Stargate Worlds Forum » General Discussion » I have discovered the missing link between Gary Whiting, CME and MMOGULs

Originally posted by gameboy48

What I have seen of Stargate makes me very excited but that Black Goose name of Gary Whiting keeps poping up all the time.  I tried to gather some information about CME & Gary Whiting & the link to Mmoguls kept poping up.  So I go to there sight, Mmoguls, and find out Gary Whiting is ruining yet another good company & idea.  What does in know about MLM's or business in general.  I give him kudos for bringing together investors & developers for Stargate but that's were it all stops!  I found out that all the management of Mmoguls, who understand MLM business, resigned within 6 weeks of the company starting.  I can understand one resignation but the whole staff?  Seems like G Whiting is smarter than everyone else or again thinks he might be King or Prophet, seeing  knowing all!  There is a simple solution to all the problems of Whiting's enterprises, CME, CMG, Stargate, & Mmoguls, get Whiting out of the business side & let the professionals run the companies before your reputation and lack of business savy destroy everything!!  Gary  Whiting is the major stock holder of Mmoguls & don't let anyone fool you especially Whiting.  BEWARE OF INVESTING ONE DOLLAR WITH GARY WHITING AT THE HELM!!!

While Gary definately own a chunk of blame, eliminating him will not solve the problems CME has.  keep in mind, CME only has the money it has because of Gary's ability to raise the funds ($50 million!) in the first place. He did it with a team of talent of course and each has their right claim a portion of that raised, but GW brought them all together in the first place.  The man can raise money that's for sure.

Eliminating him will still leave a management team that has proven incompentant at managing the ability to get a game launched.  The CEO (Jenson) was bonused on studio creation, not game completion.  So what did CME do? Open lots of studios, hire lots of people, over a third of which were paid to work on things other than SGW.   

Then you have the SGW team itself.  They were given $25 million of the $50 million to build an MMO.  They were given 3 GOOD years (before stuff started to fall apart) and they failed.  Their "beta' release was an alpha.  They consistently lied and glossed over public announcements.  Most of their milestones were missed (and glossed over).  They never proved their technology could do more than lag out with a medium number of connections (rumor has it about 800 max on the server during the tail end of beta, that was after weeks of only 100 or 200).  Sure, if they had another 2 years and funds, I'm positive they could get "something" out the door.  

But they don't have that time or that money.  The whole time while building the game they kept pushing back release dates, missing milestones, mismanaging design.  They put a good show on for the public but behind the scenes there was no accountability and often things operated as if the money would never stop coming.  To be fair, they were often told that they could have whatever they needed.  But failure to deliver on schedule in the Production team and immediate leaderships fault.  Failure to hold them accountable is the CEO's fault.  I'm sure there were many great successes, there were just larger looming failures.  There is no other answer.  After $50 million in spend, the company CME failed to deliver a title.  After $25 million in spend, the SGW team failed to make even a successful beta.  These are facts, not opinions and they are signs of failure.

No one here has any comprehension of what the internal politics were like (unless someone here was on those leadership teams and isn't saying).  We won't know the real nitty gritty details until CME caves and some of those folks choose to talk.  Someone always does, look at every other major MMO failure, someone always spills the beans, usually at least two people.  We'll see what happens when CME eventually closes its doors.

Looks like Mr. Whiting does not like to pay his MMGULS employees, let alone any employees.   CME is cruising onto 3 missed pay periods.   I'll paste some crap from the scam.com site.   Bob Guenther posted some e-mails to/from Bret and the prior CEO of MMOGULS, Damian Kuolt.  Some of the more interesting snips are: 

Mmoguls had over $1 million in revenue since March 1st. Gary continued to control cash against promises made to me. It was discovered two weeks ago that over 1/3 of the cash (over $300k) was taken from the Mmoguls accounts. Gary took the funds for "personal" use.

I have told Gary and everyone that Mmoguls really is a ponzi scheme unless we provide value in games offered and more discount value in Itzyourmall. I have found games and discount values to add but Gary refuses to move in this direction and only wanted to build membership and affiliates.

Payroll still hasn't been paid and I am not requesting I get paid. I just want to be gone from the scheme!

Unfortunately my name had been tarnished by associating with Gary....  I do hope your message will now be heard about Gary and that legal actions can be taken to prevent him from hurting more people.

