Rise of the Scam MMO

in 1890 the Charming and charismatic George C Parker was sitting in a Brooklyn Cafe talking to a group of tourists to the tourists amazement George actually owned the Brooklyn Bridge and due to falling on hard times he was selling it quite cheaply in fact the tourists jumped on this once in a lifetime opportunity and they bought the bridge George would then go on to sell the Brooklyn Bridge several more times to several other groups of people over the years he would also sell the Madison Square Gardens and the Statue of Liberty he sold all these landmarks to various people despite not actually owning any of them then in 1920 Victor lustig would tour the country with his amazing money duplicating machine known as the Romanian box which could make an identical copy of any value note you put in he would demonstrate to People by placing a hundred dollar bill inside waiting six hours for the machine to work and then receiving another identical 100 he would take both these hundreds to a bank to prove they were real and once people realized it was the real deal he sold this box to the highest bidder including at one point a Texas Sheriff the Box itself of course only contained one real note and several fake notes the six-hour time working was given to allow him to escape after each sale then in 2009 the BBC TV show hustle aired following the fictional story of a group of confidence tricksters the show was slick sexy and Incredibly successful it's also one of my personal favorite TV shows it ran for eight seasons but now con men have moved on from selling Bridges and money printing machines and they aren't the Debonair suited and booted image you come to expect they're greedy they're manipulative and they're taking money from naive impressionable children because con men are now exploring the world of MMORPG development ladies and gentlemen welcome I'm Josh Drive Hayes con men or confidence tricksters hold a special place in our Collective social heart because they're presented as Suave sophisticated see scamps tricksters tricking old billionaires out of their ill-gotten gains the unscrupulous Moguls the Robin Hood types if you will unfortunately the reality is often somewhat different the romanticized Hollywood version of this greedy billionaire being swindled out of his ill-gotten gains by some cheeky young Chap and then that money distributed to the needy that is often replaced with tricking naive or impressionable young children or swindling the elderly or the vulnerable out of their money praying on Desperate people if you've been following the dream world Fiasco on multiple YouTube channels you'll be aware of exactly what scam MMOS look like aware of how Wild the boasts are and how unsubstantiated the claims of what they can actually do are and you may consider yourself a rather intelligent wise individual who wouldn't fall for such obvious blatant scams but they're not aiming at you they don't need to trick you you're too hard to trick they're trying to trick the people who don't know any better yet and that's the problem these projects are designed to bypass your logic centers your intelligence and go straight to your emotional core to pull on your heartstrings and to part you from your money by manipulating you not by promising an actual viable service and over the last few years we've seen the rise of MMOs claiming to be all things to all men to fill a need that you so desperately have so let's take a look at these scam MMORPGs work look at how you can spot the scams work out why they're trying to scam you and then hopefully you can help protect other people let's examine the Strange World of the scam MMO before we dive into this strange World consider dropping a like on the video or subscribing to the channel for more MMO stuff and ring the bell so you get all the future notifications a huge thank you to the supporters on patreon and twitch who keep the channel going more on how you can support at the end for now let's begin when looking at questionable projects it's very important to remember hanlon's razor which is never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity basically that means if something seems stupid or straight up too good to be true it probably doesn't mean the person doing it is an evil genius they're much more likely to Simply Be an idiot or completely unaware of the complexity of what they're claiming they can do if someone says I'm going to do X and they have no idea how difficult X is to do don't assume they're trying to con you assume that they're just ignorant of the true difficulty of what they're claiming it is they can do but with that remembered these game projects are different because they are all being created by people with claimed experience in the design Arena people who claim a level of authority people who tell you to trust them these projects aren't just ambitious amateurs unaware of reality they are claimed experts telling you they can straight up do the impossible con man or confidence trickster is someone who achieves a goal through trickery and deception sells you a product that doesn't exist or gains from you and not repays the debt they've been around for years but it's only recently the old con man tactics have started to push into the MMO design world so let's take a quick look at how they work before we look at how they're using MMOs specifically to make money con men rely on three things to achieve their goal abusing the extremes of human emotion fear of missing out and pressure to make a decision now and the absolute unwavering confidence that they should be trusted the first is emotion you sell something by choosing an emotion enhancing it and then abusing it if you want to sell someone the Brooklyn Bridge you appeal to their sense of 1 under their sense of power to controlling a Historic Landmark how respected they will be how famous how revered you appeal to their desire to be known if you're selling a money box you play up to their greed their desire for more the Lust For wealth if you're cold