FleetCOMM Update Translation

Source: https://archive.is/okXmm

Steam user “Hippyshake” asks: Any news?

“FleetCOMM Technologies”, a.k.a. lone (alleged) game developer (alleged, as he’s never released anything fit for public consumption) Slade “Roguestar” Villena, responds: Hi, thanks for asking.

The stage before releasing a game is always hectic and stressful. We've decided to not post any news/updates/"hype bait" from here on out. You'll just see the game released. We're not the kind of people who want to be social media parasites just so we can hype for more sales, the project is confident in it's delivery on the games merits.

***Translation: I don’t have any excuses, so you won’t see them. Also, I don’t believe in marketing, because I have zero business acumen, and at this very delayed stage of my promises and my horrible reputation as a serial harasser and general negative-attention whore on social media, anything I did try to sell this game would be pointless.***

Having said that; the lead programmer was recently hired by a military research lab. He's now working with projects involved in US Army rotorcraft and drone tech, at the NASA Ames Research Center. FleetCOMMs store page, trailers, and the teams legal documents + contracts are being taken care of, but during nightly hours. We're still working on a lot of the business end so our team is squared away before we release.

***Translation: I’m talking in the 3rd person here because it makes it seem like there’s more to this fiasco than just sad and angry me, making up more excuses. It was seven months since the last Steam Greenlight update because I’d pretty much given up on this project, spent the summer spamming up Twitter, and when I visited NASA and took some photos there around November 13, 2015 (https://archive.is/qQeLq), I figured it’d be the perfect chance to fabricate a position and use it as an excuse. Never mind that I was doing nothing for the months prior to that. Also let me mention again that I have zero business skills.***

FleetCOMM is still going to ship out.

***Translation: Don’t hold your breath.***

We'll have a story posted on Kickstarter describing the events leading up to release.

***Translation: I’m not sure which of the 3 Kickstarters I’ll post on, probably the 1 that actually suceeded, where I took $17,427 of people’s money in good faith and then failed to deliver on my promises, that one I last updated on March 3rd, 2015 (https://archive.is/8cOmz), an update where I mentioned nothing about a NASA job or any other issues with the promised project.***

“Hippyshake” replies with concern for undelivered crowd-funded projects, enthusiasm for indie games and hopeful for the game and further updates, also expressing interest in grassroots marketing.

“FleetCOMM Technologies” responds: Hi, Slade Villena speaking, I'm the lead programmer of FleetCOMM.

***Translation: It’s convenient for me to flip-flop from pretending to be something larger than I’m not, to try and convince you that I’m taking a personal interest in your comments.***

[Addressing Hippyshake’s concerns about devs who take the money and run] We have a legally binding agreement with the folks at the greenlight bundles. We took real money from a business, so *not* shipping this game out would give the project legal troubles. We're not that kind of crew.

***Translation: Please believe I’m a credible businessperson who’s the head of an actual operation, instead of a confused individual who’s gotten in way over his head.***

Behind the scenes of this game have been a lot of personal, financial and business issues. Those will be given a full debriefing when we ship out the game. We will be notifying our kickstarter backers regarding the full story, as well as the bundle people who ordered (there's about 5000+ people who got in on the bundle, along with about 500 kickstarter backers)

Please do keep in mind that I'm dealing with *two* jobs; this project, and working at NASA Ames. It's very hectic on my end.

***Translation: In case I didn’t make it clear when I was pretending to be “FleetCOMM Technologies”, I’ve actually been sandbagging this project for YEARS, and now I want you to believe that a job I pretended to get in November has been most of the reason that there’s been zero news and development on this project.***

[Addressing Hippyshake’s enthusiasm for grassroots indie marketing] Unfortunately, every mediocre gamedev in the market does that.

***Translation: I view everyone who’s tried to get eyeballs on their product as “mediocre”. Clearly, saying NOTHING about a project is what all the cool developers do.***

My crew doesn't have the kind of clout that other richkid devs take for granted, we have very *few* connections to media entities that cover games, and with the schedule I've had for the past few months, having "social media upkeep" is out of the question.

***Translation: I think that people who can maintain community-building efforts on social media as “richkid devs”, and I’ve also burned most of my bridges with mainstream media through my months and months of brutal harassment and abuse on my many, now-banned Twitter accounts, where I spents hours and hours of valuable development time spewing and spreading vitriol through tens of thousands of tweets. But marketing my game? Screw that noise.***

That being said, we're at the point of this project where promoting an unreleased product would be presumptuous, if not tasteless.

***Translation: I have absolutely zero business acumen when it comes to marketing my nascent indie game. None. Zilch.***

I'm gunning out all the lose ends and going on the promotions / news when the game is ready to go out. We're not a crew with a studio full of resources/people who can cover the business end; I literally take care of all of that myself. That kind of upkeep takes away time from polishing the game.

***Translation: We’re not a crew at all. It’s really just me and a sound guy who did an amazing job on that one track you might have heard on the promo video, and he’s probably pissed that I’m dragging my ass on releasing the game, but I wouldn’t know because I never talk to him.***

So a long story short; the game will be released when it's ready on the business end, legal obligations+protections, store front assets, encryption, and the absolute final stages of gameplay polish. With the exception of the polishing, all other "final details" aren't really exciting to "promote" to gamers; they are extremely mundane, boring, if not outright yawn-worthy.

***Translation: Even though I promised this game would be out in 2012, here it is almost 2016 and the game’s in the same sorry state. My campaigns  of hatred against game journalists, other successful game developers, the IGF, etc, have all come to nothing, and I’m left holding a dead project and a ruined reputation.
Also, in case it wasn’t crystal clear, I have total disdain for community-building and zero business sense.***

***

It’s worth noting that this was Villena’s longest update on FleetCOMM in months, was posted on November 5th, 2015, and at the time of this posting (3 weeks later) there had been zero response from either “Hippyshake” or any other member of FleetCOMM’s community. Which should come as no surprise, really.

Slade can currently be found flaunting Twitter's TOS on @OneAngryGamedev, spending valuable development time spewing empty rhetoric, at least until he gets himself banned again.