Posted: September 22, 2024
Updated: September 23, 2024
-Censored a Twitter user by request
Addressing the elephant in the room regarding Power Well and Brother Ming (Games)
IMPORTANT - All screenshots provided are first hand factual representation of what was said. Most of the typed text in this document is my analysis and commentary of the situation, and is my own personal opinion.
Brother Ming (@BrotherMingGame on X/Twitter, I’ll just refer to him as Ming from here out as that is what he told me to call him when we met in person) has been laying some strongly worded accusations against the Power Well team on X. In this document I will be providing all facts and receipts. You can read our entire history together here from day 1 to now. I choose not to humor a childish Twitter feud, so please find all correspondence here so you may form your own opinion.
Important note, I will be providing FULL TEXTS of messages and not be clipping segments out. I will censor identifying names of individuals that get brought up through our conversations for their privacy.
TL;DR - Ming tells the world he does not believe in ownership of ideas or designs.
Ming claims ownership of the design of Power Well.
Ming demands thousands of dollars for the idea/design of Sento, which he had already sold for $10,000.00.
We credit him as the inspiration for the project. We link to his website. We tell everyone we are a spiritual successor to Sento. We offer him $4,500.00 to put his name on our game.
Ming demands more.
Ming is not a cool dude.
Here is my full, final message to Ming that he has posted to X but has clipped the lower segment. I encourage you to read this entire document though, there is much juicier context available.
To all of the people referenced throughout this document: J, M, Ma, K, Tycho, anyone else, I sincerely apologize that you got dragged into this in any way. It is embarrassing and unprofessional. I do not like to handle business in this way, but I will not allow Ming to continue to abuse my family and me.
I ask that the reader of this please do not attempt to further identify nor contact anybody from this document. This is about Ming.
Real quick, who are we? Red Planet Games Co. is creating Power Well. The company is my 2 brothers, my brother’s wife, and me. We formed the LLC in November of 2023 just to make this game. Nobody is being paid. I am funding this project using my life savings. We do not have a manufacturer, playtesters, or anything else.
This is a timeline of events as they pertain to this situation. This will start out very broad and start to get much tighter as we approach March of 2024. Bear with me, this is all important information. If you want to get straight to the heaviest part, I recommend jumping to July 5, 2024.
June 2018 - Ming posts a video of a game he is prototyping called “Orb Strikers.”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aYFnlmpe67s
This prototype would eventually become “SENTO: Ultimate Arcade Fighter” (I will refer to this as “Sento” from here out)
https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/296309/sento-ultimate-arcade-fighter
I was made aware of the existence of this video by Ming in person when we went to dinner after Origins Game Fair in Columbus, OH in June of 2024.
Sometime between these two dates (I think, I don’t know the exact date) - Ming sells Sento to a man named J for $10,000.00. As far as I know, Ming no longer owns Sento in any way from this point, but more on this later.
January 2020 - I attended PAX South, at which I played a demo of the game Sento. This was my first and only encounter with this game. I did not take any video nor photo at the event, but the boardgamegeek link above shows this photo from that convention and that is how I remember the booth appearing.
The game was very cool and I was excited to back it on Kickstarter eventually. I get home from the convention and I tell my brother about it. We both love Dice Throne, and I explain how it is similar to Dice Throne but you draw marbles from a marble tower to perform your attacks.
October 2023 - My brother and I are hanging out, he says “hey whatever happened to that marble game you told me about?”
It has been 3 years, 9 months since I saw Sento. 1,369 days (give or take a week). I can’t remember the name of the game at all. (Ming admitted to me in person that Sento was a dumb name, and that it means “bathhouse” under certain translations.) I attempted to search for the game on the internet and only found references to a game called Potion Explosion.
https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/180974/potion-explosion
Ming has called me a liar about this. 🤷♂️
NOTE: I will show the rest of this message later. Ming deleted it, my guess is that he really didn’t want this getting out. Whoops. Unfortunately for him I saved every correspondence we had.
I tell my brother that I cannot find the game. I ask him if he would be interested in trying to make our own game in a similar vein based on what I could remember, and he says absolutely.
This will be important moving forward. Let’s define a term for everyone real quick: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spiritual_successor
A spiritual successor (sometimes called a spiritual sequel) is a product or fictional work that is similar to, or directly inspired by, another previous product or work, but (unlike a traditional prequel or sequel) does not explicitly continue the product line or media franchise of its predecessor, and is thus only a successor "in spirit". Spiritual successors often have similar themes and styles to their preceding material, but are generally a distinct intellectual property.