calling people pretending to be from revenue and taxes and demanding payments you play up to their fear threatening to throw them in jail for not paying to bankrupt them to make them homeless if you're starting a collective and you want people to join you you provide Community friendship acceptance belonging a place to feel important you provide the situation that will remove their intense loneliness Khan's work by finding the emotion that drives the individual person and then applying pressure to it until that person will do anything that you ask them to do to make the pressure stop they want what you are selling once the person being conned is interested they're known as The Mark now you've got your mark you apply a time limit you want to sell the bridge but you're going away next week you can sell the money box but you're moving tomorrow you need them to pay the agreed tax amount within six hours or they're going to jail the less time someone has to think about their decision the less likely they are to think logically ask friends or family about it or Research into the con man's past and figure out it's probably a scam you don't want people using logic or sense you want them to make a choice based off pure emotion the emotion you've already established they are the most driven by be that greed fear anger Revenge lost power a desire for belonging a family or a fetish you want them to make Base Animal Instinct choices and you want them to make them quickly and you do all of this with confidence Charisma and the absolute unfaltering belief that you are completely correct and you are to be trusted since people have had stuff other people have found ways of taking that stuff from them either through force or through coercion and now it's through emotional manipulation of the content MMORPG players when compared to a general cross-section of the general population have been studied and discovered to have higher than average levels of addictive personality the Casual mlorpg player wants a place to belong a community to be part of they want an experience to have the hardcore MMORPG player wants a second life effectively and all MMORPG players want to have a connection and a commitment to their character and they ideally want to be the early adopter to the next big Magic game if the next massive major MMO comes out every player wants to be there on day one and this is what every single Kickstarter MMO promises to be these traits have been exploited by the gaming world for years with subscriptions or microtransactions or pay-to-win systems or limited time sales but now the con men are taking notice they're realizing the MMORPG gamer is an absolute ripe Target for emotional manipulation let me show you how they do it opening Kickstarter and searching for MMO brings up an Eclectic mix of results from legitimate projects that actually got made to ambitious but ultimately doomed ideas to Absolute shovelware garbage but when you go through and read what they promise take note of how much is just straight up emotional manipulation and how much is impossible to achieve let's look at the emotional strings they pull the way they use fear of missing out and the lengths they go to to convince you they can be trusted here's a game called the fifth prophecy it's going to be an MMO sequel to The forthcoming series which is in itself an isometric MMORPG available on Steam the project leader is looking for 8717 to make an entire MMO which for anyone unsure is about enough money to employ a highly skilled developer for about a month the only comment which is now deleted is asking if they actually have permission to make a sequel to the forthcoming the comment is not answered and the commenter has since removed their pledge the description contains the lines I am a programmer analyst for 15 years this is the trust me statement 15 years sounds impressive despite the fact that has no actual relation to game design then you've got the line my autistic son pushed me to make a sequel and appealed the emotion of parents with autistic children or anyone on the autism spectrum it has no relevance to game design it's a manipulation technique to make you react emotionally to the pitch and immediately think it's a positive thing to support further down he writes we respect copyright we do not use any material from the forthcoming games the game will be totally different despite the fact the first writing on top of this Kickstarter page is a sequel to the fourth coming games in the risks and challenges bit he adds thanks to my obstinacy and positivism I will overcome the trials this is another trust me sentence with no proof he has the ability to do this the long lasting design section then says if the enthusiasm of people is as strong as the original game it will last for many years this appeals to a sense of belonging and Community while simultaneously placing the responsibility for the game's lifespan on the players instead of the developers this project so far has three backers and has raised 176 dollars another project face of mankind fall of the Dominion let's skip to four minutes into the trailer and enjoy the sob story complete with sad music after around 18 months they shut down the servers and canceled the contract after that I tried to get the game back on its feet on my own I called it Facebook well six months later I had to realize that not only I have burned out but my finances as well so it was rather painful to finally declare that I had to cancel the development [Music] that is just an extreme appeal to emotion using one man's Sadness the next few videos are a technology teaser and a pitch video both hosted on YouTube and both now unavailable look at the bullet points below no grinding no classes player-driven economy open PVP persistent universe and they finish with no argument or friendship will ever go unheard this is both an appeal to community and belonging and also completely untrue imagine if every argument that ever happened in an MMO actually impacted the world the world would be a mess