MMOG "Utopia" - the true story

As promised, we've now uploaded our blog about the development of the large scale MMOG "Utopia" - the project that we started last year, contracted by a client who didn't want his identity revealed.

I have to make two confessions. At first, I haven't told the full truth about this project here. The spiritual focus was just a cover story. As I'm not bound by oath anymore, I've now disclosed the real purpose of the project in the blog, as well as the identity of the client, the Swiss organization "Embassy Flight and Ground Service".

Second, the development is finished - sort of - much sooner than expected. Due to the increasingly bizarre circumstances surrounding the project, we had no choice but to pull the brakes. So the blog is in fact a postmortem. We're not working any longer for Embassy Flight and Ground Service, and Utopia won't go online.

The project was not only a strange experience for us, it also had many bizarre and funny aspects. For anyone interested, here's the full and true story:

http://www.republic-of-utopia.com/mystery.htm

Please be aware that the story is not suited for minors. If you're below 18, please DO NOT CLICK on that link. Thank you.

Mystery solved: you got fired because you didn't give the right camera angles.. I guess the truth really is stranger than fiction...

Ohhhh, I see al those big numbers with a money simbol at the end...

uhh, that hurts!

but why the heck somebody needs a 3500 second long sex scene????

This is actually a very funny story!

Was the president by accident "Mathias Nievergelt"?

Seems like the company was recently deleted from certain tradeholding websites.
A new case for Mike Morbius I guess...

Is this him?
http://www.facebook.com/people/Mathias-Nievergelt/100000415443827

Crazy story! Just googled "Mathias Nievergelt" and got the same address (the one with the ghost house on Google Maps)

Try his telephone number; a dozen results of strange websites pretending to be various different businesses.

Hm.
Apart from finding those people, do you have any future plans? Will this stop you from making games again?

weren't you scared? i don't think i would have continued after such a statement.

Wow, what a great read! Thanks for that, jcl and co. Shame it appears to be over.

Jibb

that is bizarre. the sex game stuff isnt that wierd for me, i contemplated making one for a while and i remember a topic where others were contemplating it as well because lets face it... sex sells, but all that business stuff is just.... wierd.

Sorry to hear it didn't work out for you; the snippets the public here did see/hear always sounded optimistic...

That has to be one of the weirdest stories I've heard.

Wow, JCL, you are really a talented writer. Very good to read and your sense for humor is great!

But one questions, was the forum down yesterday because of a DDos attack of pissed 'Embassy Flight and Ground Service' employees?

This venture was truly a shame, but it sounds as though you handled it well.

I would just like to thank you JCL for being forthright and honest. I will be upgrading upon the next release, both due to speedy development with your products and your strong character.

That's a funny name!
Good luck with your project (I vote for thin models with small boops - if you have influence over )

Years ago I also had a job on a swiss project named "Utopia" (a software for stockkeeping and cash register).
Unfortunately it was never finished by bankruptcy of the company

Umm, incredible
son of .... man

Would have been suspicious to me from the beginning:

-a guy coming from an unknown company, with millons of
claimed assets but not public appearence (is there further information
available in the Swiss trade register?)

-wanting to contract build a full MMO without any previous
experience in the gaming industry. And also approaching/quickly contracting a
company that never had developed a full MMO in that scale.

-paying in cash (now this is about as unprofessional as
it can get. Only drug dealers and backalley second hand car dealers pay cash in these amounts.
Whoever pais cash wants to hide something, or tries to impress the other with a simple psycological trick)

-doing "important sounding" phonecalls with "prices and trade ministers". Thats a cheap phsycological trick too.

-having no other contact persons involved in the project.
Normally the "boss" would assign one of his young employees
as contact person, who is a constant contact-partner for
the gamedesign details.
Sending detail-design document discussions back and forth.
Whoever has to manage a million dollar company is
not doing detail stuff himself.


------

Anyhow, its good that you stopped the development soon enough.
I suppose that other companies would have continued working
even with delayed payments, just in the hope that it works.