In fiction, the term generally refers to a work by a creator that shares similarities to one of their earlier works, but is set in a different continuity, and features distinct characters and settings. Such works may arise when licensing issues prevent a creator from releasing a direct sequel using the same copyrighted characters and names as the original.
The term is also used more broadly to describe a pastiche work that intentionally evokes similarities to pay homage to other influential works, but is also distinct enough to avoid copyright infringement.
NOTE: Emphasis mine. Read the Wikipedia page please.
So I get to work modeling a marble tower.
NOTE: Neat Borwo was a randomly generated name by the Tinkercad software. In retrospect it would have been a sick name for the game.
And with that we are off to the races. We design two heroes, Knight and Painter. We create rules for this game, roughly following what I remembered of Sento. The game is already fun.
November 2023 - We decide to bring in another brother and his spouse. He is a professional game designer, and his spouse is a top 1% on Earth artist (source: me, deal with it). Our new designer creates our Beasthunter hero. Our artist starts arting these 3 heroes while we work on balancing.
We hire legal representation and form our business RED PLANET GAMES, LLC. (dba Red Planet Games Co.) This is a legitimate family business, making a legitimate product, that we hope you will legitimately be able to purchase some day. As such, we respect and follow the rule of law. We DO NOT and WILL NOT create works using copyrighted materials that we do not have license for. We DO NOT and WILL NOT infringe on anybody else’s intellectual property.
We clear the entire project with our legal team. I explain to them that I am using the inspiration of a game I tried many years back that doesn’t exist. Everything we do is and always will be aboveboard.
The game feels really good. Our first 3 original heroes feel really good. Our UI/UX layout is sick. We are going to make this happen.
January 2024 - We have a very rough version of the game that has 3 very balanced heroes fully designed, and around 5 more heroes roughly designed.
As a software developer by trade, I believe in fast iteration, and quickly determining viability of a project.
See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fail_fast_(business)
I think we are sitting on an extremely strong project, so I reach out to PAX Sales requesting a booth at PAX East 2024.
NOTE: This email is super cringe. I didn’t know what the process was to get into PAX nor any convention at this point.
I then found out that I had missed the ship by several months already. Bummer. My hope was to get this in front of a large audience and determine if people like it or not so we know whether to drop the project and move on or continue forth.
February 2024 - Somebody drops out of PAX East, I am notified that I can purchase the booth that they had abandoned. We go into overdrive trying to build the game as we have 1 month to be show ready and we don’t even own a banner, have a single full copy of our game, a website, nor pretty much anything else.
NOTE: Blurred out the personal information of the PAX representative for their privacy.
Our first ever copies of Power Well for demo at PAX East 2024. Made in my garage using chipboard, label paper, laminate stickers, and a laser cutter. Please excuse the mess.
March 21, 2024 - We made it. It was a rush job, but I was extremely proud of what we had accomplished. We go to PAX East, and the show starts. Within minutes of the show starting we are asked if we are Sento.
Sento! That was the name of the game that I demoed all those years ago. I explain to everyone that I tried a game at PAX South 4 years ago that left a huge impression on me, but that I couldn’t find any information about it. So I decided to make a spiritual successor to it.
Enter Ming. PAX visitors that knew of Sento sent him pictures of our booth and our product. Ming and some of his friends/associates join our Discord server and start asking questions. Most prominently, they say that our product looks too polished and finished to be some random fans, they suspect that we are a front set up by J (owner of Sento at this time) to try to publish the game without attaching his name to the project (more on this later). Honestly it is a fairly high praise for something we threw together in a matter of weeks.
Now we can get to the meat of it. Here are our messages from the first day of the convention.
NOTE: Ming states “J is the publisher who owns the original design contractually”. The implication here obviously being Ming does not own the design of Sento.
NOTE: “and if [REDACTED COMPANY] ever tries to send you a C&D” - This was the first of several early communications with Ming and associates in which we were warned that J would probably attempt to use the judicial system to kill Power Well. This further cemented to me that we needed to be hyper vigilant that everything we do remains aboveboard legally.
NOTE: “Fun Fact” background on the Facebook/Instagram situation. I set up new Meta accounts for Facebook/Instagram/Threads for Power Well and it immediately locked the accounts saying I wasn’t a real person. I had to send them a selfie to prove I was real, which I did, then they said I was fake and permabanned those accounts. I later created new accounts yet again and when it asked for a selfie I sent a picture of me holding my ID and they allowed it. However, we lost our original @’s which is heartbreaking.
