Transcript below:
User (U): @Shane I know you are probably working hard for us and the company, but can you give us some weapons to fight those who try to break our community. Or at least some hope
Shane (S): We are working on a statement so people can at least share something when needed. Thank you for your support.. unfortunately success brings this type of behaviour out of some people looking for views to sell ads and make some dollars.. but yes, we are working on a statement we will add to our website over coming days that people can refer to.
U: They're just jealous, but I am excited for the video that is definitely coming this week, right?
S: Well I believe Nathaniel mentioned that, but it was just a little progress video showing some physics inside the engine that we plan to record with Unity UI showing so people don't claim it's pre-rendered. We have discussed another more interactive display coming up at a later date not too far away
U: Shane said he was releasing a 'hiring' page on the e2 site a few months ago, but I assume this is now happening after the move to react
S: Yes, will be live next week if all goes well
U: I think there need to be another Dev stream doesn't have to be to address the scam calling but having your faces out there talking about the project will help a lot the last dev stream was just over 3months ago
S: the people making the videos will just continue to do so, they are only interested in speculating on negative things while ignoring plausible explanations
U: Heyy the savior. any news on when we will be getting weekly patch notes just stating broadly what the team is working on so us (the shareholders) know whats being done. or maybe a simple progress bar to show the status of current things on the site. like 80% done till phase 2 that you could adjust weekly and state issues your running into
S: I actually created that back in December last year and I believe it should be included in the next update with updates (will need to check with that team though to be sure)
U: yeah they do that... such a shame what some people do for few $
S: yeah they sell their souls .. I can understand if they want to pick on something that is legitimately a scam but we have literally been working for months on fixing our growth issues .. if this was a scam we would have been gone a long time ago
U: Is there anyway you can address to those why this isn't considered a ponzi scheme as well?
S: Well a ponzi scheme is something where you don't have enough revenue to pay out people when they request their money, right? So you need to use incoming funds to pay out requests as that money comes in. We have more than enough money to pay out every single user should they require their money out and we are not a ponzi scam .. it's just scaremongering that sells I suppose and they do not understand how our business model works
U: Another question @Shane - one of the criticisms of your background was your lack of experience prior to id.xyz (as per your LinkedIn) - what did you do before that project?
S: I was involved in many various projects, I worked on VoIP software and owned a VoiP company, worked in business development, marketing etc. I know they are picking on me and my background but at some point in time every successful person was unknown .. based on their approach only rich and famous people should be allowed to create something new and inspiring meaning anyone else should perhaps not even try .. they would use products every day created by people like me who stuck their necks out and worked to create something different yet they do not want to look at it that way
U: Lest We Forget.. thank you for your service and sacrifice that we may be free and in turn bring freedom to others. --- Art or treasure with y'a prize of old' the first will claim the plates of gold. --- is the whole tweet the riddle or only the second part that is marked? S: The second part is separated for a reason
U: @Shane Many of those youtubers have said the biggest issue is that there is no gameplay and “never will be”. So as soon as you can put out anything to prove the aim of the game and actual footage that is in game, then many will instead become interested. I think this attention is a bit unfortunate, but at the same time - E2 got eyes on it now, and I am VERY sure all of these people will turn from haters to players once the game is out and playable However right now it could as well be like many of the scams we have seen, and this has been the reason for many to not invest already.
S: yes well we will show some things we are working on .. but whatever we show they will also pick on and focus on something else because that is their agenda here
Nathaniel(N): Yes we're working on showing more gameplay asap... Next video will be the start of it
U: Shane can we see evidence of the MasterCard deal
S: Users have already been issued with Virtual Cards and I am working on the physical card structure at present
U: Plus a ponzi scheme would mean that the people who bough tiles in december would get tons of money for doing nothing - not true - we sell to other people that see and understand the value of a location and its possible future value. and usually scams do not have devs talk directly to its userbase - it is usually the people who invited others that manage the lower tiers. again not true for E2 - am i getting this right?
