If you live in Illinois, that type of lottery would be the ONLY lottery that actually pays.

He could call it "Zizzle"

I've read all of your quips today and they are sub par. Bring the dog with the cigar back.

What I'd really like to know is how many people signed up and got out? I imagine there were a lot of people mid way into the deal that backed out. I'd heard rumors of all kinds of buying and selling of game positions over the years. The NDA probably helped some people get their money back/out and caused others to enter the game late and get taken to the cleaners.

Is he in Jail Yet?

Finally read up on this all. What a sad story. Though perhaps a very necessary one for the industry and community.

With regard to this being some kind of intentional fraud or not, I don't really get that vibe. He seems delusional and highly narcissistic. People with these traits, when they get into something, both praise and criticism, success and failure, it all adds to the disconnect between reality and the picture of it they have in their head. Inertia and diversionary behaviour also tends to increase exponentially, whereby they'll actually actively avoid working on anything and everything that matters, and instead focus on minute details and other bits that are totally irrelevant. We've all done it, mostly innoccuously ... whether it's clearing up the spare room or procrastinating endlessly when studying. He was doing it with something vastly more complicated, costly and involving far more trust. JPop clearly wasn't cut out to be a project manager and seemingly lacks any kind of self awareness or self knowledge.

He doesn't seem like a bad guy, just a total failure in the endeavour he shaped, and one that he never should have been allowed to go beyond that of a creative director in. This isn't just his failure though. It was the buyers, the people he employed and the community at large. Hindsight is 20:20, but there were alarm bells, lights flashing and klaxons whirring pretty much from the beginning.

Whilst people's money may be mostly or entirely lost, looking over everything, I think there is a reasonable chance of something coming out of this. If John's hands can be prised off the assets, there should be a reasonable chance of one of the companies acquiring the art and music assets For Magic Girl at the very least. All 3 themes were very strong and the IPs very well liked. Certainly I imagine ZombieYeti would like to get paid for all his work ...

Normally yes, but who would really be interested at this point? All 3 projects are so tainted at this point, would anyone really want them? To me:

Magic girl: seems like a re-hash of theatre of magic that didn't really innovate nearly what was promised.

RAZA: Needs to go back to being BHZA. Whatever mess that became RAZA, I don't think anyone is intersted in.. In fact if I were Ben (since it's his likeness), I'd seriously build a pin themed as him being some sort of super hero. Maybe a takeoff from Junkyard where he collects junk parts from around his workshop and builds something to battle with.

AIW: The original story is unlicensed, and really anyone could build a pinball theme around it. In fact, riot pinball announced a couple years ago that they were going to do one:
http://riotpinball.com/node/3

Pinball is always rehashing stuff. AIW is different, obviously, but the art packages for MG were complete and RAZA nearly there. "At this point" only really matters in terms of whether an investor comes in as John seems to still hope in the podcast interview he gave, or whether the company's assets are liquidated and sold by the administrators or put up for auction. I think the possibility that MG art and sound assets at least will go unobtained is vanishingly small. There's a lot of man hours in that, and the work is of a high quality.

It's a shame you didn't get the opportunity to preorder one

Both versions of RAZA were a mess, theme-wise. John clearly just wanted to make an amusement park game and used peoples desire for a zombie theme in a pre TWD world to fund that dream.

AIW would be a great Pinball theme, but there's no reason to finish Johns work.

problem is even if John just gave the assets away to someone who said they would make the games, there is no money in it for that person, unless all current buyers were just screwed and everyone had to pony up more money. Yes there has been this idea of selling more to then address that, and maybe current buyers would be okay if others could now by the game for half, at least they would get their game, but based on all reports, MG is not a good game, looks nice, but sounds like the actual play of the game is not good and even if completed, those who have seen don't see how it would be improved.

For anyone who has the money, why would they do this vs doing something new and from scratch that does not have the stigma, and has a chance to make money. Unfortunately it is hard to see any path that leads to a positive outcome for for buyers or vendors. Best outcome it seems, would be for those who have gotten screwed seeing John 'pay' for what he has done in some fashion.

Impressive cherry-picking.

Necessary? Bound to happen, perhaps. But saying it was necessary is ridiculous.

If you had truly read through this entire thread, you'd know that JPOP was/is taking orders for games he knows will never exist. He's a ripoff artist, plain and simple. I fail to see why his scam was a necessary evil in the hobby.

