So after a very very long hiatus I’m back. I’d like to say I’m new and improved but the truth is I’m the same old me except that now I’m 27 and I’m making videos. Fascinating right?

So where did I go? What the heck happened? It’s a long story but I’ll try to keep it short. Back in August I signed up to beta test some new online games. One of the games I signed up for was a game called Nightscape, the premise of which was a virtual online club scene. Anyone who knows me knows I don’t like clubbing but the game designers said they intended to make the game with the testers, to get their input on every detail and really involve them so I thought what the heck!

The games developers put up a website so that beta testers could get to know each other, begin to build the community and make game suggestions. I was one of the first people to register and to my surprise I became something of a local celebrity. Because the site wasn’t finished and the company was understaffed I took it upon myself to act as forum moderator and site support. When people had questions about the game or site they came to me. When people complained that there were no FAQ’s I wrote several for them. When people needed help designing their suites (think MySpace profiles) I made a video explaining how to do it. I ended up having the most points, the most friends on my friends list and was the first non-employee to make the featured members list. The point is, I was very influential on the site and I became rather popular within the budding community.

As time went on I did more and more free work for them. I started a newsletter, designed the graphics for it and chose people from the beta test to write articles to keep people involved and up to date. I and a few friends started a contest account and held official contests. We wrote a lengthy report on all the ways the site devs could improve the site and what the testers wanted added. We spent hours writing detailed posts about game and site development and I personally spent hours and hours answering player questions and speaking with the site devs via chat programs and even over the phone. At which point I jokingly said ‘I do so much work for you guys you ought to hire me.’ So they offered me a job as a creative consultant and site admin.

They made quite a big deal about it to, leaving comments on my page, putting up a poll to ask if they should hire me (all the possible answers were yes) and announcing it via the forum and a mass email. I was really quite flattered so when they asked me to do some work for another game they were making I was glad to help. But over the course of the next few months the site deteriorated, the job offer went no where and it was becoming clear the game itself was likely never going to be developed. When I would ask about the job I’d get lies and half truths. When we brought it to the staff’s attention that the site was being over run with pornography, pro-drug images and copyrighted material, all of which were violations of the TOS, we were told that the staff didn’t care. Staff members were being verbally abusive, promises were being broken and everyone was getting very uncomfortable. So I started to research the company and what I found was very unsettling.

According to the Google results the company had a history of scamming people through various pyramid and marketing schemes. They were reportedly being sued by several different organizations and were being investigated by the IRS. More and more of their lies began to unravel and it became fairly clear that they were trying to take advantage of people. Beta testers were dropping like flies, people leaving left and right and the traffic to the site had slowed to a crawl. The site had been taken over by perverts and bottom feeders and few of the original ‘founding’ members remained. So it was with a heavy heart that I decided to leave. I removed my content and ceased doing any work on the site and then left a Blog post explaining that the site was going in a direction I didn’t approve of and that I didn’t think it was a healthy place for me to be anymore. I didn’t mention any of the information I’d found out about the company because while I felt people had a right to know I didn’t have any hard proof they’d done anything illegal and didn’t want to make accusations based on hearsay. I did however suggest that people do their own research and leave my MySpace address so people could find me.

After that I only checked my account once a week to see if I had any messages and as far as I was concerned that was the end of it. Until a few days ago when I tried to log in and got a message that my account didn’t exist. So I logged in under a separate account I’d registered long ago for testing new profile themes and was amazed to see that no only was my page gone but any mention of me had been wiped clean from the site. My polls, forum posts, even other people’s posts or polls regarding me had been removed. Clearly they knew I knew what they were up to and wanted to shut me up.
So after a few seconds of being royally pissed I decided I really didn’t care but that the players had a right to know they were being swindled. So I made a video about what happened and I intend to post it to my new vlog on YouTube. If you weren’t involved in the whole NightScape mess you probably won’t care about that particular video but you may enjoy my other videos feel free to pop in and say hello.

So, now I’m back, and I’ll be blogging again. I hope you haven’t forgotten about me and that you’ll come back to visit. And of course, I hope you’re all having a lovely holiday season.

This entry was posted on Monday, December 4th, 2006 at 1:46 pm and is filed under General Stuff. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.