Tag: John Smedley

I don’t think it is a very well kept secret that here on MMO Fallout, I have a huge man-crush on Derek Smart. He makes me laugh, makes me cry, I send him flowers and he sends me restraining orders. We joke around, and we both love MMOs, and at the end of the day isn’t that what love is all about?

As I have pointed out numerous times, Derek Smart is not one to take it, whever it may be, lying down while the internetizens trample all over his beaten corpse. No, at some point Massively picked up on the story of Alganon copying a speech by Bioware, that was actually a speech from 2004 by John Smedley (as we found out.).

And who showed up to the party, but Mr. Smart himself?

OK, the weekend is officially canceled!

I have not yet issued an official statement because, tbh, I don’t have all the facts yet. Being a weekend and all, I don’t expect to know what happened until Monday. I am about to rush off to church, but decided to just post this quickly to let everyone know that this just came to my attention.

I hired a PR firm to handle media relations etc for QOL when I came aboard. They were tasked with that press release.

While I’m certain that there is a reasonable explanation for the similarities in the releases, I simply do not want to speculate but only to say that we are going to investigate this tomorrow.

Next week I will issue an official statement once I have all the facts.

Wait…So the PR firm wrote it all…but reading back, they were quoting you. You can read the press release, you are quoted as saying it. So what you are saying is that your PR firm fabricates quotes in order to make a statement. But I won’t finalize it here, you are on your way to church afterall.

I don’t know wtf you’re going on about or what motivates your ire (at least I have an excuse), but wtf does the announcement (in the news you linked to on MMORPG) about the game being released have to do with this discussion?

Of course I knew about the release. But how the hell am I supposed to know if parts of it were either plagiarised, referenced without credit to the source, based on homage or whatever if I didn’t compose it? Do we have to now go out and fact check press releases? Seriously?

More importantly, what has this got to do with Google Alerts? You do know how that actually *works*, right? Right? My guess is that you don’t. And even if you did, you’re trying to claim ignorance in order to continue your net rage ire.

The first I even heard of this issue was when Warcry sent me an RFC which I was greeted to this morning when I opened my email. Then I got one from Massively and others. Most of us with families and jobs, actually have *lives* beyond the Net. So its not like we’re no-life-having cretins looking to stir up trouble at every opportunity. So excuse me if I wasn’t trolling the net on Saturday when this was first posted.

I am waiting to get an official answer back from the PR firm, but from where I’m sitting, this is a non issue and I’m not throwing anyone under the bus.

Anyone with more than two functioning brain cells can read easily see that the opening commentary is nothing more than a reference.

Even running the original link* through http://www.copyscape.com doesn’t yield anything other than similar phrases being used in both releases.

The reference to “pillars” is a commonly used phrase in various structure driven arenas (e.g. the government). And the bit that preceded my commentary is a single line that the firm chose to use in order to make their point and precede my commentary.

“Traditionally, massively multiplier** online games have been about three basic gameplay pillars – combat, exploration and character progression,””

Nothing beyond that is remotely the same. Since John Smedley made similar remarks in a talk he gave, go find out who first uttered those words, source it, then go back and accuse anyone else who uses it of plagiarism.

And if you really want to have fun with semantics, go ahead and run “Traditionally, massively multiplayer online games” through Google. Have fun with that.

This is just stupid and why it even made the news is beyond me. But it just goes to show that sites – trying to scrap a few dimes together – will do anything for hits. And since we’re the latest flavor of the day, here we are.

You clearly have an axe to grind and have no common sense whatsoever; so arguing with you is going to just be a lesson in futility. So go ahead, have fun. I’m sure you need to validate your otherwise inconsequential [anon] existence.

* http://www.swtor.com/news/article/press-release-001

** sp due to spellchecker

This was in response to a player linking to the announcement dating back to April. To answer a question early on: Fact checking your press releases would be very nice. Not that it has happened yet, but a misleading press release can result in lost trust between you and your players, and at worst a misleading ad can result in a court reminder that misleading advertising is illegal. Despite another company doing your press releases, your company is still liable for what they say, and if fact checking even comes on the table, you should consider a new PR firm.

