Darkwater1

That goes back to a point I made earlier - Kevin LOVES to get hate mail and see people angry at him. Here's a post on Aintitcool.com from 11 years ago where he was begging for hatemail: http://www.aintitcool.com/node/5382?q=node/5381 The fact that he would go as the name "20th Century Fox" was another oddity altogether which I won't go into now. The ironic part is I used to work for Fox, and one day at one of the SoCal Robotech parties, I mentioned a pretty big Star Wars rumor I heard from someone one the Fox studio lot (I probably had a few beers). The very next Monday, I read that story on Aint it Cool almost WORD for WORD as to what I said. I joked around with Kevin that I shouldn't be talking after a few drinks, and he was like "Oh, that's been everywhere!! Everyone knows it!!" And it totally wasn't. It wasn't until later that I put two and two together that it was him. The man who trolled Aint it Cool and would talk about how evil it was became their informant the moment I said something worthy of their site. I was like "man... that's just weird"

Have you seen the size of the convention halls? With the exception of AX and Comic-Con (and probably NY Comic-Con), there's like 20 people sitting in those rooms. Now if HG were getting all expenses paid and an appearance fee, it might be one of those things where they could say "sure, why not?" and get some extra money. But as an effective marketing tool, it is not. It's been like 4 years since I shut down my blog (and later banned from RT.com) and this dude still holds a grudge. Granted, I didn't ever really dignify anything he said with a direct response, but what I did do was continue to criticize Robotech's business model. It wasn't personal, I just happened to be a fan who hated seeing the franchise going in the direction it was going. Once on the forums, like 5 years ago I said "From what I know of this business, this is not the norm." He's since used the phrase "People who 'know this business'" over and over since then. A while back, someone on the forum even asked "Why do you keep saying that and who are you talking about?" It's really odd, but he still takes professional jabs at me. Kevin took over my old blog (robotechnews.blogspot.com), which is bizarre onto itself, and there are subtle professional jabs at me there. Ironically, there have been a few times in my professional career where, had I gone out of my way, it would have been beneficial to the Robotech franchise (I have to stay vague on that), but why on earth would I at this point? Typically, in my experience, when a fanboy becomes a professional, they learn to shed things like taking forum posts personally and the need to troll back. Apparently, Kevin never got that.

In order to understand what Kevin is talking about, you have to understand his history. If you don't know his history, consider yourself lucky. As best I can tell, Kevin went from having a background in production, not marketing, and sort of fell into it when he took the opportunity to analyze old Nielsen ratings from the 1980's for Harmony Gold. Having worked with Nielsen ratings every single working day of my life for the last 12 years, I can safely say I've never seen an analysis such as his. Kevin's next accomplishment was creating "Robotech Convention Tour" which in itself was no small feat. Getting conventions to fly you out (or convincing the company you're working to do it) is not easy, and I think there is a certain amount of credit to be given for that. But that also seems to be his crutch. Not only is he defending the company that signs his paycheck, he's defending what seems to be the biggest accomplishment he's made at that company. He's defending the marketing model he's built. When a fan talks about there not being enough buzz, it's a standard fan thing said online that he takes as both a personal and professional attack. That, and he's left defending a model that itself is horrible, way of actually getting your product exposure (in my professional opinion). When Kevin mentions his competitors from 2006, that's actually a direct referral to stuff I said back then. I mentioned how Superman Returns actually showed stuff online, did a ton of viral stuff and really got people excited and talking. Kevin then loved to point out how the movie bombed. The movie didn't get the money they wanted from the box office, but through the international box office, home video , TV syndication and merchandising - it made crapload of cash. Also, when he refers to people who "know this business," he's referring to me. And he likes to point out how wrong "they" (me) were back then. He took my criticisms back then as extremely condescending and really personal. But then again, I must have no idea what I'm doing, seeing as how I've been promoted three times since I've met Kevin and make as much as his boss (from what I've heard). The funny thing is, back when I was wided-eyed fan who just wanted to help the franchise, I actually sat down to dinner with Kevin and Tom once to tell them things like "use your website" and "try viral marketing" and "post things online" and "yeah, conventions aren't going to reach as many people as online." And I'm betting there is a real insecurity there because there is an uncertainty about his job. My company has forums, and people bitch about the work I do all the time. Granted they don't know my name or face, they just rant about what they see and what they don't like. I know for a fact how my company is doing and not once have I felt the need to to jump in and defend myself of three or four fanboys. Not only that, my bosses would be saying to me "What the hell are you doing, this is totally unprofessional" and "Never do that again"

But how would they market their product without manipulating what goes into fan sites???? Here's what you have to do if you don't the plug pulled on your RT project. 1) make it is whatever your making 2) Act all wide eyed when HG talks to you for whatever reason 3) Do anything and everything they say I'm just guessing, I have no history with this whatsoever.

True that. I remember once when doing my site, I announced an upcoming interview with the Waltrips on their Shadow Chronicles comic, HG asked me to hold off until another interview regarding the comic on another site was published because they were granted exclusive access. I said okay as a courtesy, and had to hound HG for a while to get the go ahead to publish the interview. But this also begs the question - is every RT fan project at risk now? Not that there are that many of them at all. This is RT, after all.

Thought I might chime in on the UEG thing, just because I haven't talked about the strangeness of HG in a looooong time and this is making me nostalgic Basically, HG was in its full legal rights to yank the project, but the main question is... why? It wasn't making money, and it was something they've known about for a loooong time. I do know the UEG people had contacted HG on more than one occasion about licensing it and making it official, which HG said "no" to, again totally understandable and totally their legal right. And obviously UEG had other projects they were working on, so maybe they wanted this to be a showcase to grab attention, then release their own product later? That's what that guy James Cawley did with Star Trek New Voyages. Make a bunch of Star Trek fan films (some argue great, some argue terrible, either way he made 'em), and now he's working on his own Buck Rogers web series that he does have the rights to and will try and make money from. CBS could and still can pull the plug on these Trek fan films anytime they want, but they let him do his thing as long as he doesn't make a dime. Not to mention, it would be really bad PR if they did pull the plug, considering he gets the original actors and writers to work on it. But HG pulling the plug on this project now, and this project alone is really bizarre. So HG doesn't want to license the project, fine. And they don't want people making money off of their product - understandable. But if that wasn't going to be the case, then it goes back to... why? Since no one but the people directly involved really know the whole story, all we can do is speculate. One could argue that with the LAM supposedly in development, a project of this caliber (and some would argue much better looking than anythign HG's has done) could skew the perception of your product to the average joe. On my old Shadow Chronicles site, I was politely asked to pull some of my fan-trailers for looking "too official" (and they were by all standards, crap to begin with). When I uploaded them to YouTube, they mysteriously went missing after a while. So who knows. All I know is that I really wanted to see what they had done and now I can't. Oh well.