within five minutes and if you pledge just ten thousand dollars you can design a unique one-of-a-kind character just for you custom armor custom hat custom weapon and a custom icon so players know your custom this is just hunting for narcissists you will even be listed as an executive producer in the game's credits and they will invite you to a paintball event with them and then a relaxed dinner I'm not making this up it's actually a backer reward the estimated delivery date of this backer reward was 2014 and the game hit its goal so surely the game got made well this change.org petition titled removal of face of mankind fall of the Dominion on Steam seems to suggest it did get put on Steam and the promised faction system was monetized beyond belief and in the comments we even see someone commented hashtag Kickstarter fraud here's another MMO Global Adventures last updated in 2017. it got funded for just under two thousand dollars which actually far surpassed its ambitious lofty goal of 222 dollars to make an MMO the game says your life will get turned upside down as you hunt for hidden treasures and fight zombies vampires and ninjas the graphic even says it is fair to play never pay to win you cannot gain gameplay Advantage by spending real money that was a key element of the kickstarter campaign remember this scrolling down we get to see even more backer rewards with the warning the exclusive items shown in the soldier tier and above will only be available via this campaign fear of missing out kicks in now and if you pledge 750 you'll get your face on a wanted poster in every main town and further down they explain the kickstarter campaign saying 12 of the kickstarter proceeds will go to making an anime series 12 percent of the two thousand dollars they raised they are going to make an anime series with just over two hundred dollars but even further down they actually explain why 222 was the goal stating the kickstarter is actually just to gauge interest and don't worry because 222 is actually only about 0.01 of their already established total budget this means the total budget is 2.2 million dollars and the investors have already agreed to give them this they just needed a Kickstarter to show that they were serious the game launched on Steam has mostly negative reviews and the latest comments let people know the servers were taken down more than a year ago and the other comments include choppy animations completely unsynced audio needlessly bad dialogue 10 levels of payable VIP which create a Pay to Win system paid mounts in the cash shop you can't get through playing the game an energy fatigue system limiting how much you can play and a comment from the publisher Super Games who also made dream of mirror online stating the development company pixelsoft have stopped developing and have just sort of ran off tricking people is easy convincing them they've been tricked that's much harder the con man will always be a career path that appeals to morally gray people until the end of time in the MMO Community is full of players that have extreme emotions that are remarkably easy to exploit full of players crying out for the next big MMORPG you will have the narcissists that want their face on every poster in town you will have the completionists that want to start a game on day one you will have the lonely people that want to be members of a guild or running a guild you will have every single type of player wanting something to fill an emotional void and if you promise that you'll have a lot of people willing to throw money at you and follow you with your brand new game the simple fact is if you actually have the ability to produce and create the game that you're claiming to create you don't need to use emotional manipulation you won't need to promise the world you won't need to say trust me you'll be able to show them proof here's an example is there tea or coffee in this mug neither it's a Space Marine mug obviously it's full of Space Marines that's a promise trust me if it actually was full of Space Marines I'd have proof of that I'd be able to just show you you wouldn't need to trust me you'd be able to see that I was actually telling the truth and that's the easy way to spot the con man from the actual experienced developer the people with the real skill show proof of what they claim they can do scammers and tricksters hate it when you talk to other people because when you talk to other people then you start to see between the cracks then you start to read between the lines you get other people's opinions and you realize this might not actually be legitimate they impose a time limit they push your emotional buttons and then they say don't miss out trust me When someone tells you to trust them without proof that they're trustable that should raise all kinds of red flags Space Marines you can be sure that YouTubers such as myself Kira TV Callum Upton the lazy peon MMO bite and slopes game room are going to be keeping a close eye on all the upcoming MMORPG projects from more famous ones like ashes of creation Star Citizen and Pantheon rise of the Fallen to the absolute shovelware Kickstarter junk and will work to help you see through the manipulation and make an informed choice so you are not taken in by the next big scam it seems the age of the scamo is upon us and it's up to all of us to analyze and scrutinize these projects so the naive or the vulnerable are protected from them thanks for watching another great big thank you to all the supporters on patreon and twitch who keep the channel going you can support the channel from only one pound a month and you can check the video description to find links to the patreon twitch Twitter and our Discord Channel and as always have a great day

Channel: Josh Strife Hayes

Views: 710,364

Keywords: KICKSCAMMER, scammo, scam game, fake mmo, mmorpg, dreamworld scam, kickstarter scam

Id: 4SFfRoolOtQ

Length: 19min 20sec (1160 seconds)

Published: Wed May 26 2021

Reddit Comments

[u/chicken_bizkit]

I think I posted this one last week