Forum > Flight Sim World (FSW)
Flight Sim World: Closure Announcement
Asid:
Response from Chris Trott (former Aces Studio team member) to video published by
Chris contradicts quite a lot of what Froogle said. Having viewed the video I can say that Froogle did gett a few things wrong.
Chris Trott
1 week ago
"First - I have a real problem with your statements about the "money motive". I find it utterly unbecoming of anyone who purports to be a representative of this hobby to make statements like you did accusing PEOPLE of doing something like you did (i.e. the hiring thing, the facebook posts) and assuming that the RANK AND FILE had any idea what was going on at the management levels. From everything that's been posted by the people who now are JOBLESS because of this cancellation (which is most of the team, including the 2 that ran the media BTW), they had no clue that there was any discussion of cancelling the project until it was announced. So, shame on you for claiming they made posts "knowing" that it was being cancelled. They *DIDN'T*.
Also, I have a major problem with another base premise of your editorial. Dovetail did have experience in flight simulation. I'm sorry that you have forgotten that Dovetail was made up of many of the original ACES team that worked on both Microsoft Train Simulator AND FSX. I'm sorry that you forgot that I reminded you of that months ago when you got it wrong the last time you went on a rant about their "lack of experience." Microsoft picked Dovetail because they had that background experience, not just the money. Dovetail had, among its programmers, the guys who literally wrote Simconnect from nothing. The experience was there.
I'm not going to go into depth like I was tempted to with my end of this, but I'll summarize my feelings as such -
1) Robert Randazzo is not a "pillar" or "leader" of our community. He doesn't deserve to be heard. He hated DTG because they outbid him and never gave them a chance. They approached him in good faith and he told them off. He continues to make money because of the things DTG did to FSX to make it more stable and allow him to make addons that previously would have crashed FSX immediately and he has no respect for them at all.
2) Aerosoft are their own worst enemies. Mathjis is one to talk since it was Aerosoft that was one of the worst offenders prior to the self-publishing revolution a decade ago with their "fees". Flight1 and Aerosoft both took 50%+ of the sale price of an addon before the digital download revolution took hold and allowed developers to self-publish. Aerosoft is not a DEVELOPER first, they are a PUBLISHER first. They claimed to have their own FS in development prior to the FSX license deal. What happened to it? Oh yeah, they abandoned it because they wanted to bid on FSX. Now it's gone, GSX v2 is gone (and talk about a money making scheme - GSX is one), and Aerosoft haven't released any of their promised addons on time since because they were relying on 3rd party developers with (wait for it) - NO EXPERIENCE prior in FS.
3) Carenado, ORBX, and A2A all licensed or published addons for FlightSimWorld (A2A licensed AccuFeel, ORBX licensed GlobalVector, Carenado released several FSW-specific addons). There were those in the business who did support FSW and tried to work with DTG. The problem was there was a lot of venom (mostly egged on by those who lost the FSX bid and put out misinformation and lies) that over-powered those trying to genuinely help. Those who were helping Dovetail stayed silent about it because they feared the kind of vile response that DTG was getting simply for trying.
4) Dovetail was in trouble from before Flight School. You failed to mention it (again) but Dovetail sold a substantial share in the business to a Venture Capital company a couple years ago. Why? Because Trainsim World, their new sim platform, was in trouble and hemorraging money. The conversion to UT2 wasn't going as well as hoped, they needed more staff, and the money wasn't there. As such, they pulled most of the Flight School team off (and then cancelled it) and the team that remained to work on FSW was less than 10. It never got above 15 afterward. How do you expect 15 people to build a program on the level of XPlane or P3D when you have less than 1/3 the workforce? Laminar had at least 50 working on XPlane at one point (if not 100), and who knows how many Lockheed has working on P3D. Would a less hostile environment from the community and publishers have encouraged them to put more people on it? I don't know. But it certainly didn't help give confidence that they would get rewarded if they did.
In the end, the reason FSW died is because of us, not Dovetail. We allowed a hostile environment to fester within this community and didn't support it. I see it in the comments here. Everyone "I called it...", "I knew it wasn't going to work...", etc. You're right - you created a self-fulfilling prophecy. You never gave them a chance. Don't blame Steven Hood. Blame yourself for not supporting the guys who were actually working and trying to do something for the community that we'd been asking for. "
Beef:
Let me first say that I started out this reply much differently and then changed my mind and decided to just say this...I don't subscribe to froogle's channel nor watch his videos.
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