MLX

Aug 8 2016, 09:41:20 AM

We will gladly try to ask him any question you guys have. It may takes a while to get a reply through (and some he won't answer). We're doing our best to please people. We could have kept everything private (something that way too many people do) and share nothing.
The PGC~BGW staff are really trying their best to share any info we get ahold of and we do not understand why you refuse telling the questions to a "middleman". Is it too "private"? Stalking? To keep the answer for yourself? We're not trying to have exclusivity to chat with him but, really?

To answer some question: yeah Hummer (Simmer) Technology did work on some other games between 99-200x but it seems they were mostly doing subwork for japanese devs, some were cancelled also (some Saturn port, which name I have forgotten). As you know they also worked on VT03 (proof of that is the VT03 documents showing Pink Jelly an the likes). Not much more.

Really, since this is such a closed domain, we really try to bring the lights on anything we can and we do not endorse the "keep it for myself~ourselves" thing.[/quote]MLX, although we haven't chatted in quite some time, I consider you an online friend, as well as a trusted party.  With that said, here are the problems that I personally see with people going around spreading personal email addresses, contact informations via websites, etc:

For the past four years (since 2012) have been working on researching and getting materials to put together a series of print books relating to these topics.  Without trying to sound immodest, since I own so many of these games / hardware / etc, I am sitting in a position where my involvement would be almost necessary to create a complete encyclopedia book of sorts.  With that said, my limited abilities with publishing presents me with a different challenge, but I honestly wouldn't be closed towards working co-jointly with one or two others, just to help get the books published and out there.  But going back to the interviews and what not:

Here is where my problem lies:  as we saw with the Mr. Hummer email, a contact information gets posted and then a hundred people jump on it to contact the person.  In a best case scenario, the first one or two people get replies, and in a worse case scenario, no one gets a response.  But (imo) the problem gets even worse from there.

I personally think it would be most optimal to contact some of these people and conduct interviews in person.  Why?  For starters, more information could be gained than just from a back and forth email writing, secondly I know for a fact that some of these people are leery about sharing details of their gray-area involvement online to strangers.  But to buy them a dinner and talk about some parts (unrecorded), I know it would be a much easier way to get people to open up about it.  But how many interviews have I been able to conduct in person?  Exactly one, and it happened to be because one of my IRL friends actually (miraculously) is friends with the guy.  But emails go unanswered continuously.  Why?  Probably partially because of people getting pestered.  Why do I think so?  Here is why.

Aside from the Hummer email and the feasting frenzy that followed (that showed just what happens), I am sure that most of the folks here have a rudimentary knowledge of (traditional) Chinese at best, and are either writing in English or via Google Translate.  I am lucky though to have a girlfriend that is a native Chinese speaker, who also has a near-native English ability.  So she not only knows how to write an email to these folks, she also knows the culture behind how things should be written.  But alas, no dice.

So this isn't about waiting to keep answers for myself, or something like that, rather it is in the name of a research project.  Researchers always prefer first hand interviews to those conducted by others, but further more, I just sit in a position where I think I could probably get a lot more information about this stuff.

On another note, I find it funny (and somewhat hypocritial in general) that you guys are telling others that we should conduct interviews via you, yet how would you feel if the situation were reversed?  If it isn't a problem, why not just send me all the contact informations along with questions, and let me conduct in-person interviews and be the middleman for you...

Also, I think it is fair to point out that it has been referenced numerous times on here about private discussions (maybe even a private forum?) for some of the "elite" members here on PGC-BGW, where things are discussed and posted, unshared with the public.  Talk about transparency.