S: Exactly
U: We need a hint on the riddle mate.. No idea where to go
S: I am not expecting it to be solved any time soon
Shane: it's 3am here and I have been in meeting for around 10hrs today .. and I need to wake up soon so I probably need to sleep guys - am sorry. Nathaniel was in the last 3 hours of my meetings so guess he will also be worn down lol
But Shane stays on to answer a few more, even as someone (ahem E2.News) tells him BigFry is going to hop in E2O discord.
U: @Shane just look after you and the team, once all comes to fruition it will all come in place and everyone will regret being stupid for talking against E2
S: 100%
U: Shane, just floating this out there, allow us to name a beneficiary or emergency contact on our accounts. Thanks
S: lol good idea
U: My father(rip) was a "nobody" who became a self made multimillionaire and along the way he experienced the same defamatory garbage you're going through. Once you accomplish what you set out to do, the stress will be hopefully worth it. From the little time I've been here I've seen a very loyal base of users dedicated to supporting your success. I wish you well too and hope that you can provide something concrete in terms of game play and resources release soon. Hoping there's eventually a pet unicorn in the works
S: thank you. I have told my team the same thing. I don't mind them picking on me so much as yes, this was my idea and I had the guts to do it (told to me by someone relatively big in SF) .. but would appreciate them just focusing on me and say whatever but leave my team out of it, they are just trying to do their job BigFry (B): Is this where the questions are being asked?
Nathaniel (N): @Bigfry Hi yes ask
B: My question to Nathaniel and Shane. In your opinion, rough estimate (I do know that game dev is a finnicky business) but when would you estimate that your "Ready Player One" experience will be playable and functional?
N: Of course this is the ultimate goal and will take a lot of time and can only be done with the most skilled devs which we are building the team for
S: hey @Bigfry - I actually didn't mind your initial video as it contained your opinion and I understand skepticism on what we are doing. We launched e2 Nov last year and had no idea it would take off this quickly so we have been playing a lot of catch up over previous months solving issues inherited from hypergrowth. I would like to chat with you but is almost 3:30am here now and I have just finished an 18 hour shift and have to wake up again shortly. I only dropped in to say hello to the community in here quickly
B: So, my follow up. Do you have anything to point to, in terms of gameplay RIGHT NOW, or in the NEAR future (June) that can show your supporters that you actually have a game. Prototype VR session, anything other than terrain. Any sort of interaction in the world ON the ground?
N: Yeah we will release a video this week showing terrain editing and driving around with a car and physics updating real-time on terrain editing under the car, etc (coming this week)
B: Awesome, look forward to it
N: @Bigfry I kinda expected videos like yours so we've been working on implementing all terrain physics to showcase some first interaction. Where you can see like ow this is not some noob development that patched some Unreal/Unity terrain together and pre-rendered all.
S: It was not planned in response to your video though, just to be clear, is simply showing that we are working on the engine introducing physics in massive environments etc. There is something else we will be releasing over coming weeks with a bit more to it
N: Yes as we understood already we have to show more progression there that obvious
B: B: I'd love to have a chat in the future. Was the company responsible for the defamation claim on that first video then?
N: I'd love to chat with you too explaining some stuff
S: I am not aware of our lawyers serving any documents to you for defamation
N: Yep all peace and I understand the skepticism...Btw I didn't leave Drone, we're still in very close contact.
U: I'm actually impressed and excited that this seems to be a civil conversation
S: well we expect people to criticise us but when we're labelled a scam or a ponzi scheme without just cause or evidence or if there are unsubstantiated / slanderous claims it becomes a little much
U: Imagine the devs setting it up as a scam but thinking whoa we got this lets keep this going
S: That is not true .. we were working on the terrain engine a long time before launching. I am also a father of 3 kids .. I don't want to be seen as a scam it's embarrassing for my family and children
U: Unable to withdraw funds and support ignoring several emails seems fraudulent to me.
