The real deal about Crime City, Fight Club,the Indians, and Payam.
The real scoop about Crime City, Fight Club, the Indians, and Payam.
How many noobs have ever heard of a player named Payam? Or how about Noodles? You have likely heard the stories of the legends of crime city, but do you know the truth? I doubt it.
Payam and Noodles were actually friends. They both were young, up and coming, programmers who decided to start making apps. They came up with an idea for a mafia based pvp game with global potential. It took some time to get it to the beta stage, but once testing began they knew they had something. Noodles took care of the mechanics of the game, while Payam handled the graphics. It really came along nicely.
They found a small gaming company that had the capability to get the app published and on the market. This company was Funzio. That's right guys, Payam and Noodles made Crime City.
They both played the game, everyone in their office, friends, and family played the game. It was fun and the rivalries were with people you actually knew. They wondered how it would be for strangers to battle. It was time to push a beta app to the public market and find out.
They were surprised at how popular it was. They continued to play the game. While playing they found that people actually got angry when they were robbed of pixelated cash. These people then spent real money on better items to get revenge. It was then they knew they were onto something. They continued pushing people's buttons as individual players and the revenues increased. Family and friends became paid game players. It was going great.
The popularity continued to grow and Funzio decided to buy the game outright. The team was happy about this and excited for the big payday they had worked so hard for. The time came for the terms, and this is where it went wrong. Noodles felt that it was his game mechanics that made the app what it was, and Payam felt it was his graphics that made it so popular. Noodles argued that it was his hours of writing code and creating algorithms that was the real work and he should get a bigger piece of the pie. Payam countered that it was the graphics and the time spent drafting concepts and creating maps that really made it boom. He too wanted a bigger piece. This created huge problems amongst the friends. In the end Funzio agreed with Noodles and he was given a larger amount than Payam, though the both were well compensated. We all watched their private problems play out publicly in the game.
They had both signed non disclosure agreements so could never mention a word about this. They both retained small royalties percentages, and those would be forfeited if they said anything. They fought each other in game and people began to notice. They identified with one or the other and chose sides. They created groups to battle groups. This was for personal reasons, but also for monetary gain. They had their royalties, remember? It continued on until they both had outgrown their dislike of each other.
Payam retired from the game and graphic design industry and is now pursuing his true passion, photography. He is quite talented and highly sought after. Check the web, he's all over it.
Noodles made a few more apps for funzio and then left game making all together. He officially retired, at a young age, and enjoys his royalties from multiple published games. Last I heard he was looking to buy an old castle in Ireland, or something like that.
Now, that brings me to the crews of Crime City.
Lets start with Karma Crew, Payams first group. This was his first experiment on getting in game players to spend. It worked and other crews sprouted. Some created by players, some created by Funzio employees. It spread like wildfire.
The Indians were Noodles' group. He did very well at finding people to spend, so well in fact that it began to run itself. He didn't have to push for spenders, they just did. It made the Indians the strongest group for a time. It became a problem as players began to feel bullied by them and quit playing. This was the opposite of what they wanted. They needed players in order to make money, so running them away was not good. From this, Fight Club was born.
Fight Club was put together to gain the revenues of those that felt bullied by the Indians. Two employees actually built that crew by hand picking the people to join. They had inside information, like spending records, and used that info to pick the candidates. It worked and the revenues jumped considerably.
The changes in the game, such as syndicates, are the biggest money maker thus far, but the plants in the game continue. There are 225+ Gree employees that play the game for a living. Their job is to drive revenues. They have had employees in the game since the beginning. They are in most crews, bigger crews have more than one. Some get outed as hackers, but are just poorly put together admin accounts.
This may be a little hard to swallow, but nonetheless true.