NOTE: I censored addresses. I am not going to doxx Ming nor myself. That shit is not cool. I am comfortable saying that we both reside in the state of Texas.
That is where our first ever conversation ended. I thought it went well and felt pretty good about the whole thing. It was very exciting to be in contact with Ming and he liked our project and gave us his approval. As a standalone IP that uses absolutely nothing from Sento, we are not legally required to have anyone’s approval, but it really felt good to be in that position with Ming as I had great respect for him and his Sento project.
To give you all context, here is the message I received from the M that Ming mentioned early in the conversation.
March 22, 2024 - We are on the second day of PAX East 2024, and the show is going incredibly well. Our booth is absolutely on fire with nonstop players, we are making a much larger splash than I anticipated.
Ming tweets about our game to Tycho. For context, Tycho (co-)owns Penny Arcade, and the PAX conventions are put on by him.
In return, Tycho tweets about our game.
To be 100% completely honest, I have trouble trusting people, and I was a little worried that Ming was flexing on us a little bit with this. Sort of a “look I have the power to get Tycho’s attention” type of situation.
That evening I sent Ming a thank you message. I will break this up a bit to insert commentary, but again, I will show you every message, as I have nothing to hide.
The other shoe drops, and my suspicions prove true. Let’s break this down.
1. Accused of “stealing”. Let’s be very clear here. Sento does not exist in any tangible form to me. I played a single demo of Sento 4 years ago. 1,369 days later I began working on Power Well using a fuzzy memory of something I experienced one time ever. There is no rule book for Sento that I can access. I didn’t even know the name of the game Sento throughout the entire pre-PAX East 2024 development of Power Well.
See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clean-room_design
Furthermore, our heroes are of our own design. They have no relation nor analogue to the characters in Sento as we were not privy to the characters in Sento at any time up to this point, except for the one demo I played 4 years back.
2. Ming believes that originality in creative works is over rated, and that everything is a remix. Okay, cool. Then we are good, right?
3. Are we J? No. I have never met nor interacted with J ever in my life as far as I know. I could not pick that man out of a lineup.
4. Our UI and color scheme implies a close copying of Sento.
Here is a side-by-side of Sento at PAX South 2020, and Power Well at PAX East 2024. As a spiritual successor, we will obviously have similarities, but to say our UI is a close copy of Sento is ridiculous. Again, to be completely honest, we modeled our UI after Dice Throne.
NOTE: Image property of Dice Throne, also I told the creator of Dice Throne that we were following their model at PAX East 2024 and he said he is totally cool with that.
And for the record, here is our latest iteration of the design as of PAX West 2024.
As for the color scheme, this is a game about matching colored marbles. Ming does not and cannot “own” primary colors. Technically our game uses CMYK color space. We are Cyan, Magenta, and Yellow. Primary colors are the most accessible colors to all types of color-blindedness. We attempted to use other color schemes, but accessibility is very important to us, so we defaulted back close to the primary colors.
5. Be open about it being a spiritual successor. We always have been. We told everyone that asked about the history of the project exactly that.
6. Credit as a designer. This becomes the biggest talking point in the entire argument. We will get really deep on this later. I remind you, in Ming’s own words: “J is the publisher who owns the original design contractually”
7. “you don't owe me anything, no one can own a game’s design nor own game mechanics, and trying to claim ownership over conceptual things is stupid. I despise all things related to Intellectual Property as a concept.” Ming likes to state stuff like this a lot, you can find it throughout our messages and across the internet. He is factually correct that one cannot own a game design nor mechanics, which is why Power Well is aboveboard. However, as you will see as we continue through these messages, Ming (in my personal opinion) does not believe this one bit. He will later begin issuing more and more demands.
8. Hire my artist that worked on Sento. This was offensive. He knows at this point that my sister in law is our artist. To request that we hire a different artist is not cool at all. Also mind you I have “known” Ming for about 24 hours at this point. Not cool.
9. Your theme is lame, make the game about characters that are “some sort of brown.” This was also offensive. He asked it in a “nice” way, but I am not making Sento. (You will see Ming do this more later. He will make a demand, then drop a 😊 after it as if that makes it any softer, it is still a demand.) I am also not a minority. I want representation for everyone in Power Well. I cannot appropriate an all-asian theming as that is not my lived story to tell. Honestly at this point it felt like we had stepped on a landmine. Ming was starting to make requests borderline on demands and was starting to attempt to back-seat drive the Power Well project. Again, we have been in contact for roughly 24 hours total at this point.