Re AIW, this is out of copyright- huge opportunity for anyone to develop this wonderful theme. There are plenty of other examples- some Sherlock Holmes stories are out of copyright now. HG Wells etc.

Basically we're limited only by the imagination

If only JPOP was a non-profit,
all "games" would be tax write offs?

It's a bit of a tough situation. I would love to put together a team and create an awesome AIW pin, but what do you do about all those in limbo from JPOP? I don't know the specifics of how many people are out how much money on AIW, maybe there is a to produce new design and give some sort of "sorry you got screwed by JPOP" credit. But then what about those that got screwed on MG/RAZA? One could argue that if they had not been strung along, the opportunity to get screwed on AIW wouldn't have existed. Should MG/RAZA buyers be given the "screwed by JPOP" credit?

The mind just spins 'round and 'round on what is right, what is fair, what makes sense business-wise, what would make for a great title.

I can swing one way and say, "an all new original JPOP-free AIW would be great! This new AIW wouldn't put people's money at risk and be a great success!" and another way, "why not pick a whole new title and not have any baggage at all?" and then one last swing, "screw JPOP for tarnishing what would be a brilliant pinball!!!"

Aaron
FAST Pinball

Conan is in public domain

"The opportunity to get screwed"... man you can't make this shit up
image.gif

sounds as if your going down the same path I was before the tittles were really tarnished and no matter how you do it someone is inevitably gonna find something wrong or not fair? The only thing you can do is take a tittle and start from scratch. Whoever lost their money lost no matter what tittle. I do think AIW is the one to build, the other two were retreads and a pile of crap!

Yeah, nothing worse than tarnished tittles.

rd

For sure. We have had this conversation before. It seems every other month it really bugs me how badly John blew this opportunity!

Aaron
FAST Pinball

Slicing bits of text out of context sure removes their intended meaning, now doesn't it?

No offense intended towards anyone hurt by this debacle. Just sharing what spins around in my head after my experience with all of it.

Aaron
FAST Pinball

I thought Jpop had new investors?

He does, in his mind. That rich guy is going to buy his million dollar art any day now
monopolyman.jpg

That dude already has his own pin. I own one. And while I might be curious to see what jpop brought to a Pennybags Family pin...

That wasn't a slam on you Aaron, it's just the whole situation and JPOP... it still blows my mind when I think about it.

I don't think it started out that way. I think he planned on producing the machines. But it's clear that he got himself in too deep, and did not have the courage (or common sense) to stop.

Either due to lack of knowledge and/or over confidence in himself; he thought he could do this.

At this point, he has to keep the illusion alive (either to show that this was not a scam, or due to the fact that he is still delusional).

Listening to the Podcast should tell it all. Making pinballs is "Hard". Really? Try building and running any small business from the ground up. He took little blame, and even bit the hand that feeds. And then he expected all this "Free" support from the community? (some of it he got in the past, and rejected...).

Forgive me for saying, it looked to me all along like there was plenty of delusion to go around.

Then again, I don't know how Spooky pulled it off. (Probably not by paying themselves a large base salary!)

Nothing will ever possibly come of this. Whomever took over the project would basically be starting from scratch so why bother.

One would hope people would understand anyone starting from scratch on a theme he used for till money, has nothing to do with Jpop. Granted, I'm sure it might sting to see the title getting made. I would liken it to Mercedes stopping producing diesel engines because Volkswagen screwed thousands of people. Maybe not a perfect analogy but a product is a product. One company can't control what anyone else did They shouldn't be hamstrung from making a good, viable product based on someone else's screw up.

You don't get that vibe? In my experience, people who are delusional and highly narcissistic tend to be those who cheat and defraud others. I definitely get that vibe. I'm not sure what people are expecting when they think "evil sonofabitch", but it rarely comes with a cape and twirly mustache.

If it was bound to happen, then surely the sooner it happens the better? Maybe people will wise up and the industry as a whole will run things more professionally. If something happened like this in 5 years time (when presumably there will have been significantly more growth and investment), it could be an immensely larger setback.

There's a clear question of intent or lack thereof, however. Both from an ethical and legal point of view. There's a difference between him (or anyone) intending to deliver something (even if the whole project is to feed their ego) and never intending to do anything and run off with the money.

If you really believe the intention was to make off with the money, then he's a far more incompetent thief than an incompetent and ill-equipped manager and business owner given the alternative. I know which I think is more likely.

My argument has always been that when the situation involves dollar sums on the magnitude as this (a million bucks) the "Aw shucks, guys, my bad" excuse is not available. You have an obligation to have your shit together or don't go swimming in the deep end of the pool.

