretend I posted that picture of Gus from Psych eating popcorn, okay?

I'll put it into the second alpha of this post when I get home.
 
Jackben

Jackben

bitch I'm taking calls.
Did you run out of money? What did you spend the money on?

Yes, we ran out of funding because development took longer than expected and the Kickstarter money went to paying developers.
Click to expand...
What does this even mean? How did they run out of money that was specifically budgeted for this project by spending it paying developers? Where was that on the outline to what the money was being raised for?
 
A

Aquamarine

Member
Jackben said:
What does this even mean? How did they run out of money that was specifically budgeted for this project by spending it paying developers? Where was that on the outline to what the money was being raised for?
Click to expand...

I love how it's a big "Screw you" to everybody who supported their Kickstarter.

"Did you spend all of the money we gave you, even though it was $70,000 over your original budget?"

"Yes. Now we're just working as volunteers."

I mean seriously? Nearly twice over their original budget and they've "run out of money"?

Something doesn't add up here.
 
O

onlyindreams

Banned
Aquamarine said:
I love how it's a big "Screw you" to everybody who supported their Kickstarter.

"Did you spend all of the money we gave you, even though it was $70,000 over your original budget?"

"Yes. Now we're just working as volunteers."

I mean seriously? Nearly twice over their original budget and they've "run out of money"?

Something doesn't add up here.
Click to expand...
His developer workforce seems to just be child labor at this point

http://primerlabs.com/hack-future-code-club
 
E

epmode

Member
Jackben said:
What does this even mean? How did they run out of money that was specifically budgeted for this project by spending it paying developers? Where was that on the outline to what the money was being raised for?
Click to expand...

What are you quoting? I ctrl-F'd this entire thread and I can't find it.
 
A

Aquamarine

Member
epmode said:
What are you quoting? I ctrl-F'd this entire thread and I can't find it.
Click to expand...

https://primerlabs.com/developmentcontinues

Questions

We're adding a summary of the answers to questions people have asked us here. We'll continue to add to the Q&A and summarize the whole plan for going forward as best we can.

Did you run out of money? What did you spend the money on?

Yes, we ran out of funding because development took longer than expected and the Kickstarter money went to paying developers.

Fortunately, we still have a team dedicated to working on the project as volunteers until it is finished or we raise more money and can pay everyone again.
Click to expand...
 
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