Where is Charan?

"

ciknay#1000 wrote:

But it's far more likely that the closed/open beta packages were less about funding the entirety of the development, and more about proving to investors that GGG had a product that had a dedicated audience willing to spend big that they could then capitalise on going into the future.

Agreed.

"

Foreverhappychan#4626 wrote:

Have fun in Wraeclast 2.0.

Okay. Going to clear the air a bit here.

Had I found GGG a year or two earlier I would have invested for real, given the opportunity. By the time I arrived (march 2012) they already had enough private investment and personal (remember, Chris owned a big chunk of GGG for quite a while) and the buy in was...somewhat higher. Also, I didn't really want to see GGG as a source of returns. That way ruthlessness lies. I have investments in other companies and at no point do I kid myself: that makes me the bad guy. All I do is check their stock value and hope it goes up. I have no idea how these companies treat their workers. Or their clients. All I care about is ROI/dividends.

And I think juggling whale supporter + "cynical non-brit" was hard enough. I finally made my choice there -- do not ascribe "rage" to my decision to purge almost all my mtxes. It was, if anything, one of the most considered, rational things I ever did as regards PoE. Chris, who over the years got to know a bit about me and my violent impulses towards slate-cleaning, wisely told me to take some time and really think about it. So I did. Talked to my wife. Considered what having those mtxes meant to me at the time vs what they meant to me before. I had them cleansed and not once have I regretted it. Made quitting for real so much easier.

Anyway, no. I agree with ciknay for the most part. I helped in the early days. A lot of people did. But I didn't get GGG over any sort of threshold. I think it's possible I made them more money by buying a hundred or so beta keys for future whales and dolphins, because as I said, that's how crowdfunding works.

I mean, look at it this way. This Chris cured me of any future urges to really whale any game ever again. So by the time that other Chris came around promising a hrand return of one of my favourite games from the 90s, I was 100% inoculated. No citizen of the stars I. :)

Recently I felt something new. I finally regretted my support for PoE because a friend of mine fell into deep financial trouble through no fault of his own and I was starkly aware of how much that 25k or so would have helped him.

Hindsight's a bitch, but honestly, I probably would have just spent it on something else by now anyway.

I managed to help him a bit but...yeah. I did wonder how that conversation would have gone down with Chris were we still talking.

I'd ask about that, and also if he saw that seemingly mint condition signed alpha lotus in Akihabara a week after TGS. I did. My god. It was just sitting in a case on the top floor of the Radio building. Price tag: 190k US.

It was gone in a few days.

Wild.

There's money. And then there's MONEY.

But I suppose everyone feels that way. Always someone higher on the ladder.

Well, 4am here. Enough blather. Night night.