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[bloop_bleep]

-snip-

3) is where the malice bit comes in. Intent to deceive is inherently malicious. The five statements are exactly what I've read too.

You are very right that how people interpret those statements influences their viewpoints. At worst I don't think that Josh and Joe knew that those statements were false when they made them. They were doing what all salespeople do and puffing up what they had to sell it to others. Others obviously disagree.

Puffing up an objective fact isn't normal salesmanship, it's outright lying.

If they were saying something like "we have made many great accomplishments in the past", or making predictions about the future, then that would be mostly okay, since that's subjective. Whether or not you have a "working game with all major game systems implemented," however, is not.

[ndkid]

You are very right that how people interpret those statements influences their viewpoints. At worst I don't think that Josh and Joe knew that those statements were false when they made them. They were doing what all salespeople do and puffing up what they had to sell it to others. Others obviously disagree.

As bloop_bleep points out, I think we can agree those statements amount to more than puffery; they were legally material. Even if I stipulate that Josh and Joe thought the statements were true, I'm pretty sure the prosecution could attack that belief as unreasonable. (Having said that, I don't have a lot of confidence in knowing how a given judge or jury would end up viewing such an argument, because we'd be getting into some pretty technical breakdowns on the state of the code and what it could do at a given point in time, and that's not an area that either judges or juries have shown a high degree of willingness to develop sufficient expertise to make well-informed judgments.) (Disclaimer: I'm still not taking a stance on whether or not those statements were actually true, as I don't fall into either camp of feeling the evidence is sufficient to prove that they never had anything functional or that they clearly had a working prototype.)

[USEC_OFFICER]

This just leads back to 'It depends on how you interpret certain words and statements in the kickstarter'. You view it one way and you think it's a fraud. Another and you don't. The problem is that it's not a technical or legal document but a sales pitch meant to sell game on the idea of the game and that it'll succeed.

I think it's pretty obvious now that you can't convince other people to read differently into certain words so I'm going to shut up and leave the thread for a bit to cool down. I'm sorry if I've come across as rude or yelling. That honestly wasn't my intention. I'm sorry.

[ZeroGravitas]

that's why it mattered when nenjin said fraud required malice. it DOESN'T.

I believe that fraud requires malice, and every legal definition I've seen suggest is does, but I'm not sure I posted that in the thread yet. So no. I don't think that counts as fraud. Thinking that he had the time and money to finish the prototype he had prevents it from being fraud. It's a statement of belief, not one of fact.

lol no, we literally already had this discussion a few pages ago. nothing about fraud requires malice. just knowingly making a false statement of material fact to induce someone to rely on that statement to their detriment.

-snip-

3) is where the malice bit comes in. Intent to deceive is inherently malicious. The five statements are exactly what I've read too.

You are very right that how people interpret those statements influences their viewpoints. At worst I don't think that Josh and Joe knew that those statements were false when they made them. They were doing what all salespeople do and puffing up what they had to sell it to others. Others obviously disagree.

intent to deceive isn't inherently malicious. he could have intended to actually release the game, at the time he was lying about it.

malice is the intention to do harm. if he intended to trick people, but then actually release the game, it wouldn't be malicious - because people would have received exactly what they expected.

sure, you can have a malicious fraud, where he never intended to release the game. people keep saying, "aw I don't think it's fraud, he just got in over his head." yes, that can be true, and it's still fraud.

[ZeroGravitas]

This just leads back to 'It depends on how you interpret certain words and statements in the kickstarter'. You view it one way and you think it's a fraud. Another and you don't. The problem is that it's not a technical or legal document but a sales pitch meant to sell game on the idea of the game and that it'll succeed.

This is why one of the elements of fraud is misrepresentation of a material fact. if it were just puffery to make himself sound good and make the project sound cool, that wouldn't be fraud. like if he released a game that didn't really allow you to do exactly what his recounted stories said you could do, that would be fine.

but misrepresentations as to the current state of progress on the game isn't puffery. it's material to the actual question of whether there is a game and if it'll ever be released.

so are the misrepresentations as to "we have a full-time coder." pretty quickly, delays on the beta forums were described as, "josh has to do some contract work so he can't work on this game full-time." was josh ever working full-time on TWS?