At this point I pushed him off. I was already extremely stressed by the convention. It was our first time ever doing this, we were completely overwhelmed by the amount of people coming in, and I just couldn’t deal with Ming further at this time.
As for the part where I state “I get your concerns for sure I’ve been learning about what you went through with them and it sounds awful.” We had met with several people at PAX East 2024 that explained what happened to Sento to us. Now this is mostly third, maybe fourth-hand information, so I cannot verify whether it is all accurate and true or not, but this is what I was told in a summary.
Ming sold Sento to a man named J that owned a publishing company. J had run several (maybe 2 or 3) Kickstarter campaigns for other games that he owned. The campaigns were successful, but for some reason he was unable to deliver the final product to the backers. He did not run a Kickstarter for Sento as he was waiting until he had fulfilled the backers of his other projects. It was unclear if he would ever actually get to do that, and most likely the wild supply chain issues from COVID had hurt his business in a huge way. Sento was a “dead” project that had been shelved indefinitely. More on this backstory shortly.
Here is the rest of our conversation that day.
So Ming once again says that as long as we let people know the history that we are cool. He views it as a spiritual successor. Then he flexes on me one last time about his connection to Tycho. I do not respond, we go radio silent for a few months.
March 26, 2024 - We have just gotten back home from PAX East 2024. I now have access to my computer once again, and I know the name of the game Sento as well as the creator Brother Ming. I update the Power Well website, above-the-fold, to give attribution to Ming using my legal team approved verbiage. This is near the top of our webpage, above our email signup form, and it links directly to the Brother Ming Games website. I want to drive traffic from my project to his projects and let people know where we got the inspiration for Power Well from.
This same day I also receive a follow-up message from M. He explains the story of Sento as it relates to J and reminds me that he may attempt to litigate.
NOTE: As I state here “ideas alone dont hold value its all in execution” “and he isnt executing”. I am firm believer in this. I come from a software development world with a strong background in video game development. Everybody has a “million dollar idea” but once that idea is out in the world what matters is execution. That is why we have PUBG and Fortnite and Apex Legends. That is why we have DotA2 and League of Legends. I welcome competition. I believe in our execution of Power Well.
See: https://www.entrepreneur.com/starting-a-business/your-ideas-have-no-value/236605 and https://www.forbes.com/sites/joshsteimle/2013/09/01/why-great-ideas-are-worthless/ and https://www.google.com/search?q=ideas+are+worthless+without+execution
NOTE: A small time jump there at the end. We had a 2 hour long conversation on a call. It was very pleasant, M seems like a really nice guy. We talked tabletop, crowdfunding, what to expect, etc. Good information that I didn’t already have. M sent me 3 additional messages during the call that were links to projects he worked on, I am not showing those because they would just be large censored blocks of links. As of writing this, that was the last time I corresponded with M.
June 17-18, 2024 - We are days away from our 2nd ever showing of Power Well that will be at Origins Game Fair in Columbus, OH. I had not spoken with Ming at all since March 22, 2024. I was honestly hoping that he had just moved on with his life and we could make Power Well in peace, but he was going to be showing his own game(s) at Origins Game Fair as well. Knowing that we would be crossing paths in person, I extend an olive branch.
On the evening of June 18 we are helping a friend move into their booth and we run into Ming at the loading dock. We shake hands, introduce ourselves, have a nice conversation, and my brother and I help carry his stuff in to his booth.
We are roughly the same age, we both love video games and board games. I am hopeful that we are going to get on quite nicely and can end up friends.
June 20, 2024 - We set up the dinner I wanted to take him and his crew out to.
NOTE: KPOT was incredible. I highly recommend it to anyone in the area.
NOTE: Blurred out everyone for their privacy.
The meal went pretty well. We sat together, we ate together, we had some great conversation about our interests, and of course we spoke about the history of Sento and about the Power Well project. This is where Ming showed me his original prototype designs and showed me his Youtube page with the video of “Orb Strikers”.
