 What's up everybody I'm TheMangoose, you are awesome and today I'm going to be talking about how these companies resurrecting Paragon are all independent developers, specifically how this is sometimes their reason why we should cut them some slack, but other times it's just an unacceptable excuse for poor performance. Sometimes we do need to keep our expectations in check because these are small unfunded studios but at the end of the day the final product has to compete with titles produced by AAA companies and a new player just happening upon one of these Paragon remakes isn't going to give a flying fuck about who made the game. They will be comparing it to all other games on the market and expecting equivalent performance. Do I think these companies can't compete with AAA studios? Yes, with the assets they have available combined with lessons learned from Paragon and a lower bar of success, they certainly can, but we still owe it to them and ourselves to hold them accountable when they veer off track. A good example of it's an indie company being a reason instead of an excuse is development times. I'm willing to wait patiently for these small volunteer teams to create their version of Paragon. They have neither the numbers or resources that a AAA studio has, it's going to take them longer to get things right even with the use of free assets. If they make a mistake forecasting a release date and have to go back to the drawing board, that's fine. This is their first go at making a game, mistakes will be made, not just with coding, but with marketing and planning. That's why it's crucial that they take all the time they need to present the community with the best possible product. Now an example of indie development being an excuse is when they do release that final product and it's riddled with easily identifiable bugs. I see many people saying things like, well such and such AAA studio also had problems with such and such game, but the poor performance of a AAA studio in no way excuses the poor performance of an indie developer. Only the end product matters. By the way, I don't give a fuck if you call it an alpha, an early access, or a beta, those terms have lost all meaning. If you put a game in the community's hands to play, what you have better work. Maybe it's not complete, but the features it does possess need to function. Game breaking bugs need to be discovered at the testing level, not the everyone is playing it and streaming it level. Once you put your product out there for the entire community to see, not just the Paragon community, but the gaming community as a whole, all bets are off and no one gives a fuck about your numbers or resources. All three Parazombie companies have done this. Predecessor's first alpha was dogshit because they didn't use gas and there was no client server prediction. They had announced their alpha for March of 2019 and squeaked it in at the end of the month, allowing anyone and everyone in the test to stream and record. The community flipped on a made of studios immediately. This was a case of them not taking their time and properly testing before presenting the product. After that they went silent, pulled their shit together, and it took as much time as they needed before bringing the alpha back online. This time they had testing sessions where streaming and recording were not allowed before the public alpha and it paid off. Predecessor now is subjectively the smoothest and best feeling Paragon remake out there. We criticized them for their failure, they learned from it, and drastically improved. Fault's Early Access weekend was much the same and I would say even worse due to money being involved. While they have improved significantly, that first bug filled framerate fucked weekend screwed them over more than I think any of us could know. They did learn from Omata's previous alpha failure and did plenty of internal testing. The weekend long alpha tests were very successful, but then they missed their Early Access launch date, which I am completely fine with, and spent months adding in new features. They should have taken more time. The initial launch was far worse for me than any of the other previous alpha weekends. I don't know exactly what they did, but between their last alpha test and the launch of Early Access, something went wrong. The bugs that they had could have easily been identified through some proper closed testing leading up to the Early Access launch. Strange Matter has been steadily improving the quality of Fault, and they can hopefully recoup their losses. They also recently took steps to prevent 5 stacks from ruining the game which shows that they do listen to the community which is great, but that first weekend took a huge bite out of their potential player base. Over Prime has been allowing absolutely anyone to have access to their game very early on, and holy shit did that ever hurt them. Over Prime is really quite good now, but when they first let that one fly with only peer to peer access and the game being very arcade like and jam packed with weird bugs, it skewed the community's impression of the game. Most people look at Over Prime as a joke because they tried it once, probably couldn't even install it, and then they couldn't play it if they installed it, and if they did play it the game was crap. If Soul Leave would have held off when releasing Over Prime, tested it among a few members of the community, and then only allowed alpha access with the game in the state that it's in now, it probably would be a hit. Maybe it's a good thing that they're only just now looking to bring the game to steam, but if they do so without improving some of the bugs and animations it currently has, you best believe I will criticize them as if they were a AAA studio because at that point, they're putting Over Prime out there to be judged by all and against the work of every other type of studio out there. Being independent developers does work for all of them in one very crucial area, sustainability. Paragon wasn't losing money for Epic, it just wasn't making as much money as it needed for the project to be a feasible investment for a large company. While many people firmly blame Fortnite for killing Paragon, the future of the game was on shaky ground long before Fortnite Battle Royale. They brought in Donald Mustard with his experience at monetizing mobile games to increase profits, they made constant changes to the core of the game in a desperate bid to attract and retain new players, and none of it was working. Paragon was already on the chopping block, Fortnite just acted as the executioner. But these small indie developers are not multi-million dollar companies that need to show quarterly growth to impress investors. They don't need to maintain the numbers that Paragon did in order to succeed, they can take their time and focus on the players that they have. If it seems that I've been more cynical than I have been in the past, it's because I care about the success of these games. I was happy to white knight my ass off when they were in the development phase, but now they're out there for the world to see. It's not going to do anyone any good to praise these teams for their mistakes and excuse their failures. While I make sure to let people know in my videos that I still believe in what everyone is doing, I certainly will not be shy about criticizing anything that I feel will impact the growth of the game. Maybe it's not fair that their titles would be compared to the products of much larger and more experienced companies, but it's a reality that we all need to face. If you enjoyed this video, please hit that like button and subscribe. But for now, this is TheMangoo signing off. You guys, have a good one. MANGOO!