I think it's pretty obvious now that you can't convince other people to read differently into certain words so I'm going to shut up and leave the thread for a bit to cool down. I'm sorry if I've come across as rude or yelling. That honestly wasn't my intention. I'm sorry.

the problem is that you keep making statements like "fraud requires malice" and "intent to deceive is inherently malicious" that are just objectively wrong in the context of what's being discussed.

[Astral]

Seeing activity in this thread had me wondering, but I was disappointed to find it's just another rehash of the arguments that have been done a hundred times over already.

[SangerZonvolt]

One thing has been weighing on me a little bit. In the video, Josh referred to the development team as a 'we', as opposed to I or anything like that. Is he currently working along with others yet?

As far as we know, no. KDG was a two man team before Fen left and after that Josh has been alone. I donīt think that changed at all. If it did there is no sign of it. I just think he uses the "we" as a way to refer to the company, even if it is just a one man show now. Maybe he is used to it. Maybe he thinks it sounds more professional. Or maybe he has some voices in his head and is including them in the "we". Or refers to himself as royality. At this point I would be surprised by none of those things.

[Lapoleon]

Seeing activity in this thread had me wondering, but I was disappointed to find it's just another rehash of the arguments that have been done a hundred times over already.

Haven't you gotten the memo that it's critically important that everyone who falls into the "it's probably never coming because Josh is in way over his head but we'll just wait and see" camp should convert to the "it's fraud but we're not going to do anything about it (partly because we didn't even back the game)" camp?

[Serenseven]

What was actually said was that one video - the "First Turns and New Maps" one - was scripted. Joe had a programmer friend look at an incomplete copy of the source code, and the friend found the script hard-coded into the function that normally would have handled the passing of turns. So that video does not actually show what it purports to show.

This is actually the only provable deception about That Which Sleeps. Provable because I was that friend, I found that script, I told Joe about it, and I still have that copy of the source code (with the script still inside it).

And before anyone asks: No, the incomplete copy of the source code I have does not compile into even a running executable, much less an actual game.

Outta curiosity, does it look like there's any supporting structure for turn advancement at all? I'm curious if it was scripted just to make sure Josh knew exactly what would happen so he could explain everything best, vs it being the only way to get it work.

Not that I think it actually is to aid recording... I don't have anywhere near that much faith in Josh. But it is a benign explanation.

Then similarly, does it seem to fail to compile because you're missing dependencies, or because it's fundamentally incomplete, or.. It had to have compiled in some form to make the videos even with a script, so I'm just wondering if failure to compile  has a benign explanation as well.

There are some classes named "TurnController", "GameController", etc., that seem to be the code representation of Unity objects that would be responsible for managing individual turns and the overall state of the game, respectively. There is nothing TWS-specific in them, however, so I assume these classes were auto-generated by Unity when the associated objects were put in the project.

I am not getting into the question of Josh's motives for scripting the video. All I stated was that that particular video is not what is says it is in the title. It claims to show the first turns, when in fact no turns are passing. I'm aware that putting an executable on rails temporarily for demonstration purposes is a thing - I've done it before - but I also took care to make everyone involved aware that it was just an illustration of planned future features, and not the actual features themselves.

The video makes no such disclaimer, and therefore is currently the only thing about TWS that can be proven to be a falsehood without relying on anyone's perceptions of "fraud", "malice" or whatever. It is an objective fact that that video is not what it claims to be. Why it is not what it claims to be is an entirely different question, and is not answerable with our current knowledge.

The source code I have doesn't compile because the linker is looking for Unity prefabs and other precompiled objects that are not part of the code I have, and that are not present on my machine. Josh's Unity environment presumably has these objects present and so his executable would compile.

I should also point out that the source I have is dated 10/23/2016. So we're talking about nearly year-and-a-half-old code here. Things may (or may not) be very different now.

[ZeroGravitas]

in other words, vreenak.mov

[forsaken1111]

There are some classes named "TurnController", "GameController", etc., that seem to be the code representation of Unity objects that would be responsible for managing individual turns and the overall state of the game, respectively. There is nothing TWS-specific in them, however, so I assume these classes were auto-generated by Unity when the associated objects were put in the project.

