 On November 3rd of 2015, the first Paragon teaser featuring Twin Blast was released. Backed by multi-million dollar gaming company Epic, Paragon would fulfill Steve Superville's vision of MOBA whose gameplay matched its cinematic trailers. It was going to combine the adrenaline-pumping immersive gameplay found in Gears of War's third-person perspective with the slower, more strategic gameplay of MOBA. It would be beautiful, it would be exciting, but it would not be free, not at first. Epic first unveiled Paragon's closed beta in March of 2016. Players were given access to all of the heroes, but they had to buy a Founders Pack. You had to pay for the opportunity to test the game. Even with the backing of a well-established company, investors needed to know that enough players would be willing to spend money on the game before Epic would fully commit to its development. It was only for a few months that access could be gained via money. Open beta brought free to play for all and was released in August that very same year. However, Paragon was not the financial success Epic or its investors had hoped for. Changes in leadership, game mechanics, and monetization were made. Changes that brought in new players were maybe a week or two while alienating the hardcore fans that were actually spending money on the game. Nothing worked. Paragon was making some money, but not enough to meet the expectations of the investors. Eventually, the call was made to cancel the game. A decision made all the easier with the booming success of Fortnite. While it's easy to place the blame of Paragon's downfall in Fortnite, it was simply the nail in the coffin and possibly what allowed Epic to save face by refunding any money spent on Paragon and releasing millions of dollars of assets for free. It's those assets that have allowed several indie developers the opportunity to resurrect this beautiful third-person MOBA and hopefully learn from Epic's mistakes to create a game that is financially successful enough to sustain development. Interestingly, these three different companies have also gone three very different routes when it comes to funding production. Crowdfunding, investor backing, and publisher backing. This gives us a unique opportunity to explore both the advantages and disadvantages of each route. That's what we're going to be doing today. Before we go further, I would like to remind you that I track and create content for all three of these games, including a weekly podcast covering any news about the project, so please subscribe if you wish to stay up to date. Amida has been developing predecessors since 2018, but their small four-person team started under the shadow of the Paragon remake Colossus that was core. At the time, Amida Buff was a marketing-driven juggernaut that had the attention of a vast majority of the community. However, Amida Studios were already proving that you didn't have to have a big team to produce solid results. While most of the community ignored predecessor, I'm proud to say that a few other content creators and I could see even then that Sargent Smokey was leading his team in producing concrete results in the face of Core's hype. All this time, the only money being collected by Amida were donations to developer streams that would go towards funding servers for an eventual alpha test. It was this connection to the community alongside demonstrating significant progress that started to win more and more of the community over. Amida Studios brought on popular Paragon content creator RGS Ace to assist with the game. While Ace does work on game development, his biggest contribution has been his efforts to procure funding by lobbying investors. Amida was able to attain over $2 million in their initial round of funding. To cap that off, they also applied for and received a $10,000 grant via Epic's Mega Grant program. They've put this money to good use as well, hiring more people to assist with development and solving problems discovered in testing. Their first server stress test didn't go so well due to back-end issues, but since they have the money to do so, they hired a third party called Accelbite to provide them with a host of solutions that made their next test a resounding success. However, it seemed that the more money Amida received, the less we've seen of the original team. Updates from Amida slowed to a crawl, and Devstream seemed to be a thing of the past. The heart of Amida Studios that gave early fans of the project hope has sadly been hidden behind a suit and tie. They have addressed this issue, though, by bringing in another very popular Paragon creator Nabori to act as their marketing manager. He has since been doing a great job of updating and reconnecting with the community. While RGS Ace has assured us that the investors he secured have given them the freedom to make the game fun before trying to make it lucrative, I still worry that our reliance on investors may result in the same problems we saw with Paragon. How long can somebody reasonably sink money into something without seeing returns on that investment? And how long can Amida continue to develop predecessor if that money runs dry? Hopefully, we'll never have to know the answer to those questions. It's very possible that predecessor will be a financial success that carries on long enough to achieve what Paragon could not. If you count the early work of Rocket Mania, you can say that Team Soulieve has been developing Overprime longer than any of the other Paragon's successor projects. He was able to use the assets to create a playable, yet somewhat janky solo project called Overthrow Paragon that was made playable for free via peer-to-peer network long before we ever saw so much as an alpha from anyone else. Team Soulieve, Son's Rocket, were also working on a project with the assets, however what they were doing was more of a battle-warrior style game than a MOBA. Eventually Rocket joined Soulieve's ranks and Overprime was born. Overprime came out at a blistering pace from the start. They had both a legacy and monolith style map and included a majority of the Paragon heroes. While access to the game was free, you could only play via peer-to-peer network, something most players just weren't willing to do. Even after adding servers that allowed you to queue into matches normally, servers that they must have paid for out of pocket since I never saw them ask for money, people just weren't playing Overprime. The download process was