“Most of us with families and jobs, actually have *lives* beyond the Net. So its not like we’re no-life-having cretins looking to stir up trouble at every opportunity. So excuse me if I wasn’t trolling the net on Saturday when this was first posted.”

Stay classy, Mr. Smart. I only have the one functioning brain cell, but as I mentioned previously it wasn’t a reference as much as it was quoting you directly. And you can see that many of the phrases are not mere “similar remarks” but quoted word for word.

And if it makes you feel any better, nothing I do here is “for the hits.” I do it because, like a nurturing mother, I love you and, as one commenter pointed out at this juncture, the fact that Mr. Smart’s comments were rated into the dust just goes to show how the public is taking it.

First of all, I didn’t accuse anyone of anything – and I certainly didn’t say that anyone here didn’t have lives. But if the shoe fits, go ahead, wear it – and don’t let me stop you.

Reading comprehension is something that is taught at the very early stages of development. Some people basically never did learn it or leave school with the skills to put two coherent sentences together, let alone construct a paragraph that actually makes sense.

And others tend to deliberately take things out of context in order to continue promoting their attack driven agenda.

That said, I stand firm by what I said. Deal with it.

@ Warrior.

First of all, thanks for that particularly wasted effort. You clearly have no clue what you’re talking about and if you – ever – worked in PR, you would know that everything you just posted is patently rubbish. To wit: A CEO should go and fact check a PR written by a company hired to do it. You must have been working for PR in an alternate universe or something. Go ahead, give me your name and tell me the PR firm where you worked. Go ahead.

It is always delightful to see people in glass houses throwing stones. Especially at someone who clearly doesn’t care for angst driven man-children on the Internet behaving badly.

Attacking people – especially developers and people in authority – for no apparent reason is the real reason why gamers are, primarily, treated as nothing more than a means to a revenue stream and nothing else.

Even the headline for this news bit is quite unprofessional. Stealing is a serious accusation and quite clearly thats not what has happened here .This is yet another example of irresponsible writing passing for journalism in order to push people’s buttons, gain hits etc. Buy hey, to each his own – and thanks for the memories. Most people have more than two brain cells and can clearly something like this for what it is.

I see, so you didn’t call them “no-life cretins” and they could understand that if they weren’t so developmentally delayed. For the record, the CEO doesn’t have to fact check the Press releases, that is something that should be done by someone in the company however. Technically it is your job, just not necessarily directly. And you did check it, at least you approved it. According to your PR firm:

As a CEO he looked it over, approved it, moved it forward. While drafting the quote, I looked for inspiration from other press releases, about MMOs. Yes, sometimes it is easier to write something up by using someone else’s thoughts as examples.

I don’t often talk about legalities, but according to your presumably fired PR guy, you did approve that you said, in quotes, what was lifted from another person and used as your own quote. I might not be a lawyer, but claiming another’s quote as your own would likely fall under the realm of plagiarism, a form of theft. Again, the quotes weren’t just “similar,” many were exact right down to misspelling of “multiplier,” grammar errors, lifted directly from both quotes. But I’m not here to make accusations, so let us move on.

To sum it up, I’m going to go with Warrior’s third option, in his post on Massively:

3. Derek: You need a handler. Appoint someone you trust to counsel you and reign you in. As a CEO, you should not be posting long-winded rants about internal affairs. You should not be bashing your constituents, predecessors, or anyone you fired in public forums. You should not be involved in online shouting matches. While part of the job is to be a punching bag, proactively inviting attacks and controversy is not. There is a proper way to behave as a leader. There is a proper tact that you must take when communicating with stakeholders. Please show restraint and get a grip on your roles in the companies for which you are responsible. You do them a disservice otherwise.

You can find Derek Smart’s comments on the Massively article, here: