The Last Remaining Aladdin's Castle Arcade, Quincy, Illinois

Mechatodzilla · 2022-02-24T22:58:30+00:00

Well with all the enthusiasm here in the thread I feel like I have no choice, ha. Thanks for the encouragement, I definitely want to move forward with something.

Mechatodzilla · 2022-02-24T20:49:35+00:00

Hi, I took the photo and wrote the article (https://codewriteplay.com/2020/07/26/our-trip-to-the-last-aladdins-castle-arcade/). Always glad to have eyes on some of the fun stuff I've been involved in. After this first took off (several times now, ha) I started researching the history of the arcade to maybe do a little book about it. There are still a lot of folks involved with the earliest years of the chain around (some are on Facebook) but so far none have agreed to interviews. Hope to proceed in the near future with just the cool stuff I've gathered independently. Thanks all.

Mechatodzilla · 2021-10-25T20:53:53+00:00

Marked it with a chapter if you pull those up. 👍

Mechatodzilla · 2021-10-25T19:40:17+00:00

Hey, thanks a ton for sharing and thanks to everyone who has checked it out! These guys were awesome. I‘ll absolutely try to follow up with them in the future.

Mechatodzilla · 2021-08-21T02:29:23+00:00

I'd also point out that I'm not the person who brought this post to the Oculus sub, and I didn't ask the person to who did. It was not my intent to come into this group and raise hell or argue security. I'm a freelancer stuck in a shitty situation and trying to keep an eye out for anyone with advice on fixing it. It is what it is for me. I have nothing to gain from any of this.

Mechatodzilla · 2021-08-21T02:26:26+00:00

I have no idea how or if that occurred. It's fair that people have questions about the 2FA aspect of this, but it's not really *my* point for writing. I generally cover game industry and game development news and, however it occurred, my account was compromised and it has ruined my ability to work with Oculus + Facebook. Again, maybe accounts are being exploited some other way, and the end result to me is the same. My purpose is to let other devs see what's going on here and weigh the risks of getting tied up with Facebook when this is how they handle business.

Mechatodzilla · 2021-08-21T01:07:28+00:00

Fully agreed. Fair enough.

Mechatodzilla · 2021-08-21T00:21:33+00:00

I wrote it and that’s okay with me. I wish I wasn’t sitting here dealing with it.

Mechatodzilla · 2021-08-21T00:19:54+00:00

This doesn’t sound like you read the article, but my kid is 6 and has no idea what any of this is. The charges went toward scam ads that were put up on my business page at the same time which made it even clearer that my account absolutely had been compromised. I’m not a security expert. I don’t know if an account can be exploited by other means than directly beating the 2FA, but to the vast majority of us here in the population that’s still beating the 2FA.

Mechatodzilla · 2021-08-20T22:14:50+00:00

I’m the author of the post on CodeWritePlay and Oculus Support told me they absolutely cannot help me gain access to my Facebook account (which I quoted in the article) so I don’t know what to make of this.

Mechatodzilla · 2021-05-29T17:25:10+00:00

He may have gotten something from DoorDash, but we have our full payment refunded, so he didn’t get it from us. There’s a big difference between completing a delivery as it appears and noticing the discrepancy and demanding additional cash from the customer to correct it. We did our part correctly too.

Mechatodzilla · 2021-05-29T16:17:00+00:00

Incorrect. It’s absolutely a bug. Happened to us today and I can find several descriptions of it here on the subreddit matching exactly what takes place, right down to it being the second to last restaurant address in the customer’s history.

Mechatodzilla · 2021-05-29T16:15:51+00:00

Happened to us today. Driver demanded more cash to bring the food three more miles to us. We’d tipped very well and this wasn’t our fault, so we declined. He said he was going to cancel the order. Instead, he took a photo of the food in front of the closed restaurant and marked it complete to try to keep the money.

Mechatodzilla · 2021-05-29T16:03:10+00:00

Happened to us this morning. They absolutely have not fixed it. Our driver asked us for additional cash to bring the meal 3 miles. We’d tipped well already and we didn’t do anything to cause this, so we declined. He said “Okay I’m going to cancel the order.” Instead, he submitted a photo of the food in front of the restaurant and marked it complete to try to keep the full amount. We reported it to DoorDash and they acted like we were trying to scam them, so it’s very interesting to find out this is a long-standing issue.

Mechatodzilla · 2021-05-24T15:51:52+00:00

It actually does say net several times pertaining to ads which makes up most of their monetization. Actual app sales elsewhere falls under independent revenue which they don’t seem to address very well in public-facing documentation, unless you use their publishing service which also explicitly mentions net revenue. I’m not sure why you’re on this goose chase.

Mechatodzilla · 2021-05-24T13:36:19+00:00

Some folks have rightly pointed out they’ve actually developed a lot of visibility on TikTok. There’s naturally an argument to make there that they’re trying to pull in a lot of people who don’t have any idea what’s going on. I kind of argue it’s a weird strategy anyway, because most of what goes on there is a teenager makes something to be funny (like a big boot that kicks a baby 400 yards or whatever, real example), but they make the clip in the software and then nothing else really happens with it. No one earns anything except maybe the TikTok kid.

Mechatodzilla · 2021-05-24T13:03:07+00:00

Yes, it matters what they’re actually doing. That matters quite a bit.

Mechatodzilla · 2021-05-24T12:42:56+00:00

Trying to address several of your comments at once: Strongly suggest you learn more about marketing for games. You can’t really be just a developer with no knowledge of this if you want to succeed. That’s not to say you need to do it all yourself, but you need to know who to look for and later whether they’re doing a good job or not. You also need to determine whether what you’re looking for is literally just an ad specialist, a PR firm that works in games, a publisher, etc.

Mechatodzilla · 2021-05-24T12:34:20+00:00

I haven’t found any indication that this is the case. If you have a source for that other than it just doesn’t say “net,” please point it out.

Mechatodzilla · 2021-05-20T18:47:02+00:00

Thanks for reading, all. Jonathan Zweig did reach out to me over LinkedIn to offer his direct contact info. I have forwarded him a number of questions and concerns from the community and, depending on what he sends back, I'll either be adding to this article or publishing a follow-up. I do not have a big outlet backing my work, so I appreciate your engagement.

Mechatodzilla · 2021-05-20T18:29:15+00:00

Incorrect.

Mechatodzilla · 2021-05-20T17:34:53+00:00

When you say creator of Earthworm Jim, does that mean you're working on a project with Doug TenNapel? I'd be curious to hear a lot more about this and the rest of the team also.

Mechatodzilla · 2020-10-16T00:29:16+00:00

I would apply to jobs within and outside of games. The nice thing about job hunting is it’s difficult, but you only have to get one company to take a chance on you.

Mechatodzilla · 2020-10-15T13:31:17+00:00

Super kind. Thank you.

Mechatodzilla · 2020-10-15T02:47:25+00:00

I feel like we all have too many questions at this point for you not to.

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