U: That's clearly fraudulent activity
S: I am not even sure if this is true and you're picking one case from 10s of thousands? There are also people who have attempted to hack and exploit our system who we do not name publicly .. but our team is very well across these users
U: Yeah I mean you have been talking about showing actual gameplay of phase 3 for a long time and said it would come with introduction of phase 2. Just unfortunate coincidence that all these youtubers suddenly found this now and not two weeks later
N: Yep and so many other things to help on the company with support/withdrawals etc that Phase 3 showcase has been delayed for some time, but still we only released 6 months
U: E2 needs to continue to show progression or videos claiming scam will keep coming
S: we realise that but we have been trying to lay low while fixing issues from our growth period. Unfortunately these recent videos just brought us back into the lime light some what before we were prepared
U: Well if you'd actually respond I can show u emails dating back to before February, then everything goes silent after March
S: That was a period when we were transitioning to 5CA and Zendesk. Did you send another email recently ?
U: Even if it’s a small amount of cases you just took someone’s money
S: right .. why don't you go chase a bank or something ..? Oh that's right because the CEO of a bank wouldn't be in here chatting with you so you don't have the chance to criticise them directly
U (replying to another user): Bro it's just with you. Everyone is getting paid. Its either your mistake or the bank has blocked the inflow
S: he won't even share his URL (Shane had previously asked his URL to identify his account, which the said user declined to share)
N: Bigfry, btw did you see Ferrans Turbo Squid? I hope you can agree he's not a noob.. https://www.turbosquid.com/Search/Artists/Galva858
U: To be fair, I don't think he said anything about noob in his videos -- he's looking for details on future gameplay mechanics in addition to engine mechanics.
N: Well (he-BigFry) kinda trying to prove the teams inexperience
U: How do your kids get along with only seeing their dad so seldom?
S: Am trying to spend more time with them. I actually played basketball with my son for 30 mins the other week !
U: Phase-2 ? (presumably as original message was deleted)
S: It is coming. We have experienced some incredible success and we want to caplitalise on that. I do want to be a little ambitious in this area so we are working on multiple projects in parallel but as they come together I believe it will cement our platform exactly where we want it to be
U: Exactly mate Thats where the problem is They don't have the right calling E2 a scam or us stupid Is it a high risk investment, yes, it is, but that's my choice and mine alone I believe Shane and the team and that's the bottom line At the end of the day everyone can express their opinion, but not calling it a scam as its not Let's not forget that people are always afraid of what they don't understand, so its easier to call everything and everyone stupid that go into open conversation and express real and adequate opinion
S: Thanks
U: @Nathaniel @Shane you wanna know how to shut up the people who calling you a scam? : STAGE VOICE
S: I have just worked an 18 hr shift and supposed to be sleeping now. I dropped in to say hello to the community then was about to sleep and Bigfry appeared so I stayed around a little longer
U: Essense? Shoon?
S: Essence will be Epic
N: But yeah even Unity was impressed with our rendering and technology we made with Unity with them collaborating and featuring us: https://unity.com/madewith/drone
S: yes, this is really impressive .. created by some very talented devs
U: Any chance of newer content creators being added to the test ads?
S: Yes, we would like to add more but it's just one example of how busy we really are right now
U: Hoping Earth2 accepts BTC soon. 11BTC could get me a few countries, but I'll be waiting around for it
S: Well....
U: I've witnessed all the struggles, being here since mid November, and as a person running his own company with 60+ people i know how EXTREMELY DIFFICULT it is to start and achieve something What you did is amazing and I am ALL IN TILL THE END without a doubt Just keep it up you and the team are amazing.
S: Thank you - look forward to telling the full story one day.. people have no idea all the crap we've had to deal with while also fixing problems and trying to make progress but it's all coming together better now
N: Yeah it has been one heck of a crazy ride so far.
U: Real millionaires dont sleep, Am i right?
S: yes you are right lol
U: Crap like debt (Wolfgang referenced twice) - what was that about (assuming you can't say so if you ignore again, I won't ask again)
S: debt? No debt
U (answering to first user): it was in reference to tech debt not $ debt
S: yes I thought so .. but tech debt is tech debt and debt is debt lol.