But ignoring that for a moment, Jpop knew enough that he knew he had to appear to have his act together to sell the thing: non-disclosure agreements, a printed timeline with milestones and deposit schedule, build blog, partnership with Ben Heck, etc. In hindsight, these all paint the picture of a guy who intended to sell an image but had no real plan outside of selling just the image. In other words, he was selling smoke and mirrors and he was very conscious of it.

Now add to that the guy tinkered in a workshop for four years with a team and still didn't produce a single game. Four years to run the numbers over and over and realize "I need help." Help was offered many times and refused, in fact.

To put that in perspective, Skit-B had a mostly working game when they started taking pre-orders. Where skit-b STARTED was further along than where JPOP crashed and burned following 4 years and a million bucks.

Then, after all deadlines had passed and he was obviously in breach of his own contract, when people attempted to contact him for refunds he ignored them. But he always had time to take more pre-order money.

We're not talking about a situation where Jpop left all the money in a duffel bag on the subway. "Jeez, what an idiot! But he didn't intend for our money to get stolen..." We're talking years of misinformation, assurances, and lies, and all with slick packaging to give an air of legitimacy.

So at what point does that kind of gross incompetence, willful ignorance and fiduciary neglect become an outright criminal matter? I think a long time ago.

No prob!

Aaron
FAST Pinball

I believe he pretty much stated that he never intended to build the games, and to me that gives off a fraud vibe.
It does not matter that he appears to have intended to sell off the game designs so that some other entity would do the actual building of the games for the customers. If that was his end game then the customers had the right to know and should have been informed ahead of the ordering process so they would have a better understanding of their risk.

He did in fact state that. His plan was to design and sell

Kevin actually had mechanical aptitude, he had talent and ability. JPop is barely functional by any reasonable measure based on what he has shown with Zidware...

Looks like some activity over last week or two, and no surprise looks like jpop and his legal team are looking to delay things further, needing 'discovery' (at least that is how I, with no legal background, interpret this). The wheels of justice move slowly, but at least they are moving.

https://w3.courtlink.lexisnexis.com/cookcounty/FindDock.asp?NCase=2015-M1-110181&SearchType=0&Database=1&case_no=&PLtype=2&sname=&CDate=

If I'm interpreting things correctly, yep, looks like more discovery time, and then a meeting on the case status with the judge on Jan 12th.

[edit]: I just noticed the "Ad Damnum" set for $30k. wasn't this supposed to be a group action of some sort, rather than an individual one?

That was the original filing. The amount could have been changed (likely was) in later additions of plaintiffs, which isn't recorded on the website without getting the legal documents.

They should have just abolished all lawyers like they said they would

sort of annoying that the listing does not give at least a summary of the 'motions' to be a little more informative.

If these court appearances were closer to the lunch time, i would take a bag lunch and go watch for entertainment purposes, but they seem to all be in the morning.

...in which case you'd have no legal recourse against this guy.

If I lived up that area, I'd take a day off of work to go in, admittedly..! Mainly to find out more info and how the plaintiffs and defendants act, as that could be a big clue as to JPop's state of mental health.

if it is the courthouse I think it is, not too far from my office, maybe I'll have to sneak out of work to go, my guess is it would be anticlimactic, I'm sure it will just be more motions and continuances.

It has probably been pretty boring so far. The motions were almost certainly all procedural (plaintiffs adding new plaintiffs/claims, defendant asking for more time to respond, that sort of thing) and resolved in a minute or two without anyone saying anything exciting. The court proceedings you'd really want to attend are summary judgment (where the parties will be arguing that the case can be resolved without a trial) or barring that, trial itself. All that will happen after discovery ends, which could be months (or a year or more) depending on how the court schedules things.

In sum, nothing worth wasting a lunch break on has happened yet!

Agreed. To piggy back on that thought a bit one discovery hearing that is usually fun to see are the motions to compel or rule for contempt (or whatever the equivalent is there)...which I am sure there will be at least one of each...

JPop will not respond adequately to the discovery, I would bet on that for sure and the plaintiff's counsel will have to file a motion to compel his response...when JPop doesn't respond to that the plaintiff's attorney will likely file a rule for contempt. Both of those hearings could require much factual discussion and position taking.

I really want to see a video deposition of JPop. Will be awesome.

agreed.. I'd even settle for artist sketch chalk drawings
court_sketch1.jpg