Without jamming up the quote function too much, I wanted to say that just because somebody states that the budget for their project is $250k, doesn't mean that they have $250k, or that they've spent that much. Just because somebody says you could easily spend $100k at Nuare, doesn't mean Hasan spent $100k at Nuare. What he's shown so far is about $100 worth of content and a day of work for 1 person.
Now on the other hand, I don't believe Hasan is a
scammer. I don't even think he's an indie dev in over his head. What he is, is a big fan of Hideo Kojima, a mentalist, and a great viral marketer. He's exploited a loophole left by Hideo Kojima in his fandom's brains.
What makes me suspect of the Hasan-Kojima connection is how the 2012 Phantom Pain reveal and subsequent interview with Geoff Keighley were extremely high quality for the time. That's what makes that twist work: a no-name, mysterious dev is putting out epic, cinematic teasers. This doesn't work if it's a known indie dev putting out below-par teasers and hiding his game as much as possible. What's the supposed payoff in that case..."Kojima was so shit nobody guessed it was him."?
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Interesting legal breakdown about the IGN article from Hoeg Law:
This guy brings up many good points about the IGN interview, but he's giving them wayyyy too much credit when he says, "I expect better from one of the biggest gaming outlets in the world." That's a bit naive, even IGNorant if you ask me.
Time stamp for an important point this guy makes...
In journalism, usually if you're going to report on facts and they're going to be controversial facts that maybe have a couple of different ways that you look at something, you're going to get more than one source. And there's no indication in this article that anything else is happening besides Hasan Kahraman talking to the interviewer at IGN, so every single time you get a fact statement from IGN which isn't accompanied by a "Kahraman says" or "Hasan says" or "Hasan states" or explains whatever, you get into this notion that IGN is taking the word of one person with a dicey background and taking it as sacrosanct, and that's never going to work for me as you probably know. If this isn't your first trip to Virtual Legality, I don't think it should work for you.
Now, for some that might hint at intentional negligence on IGN's part as part of the Hasan-Kojima connection, but this lawyer doesn't see it like that, and he goes in to it with more detail throughout the video...
IGN just starts saying things that aren't otherwise tied to what they have been told, and there is no indication of any background checking, or any investigative journalism, and no indication of secondary questions that might lead them to having this knowledge.