Did he ask for assets/sourcecode? Else I really wonder
what his intentions where for that whole projects.

maybe a new kind of pyramid-swindle...?

maybe he has own clients, and the clients make invests for "something".
With this money he try to make more money. And maybe he has not enough paying clients to pay utopia....

and his clients are "mafioso" and want to see results....
and now his gprs data says, his position is in the atlantic sea, 2000m under water.....

this is a realy crazy story..... i like hes high-tech-home

Looks like a good story line for an action/suspence movie.

could be, that he was himself the subcontractor for
another company that wanted to make the Utopia game,
and paid him.

So he could use the concept and demo to show others,
pretending that his company was working on the game.
Then he just needs to wait for the first payments from them,
and then lets them sit duck.

Strange ... sounds like out of a hollywood-blockbuster directly!
Thanks for sharing this story!
Wish you all the best for the future

its more like 3500 seconds of recorded mocap animation that gets split up into several sex scenes

mocap rocks...

i assume A7 development now goes faster again?

Sorry, I forgot a 0 - it was in fact 35000 seconds, not 3500.

Yes, we're now in A7 development mode again. And the time spent for the MMOG is not totally lost - the MMOG engine kernel can be useful for a future engine version. Also many detail improvements already went into the engine and the importers.

As a resume, although we've spent some unpaid time for the project, it was also exciting and a lot of fun. We'll certainly do such a project again when the opportunity comes. Probably we'll then look a little closer into our client right from the beginning.

Good story jcl. A very interesting read. I especially like the part with the dialog for the motion capture. "With or without face and fingers?" Hilarious!

lol, how do you do a mocap sex scene? just have typical actors "move like it".... or maybe hire porn actors to actually do the deed? seems like it'd be hard to get good accurate results without..... well.... actual sex.

Very interesting!

Now we have to add the story to the wiki.

Should have contacted Ex_Citer

I'm not so sure, from what I read Utopia was about human on human action, not ape on human.

You don't like Titan & Elves?

and they probably want people to get an erotic reaction out of it, not a "eww this is fucked up, and that guy doesnt know anything about art" reaction.

lol, a great story and shame about the loss,

though i can't help but hope your story is part of a trilogy, and we're about to have a great turn of events

unfortunately though, it seems there is nothing more than all the initial posts on the Jobs Offered forum, where i wanna make a MMO who can help me, springs to mind. god love the guy for his ingenuity

so without the project being canned...
i want an mmo
i want sex
and i want it now
how much and when can ya start

An incredible story.
At least we can learn something from it:
It is an excellent example of how important it is to break the project into milestones and closely follow the cashflow. And pull the brake early enough if things get out of control. I guess, I would have continued working much longer, always hoping that things come back to normal by some miracle.

This is just messed up.

Maybe he was hired by some other game engine team to waste your time and resources JCL.

Well, at least you still have us..


.. and A7.

Naja... "Logisex, 16er Version" aus dem Forum schrotten und dann diese Sauereien hier ablassen.
Aber was soll´s. Wenn sie ein Projekt mit "Realporn" abziehen wollen, dann kann ich Ihnen mit 35 Stunden schärfstem Lizenz-Material aushelfen. Keine billige Hausfrauen-Filmchen, sondern Material mit international bekannten Stars der Szene, die wirklich gut aussehen.
Gruß
AS

Danke für Ihr Angebot. Ich gebe zu, dass unser Projekt womöglich schweinischer war als der zensierte Forum-Thread. Dennoch haben wir zur Zeit leider keinen Bedarf an Ihrem verschärften Lizenzmaterial. Ich hoffe, dass Sie es anderweitig verwenden können.

Excellent story. The sex angle is funny, and quite weird he was so adamant and eccentric on perfecting it. One has to wonder what further demands he would have if the project never died. Perhaps this is a blessing in disguise... just think if he wanted monkeys included in the fivesomes with a giraffe sitting on the sidelines watching. All of this in an Zurich airport level.