There were a few moments that felt a bit odd. He made fun of our company name, said that it was stupid and he doesn’t understand why game companies have such dumb names. He said that the name Power Well was dumb, though he did also state that he thought the name Sento was dumb, however he also said that he wasn’t allowed to change it because of J. He said that our heroes, except for Painter, were dumb. This one is funny to me because his current game has a character that is a painter, so he had to give a little on that one, otherwise I am sure he was going to say Painter sucked too. He also said that our already announced hero Ronin needs to be changed, more on this later. It felt like this to me:
NOTE: Not my image, src: https://c8.alamy.com/comp/DTEM1T/knife-behind-back-DTEM1T.jpg Amie Gressett / Alamy Stock Photo - License was purchased to use this.
Ming was being “kind” to me, but it felt like he was holding a knife behind his back and was working an attack angle the whole time. It was honestly a bit much, just kept lightly jabbing me about our name, our theme, our company, our hero design. Remember we barely know each other at this point. I certainly wasn’t putting him down about any of his projects, it was all compliments from my side, and a bit of a jerk responding to me.
Ming did bring up wanting to be credited as designer again, which I told him I would talk to my legal team about it. As I have stated multiple times, we are trying to keep this project clean and aboveboard. Ming does not own Sento at this point. He sold it to J some years prior. Ming also has never seen Power Well outside of pictures yet.
June 21, 2024 - Ming comes to our booth and plays a demo of Power Well for the first time ever. He compliments us on the design. He notes that it is similar to Sento, but also notes that a few of our differences are “genius”. In Power Well, our heroes all have a power bar called the Power Flow Meter that works similar to the “Drive System” in Street Fighter. As you battle, if you do not spend this meter it builds up, and you have associated empowerments on every ability with varying costs. If you can afford it you can spend to activate it, but you will not gain any additional power on this turn. Ming noted that this was such a great system and was much better than what he called his “kicker gem” system from Sento.
He also complimented our “wishing for help” mulligan system that lets you toss a coin into the well to reset all 15 of the playable marbles on the field.
Furthermore, he noted that the actual Power Well marble tower was awesome, the theme of it was awesome, and that the dropdown door we placed on it was such a great design and he wished that he could have made something similar for Sento. Our Power Well marble tower also is designed such that we have designed front-loaded tokens that affect the columns of marbles for heroes, which Sento did not accommodate when I demoed it 4 years prior.
That is, to say, he complimented many of the various design choices we made that differentiated us from Sento. He now has been claiming on X that we are a “1 for 1” copy of Sento, despite knowing that our game has several core differences, and that ALL of our heroes are fully unique to our game.
NOTE: More on this to come, let’s continue…
June 24, 2024 - The convention is over, we have all returned home. Ming is back to the safety of being behind a computer monitor. Here comes the next “smile with knife behind back” moment.
It seems nice for a moment, and then here comes the back-seat driver once again trying to modify our project. He also starts to toss around this word “support”. As you will see, he starts to dangle this carrot in front of us a lot. It feels to me like a vague threat. Either you do the things I want and I “support” you, or I won’t “support” you. Mafia shit. You will see in a bit what that means. Hint: it is the incessant lies and whining about us on X.
I try to remain friendly and cordial in response. I have tried so hard with Ming since this all started.
Also of note, again, Ronin is already an announced hero for Power Well. Here is Ronin, in case you were wondering:
I guess this is “oriental bs” to Ming. He throws this around a lot too, more on that later. Also I remind you that earlier he asked that we make ALL of our heroes asian themed. As a note, as a kindness to Ming’s request, my team and I discussed it and we came up with the name “Spirit Blade” to replace “Ronin”. This is me bending over backwards trying to make Ming happy, while he tries to dictate what I can or cannot have in my game that he did not work on.
At this point I am hoping that us crediting him as the inspiration for Power Well, telling people that Power Well is a spiritual successor to Sento, giving him the role “Luminary” in our Discord server and placing him at the very top with my team and I, and changing Ronin at his request will be enough to make him happy. I am also hoping that this means we won’t be in contact anymore as he has become a thorn in my side.
July 8, 2024 - I message Ming completely out of nowhere about responding to him…
Insert record-scratching audio here. Whoops, that was actually in response to something Ming sent me and then later deleted. Let’s go back 3 days and grab that message from the beginning of this document without the blurring…
July 5, 2024 - We just finished watching the July 4th fireworks with the kids, and I get an unsolicited message from Ming at nearly 1AM making demands.
Yeah, it’s a lot. I am going to break down this message similar to how I did earlier.