Miss-Tee (M): Can't wait. I'm super excited. I actually get dressed up when new things are released ha ha ha. stupid woman lol
S: that is so cool .. I think I should follow suit lol
N: A screenshot of the buggy we'll use in the next video^
U: I sincerely look forward to it Shane People really don't understand how hard it is and I have experienced a real scam in my first year of business by not getting paid half a million pounds and liquidating my first company But you know what, we keep fighting and winning that's what we do That's why I am all behind you, the team and the project
S: that's a big chunk of money
U: Do you envision E2 having it's own marketing team in charge of business development, advertising etc? Or will that stuff be handled outside of house and of course by you?
S: part in house
Shane: I think @Bigfry has maybe gone? Did not see any messages for a while .. is coming up to 4am here now I need to sleep. Hope you all have a good day ahead
Nathaniel: I can stay for few more minutes
U: What's your favourite part of E2 so far
N: Playing around in Phase 3 massive terrain etc, always wanted to do something huge like this, got the idea for the terrain many years ago then made a prototype, then when Shane approached me about 2 years ago I finally had the opportunity to work this out and started from scratch with the experience I gained over the years: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v0sdjmlyQCs&ab_channel=NathanielDoldersum
BigFry pops in again for some just as Shane leaves
B: @Nathaniel Can you describe to me what the game is. Like, When your ads say "Ready Player One" is this truly what you are creating?
N: Something like Ready Player One is the goal yes a MetaVerse like Unreal/Nvidia are also working on now
U: @Nathaniel thats the thing. Many of these naysayers don't believe thats possible
N: Well then why are Unreal/Nvidia focussing on that now?
U: I agree with u. But thats what many keep saying.
N: Yes of course that is very hard to make and requires the best skilled developers in the world and there's tons of examples like Dual Universe, Star Citizen, etc trying to achieve something huge
U: In your opinion, What makes 'us' different to the others?
N: Having a lot of experience how to actually deal with that. I don't have that all publicly, but I've worked on literally everything...The only way this can work with the most skilled devs experienced in as much fields as possible . E.g. did you know that the core of Unreal 5 is made by 3 devs?
U: Do you think Unreal 5 and Unity are head to head? Both seem to be great, like Unity has an easier coding, whereas Unreal has better graphics.
N: Yes they both have their pros and cons, where Unreal 5 is ahead of Unity with graphics and Unity on the coding side. Unity is the king of iteration, you can very quickly code and 100% do you own engine on top easily doing 100% custom rendering, where e.g. altering Unreal/CryEngine to do like massive scale world rendering the most optimal way you need to modify the source code, etc. That's one of the reason of Star Citizen's progression...They had to build the tech modifying a hard to modify engine
So basically none of the game engines out there are suitable out of the box for massive world rendering at the frame-rate we want and currently already are having.
U: So for what I understand you´re using Unity as a base to create your own engine? that´s huge if so
N: Yes that's what we also did on Drone
U: What the situation is with getting multiplayer working? how do you expect to handle potentially millions of people tuning in at once if this really is going to become ready player one
N: Well obviously that's the most difficult thing. For Drone I created our entire networking from scratch as it's player hosted as we needed instant host migration, it's a hybrid of peer2peer and server/client model. It's exactly the technology you need to make servers being able to communicate with each other to sync players over
U: In D.R.O.N.E we saw some very dense jungle. Can we expect biomes in E2 to be the same
N: Yes currently it already has the same density...Is just a matter of drawing distance to handle well the lower hardware
U: Ok, but how will you scale that to allow 100s of 1000s of people to be online at once? that would have to make use of the world's biggest servers
N: Yes basically the goal is to achieve what Dual Universe is trying to do with their networking
U: Do u like sushi? @Nathaniel and btw how do you and the other devs deal with stress anxiety and business pressure depression and nausea because when I usually start a business or venture I tend to have that a lot and fail
N: Raw meat better not to eat lol..Well I'm used to this, with Drone we didn't have any funds and we were able to get that far with always the rope in our neck of how to survive
N: On the Unity Asset Store I made a lot of funds, but then I gave that up to work on Drone, wasn't the best idea in the end
U: Maybe it was.... It led you here right?