Either way, I think the rule of thumb is to never create or even consider calling your project "Utopia". They will always fail.

Ich guck immer nur 20 Minuten

Was hast du gegen Hausfauen und welche Szene ist das?

hmmm womit ich den Thread jetzt wohl völlig kaputt gemacht habe?!

Aber ich konnte mich nicht zurück halten.

Sorry to hear it didn't turn out JC. Looks like somebody was trying to "take you for a ride".

If the contract is null, maybe you can market your work to Utherverse?

Doug is HEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEERE!!!

I've become one with the internet, so I'm everywhere.

Agent Smith.

Looks like it should have been called "Screwtopia" or "Bluetopia". It would make a great game template for George's contributors game. I think we all know what the prize for finding the guy would be. It could be called JCL does Dallas (or Zurich Airport). I personally think it should be called Gone in 35000 seconds

oh - my - god o.O

das liest sich klasse, JCL! oops, German, sorry. Sounds great! I also enjoyed your scaphander story.

boah crazy story...
written in a good style btw

http://utopia-game.com/ hmmm...whats this? lol

I'm obviously sad to hear that this project failed JCL but it seems a rite of passage in the MMO world. I wonder if there are ANY MMO developers out there that haven't had to fail many times before succeeding? If so, must be nice...

well, we'll see how I go. although right now I am only working on a non massive orpg, I hope to make it an mmo eventually.

Seriously... what the fuck?
Why would anyone do this? I just... come on guys, WHAT?!
Only logical explanation I have is that this is the evil deed of a rival company wanting to waste your time/harm you financially.
Looking forward to the solution of this story...

I think those 9,7hrs of motion captured sex scenes got them stuck in whole a new venture?

It's weird they did invest money, only to pull out prematurely.

probably a snowball system:

invest into a venture, show the production-progess to pursuade credit-givers to invest into it too.
(as you can actually proove that real-world partners are working with you)
Then use this money to invest into the next (bigger) venture to
pursuade other credit-givers to help with additional investmnts on
that project.

This way you can work yourself up to huge-financed ventures.
And run away with the invenstment funds of the last project.


--


The trick is to have "credibility and trust", wich you
archive by prooving that you work with real-world partners,
and giving incentives to pursue these ventures without
very deep analysis by them. (e.g. Showing a suitcase with
money as upfront payment).

LOL beautifully put.

"It's weird they did invest money, only to pull out prematurely." xD

Weired story, hope you had no painful financial deficit while working "for free"! I wonder if the file gets solved one day. Looking forward to hearing from you

Did they guy really have that kind of money or was it a total scam with you NOT receiving a dime?

Hah! TUSC meets Utopia! Would that be TUSCopia? Or Utuscia?

In the last months, there have been some new developments about the Utopia case. A private detective was hired some months ago and found interesting information. It appears that our client is involved in criminal activities. If Utopia was a part of them is not quite clear. The president has meanwhile fled the country and took his residence in an African state. The Swiss authorities have been informed. A police investigation is currently ongoing.

Sounds like a new case for Mike Morbius

Johann Christian Lotter
Meister des Betrügens

Coming 2011

"Embassy Flight commanded to Ground Service"

Shit I totally wanted to play that game.

Anything new on this?

In a nutshell: The police is looking for our client with an international arrest warrant, but he's currently safe in an African country with no extradition treaty. The purpose of the Utopia project has possibly been fraud and money laundry. As he managed to transfer his funds out of Switzerland, the Utopia developers probably won't ever receive the rest of the due payment, at least as long as he stays where he is.

Sometimes I wonder if this is just another great story by jcl. It's almost too hilarious to be real.

I know. I always think that when i go back to this thread, its like the beginning of some james bond movie. I say jcl sneaks into the african country and "handles business"

Did anything ever come of this story?

Yes!

https://www.indiedb.com/games/morbius-the-utopia-conspiracy