1. So alot of my friends (and my wife included) is telling me I am being too lenient about how my design is being taken since ya’ll are still benefiting from 3 years of design and development work (thats all documented too via youtube videos). Actually a lot to break down there. He is being “too lenient” with us. What does that mean? Power Well is completely aboveboard. Power Well has mechanics that are unique to it that Sento never had. Power Well has all original heroes. Power Well does not use Sento IP in any way. Furthermore, Ming does not own Sento. He sold it to J for $10,000.00. In my opinion, this is a threat.
2. In industry terms, I am still the designer of power well, and ya’ll have developed it for publishing. (Designers make the core game design, developers refine and work on content, such as character kits) This is offensive and discredits all of the original work that we put into Power Well. Not a nice thing to say to somebody.
3. My friends also keep saying the failure to find sento on google is not an excuse because googling “marble fighting board game” still pulls up Sento through Penny Arcade’s article. Which whatever. Ya’ll are excited, I don’t blame ya’ll. He tries to cover this one with the “Ya’ll are excited, I don’t blame ya’ll” bit, but he is calling me a liar and hiding behind his “friends”. Not a nice thing to say to somebody. Also:
4. Philosophically speaking, I’m still adamant that I don’t believe in ownership of designs, but it will good for everyone to get a deal made on principle as the industry is small and relationships matter more than contracts. But does he actually not believe in ownership of designs? Read through his message very carefully and please form your own opinion.
5. My goal is to not impede on ya’ll’s ability to publish this game in any way, because it’s an uphill battle to publish a game. Designing the game is the fun part, which is why designers usually don’t get paid much (people like designing games! Its fun!)
But in case ya’ll achieve success, which I hope ya’ll do, I’d like to be cheering ya’ll on instead of people around me telling me I should be bitter. Okay…
6. So, here’s what I’d like to get in writing so people can get off my back:
- pay me for a re;act character license, standard 1500$ flat licensing fee to use one of my characters as a KS exclusive. This lets me actively participate and cheer on your success as a publisher.
- name in the credits next to your own as a designer for the game in all places. This lets me say ya’ll aren’t stealing anything, I’m part of the project as a designer.
- if ya’ll are successful enough to make an expansion, which I want ya’ll to be, pay me a flat retroactive designer’s fee of $3000. This will get my wife to not be bitter. Here we go. The same Ming that “does not believe in ownership of designs,” who also sold Sento to J for $10,000.00, who has been attempting to back-seat drive the Power Well project, is now making demands, all of which require that he gets paid.
You will notice that on X where he is saying we “stole” “his” unpublished game, that he claims that all he ever wanted was credit as a designer. He conveniently leaves out that he also wanted thousands of dollars. This is on top of the fact that he does not own Sento, he already sold that to J for $10,000.00. Also he “does not believe in ownership of ideas”. Also he did not work with us on Power Well.
These demands are not compatible with his stated views on ownership of design and ideas. In my opinion, he is outright lying about having this viewpoint only because he has a history of stealing IP for his own “fan” projects.
7. On average designers get paid 5% of wholesale price for every game sold, ya’ll will need to sell at least 2000 copies to justify an expansion, it’ll be at minimum a 60$ game (so 30$ wholesale). Even if ya’ll sell 10,000 copies instead of 2000, it doesn’t really matter to me, it’s more formality than anything. Im not bleeding for cash, but this way when anyone says anything to me after power well becomes a huge hit, I can just say ya’ll paid me.
Anyways tl;dr lets put me in a position where people stop telling me I should do feel bad and no one will accuse ya’ll of something that isn’t real. Justification of wanting me to pay him. Cool.
Upon receiving this message I immediately reach out to my legal team to talk about our options. Again, as stated multiple times, Power Well is always going to stay aboveboard. As such, my legal team advises that I cannot credit Ming as a designer on our game, as he sold Sento to J for $10,000.00. As we have seen throughout, I have been warned by multiple people multiple times that J would possibly become litigious, so I have to tread carefully and make sure everything is clean. Crediting Ming as a designer on Power Well would be opening that door wide for J to make a hypothetical case against us, as Ming is the party that he paid $10,000.00 to for Sento. Also, again, Ming has never worked with us on the Power Well project in any way.
After reading through his message again I start to think that he just wants to get paid. I still do respect him for his creativity and he was an inspiration to me, so I ask my legal team to draw up an agreement that can get him paid, but keep us properly separated from him.
I also don’t feel like responding to Ming at this time, and there is a hurricane headed toward us in Houston. I push him off to give my legal team some time.
