 What's up everybody, I am the Mangus, you are awesome, and today I'm going to talk about Project Agora from Aventail. I've known about this project for a while, however there were a few red flags that prevented me from mentioning it on my videos or on for the minions. I'm a very optimistic guy though, and I was content to just kinda sit back and consciously watch to see if they proved themselves to be a company that I felt comfortable informing my community about. There are actually a few companies that you guys don't know about making Paragon-like projects that I have my eye on, however they want to wait until they have something a little more solid before entering the spotlight. However a few things happened in Rapid Succession that caused me to feel the need to take a more proactive approach with Aventail. First Briddick did his interview with him which caused quite a few people to become interested in the project and let the company some credibility. I personally trust Briddick and many of my subscribers do as well, so one can normally assume that if Briddick is showing interest in the project then it's something to watch. I very much disagree. This isn't a slight of Briddick, I love that dude. That doesn't mean I'm always going to agree with him and I certainly don't as comfortable with his project as he seems to be. The second thing that happened was one of my subscribers messaged me to warn me of the project. For the most part he wasn't telling me anything I don't already know, however one particular thing he said upset me quite a bit and it's what really spurred me to do this video. It was this, and I'm quoting him here. He actually put you and Briddick into a group called Influencer, so anybody checking this discord out might consider it more safe due to you two being in there. Obviously not your fault. I at least thought that's a legitimate project when I saw both of you on that discord. That's the real problem for me, oh that gets me, it gets me. I don't want my subs to see my name as an influencer on a project and assume that it has my seal of approval. My biggest fear is that someone will back a project monetarily based on the fact that they think that I'm associated with said project. They didn't ask me to be an influencer, I never agreed to be an influencer on that discord. I've spoken with them a few times, they asked if I wanted to do an interview with them. I told them I might prepare some questions, again like I said I was just kind of biding my time to see if they were going to produce something a little more substantial before I really threw in with those guys, but that kind of brings me to the third thing that caused the old man goose to stir in his burrow here. Today they announced they paid early access to the game. Guys, please, please, please, never spend your money on anything, even if I have officially endorsed it, without first doing as much research as you can. And please do research them, maybe I'm wrong, maybe they are a legitimate company that is trying to bring a gore back to us like so many others. If that's so, then I hope the team over at Aventale looks at this video as a roadmap for how they need to improve the way they do business. I don't think I'm wrong though, let's take a look at some of the red flags I mentioned. Let's start off with one that is very cut and dry. They are completely unprofessional. Many of the other red flags I'll cover can be argued, but I don't think anyone will disagree that Aventale lacks the tact and self-control of a true gaming company. Or any company, really. For everyone rolling their eyes at me right now, I'll give you this screen capture from their Discord. It says, If this is at all have a community treated epic, which I suggest it is, no wonder they left you guys for dead. What the fuck? Even if that's how you feel, you can't just say shit like that. Also, fuck you. One thing all the companies I cover have in common is respect for their fans and respect for each other. Does this look like respect for another company? I mean, read that. I expect this kind of thing from the fan base kind of. We all get a little riled up from time to time, but you can't represent a company and say shit like that. Second red flag. They ask for money. A lot. I don't see anything wrong with wanting to fund your game, but there are proper ways to do it. Offering pre-access to a game that you can't prove functions is not the way. I know there were some people in my comments saying that the community begged them to offer that, but you know who else was begged and begged time and time again to do a paid pre-access? Visionary. And Obeda. And Metabuff. And Undying. People were literally getting mad at all four of these companies because there was no way for them to throw money at them, and yet they all gracefully declined, deciding that it was important for them to prove that their game is functional and worthy of funding prior to taking money from the community. Would you pay someone to build you a house without them showing that you can build a house? No, no you wouldn't. It can be argued, however, that I made a took money for their servers, however, they made sure that they had something to put on the servers before funding them. Also, Metabuff caught a bit of hell over their merchandise, but at least with the merch you get a cool hoodie out of the deal, which reminds me, I still need to order a hat. Third red flag. They make wild promises and claims that never come to fruition. They often set a date and say that a certain feature will be ready on that date, yet when the time comes there's always some huge emergency situation that arises. Maybe these situations are real and I'm just a horrible person for doubting them. I'm not omniscient. Not yet at least. Getting close though. But when it happens over and over again, it starts to look less like a coincidence and more like an excuse. They also claim they'll have the game on PS4 by December or something. I have seen nothing showing that they have a company tax ID number, which is necessary to even apply for a dev kit. Also, if you watch any of the streams, you could tell that their game is nowhere near ready for fucking anything, which brings me to another red flag. The fourth red flag. They don't have anyone that is savvy with the Unreal Engine. If you've been watching Tech Time on For the Minions, a shameless plug for you, you can see how easy it is to load assets into the engine and get them moving around. This guy absolutely struggles in his streams to the point that it's painful to watch. I get that people work at a different pace and do things differently, but damn, there's no way you're going to have a game ready by December if that's your pace of work. It is possible to create Paragon-like projects fairly quickly, take the Paragon demo for instance, but that's not intended to be a playable game that functions on true servers. Cool ass project though, I had some fun with that. Fifth red flag. They change names and also apparently the lead developer uses aliases in his own discord. They started out as green jelly and changed it over to Aventel. Nothing wrong with that, but it was the circumstances under which it happened that was a little bit off. Basically, when they got called out too much for bullshit on one discord, they killed it off and started a new one with a new name. And here's a funny one for you from a boy jacka. Like, what the fuck is going on there? Like he asked, where did the girl come in? Where should, what? Six red flag. This one is more personal than anything, and it's the fact that Ruba kind of ran him off the Paragon reddit. You can see the post for yourself, but basically he's saying he's done with their bullshit and that their project is no longer welcome on the subreddit. I count Ruba as a personal friend, and if my boy Ruba doesn't trust them, I don't either. In closing, I just want to say I very much hope that I'm wrong. I hope that Aventel is the real deal and will come out with something great for the community. I hope that the people that already invested money into this project will enjoy whatever comes of it. I don't think that shit's gonna happen, but I hope it does. After I had recorded most of this, I ended up having a small conversation with Breddick about Aventel. Basically, you can look at this in two ways. Either Aventel is an immature company that is just way in over their heads, or the entire project is a scam meant to make some easy money off of our love for Paragon. I don't want to speak for Breddick, but he seems to sway more towards them just being in over their heads, while I sway more towards this being some shady ass bullshit. I encourage you to do your own research and decide for yourselves. For now, this is the Mangoo signing off. Thank you guys. Have a good one. Mangoo.