Paragon, Epic Games’ action-oriented foray into the MOBA genre, is shutting down. First teased during PlayStation Experience 2015, it was released as a free-to-play, in-development title for PS4 and PC in March 2016. The game never managed to exit beta despite the addition of several new heroes and other major updates. On the game’s official site, a statement from the Paragon team reads:
“It’s with heavy hearts we’ve decided to close down Paragon.
We truly appreciate everything you’ve put into Paragon. We received many passionate ideas for where to take the game; the outpouring of thoughtful suggestions is another testament to this incredible community.
After careful consideration, and many difficult internal debates, we feel there isn’t a clear path for us to grow Paragon into a MOBA that retains enough players to be sustainable.
We didn’t execute well enough to deliver on the promise of Paragon. We have failed you — despite the team’s incredibly hard work — and we’re sorry.
To try to make this right, Epic is offering a full refund to every Paragon player for every purchase on any platform. This refund will come directly from Epic rather than your platform provider.”
The statement then provides instructions for how to request a refund.
I don’t know about you, but I find that statement quite sobering to read, and it illustrates just how risky an investment games have become. The risk on the development side is obvious: you never know if your product is going to be successful, and (as is the case here) it’s possible you may never see it grow into the vision you planned for. But there are risks on the consumer side as well, the most obvious being monetary.
Epic is doing right by its consumers to give refunds, but there was always a chance it, or any other studio, wouldn’t. And going forward, there will always bea chance that money spent could end up being money thrown down the drain. That’s the nature of ‘games as a service,’ and it highlights why some are so skittish about getting involved with modern games.
Don’t get me wrong – any game can be a risk, and to varying degrees, that’s always been the case. Did you pick up that SNES game back in the day because your friend at school wouldn’t stop talking about how cool it was, only to be letdown? Did you buy that PS2 game based on a review you read in a magazine, but found you vehemently disagreed with its assessment? Or maybe you didn’t read any reviews or hear any word of mouth, but grabbed a game based purely on trailers and/or box art, only to find it was nothing like you imagined?
It’s the extra layer of uncertainty that comes when games exist as a service – meaning that even if you love it one month, you may hate it the next, or in this case, it could be gone the next – that gives me pause. We already struggle with preserving games, but how do you preserve a game like Paragon? You don’t really, and so players who loved it must now be content with the memories they made during the game’s brief lifetime. There will be no ‘I think I’ll dust off my old copy’ in the future for Paragon’s community, and so it may feel like a gamble that simply didn’t pay off. That, quite frankly, sucks.
And it doesn’t just suck for those who loved the game – it sucks for every developer on the Paragon team who worked hard to make it a reality, every person who assumed they’d get around to it someday, and every believer who told their friends, ‘Hey you should check this out’. Regardless of what you think about the game itself, Paragon’s brief life should serve as a lesson on being careful about where you put your money and your time.
Epic’s position that anyone who spent real-world cash on the game will be getting a refund is welcome and the right thing to do. But personally, I find that a bit of a hollow victory – I’d much rather there be one more game in the world for people to enjoy.
The heartwarming success of Stardew Valley has taken on an even brighter note, thanks to its debut on Nintendo’s latest console. According to Nintendo’s official worldwide rankings, the farm-life RPG was the most-downloaded Switch eShop exclusive title in 2017. It beat out the juggernaut that is Minecraft, which took second place, as well as Sonic Mania and Rocket League at No. 3 and 4 respectively. All that despite Stardew Valley releasing later in the year (and thus having less time to rack up sales) than the others.
Both Minecraft and Rocket League were phenomena of their own, though their respective fervors had died down a bit by the time they arrived on Switch. Still, when you remember that Stardew Valley was almost entirely the product of a single person’s labor and deep, deep love for Harvest Moon, it’s all the more impressive (Minecraft started out as a one-person project too, but it’s had a whole studio behind it for many years now).
Here’s an extended list of the top 10 global eShop bestsellers on Switch. Remember that this list only includes download-exclusive titles (or chiefly download, I believe, if they have limited physical versions), so you’re not going to see games like The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild or Super Mario Odyssey on it.
Stardew Valley
Minecraft: Nintendo Switch Edition
Sonic Mania
Rocket League
Snipperclips
Overcooked
Shovel Knight
Fast RMX
Kamiko
Steamworld Dig 2
The staying power of Minecraft has already been made manifest. Will Stardew Valley hold on to its ranking even as the upcoming Nintendo Switch games of 2018 start pouring in? Whoever wins… we also win, because these games are rad and this system is rad. Nice.
Minecraft has now surpassed 144 million copies sold worldwide and currently has 74 million MAUs.
The figure was revealed by Microsoft head of Minecraft Helen Chiang in an interview with PopSugar. The MAU record was set in December 2017. It is unclear how many of these players are on mobile.
Chiang pointed to consistent updates bringing players back, as well as the promise of more to come in the future. This includes the addition of the Marketplace on Switch, which allows user-generated content to be sold to other players.
Setting records
“We just recently set a new record in December for monthly active users, so now we’re at 74 million monthly active users — and that’s really a testament to people coming back to the game, whether it’s through the game updates or bringing in new players from across the world,” said Chiang.