Unity doesn't 'autogenerate' anything. It does have some default classes and such but none of those are called TurnController or GameController. It's possible he used some unity asset that had predefined classes but if you just load up Unity it doesn't include any support for turn based games at all, you have to build all of the turn logic yourself or use some community developed asset package.

[Serenseven]

Unity doesn't 'autogenerate' anything. It does have some default classes and such but none of those are called TurnController or GameController. It's possible he used some unity asset that had predefined classes but if you just load up Unity it doesn't include any support for turn based games at all, you have to build all of the turn logic yourself or use some community developed asset package.

Good to know, thank you.

[Xgamer4]

What was actually said was that one video - the "First Turns and New Maps" one - was scripted. Joe had a programmer friend look at an incomplete copy of the source code, and the friend found the script hard-coded into the function that normally would have handled the passing of turns. So that video does not actually show what it purports to show.

This is actually the only provable deception about That Which Sleeps. Provable because I was that friend, I found that script, I told Joe about it, and I still have that copy of the source code (with the script still inside it).

And before anyone asks: No, the incomplete copy of the source code I have does not compile into even a running executable, much less an actual game.

Outta curiosity, does it look like there's any supporting structure for turn advancement at all? I'm curious if it was scripted just to make sure Josh knew exactly what would happen so he could explain everything best, vs it being the only way to get it work.

Not that I think it actually is to aid recording... I don't have anywhere near that much faith in Josh. But it is a benign explanation.

Then similarly, does it seem to fail to compile because you're missing dependencies, or because it's fundamentally incomplete, or.. It had to have compiled in some form to make the videos even with a script, so I'm just wondering if failure to compile  has a benign explanation as well.

There are some classes named "TurnController", "GameController", etc., that seem to be the code representation of Unity objects that would be responsible for managing individual turns and the overall state of the game, respectively. There is nothing TWS-specific in them, however, so I assume these classes were auto-generated by Unity when the associated objects were put in the project.

I am not getting into the question of Josh's motives for scripting the video. All I stated was that that particular video is not what is says it is in the title. It claims to show the first turns, when in fact no turns are passing. I'm aware that putting an executable on rails temporarily for demonstration purposes is a thing - I've done it before - but I also took care to make everyone involved aware that it was just an illustration of planned future features, and not the actual features themselves.

The video makes no such disclaimer, and therefore is currently the only thing about TWS that can be proven to be a falsehood without relying on anyone's perceptions of "fraud", "malice" or whatever. It is an objective fact that that video is not what it claims to be. Why it is not what it claims to be is an entirely different question, and is not answerable with our current knowledge.

The source code I have doesn't compile because the linker is looking for Unity prefabs and other precompiled objects that are not part of the code I have, and that are not present on my machine. Josh's Unity environment presumably has these objects present and so his executable would compile.

I should also point out that the source I have is dated 10/23/2016. So we're talking about nearly year-and-a-half-old code here. Things may (or may not) be very different now.

Oh yeah, I'm not gonna pretend it's anything good. Absolute best case it's scripted based off an actual playthrough and that was never mentioned, worst it's an outright deception to mask the lack of progress. And the only way you'd have any idea is if he'd left some comment like "//ignore normal logic, play script for recording" which I really, really doubt happened.

How far does the script go, could you tell? Did we see everything in the video, or was there more to it?

Then it sounds like failure to compile is just from mismatched build environments. That's about as routine as you can get when the process is "zip up source, email away", so that doesn't personally worry me. And yeah, a lot can happen in a year and a half. Of course, a lot can fail to happen, and while everything we've seen recently looks very polished... Lack of polish on the map and UI hasn't ever been the problem   

[birdy51]

You know, has Josh's specialty ever been nailed down? Some of the stuff, like icons and various bits of art are obviously things that were probably commissioned for the product, but are actual map effects and the like usually done up by the coders?

[ChairmanPoo]

You know, has Josh's specialty ever been nailed down?

Proctology, I hazard