N: One of them, the other that Shane is a very good friend and I always loved his ideas for E2. It's crazy, but cool at the same time
N: But I've also been doing very well again on the Unity Asset Store since a year or so. Just looking for someone taking over support as I'm doing E2 full-time since it launched
U: How do you intend to tackle replication on a scale this size? If we can customize our tiles does that data not have to be present and available for all players? Aren’t there 7.2 trillion tiles
N: 5.1 trillion, but very unlikely all will be bought. Yes this data will be on our E2 servers and loaded the same for all players
U: U need to expand the Dev team very quickly bcoz we are increasing in numbers everyday
N: Yes we're doing that, just had an interview this morning
U: BigFry ran like a lil' b***h
B: Ran from what? I'm right here. They answered the questions I had
N: Yes, thanks for being here
N: Another screenshot of buggy in coming video. This time we'll showcase the video on the fly with me driving around, editing terrain, doing voice over explaining stuff, etc
U: @Nathaniel I'm asking on the issue of replication and managing large numbers of players at once in concentrated areas. Will the numbers of players be limited or will there be a limitless approach?
N: Dual Universe explains well how to handle that: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QeZtqoydXpc&ab_channel=DualUniversehttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pLh2OoTj8vc&ab_channel=DualUniverse Is basically using an octree data structure approach for handling player load, key is that each server can communicate with its neighbor servers
U: You'll need lots of servers to pull that off, but shows it is possible
N: Yep
U: This will be cool, when will the video be, obviously nobody would want too miss it...? Will there be any water visuals? Or new biomes?
N: Not yet, as I've been focusing on making accurate terrain physics. But we're working on getting super skilled devs on board that will bring e.g. a water solution, so this is almost wrapped up and from there on we can move forward much faster
B: Slow mode is stopping me from replying to everyone, but in terms of an "apology" what do you think I need to apologize for? What is it that I said in my videos that I need to apologize for? Apologize for....asking questions and researching the team? Also, John, you are so cringy. The E2 community is looking at you with some shame rn lol
N: Mods can u disable slowmode?
N: Yes I don't think you need to apologize, you're free to have your opinion and being skeptical, you've pointed out many good points in where we can improve
N: @BigfryWe can chat directly if you like, but you have that disabled and can only do that from your side.
B: Sent you a friend request Nathaniel. I'd rather speak in private rather than in this chat with your amazing community members like John here
N: @BigFry ok, lets move there
U: Constructive criticism is not a bad thing
N: Yes indeed, and the website he made is very funny
Nathaniel(N): I'm going now, thanks for the chat
As Nathaniel moves to probably a private chat with BigFry, however BigFry chooses to add few replies which
Our Opinion: Nathaniel/Shane/Devs are needlessly wasting time with BigFry. there will be many such. This is waste of precious work time given they already doing an 18- hour shift
U: @Bigfry so all the things people replied back to you i guess you may send out some kind of apology on your youtube account and encourage all the others to do likewise
B: I have nothing to apologize for. I still believe its a scam and that there is no way the team can create what they are selling you. There's nothing yet that even proves the game exists outside of phase 1. You all are mad at me for asking about the game, but you haven't even see Phase 2 yet, let alone 3 and beyond. This project is 40 years off at this point lol
U: Well if you believe it's a scam, what are you doing here? Go call the authorities! You have a world to save!
B: I am here because I had a bunch of E2 shil- fans in my chat saying the devs are here answering questions. Im talking to nathaniel right now in DMs. Anything else?
U: @Bigfry i am 100% okay if you dont think the devs can pull it off. But if you use the word scam, to me it sounds as you think e2 is ripping People off. Is this indeed your statement? Or do i misinterpret?
B: My statement is this. I believe that the team knows they can't create Ready Player One in 5 years. Yet, they are selling tiles to you to fund it. There is no company on the planet that can do this, let alone in 5 years. That to me, is a scummy thing to do. I mean, based on all experiences I have with gaming, VR and watching Industry news, talking with other developers and just overall having common sense when it comes to gaming and tech. What evidence do you have that this CAN be achieved? That should be the real question lol
I guess we'll stop covering further chat that followed - I guess he's repeating himself over and frankly its our waste of time now..lol. Have a great day E2 !
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