July 8, 2024 - You have seen this one already.
July 18-19, 2024 - My legal team has come up with a workable solution to get Ming paid. Mind you that Power Well does not infringe on any IPs, copyrights, patents, etc. So paying Ming is absolutely not a requirement, but I am trying to do something good for all of us.
Here is Ming hiding behind his computer monitor again. If you are looking to make an agreement and thousands of dollars are at stake you should be able to handle a call. Red Planet Games Co. is a legitimate company and I am trying to make legitimate business deals here.
This frustrates me greatly, I start to draft out what I am going to offer him, it takes me a few days to get the wording how I want it.
July 22, 2024 - Here is the offer I made Ming.
Please take time to read this in its entirety. I don’t know how many ways I can say it to Ming, but he sold Sento to J for $10,000.00. He does not own Sento anymore. It would be walking straight onto a landmine if I were to credit him as the designer of Power Well.
In essence, I offered him $4,500.00 to put his name on our box. Here is his response.
Let’s just break this one down too.
1. So being credited as a co-designer is all I really cared about. The money, like I said, is a formality for everyone to be agreeable over a tangible transaction. Like I said so many times already, this is a legal hard-stop. I don’t know how else to say this to get Ming to understand it.
2. But after typing up a wall of text explaining why the tabletop industry would normally expect me to be a co-designer of Power Well instead of a prominent inspiration (which is honestly not normal), I realized that you and your brothers are simply industry outsiders. This is insulting and offensive.
3. So after really really thinking about it from your point of view, as someone who gives a lot of consideration to the power of lawyers and the dangers of litigation, I am willing to at least accept a compromise with a simple counter offer so that you can get back to focusing on making Power Well a success. Again, Ming and his associates warned me so many times up front that I needed to be careful legally. But somehow that makes me a bad person?
4. I can accept your terms as written and give you my genuine support if you just pay me the same amount J paid me, which was $10,000, plus a licensing fee of $1,500 for a Re;ACT character (this is just how much I've charged Iconoclash and how much I've paid One Step from Eden and Level 99 Games for similar licensing). $11,500.00. He will give me “genuine support” if I pay him $11,500.00. His counter offer to my $4,500.00, which was already a counter offer to his up front $1,500.00 request, is $11,500.00. What exactly is it that he is “selling” me here? He does not own Sento. He says himself that he does not believe in ownership of ideas.
See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Double_dip
5. If that counter offer doesn't work, I would really much rather open up a conversation with you and your brothers about why being credited as a co-designer is more appropriate. I am sure you will.
At this point I told my legal team to stop working on the agreement. It was obvious to me that we would never come to an agreement, and on principle I am not about to pay him $11,500.00 to keep his “genuine support”.
We started off at [Tell people it is a Spiritual Successor to Sento] and now we are at [Give me $11,500.00 for my “genuine support”], with many additional asks in between. Not only have I been enduring constant abuse, but Ming just pops up at random and alters the deal regularly. It is exhausting. I just want to make Power Well.
In the interim I called a friend that is in the industry to get some perspective, just to make sure I wasn’t crazy. I wasn’t crazy.
August 5, 2024 - Ming gets tired of waiting on me to respond, Gen Con is over, he messages me again.
Read his message. I have nothing to hide. Here comes the “you designed nothing” talk again. It is condescending, insulting, and offensive. He conveniently boils down all of our changes of which I noted several earlier that Ming called “genius” to just a single change. He claims that all he wants is credit. He claims that he only gets paid if we are successful. He claims that he does not believe in ownership of ideas.
In my opinion, all lies.
- He wants more than just credit, as he wants money.
- He wants at minimum $1,500.00 up front to license a character from his other game, so he gets paid whether we are successful or not.
- The previous two points pretty much shatter that last claim about ownership of ideas.
He also gives me legal advice, which is laughable coming from a person that sells “fan” projects using Square Enix, Atlus, Nintendo, and other IPs.
At this point I know I will have to “break up” with Ming, and that it is going to be nasty. His toxicity and demands have gotten way out of control. He continues to insult my team and our project. He is not the cool, nice guy that he pretends to be. I start drafting my response.
August 7, 2024 - Time to stand up for myself. For anyone reading this, don’t let bullies push you around. Not in your personal life, and not in business. I tried to take it for as long as I could to be cordial and hope for a better result, but here we are.
Please take time to read the entire message. This is the message that Ming posts on X, but he clips it at the Cards Against Humanity link so it doesn’t have the context at the bottom.