Thank you for your offer to represent the monies owed me to whomever you are negotiating with at Cheyenne Mountain Entertainment / MMOGULS / NOW Corporation / Cheyenne Mountain Affiliates / Cheyenne Mountain Marketing / ItzYourMall / Garvick / or any of the other ‘entities’ that Gary Whiting has used and abused.
The amount I am owed directly:  1. $36,000.00 SEVERANCE. Two months at $18,000 per month per my employment contract, signed by Gary Whiting.  2. $5,009.90 CALCULATED COMMISSIONS for Weeks ending 12-13-08 and 12-20-08.  3. $12,500.00 ESTIMATED COMMISSIONS for Weeks ending 12-27-08, 1-03-09, 1-10-09, 1-17-09, 1-24-09.

So two people that worked with Gary, do not have good things to say about how the MMGULS business was ran.    Enjoy!

Originally posted by Mondelis

 People do the right thing and join the RIGHT COMPANY.

Best Regards.

Um,,,,LOL,, NO!

I think I am right in saying this, but 99.9999999999999% of people dont give a crap about this whole mondelis thing, we are here to play a game, not sign up for a business.

The only reason MMOGULS is brought up is to show how things went in the wrong direction with a game that is bing developed, not in finding an alternative to a MMORPG and getting paid to play, which in itself is a very misleading thing to say (MMOGULS).

Overall people dont want certain individuals running certain things in a certain way, and MMOGULS seems to embolden the whole idea of why it wont work.

Your aiming at the wrong people in here with mondelis, so please take your spam away, we really dont care if it works or not.  Signing up for multiple games that are all overloaded with ingame advertising is not what people want, I even had a look a Golden Fairway one of mondelis's titles, and literally every other screen within 30seconds of playing or even doing anything served up 'Your advert here' or a splash screen to join mondelis, personally I would rather just pay for the game and not be bogged down with spam, I get enough of it in my email, I dont want to see it in my game as well. Never mind all the people ingame looking for more saps to get signed up under there name.

Again the only reason why MMOGULS is ever mentioned here is to show how screwed up things got with certain people and companies, not why its a good idea.  So I think I can hoenestly say, your spamming the wrong forums for investors in your current scheme.

(my opinion, but I am sure other will agree with it.)

/rant on

Number 1 rule, if your going to compare yourself to facebook you need to be free, facebook would not have those number if they charged for there service, so dont compare yourself to a free service, it makes you look dumb. /rant off

The speculation has gone far enough - time for some facts.  Gary Whiting controls many entities probably over 30.  A lot of companies he owns indirectly through other companies.  Check out the Arizona and Nevada corporations site and you can figure most of this out. 

Cheyenne Mountain Entertainment (CME) owns more than 50% of Cheyenne Mountain Games.  Cheyenne Mountain Games owns more than 50% of Firesky, a publisher, and more than 50% of Stargate Worlds, a developer and more than 50% of three other game developers.

CME is more than 50% owned by Garrick which is owned by another company which eventually ends up at Gary Whiting.  Gary Whiting also owns Now Corporation which is ItzyourMall and MMOGULS, but neither of these companies is run or operated with CME.  They are run separately by different management teams.  Itzyourmall is located in a different suite in the same building as CME.  MMOGULs is located in Utah.  In addition Gary owns several other corporations and limited liability companies.

Gary Whiting is always looking for synergies between his various companies and ways to make each of them better - but he is an entrepreneur - always starting something new - he is not a operator of businesses.

Orgill's facts match with my understanding.  No one at CME wants anything to do with MMOGULs or Itzyourmall.  They just want to build games.  A few CME investors are also investors in the MMOGULS and Itzyourmall, but most are not.  Everyone shares some of the blame for where the company is - developement didn't go perfectly, The CEO didn't fire some people when he should have, Whiting spread himself to thin with so many different companies, and then the economy tanked and no one had any more money and everything changed.  If the economy hadn't tanked it would be a different ball game.

If the economy hadn't gone into a nose dive, we'd spend time on these forums talking about the game and not about all this other garbge.

ain't that the truth!!!

Originally posted by yellowperil

Number 1 rule, if your going to compare yourself to facebook you need to be free, facebook would not have those number if they charged for there service, so dont compare yourself to a free service, it makes you look dumb. /rant off

First off, I couldn't give a rat's ass whether MMOGULS lives or dies.  I just like the drama and was looking forward to SGW to be released this decade.  However, I did want to clarify one piece of error you have there.  From what I know about Mondelis, the social network will be free.  It is the games that will cost money.  I pay to play online games anyway, so if I can get more for less, then I just might be a customer.  I don't know that I would ever be the type who goes out selling it, but a concept like this could actually be a good thing for gamers.  If a site like Facebook with over 200 million members had even a fraction of them paying something like $20 per month to play online games, imagine the revenue that company would have and think about the awesome games they would be able to produce!  I think discussions about MMOGULS or Mondels or whatever company pops up with a similar platform is worth talking about simply because of what it could mean for the gaming industry.  Look around at the games that are available right now and ask yourself if you wouldn't want it to be taken to the next level.   I for one will be watching these types of companies closely.  I honestly hope that I'll kick myself in the ass for not joining with them in the beginning someday.  Until then, I hope they do something good for the gamming community.  It is a huge market and could be very profitible for them if they do it right.  MMOGULS certianly didn't do it right...

