ok, since I've pretty much followed the dm games from their side scroller beginnings to their big freaze, I will try to state my (as far as I know educated) opinions here. I don't know the full story on any of this, because most of it happened years ago and what looks to be between danny and a bunch of close friends, a circle that I wasn't part of, but I will do my best none the less.
When the death match side scroller first came out, it had a lot of potential, and there was rapid development going on. It went through several re-releases, sometimes being a top down game, and other times a side scroller, till it settled on project alpha, which in itself isn't a bad game at all. At least, it can be completed, and from what I remember the story actually has an ending. That's all right and good, but then dmnb comes along. Now that game was released in exactly the time when a few more entitled and winy forum members joined (aprox. christmas 2014, *no names given*) and of course, they played it. Back then, I was a member of the reality gaming testing folder which was also used as a defacto storage folder for admin logs. This is why even though I wasn't an admin, I got wind of a lot of the bannings and things that went on. And after dmnb was released danny of course got a lot of feature suggestions, and coded many of them. This however ment that he was left with a project that wasn't what he had envisioned it to be. Also there were large server problems at the time, the thing kept crashing and lagging all over the place despite his best efforts to fix it. Ultimately, I think he simply caved, and abandoned the project. But it was revived later as a side scroling game which never got anywhere, and still later he began work on a python first person version called "Fortune's frontier". Now it's time for me to fess up, because I'm not an objective observer klad in inoscence. I wish it was that way but the past can't be undone. When ff was first announced, naturally people were really hyped about it. Danny further compounded this by giving frequent status updates and publishing recordings of the game's various modes as they were implemented and tested. This lead to a group of people (which unfortunately includes me) going to great lengths to try and enter the reality software beta, or at least get the testing version for ff. Stupid thing to do of course, since it's an online game. And to this day I believe us trying to gain access and frequent requests from other forum members to participate in beta (to play the game early) caused ff to be thrown away as well. Finally, danny tried again later that year with another dm2. That one actually did get released, but not in the way it should have been. For weeks and weeks all the way till the game was released, certain individuals on danny's dm topic were spamming it over, and over, and over again with messages that pretty much all said some idderation of "Please danny release game fast now bekaus i wand play best game death match release now mister danny please please please". And eventually, he did. But releasing the game in its current state was a lot like throwing a bone at a hungry dog, hoping it would give you enough time to get away. That's not the best analogy I've ever given but hey, I try. When people played this concept that was bearly in an alpha stage, naturally they thought it was unpolished and buggy, even knowing the release was likely rushed do to these already mentioned greevers spamming danny's topic. It didn't take much more for him to cave yet again, but this time for good. And I do believe, it was best that way. Dm had been dragged through the mud in so many different ways for the last four years or so, it was more like a mursy kill than anything. The only thing that pisses me off about danny's way of doing things till today was that he never gave a final statement. He just took the dm servers offline, left all skype groups I know he was part of, and never appeared on the forums again. The dm fiasko is a big reason why coding for this comunity was never a big goal of mine. If I have to put up with 12479124798132 posts a day chanting a chorus of "release! release! release! release!" for weeks and weeks on end, I'd probably just close my browser and say "fuck it".
I used to be a knee like you, then I took an adventurer in the arrow.