Comment by asperous | Hacker News Reader

Comment by asperous | Hacker News Reader

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I really want to warn each and one of you against giving Gavan Woolery any money for this.

I was a big fan of him as a kid when he created a huge following around his game project genesis. It was an open-world, sandbox voxel rpg.

As far as I remember he received thousands for development of the game (admittedly much of it was from close friends and relatives, but I donated money as well).

At the nearest opportunity Gaven abandoned the project, using it to get a job at a game company and not even bothering to develop the project in his spare time.

His brother tried his best to keep the project alive, and many lurked around the forums generating hype and designing the game.

The updates from Gavan became less and less as if his heart was not in it any more and years later people began giving up hope-- little by little people left.

Eventually Gavan shuttered the site.

I understand that the project was overly ambitious, but looking through your life I believe you have a tenancy for creating vaporware and not finishing any you start.

I really believed in you Gavan and you were an inspiration for me to become a programmer and to start projects of my own, but I will never forgive you for abandoning the project the way you did.

Screenshots of game:

https://plus.google.com/photos/118320659623423727582/albums/...

Archive of website:

https://web.archive.org/web/20070311023308/http://www.playge...

Hi Andy, to set the record straight:

I received about $700 total, and I was living with my parents (most of that $700 was from my family, but there were several other people who donated). I actually still have a list of the donations, and I covered this topic in my Kickstarter page (which is not yet public). I probably should have returned the original donations as it was not a huge amount of money, but I was planning to surprise my original backers with something -- cat is out of the bag now I guess. I still remain friends with many of the original Genesis fans like David Sahlin, Collin Popel, and Seiji Tanaka.

My parents were very supportive, but at the same time I had been living with them 8 months post college, and it came to the point where they were hinting more and more that I get a job and move out. After I launched, it became pretty clear that I was not going to support myself off of Genesis even though the reception was very positive (there was no equivalent of Kickstarter at that point in 2006, unfortunately). Not more than 2-3 months after launching I got an offer at my the startup my brother worked for (which was not lucrative, just $35k year to work 80 hour weeks). I put in 10,000+ hours of work into Genesis, no one was more disappointed than me to shut it down. I did what I could and released the source code, hoping that I could return to it later. I made several attempts over the next couple years to make Genesis-related projects (most of my failed game engines) or make something that could support me to do so. For the most part, I've been working 80 hours or more trying to make up for it for the past decade.

The only situation in which my current project will become vaporware is if I run out of money and have to get another job, and I am really hoping this does not happen because I have put so much work into it again. Thank you for bringing this up, if I can do anything else to make up for Genesis please let me know.

Also, the silver lining in this is that it led to where I am now. My honest opinion of Genesis is that it was doomed from the start: I was a young, naive coder and did not know enough to make a project that ambitious work (even now, I still have my doubts in myself). I learned a lot over the following decade that hopefully puts me in a more capable position now. Also, for a bit of further clarification, my first job was at Goowy Media (not a game company), although I got job offers from EA and a few other companies but I did not want to work in the game industry (it is fun if you are independent, but mostly pretty bad conditions otherwise)...

All of that said, I myself am going to warn people against giving me money. This is obviously a very ambitious, very risky project and I want everyone to have a very realistic idea of what I am up against. Some people are willing to take that risk for the chance of producing something new and interesting, but not everybody.

I'd say go for it if it will support you to finish the project. I think now that kickstarter is common people are a bit more accustomed to giving money to projects and not necessarily expecting immediate results.

Thanks! Yes, unfortunately many people have differentiating ideas about what Kickstarter should/shouldn't be, so I really have to tip toe through a minefield not to piss anyone off.

Just for posterity, here is the list of backers from Paypal; I have removed the names and other sensitive information. $500 was from my family ($100,$200, and $200 entries). The total gross is $759...totals are at bottom.

http://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0AgaotKT7v5hNdDNL...

Even if it were thousands, giving someone money before something done is an investments, and investments can go bad. Especially if it's just a few thousand, what did you expect, that he'd continue to slave away at the project for the few bucks you gave him?

Perhaps, but I still hold myself accountable even under the circumstances mentioned above. If any of the original Genesis backers are reading this and want their money back, please let me know and I will gladly return it, with interest (just let me know the email address or alias you donated under and I have a record of the amount you gave (thankfully Paypal keeps history that far back)).

"Genesis" always reminds me of the Genesis3D game engine from the late nineties. http://www.genesis3d.com/screenshots.php

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