Minecraft is pretty important to Microsoft. Not only did the company spend $2.5 billion in 2014 to own the world’s most popular building-block game, but just last week it promoted Matt Booty, the head of Minecraft, to corporate VP of Microsoft Studios. As far as Microsoft sees it, there’s a direct line from Minecraft to Gears of War, Halo and all of the company’s major first-party games. And now, with Booty’s ascent, there’s a new Minecraft boss.
Helen Chiang has been with Microsoft for 13 years, and the past 11 of those were spent in the Xbox division, managing the Live team and working with developers in the Xbox Live Arcade program. She helped Minecraft get settled on Xbox long before Microsoft’s acquisition, and now she’s in charge of the entire game.
“It’s really important for the overall gaming strategy,” she told Engadget. “What I like to think is that we’re out in front thinking about a lot of different things.”
Chiang says Microsoft can use Minecraft as a proving ground for new ideas and features that might make their way to other Xbox projects. For example, Microsoft recently partnered with NetEase to release a version of Minecraft in China, and Chiang says the game is doing well in the region. This opens the door for other Xbox games to make the international leap. In the coming years, players might also see more Microsoft games coming to a range of devices, just like Minecraft.
“We’re one of the games that’s on all of the platforms outside of just Microsoft platforms,” Chiang says. “When I started at the company, and it’s really evolved over time — that is something that’s changed in our strategy. I’m really excited to work on a game that, really, it doesn’t matter where the players are playing. Part of what’s important to Minecraft is that we make it available to anybody, anywhere they want to play, on any device that they want to play. And that’s something I think we’ll see Microsoft do more of.”
With more games on more platforms, an obvious question looms: What about cross-console play? Currently, Microsoft allows PC and Xbox players to join select games together, including Gears of War 4, but the list is limited. The company is even willing to enable cross-play between Xbox One and the Nintendo Switch — here’s looking at you, Rocket League — and it wants to work out similar deals with Sony’s PlayStation 4. Cross-platform play is possible from a technical standpoint, and both Microsoft and Nintendo have expressed interest in connecting their consoles. However, Sony has historically rebuked these efforts.
Minecraft is an ideal test case here. The Better Together update unifies all versions of Minecraft, from consoles and PC to mobile, allowing players to interact with people on different devices and receive updates at the same time. Better Together is live for Xbox One, Windows 10, mobile and virtual reality versions of Minecraft, and Chiang’s team is working on the Switch version right now. It should be available “shortly,” though there’s no concrete launch date.
Sony, meanwhile, is still playing coy.
“In my role as the new studio head for Minecraft, I’m looking forward to continuing the discussions with Sony about bringing the Bedrock engine over to players on PlayStation,” Chiang says. “I think that is something that is very important to us and I’m looking forward to continuing to have those conversations with Sony.”
If everyone decides to play along, Minecraft‘s future will be more connected, communicative and open than ever, and Microsoft’s broader game strategy could follow suit.
“I think games are such a dynamic industry, one that really builds on everything that’s happening in technology,” Chiang says. “So I’m really excited about what we’ve done in games and how much farther we still have to go.”
What happens when you cross ARK: Survival Evolved with the blocky-style of Minecraft? Studio Wildcard and Snail Games revealedPixARK Thursday to answer that question and provide yet another spin on the open-world survival title. Xbox One and Steam PC gamers will get the first taste this March, but PlayStation 4 and Nintendo Switch owners won’t be left out.
PixARK is coming to Steam Early Access and the Xbox Game Preview program this March. The goal is to officially release the sandbox adventure game by the end of 2018 and add the PS4 and Nintendo Switch as additional platforms.
It is a voxel-based building, crafting, and adventure title that should seem immediately familiar to any veteran of ARK: Survival Evolved and Minecraft. Some might say it more closely resembles Trion Worlds’ Trove, however.
Snail Games USA is the developer behind PixARK and has already included many of the creatures and much of the equipment from ARK: Survival Evolved in the game, plus some that are not. The debut trailer and screenshots show Raptors, Brontosaurus, Triceratops, the T-Rex, and non-traditional ARK creatures like a panda and cyclops. The studio plans to have over 100 creatures to tame, train, and ride on procedurally generated maps with different biomes above ground, underground, and underwater.
Meanwhile, there appear to be familiar crafting elements to construct bases, plant farms, or make weapons and armor. There also appear to be some more magical elements as some characters can be seen wielding staffs.
Interestingly, this is the yet another proposed spin-off for ARK: Survival Evolved. The VR-based ARK Park was announced to be released in 2017 for the HTC Vive from Snail Games but is still listed as “coming soon.” Meanwhile, the battle royale title, ARK: Survival of the Fittest was shelved while Studio Wildcard focused on releasing the primary game. The developer also toyed with ARK: Primal Survival to allow play as a dinosaur before it was eventually shelved as well.
The good news with PixARK is that Snail Games states the core game is fully functional with support for local single-player and online multiplayer on both official and private servers. The developer plans to test and iterate on some of the “experimental technology and features” during early access period on PC and Xbox One.
