Please don't support Mesozoica.

This is a modified version of my original post, which can be found here.

“Customization”

• They allow players to choose between accurate and inaccurate versions of prehistoric animals.
• Example: they have a short-legged Spinosaurus, but also what is explicitly the Jurassic Park III Spinosaurus (they even reuse its roars!)
  

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• Why? Because even if it’s inaccurate, it’s the public perception of Spinosaurus.
  

• It gives the impression that they view accuracy as simply a stylistic choice, held on the same level as the inaccuracy. It almost negates the point of considering these as real animals
  
• If you give the option between accurate dinosaurs and not, really what’s the point of having accurate ones?

Specific Inaccuracies

Note - for all of the following, there is no indication that these are not the “accurate” versions

• Everything is wrinkly. EVERYTHING. Even the sharks.
  
  

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• Deinocheirus has a weird “elbow wing” that there is zero proof of having ever existed in anything.
• The Spinosaurus and Deinocheirus have traditional theropod feet (the first digit is held off the ground and the other three touch the ground). Spinosaurus’s first digit touched the ground, and Deinocheirus didn’t have one.
• The Pteranodon lacks pycnofibres and has unrealistically leathery wings.

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• The feathered Velociraptor doesn’t nearly have enough feathers - its arms are devoid of non-pennaceous feathers, and there seems to be no wing structure other than “long feathers coming out of arms”
  
• The Kelenken is hideously wrinkly, has the same elbow wings as on Deinocheirus, and has clawed digits (this has only been proposed for the much younger Titanis and is currently the unpopular opinion among scientists).
• The Stegosaurus, Paraceratherium, Entelodont, and deer models honestly look dead.
• The zombie-looking Entelodont has the teeth of a theropod dinosaur.

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• Their mosasaur, until very recently, lacked a tail fluke.
  
• The Kickstarter page does not capitalize genus names at all.
• So far pretty much all of the released images proudly display teeth and claws where possible.
• And they claim to have strict scientific rigor, and tout it around like this is a new thing (see Saurian and Prehistoric Kingdom for better examples of that).
  

Plagiarism

• A Tyrannosaurus skin that was (apparently explicitly) ripped right out of Dinosaur Revolution.
  

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• A Tyrannotitan design that’s rather similar to the Walking with Dinosaurs Allosaurus in coloration.
• The Allosaurus itself has a spot pattern that’s nearly identical to that of the WWD Allosaurus.
  
• The featherless Utahraptor resembles the Walking with Dinosaurs Utahraptor.
• Again, the JPIII Spinosaurus.
• These models appear to have disappeared from the page of the modelling artist, Robert Fabiani.
• There are allegations that they stole models in early development.
  
• The UI and overall feel of the demo is essentially a reskinned version of Jurassic Park: Operation Genesis.
  

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• It has the same “industrial electric fences” approach to containment as Jurassic Park.
• As shown in the alpha, there’s a visitor’s center which is an exact copy of the one from Jurassic Park, with the Mesozoica logo slapped onto it
  
• The name was already being used by another project that also involves a fictional dinosaur park. And that originated in 2001.
  

Public Relations

• When inaccuracies are pointed out by people, Mesozoica devs will defend themselves to no end, and probably block the person who pointed it out.
• When somebody pointed out that their mosasaur lacked a tail fluke, this is how they responded:
  

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• They are overly dependent on fans for concepts. This leads to very little original art direction.
• They called upon the modding community before even releasing a demo.
  

(Original post by paleofeathers)

The Game’s History and Max Wood

• The creator, Max Wood, used to work for Prehistoric Kingdom. Then he split. It appears that Mesozoica only exists to spite Prehistoric Kingdom.
• When the creator of the other dinosaur park thing called Mesozoica contacted Max Wood, with proof their thing came first that Max Wood admitted was valid, the response boiled down to “deal with our lawyers” and a block:

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• Apparently Underdog Interactive LLC (the company they claim is making this game) has been registered as an LLC. It was done by a guy named Michael Stout (who doesn’t seem to have any connection to Mesozoica), years before Mesozoica existed, and expired in June 2014. So it appears they tacked LLC onto their name and thought that was enough to look like a legal entity and scare people off.
  

• Three developers left the team (or were booted) for uncertain reasons. One of them started posting on the forums muckracking against Max Wood. Not long after, the entire Mesozoica forums were taken down.

(Said developer’s post on the Prehistoric Kingdom posts)

• This same developer has just released chatlogs that allege that:
  
• Max is condescending and patronizing to the developers.
• He expects too much from a programmer in too little time, and sets deadlines without input from the developers.
• He blamed the same developer for not having piles of code ready at the deadline he set, and kicked him for this.
• He tries to deny his past as a marketing intern for The Stomping Land.
  

Other Grievances

• Of the animals shown so far, the majority are carnivores, and the vast majority of those are theropods.

• From the Kickstarter trailer, the gameplay is… uninspired
  
• They act like they’re doing something really new and revolutionary, and they really aren’t
• Example: they revealed elevated paths claiming it as a solution to problems that plagued other tycoon games, acting as if this was a new thing. Zoo Tycoon 2 had them first
  

• The Kickstarter page in particular was plagued with typos and many words (including literally all genus names) were not capitalized