Just a short time earlier, we passed along a story about Dan Schoening, the artist who was described as having inspired the look of the Wii/DS version of the Ghostbusters video game and promised an on-screen credit which did not materialize in the finished work.

As with most any story of this nature, however, there's more than one side to it. And admittedly, I screwed up in getting the other side of it. I won't go into the details, except to say that I erroneously forgot that it wasn't Terminal Reality who put together the Wii title. That didn't exactly help things along.

Fortunately, the CEO of Red Fly Studio and individual to whom Mr. Schoening's blog was directed, Dan Borth, caught the story and was kind enough to offer up his side of things. Here is what he had to offer:

Greetings.

My name is Dan Borth and I am the CEO of Red Fly Studio and I am the person that Dan's blog entry is aimed at.

First off I would like to defend the position here at the studio that we left Dan off the credits intentionally. That's not true.

Dan's blog entry is one that is not packed with facts so I share them with all of you before you scream that I and or our studio is just an awful terrible sort of people.

I don't really appreciate people questioning my integrity but to each his own.

When we were first approached to do Ghostbusters from Vivendi at the time they gave us a large group of concept art that we were to go through.

We had already decided on a stylish look for the game and there were many concepts and fan art pieces that we liked. Dan's was among those. We started working off the art work we liked and it wasn't until later that I was contacted by Dan himself. Being an artist myself I understood his position and also wanted to make things right - since no one informed us who created the concept pieces - etc. So we reached an agreement that included money and an on screen credit. At that point his work ceased to be fan art and became our property because we paid for it.

The months went by and Dan pinged me here and there - I got back to him when I could but not always promptly. He was very supportive and excited about the game - as were we.

Fast forward some crazy months and after crunching to get the game out Dan contacts me through LinkedIn with his on screen credit grievance. I didn't respond to him in time and he started posting these blog entries about how he was cheated and that we acted unprofessionally, and how I have no integrity - etc, etc.

Leaving me with little choice but to tell the other side at the very least to people in the industry or to whom might care about such matters.

I myself am an artist - or I used to be - and I understand the anger Dan is feeling. I don't think however, it is justified and attacking me or the studio in the press was and is a wrong way to handle things.

Back to the on screen credit...after Sony, Vivendi, Atari all got their credits we had few spaces for ourselves and the others who worked on the games with us - Zen Studios, War Drum studios, etc. Was Dan's name left off? Yes it was. Was it intentional? No it wasn't. Many, many people didn't make it and they worked many, many more hours on this game than Mr. Dan I can assure you. Does that make it right? No it doesn't. That's just how it played out.

I offered to put a blog entry up on our page to correct the matter and that wasn't good enough. Our concept artist also wanted to make an art book available on the blog only and include Dan. He has refused. So to call me out like that is not really fair. The fact is we paid him and his name was left off. We tried to fix it but he wanted to go public so here we are.

Despite how I completely disagree how Dan handled this - Dan is an incredible artist and a true talent.

I personally posted this on our blog -

http://devblog.redflystudio.com/2009/06/23/special-thanks-to-dan-schoening/ - which I told him we would do but he chose to vilify us publicly anyway. And of course all the game sites love a good story of how a big bad developer like us screwed the little guy. I would like to remind people that a large group of other creative people worked very hard on this game.

These are the facts guys.

And there you have it: Both sides of the story. Mistakes happen; that's just a fact of life (as I myself have personally proven). All we can do is try to take responsibility, make amends, and move on, hopefully a little wiser and a little better for it in the end.