Here's what Mondelis is planning to offer with respect to memberships:

Mondelis, LLC® offers the following Membership Packages:

Basic Membership

$29.95 USD one-time fee and $20 USD per month
Access to one 'AAA' game of your choice and all features of the Free Membership

Upgraded Membership

$59.95 USD one-time fee and $35 USD per month
Access to 3 'AAA' games of your choice and all features of the Free Membership

Premium Membership –lifetime membership with monthly subscription
$125.00 USD one-time fee and $50 USD per month

All access to all upgrades, products and services Mondelis offers.

It's not clear from their site what free membership is... however, I don't see the point of dedicated gamer social networking. It takes a lot of development to build a good site, and in the end, I'm not sure it would be better than Facebook or MySpace. The key thing about social networks is size--and both FB and MS have a huge lead on that, and it's free. It's probably already enough of a pain that people split their interests between these two--I don't see the advantage of a third.

Also, for both Mondelis and MMOGULS, their only "product" is memberships. To me, that smells of a pyramid scheme, though I'm sure they are lawyer-ed up enough to avoid prosecution. So, if you are on their sites as a free member, expect to be spammed constantly in ads to join as a paying member. And from the above, I don't see that it's cost-effective. Isn't SOE's site pass (or whatever it's called) something like $25/month for access to all of their games?

And Mondelis's "AAA titles" are all kinda small:

Beyond Protocol (an MMORTS, actually)
Star Alliances
Hometown Soccer
Golden Fairway
Hometown Bowling
Redline Thunder Racing
Redline Grand Prix
Liars Poker

Aren't these games free 2 play anyway, I know Golden Fairway is (piece of bloated advertising ware it is).

MY guess is that the ability to give a large portfolio with alot of free games and a few pay for games will make people that most are pay to play, when this is really not the case.

Looks like Vicki decided to give Gary the flick:

http://www.superiorcourt.maricopa.gov/docket/FamilyCourtCases/caseInfo.asp?caseNumber=FC2009-091656

When it rains, it pours.

Originally posted by marmz

Looks like Vicki decided to give Gary the flick:

http://www.superiorcourt.maricopa.gov/docket/FamilyCourtCases/caseInfo.asp?caseNumber=FC2009-091656

When it rains, it pours.

This should send you straight to it, click. Looks like a divorce or seperation atleast, right now it sux to be Gary Whiting.

I'm guessing a 'fake' divorce where Vicki gets most of whatever assets they may have.  This way when Gary & CME go down, he's at least saved his wife and kids with a nice padding for his ass to land on too later.

Originally posted by Kyriesunset

I'm guessing a 'fake' divorce where Vicki gets most of whatever assets they may have.  This way when Gary & CME go down, he's at least saved his wife and kids with a nice padding for his ass to land on too later.

So this case should be over before his business empire collapses, she takes anything worth keeping embezzeled cash ect and he keeps the toxic assets? I wonder if Gary started out at Enron?

According to the docket, Gary is defending himself -- no attorney (his wife has one).  Wouldnt you think if it was a legit that there would be a response from Gary?   Nope, just a 'proposed settlement'.    Someone let Nedra or that Bob guy know :)

Originally posted by Kyriesunset

According to the docket, Gary is defending himself -- no attorney (his wife has one).  Wouldnt you think if it was a legit that there would be a response from Gary?   Nope, just a 'proposed settlement'.    Someone let Nedra or that Bob guy know :)

I agree, however I iknow that kind of thing is illegal in the EU and am certain it's so in the U.S.A. You can't have a "convenient" divorce before you declare bankruptcy or something like that anymore, although it's not as if Whiting is legit anyway so why would he care about the law?

Originally posted by Agricola1

 

I agree, however I iknow that kind of thing is illegal in the EU and am certain it's so in the U.S.A. You can't have a "convenient" divorce before you declare bankruptcy or something like that anymore, although it's not as if Whiting is legit anyway so why would he care about the law?

Its not technicly illegal in the US but it just doesn't work. The assets can still be tracked and attached

Anyway I doubt the company can hold things together until september-24th or even november-24th