I think the "CEO" of Crystal Interactive is a fraud - this is why:

1) If he had 50 people working for your company, he could afford to have a professional looking website.

2) He insults the intelligence of everyone on this board by coming on here and backing himself up as an anonymous poster.

(It would be appreciated if the GD net staff could do an IP lookup on this)

He must really think we're stupid. Anyone who doesn't believe me, just read the first few posts on here. It's blatently obvious - note the writing style. The first anonymous poster comes on and says

quote:
Do you earn one dollar per copy? They say so. Look in the topic breakin in buisness. If 100.000 is sold, you will earn $100.000

Note the "100.000" (not 100,000)

The second anonymous poster says

quote:
This is what crystal said.

A Developer will earn at least $1 for each copy sold, IF his product goes out as a stand alone. So a small Pac-man game will always end up on a 5-pack or even a 10-pack. So then the dollar will become "pro rata". We always try to give our people more then a dollar a copy sold though. So you can make at least $10.000 in the worst case scenario when your game 'only' sells 10.000 units. But you'd really have to have written an absolute pants game in order to achieve this abismal figure. Usually we sell between 25.000 and 50.000 units of a 'normal' game. So between $25.000 and $50.000 should be reasonable I'd say.

But with who do they work? Have they there own channels.

Again, note the "." instead of the "," and the fact that the guy is quite blatently speaking for Crystal Interactive.

Then, (surprise, surprise) along comes the "CEO" to agree with his own anonymous posts.

And check out that last post. Oh this guy cracks me up . I'd love to know exactly how many posters on here share the same IP as our friend Mr de Vries.

This guy is clearly trying to take advantage of people. Personally, I wouldn't trust this him as far as I could throw him, and I get the impression he's pretty overweight.



Edited by - Bob the builder on June 8, 2000 10:18:15 PM

Just to point out...and I am not entirely certain, but I think in many foriegn controls they use . (periods) instead of , (commas) in numbers. I''m recalling this from High School French class so don''t flog me if I am wrong, but I am pretty sure that is the case.

-Tim Yarosh
Lucid Games
www.lucidgames.net

Yes Bob, other countries use "." instead of ",". And if you want to analyze previous posts, look at ALL the clues. The anonymous poster who said "This is what crystal said" probably then copied and pasted the next paragraph directly from one of the CEO''s posts, explaining the similar writing style, but then the last line is two sentences of incorrect grammar, unlike the CEO''s posts. Why in the hell would he go to the trouble of painstakingly deceiving and "actively chasing up" a bunch of wannabe programmers who ask him stupid, redundant questions and accuse him of fraud? He was trying to be HELPFUL for those of us who were truly interested in his company and reasonable enough to ask intelligent questions and accept the answers at his word. Until you have actually dealt with him or his company and have some constructive insight to offer, give it a rest. No need to disparage anyone with unfounded accusations.

Dear Spikey, Bob the Builder and less sceptic people,

Even though I told you last time I wasn''t going to post a reply on this board I can''t help but feel unjustly accused by some of you, and therefore I think I need to reply one last time.

Bob the Builder: You really seem to dig this conspiracy theory don''t you? Why would I, like some of the more "down to earth" posters already mentioned, back-up myself by posting anonymously? I do not NEED this! Until now about 5 people from this message board have contacted us with questions regarding the deal we offer developers. I simply enjoy helping people out and I NEVER EVER told anyone that the competition is incompetent. I merely stated that we pay the best royalties in the biz. Which is in fact true! Oh, and with 100.000 I mean "hundred thousand". Ridiculous paranoia to even question the meaning of this, but what the hey...

Spikey: My quarrel with you is not about something I can blame entirely on you. The only thing I can say is that we DO sell into Dixons and all of the other stores. You probably spoke to a buyer who either doesn''t give a d**n or is new to the biz. Fact is that we''ve not shipped any products into European retail for several months time. Something I''ve explained in my last post. This was due to our takeover by Nutridata. Hence the weird response you received from these buyers. To tell you an even weirder thing, my U.K. marketing manager met with the Chief Buyer at Dixons this week! So why Dixons gave you this information is a mystery to me. And as far as trusting me, I guess you are one of the few people who will NEVER be convinced of anything unless they can personally track every sale we make and make a tour through our Corporate Headquarters in Long Beach, California... It''s basically as simple as this: You ask me what we can do with your game, and what you can make with it. I reply that we can sell this many units, and that you can earn this and this. Normally this suffices for everyone on the face of this planet! But not for you... I rest my case!!!

And for the rest of you fellows, thanks for sticking up for a guy who''s only out to help by answering a few simple questions. I must insist that everyone E-mails me directly on alexdv@nutridata.com from now on, and I will not respond to any more slanderous remarks on this message board!

Sincerely,

Alex de Vries
http://www.crystal-interactive.com

P.S.: We are moving our website to another server. A new design will be in place shortly. This is the ONLY point of criticism I think is valid! It''s bad...

Yes I know some countries use "." instead of "," to mark 1000s, but thats the first time I''ve seen it on gamedev.

Anyway, I stand by what I said. I may well be paranoid, but sometimes I''m right too.

If anybody can actually prove that I''m wrong about this I''ll gladly apologise.

Hey,

I just found something funny, and wanted to paste here (Written by the CEO, on one of his first posts in this thread):

"P.S.: Good idea on that FAQ section! I''ll definately pass this on to our webdesign team."

Heh, so you actually pay a team of webdesigners to make that wonderful web site?

Cya,
-RoTTer