It was at this point that I went no-contact with him. You cannot engage with a person that is unreasonable to this extent.
I will offer my thought-responses here though.
1. Woah, way to burn bridges. I'm not sure how you came to this conclusion. What bridge? As you can see throughout this document, Ming has not been cool to me. This has been an abusive relationship from the start.
2. I'm not entirely sure why you think me saying you DONT have to pay me, just put my name down as a designer, is a threat DON’T have to pay you, except for the $1,500.00 license fee, and perpetual $3,000.00 designers fee. I feel like I am communicating with two different people here. He doesn’t even know what he has been demanding from me at this point.
3. You have not at all bent over backwards because all I'm asking for is proper credit At this point I have spent probably well over $10,000.00 in legal fees trying to find ways to work this out in Ming’s favor. I have offered him $4,500.00 to print his name on our game. I have changed one of our designed heroes to make him happy. I have credited him on our website, I have credited him in our Discord server and placed him at the top for all to see, I have taken him to dinner, I have taken his abuse. I have very much bent over backwards to help him.
4. I'm still not entirely sure why you think I don't deserve that. And you will never understand it.
An unpublished game, from 4 years ago, 1,369 days ago, that you do not own anymore. That you were paid for. That you were credited as the inspiration for from a spiritual successor.
How many spiritual successors give a designer credit to the designer of the game they are a spiritual successor to? Unless the original designer worked on the spiritual successor, the answer is none of them. They do, however, sometimes name drop the original in the Special Thanks section of their credits.
I ask the reader to think of games that are spiritual successors.
You wouldn't have Terraria without Minecraft.
You wouldn’t have Stardew Valley without Harvest Moon.
You wouldn’t have Undertale without Earthbound.
You wouldn’t have Monster Train without Slay the Spire.
Does Nintendo get credited on all platformers?
Does Street Fighter get credited by all fighting games?
Did Mortal Kombat “steal” the design of Street Fighter for having 1v1 fights, with two types of punches and two types of kicks, and throws, and health bars?
Ming does not have the right to claim all marble games. Where does the buck stop?
Does he own primary colored marbles?
Does he own a marble tower apparatus?
Does he own a number of columns/rows?
Does he own using these things to perform “combat”?
Does he own anything at all? He would likely tell you that he doesn’t.
Is it time based? Does he “own” the idea for 3 years? 5 years? 10 years?
He tweets a lot about it being “unpublished” as though that changes the circumstances. The only party responsible for Sento being in that state is Ming. He chose to sell it to J for $10,000.00. He could have published it himself. He got paid for his work.
Power Well is a love letter to everything that was great about Sento. It is a better game than Sento would have been.
In my opinion, Ming has become petty and jealous of the attention Power Well has gotten and feels like he is missing out on clout and cash.
Also you DO NOT WANT to be “special thanks”? You got it buddy.
I removed his inspiration credit that he “D[ID] NOT WANT” from our website. I will be much more vague when explaining the history to people in the future so as to not name drop him anymore.
Ming then went back to X and resurrected his Tycho thread to complain about Power Well.
Which fully proves my suspicions that he was flexing on me from day one.
He claims that all he wanted “was to be credited as a co designer”. He clips the part of my message with the context about him demanding money from us. In my opinion, he doesn’t want the whole truth to be told because he knows it flies in the face of his stated position on ownership of ideas/designs.
And as you can see from the responses, we were never shy about Sento. We never lied nor concealed anything. Power Well is fully aboveboard.
And then, finally, he stopped being so vague about his threats to us.
And there goes our “support” from Ming. At this point he had already tweeted to Tycho the evening before this threat.
Let me define another word for you. Extortion: noun Illegal use of one's official position or powers to obtain property, funds, or patronage.
This document is at the mercy of “the court of public opinion”.
That was the last we spoke to Ming.
August 31, 2024 - We heard rumor that Ming purchased Sento back from J for $10,000.00 during PAX West 2024.
The funny thing is that if he had owned Sento from the start, I would have credited him as a designer on Power Well. Now that is possible, but he has gone scorched earth against us.
I suspect that he intends on beating Power Well to market, most likely showing it at PAX Unplugged in December with a Kickstarter soon after.
The Power Well team welcomes competition, because we truly do not want to stifle anyone’s innovations nor put anyone down. We wish Ming luck with Sento and hope to buy it some day.
Also, we wanted to put Ming’s name on our project.