daunting and to be perfectly honest, the game itself felt more like bad Paragon fan fiction than a true successor. However, what they had created had gained the attention of Netmarble, the largest mobile gaming company in Korea. Gaining a publisher not only gave Team Soulieve access to funding, but also to the experience and infrastructure of an established company. They closed down the servers, went quiet for a few months, and put their newfound resources to good use. While the game isn't as expansive as it once was and the roster has been cut down to a third of what they originally had, it's now far more polished and has gained an identity as the fast Paragon. With Netmarble's backing, they've been able to mount a comprehensive and somewhat unique marketing campaign, insanely fast production of new skins that they'll be able to monetize, brand new heroes for the roster, and most importantly, actual verifiable progress towards console release. If you can't tell, I've been very impressed by how much Overprime is turned around. I suspect that it's mainly due to the influence of an experienced company at their back. I do have concerns though, much like with predecessor, Overprime's future is in the hands of people that don't care about the old Paragon community. Also, with Netmarble's main focus on mobile gaming, I'm extremely wary of microtransactions that will render the game pay to win. The developers have assured us that this will not be the case, and I'm sure they believe that Netmarble won't impose pay to win microtransactions, but I personally do not trust the mobile gaming company. I do have faith in Team Soulieve themselves though, and the skins they've created have already had me reaching for my credit card, so hopefully they can sustain development solely via cosmetic sales. During a time when Core had dropped off the map, Ameida had gone back to the drawing board, and Overprime simply did not yet exist, Strange Matter burst out of nowhere with a fully playable Paragon successor. The studio quickly gained the attention of the masses and were soon having free closed alpha tests that included more and more players each time. They also began crowdfunding via Indiegogo with various reward tiers, one of which included promised early access to the game once they were ready for beta phase development. It was announced that early access would be paid with three founder packed tiers, much like Epic had done with Paragon. They would also offer a season pass that would give you exclusive access to their own created skins, as well as a week of priority access to heroes when they were released. This didn't sit well with many members of the community. I personally don't mind the paid early access, I've bought into a variety of early access games and I'm used to paying for the privilege of testing while the game is still under development. The season pass right off the bat however, that took me back a little. It just struck me as a bit greedy and I kind of wondered why they didn't just raise the prices of the access tiers if they needed more money for development. So with the community already starting to question their motives, Strange Matter released the game as a fully playable early access title with multiple 24 hour servers. Unfortunately, the same day they released Fault, a completely separate company called Cloudflare that manages a variety of major servers experienced a malfunction that caused half the internet to fail. Many players who had pre-ordered the game were unable to play it. To make matters worse, Discord servers were also managed by Cloudflare and Strange Matter's main form of communication with the community was cut off. Even after the servers were repaired, they continued to experience problems with Indiegogo players not getting their promised keys, Steam screwing up how much the game cost, and the actual game itself was in worse condition than in their previous free alpha tests. Although Strange Matter has worked hard to fix all the issues they had with the initial launch of the game, the damage to their reputation as a company had already been done. This is also where we run into a uniquely Paragon problem. While it's not uncommon for an early access game to be buggy and incomplete, this was a remake of a game that a majority of the interested community had already experienced in its complete state and most of those players started when Paragon was free to play. Many people immediately refunded the game via Steam, and Strange Matter's reputation has caused new players to shy away from the title, leaving false development a bit underfunded. They simply don't have the same amount of money as the other two companies. What they do have though is nearly two years of experience with managing a live game and that has led them to produce something that is leagues ahead of what their initial launch was. So my worries with Strange Matter are that they don't have the necessary funds to correct problems as they occur, and their reputation as a cash grab has put them in a position where they're unable to continue development and fund the servers if they go free to play. They've taken recent steps, however, to reinvent themselves as the community-friendly indie company that they actually are, and hopefully that will bring more players to a game that is pretty well done at this point. They've also proven that they can not only sustain their game for years with their current income, but they can also make steady improvements. Strange Matter's long-term success is dependent upon the community and not investors or another company. I think it's important for all of us to remember that whether they sell the game to investors, a publisher, or directly to the community, these games need to make money in order to sustain their games. Hindsight is 2020, and we can clearly see from the closure of Paragon what happens when a game isn't financially successful. We can all enjoy playing the game, but the people behind the production not only have bills incurred during development, but they also deserve compensation for the work they've done. It could be years before we discover which one of these funding strategies proves to be successful in the long run, but I for one am looking forward to not only playing all of these games, but also tracking how three companies can grow and compete in such a unique environment. Please like the video if you enjoyed it, but for now, this is the man goose signing off, you guys have a good one.