I took the time to answer some (unfounded, cynical) criticism about how the official CC dev team is run and compensated:
http://www.reddit.com/r/Games/comments/23czot/cortex_command_just_released_a_brand_new_build/cgw3b9m

Hopefully that clears up some confusion around the subject...

(hint: use the "continue this thread" links to read the full thing)

After some 4-5 odd years of being on this ride, I can say that despite CC not being the most rapidly developed game or the most well funded at that; it is still, after all this time a game that I find amusing and I'll probably be here when the game receives it's final release. CC does not have a professional team of developers/coders. It's something people who are new to this game should understand. I think one of the genuine things that I truly like about CC is the fact that it's heart and soul does not lie with Data ( no offense ) but rather with the people in the community who are willing to continue creating mods for this game and to continue to support it's development despite it's long development cycle.

I think that you have made a great decision to ask people of tremendous talent they have shown through their mods to be part of the development team. I think the voluntary work 'thing' that you're using is a good model. Since the content of the game will be much more rich since the content has come from people who truly have a passion for CC. If a hired payed system was used there would be loads more pressure to put out content; content that may or may not be as brilliant and creative as they are today.

TL:DR I give creds to Data for the work he put into CC and the method he used for it.

Excuse any grammar mistakes I've made. I make those a lot unfortunately

Edit: PS. We do love it when you come around to say hi

wow what an ♥♥♥hole

who is this chump?

What I don't understand is you publicly arguing with someone who clearly has his own opinion and not at all empty points to prove.

Let alone that, but also encouraging us to watch you get mad at somebody. All I can see is you showing a weakness.

Me.

Dan clearly lied at least one time in this comment thread, claiming he had offered multiple times to pay the 'volunteer' part of the dev team. After reading the comment wherein he claimed that, I asked CaveCricket if it was true, and it is an outright lie. He has not ever offered Cave Cricket pay, and I honestly don't think he's offered any of the volunteer team pay. If anyone from the volunteer team would care to step up and contradict me on this, please, feel free. I'm very glad dan posted the thread here, because I wasn't going to and it wasn't going to garner much attention otherwise beyond me showing it to people who had been around long enough to have personally seen the stuff I was talking about.



Yes, child labor is totally A-OK if they want to do it because to pay somebody to make content would put pressure on someone and if children are volunteering work for free, why shouldn't an honest god-fearing capitalist let them? Oh, wait, that's taking advantage of naivete, whoops. The work the volunteer team has put in has been more than worth some sort of compensation. Just because you love the game doesn't mean you should give the creator of it a free pass on the unethical things he does. He has profited monetarily from free labor that he could afford to reimburse the laborers for, and has never even offered reimbursement.

p.s. these opinions are not new and not only mine, they are very old and more than a few prominent people in the Indie community spoke out against the way Dan was treating the community when, years ago, we started asking what our money went towards and why updates had, if anything, slowed down after Dan started selling Cortex Command.

Now let's see if this stays where it is, or whether Dan continues the old pattern of trying to ban me and shush me up.

Of course I was giving Data the benefit of the doubt. It would be a good model provided that he did give, at one point, an opportunity to be paid.

I think it's a ♥♥♥♥ fantastic idea to recruit the brightest and most passionate people from your community to your development team, it was obviously a very smart move on Dan's part and they've all produced some wonderful content for the game. The problem I have with all of this is that not only did he never actually offer to pay them, which is reprehensible enough, but he lied about it and then paraded his lie here as though he had won some great victory.

I guess you failed to read my last reply in the thread, huh?

pasted here for your convenience:

4zk: What do you suggest I had done instead? Sure, I could try to keep all emotion out of it, but as you can tell I find it very hard when someone directly attacks my life's work and personal character with the worst kinds of cynicism and unfounded accusations in public - repeatedly, over a period of YEARS.

If you've had that happen to yourself and you sailed through it without getting a little worked up emotionally, then my hat is off to you.

No, I read it, but I didn't respond to it, as it's little more than masturbation. Kind of like you posting it here. You failed to address the fact that you told an outright lie, and you are essentially talking to yourself throughout the entire conversation. This much is obvious to anyone who cares to read the thread, and I don't have any more to say on the subject.

E: btw I'm pretty sure 4zk is suggesting you shouldn't have engaged me and shouldn't have posted it here, and he's right on both counts from a PR standpoint

I will close this whole issue now:

This is not a court, and pyro is not the moral police/judge/jury of the world. He is entitled to his own opinions and to express them in public, ad hominem attacks and all. I also have a right to defend the reputation of myself and the cc dev team by showing why his accusations are baseless and needlessly damaging to me, the team, the game(s), and therefore also the community which he clearly cares enough about to stick around in for so many years.

I feel satisfied that I have shown him to be wrong on every point he's made, and I only regret that he once again got my goat for a while with his paranoid, self-righteous trolling. I can get emotional at times, but at least I didn't call him names back That would've been childish of me!

I don't think many will argue against the fact that we make rather unique games using pretty unconventional methods and development cycles. This is my first gamedev studio I've ever managed, and to be perfectly blunt: I'm making it all up as we go along. This means I can't always predict the outcome of every organizational/developmental experiment I undertake, and therefore it's also very hard for me to set the expectations of everyone who happens to be following our bumbling progress.

What I do know, however, is that we are onto something: First taking our sweet time building compelling and easily expandable game systems from the ground up, which then support a rich modding community, and then inviting the most prolific and talented members of that community to join in the ongoing development of the game itself. Despite some outsiders' claims to the contrary, it really is a win for everyone involved, or else they wouldn't participate on their own volition. Literally no one is harmed/abused in this model, except perhaps the egos of those who aren't asked to join the official development team (sorry!)

The good news is that we are also working on a new project, in which we will lean into this model even harder and be a bit more egalitarian about it. Yes, we are planning on shamelessly relying on the power of user-generated content to create the bulk of the player experience for Planetoid Pioneers. How outrageously lazy is that?! Well, we (the PP team) have already invested four and a half years in building the technology to support this plan, in the hope and belief that it will again pay off big for everyone involved: the official development team, the content-contributing users (who will also be monetarily compensated through the steam workshop economy), and the ones who simply enjoy the resulting rich, endlessly varied game experience that they can get for a very reasonable price.

That initial investment of designing and implementing the tech foundation to support all that community fun is easily underestimated. For example, if I hadn't put in the significant extra effort to ensure almost every aspect of Cortex Command was fully data-driven and bound to a powerful scripting language, all editable by simple human-readable text files organized in namespaced and easily shareable data modules (.rte folders), there would not be any CC modding community for all of us to enjoy today.

Again, this is to my knowledge a pretty new way of slow-cooking games with the direct help of their own fan communities. We are making it up as we go along - but rest assured that I am personally always extremely concerned with creating systems and arrangements that provide a personal net positive benefit for everyone involved: If not financially, then in entertainment value, educationally, and/or in professional credentialed experience - and always without any kind of coercion or abuse. If anyone has a problem with us striving toward that kind of win-win-win system, then I can only suggest they please find another game or community to follow - it's not like there aren't enough other ones out there to choose from!

Thanks,
- D