Arguing against "Fantage Legacy" turned Happy New Year, everyone! It is now officially 2020! :) Now, there is a lot of anticipation for the following info-drops. If you know as much as I do, please bear with me - the next blog posts will be detailing the perspective from the Fantage Community Discord server ("FC server") since "M," the lead developer of Pixel Park, was first invited to it. Even I, myself, do not have every piece of information required to show the entire story, so please bear that in mind. This is an account of the game's development from the perspective of the events that occurred in the FC server while combining my own. My point of view will be arguing against the legitimacy of the Pixel Park game in the following post, but I will still acknowledge any counter-arguments as they turn up. This article is broken down into the following sections for readability:
Note: Some information in one particular section will directly relate to information within another section. Another thing: legal matters, copyright, privacy, professionalism, and my involvement will take an entirely different post to explain since it is too lengthy to include in this argument. That being said, let's get to it. Grab some coffee and biscotti or something, 'cause this will be a lengthy read. Progress over time As far back as July 2018, M and the former community leader "Jimmy" were invited to the FC server. There, they had a large user community to reach out to for feedback, artwork, and feeding information or updates about the status of Pixel Park. The official beta release of the game took place in November 2019. As we know, game development takes progress, and happens over the span of a few months, so it is reasonable to expect it to take a while. In October 2018, M stated this directly in the FC server. Flash forward to December 2019. Now, we are already seeing significant progress on other games inspired by Fantage, being worked on by the community (such as Mirai), and even Fantage simulators that have only taken a few months to construct. It's worth asking, "what progress? How much?" The artist community in the FC server was largely unaware of visual progress of Pixel Park throughout the course of development besides a few sporadic updates every month or every other month. You can see the history of the former text channel used for announcing new Pixel Park blog posts here. It is worth noting, however, that M posted more nuanced updates within a separate text channel in the FC server itself, so this is not the entirety of Pixel Park's updates. Most of the time, he would answer other user's questions about the game instead of make any official announcement about its progress. Later on, in November 2018, M explained that the development of Pixel Park would take significantly longer than Fantage Legacy. The validity of the claim of it taking several months to a year to code a basic MMO (massive multiplayer online) game was questioned several times by the users of the FC server during the public beta launch in November 2019; below, as an example, a particular user claims it only takes a short amount of time to code a login screen and test server with user-to-user interaction. In December 2019, in an Instagram DM, the lead designer Jalil asked whether or not Pixel Park's coding and design work is outsourced. That's reasonable. Game development is no simple feat - deciding which designs to use, the user-interface, application interface, hiring a team of people or volunteers to support a kick-starter game, figure out the name, the premises/purpose of the game, server hosting, costs, and so on all takes a lot of time to figure out. However, it is noteworthy to point out that M stated this over a year ago; the game launched with very little core features, not full functionality, which he promised. If we look at a typical kick-starter MMO (massive multiplayer online) game that launches live after a year, its public beta test has several functioning core features, which was not seen in Pixel Park on its launch day in November 2019. An example of this can be the start-up Foxotic, which was in development throughout 2014, launched in early 2015, then shut down in 2016. Arguably, evidence points to M reportedly still being a college student; this was a notice seen on the previous webpage (link not archived) when signing up for the Fantage Legacy team. It is reasonable to expect that college students typically have busy schedules, responsibilities, and lots of classes. Usually, an organized kick-starter always keeps the community updated relatively consistently, on a week-by-week basis. This example, among many on the kickstarter.com website, provides its user base an ideal image of the following: project timelines, projected deadline dates, and a tentative launch date with typically only a month's difference. This bears some questions - should Pixel Park have been more organized before the launch? On the days following the launch, M received heavy backlash for implementing promised features too late, and for a cost. He charged a $20 fee (initially, which was later changed to $10, then, he gave users an option to use a specified amount of in-game currency as a purchase option) for using a no-filter chat system. Deadlines In January 2019, in the FC server, some users asked about a definitive deadline, and this was the answer: Arguably, it is reasonable to expect that there is no set deadline for launching any game, and that unexpected delays can arise; especially for an anonymous college student still going through courses and schooling. However, it is worth noting that despite that, it does add more credibility, leverage, and an added layer of transparency to a project if it has an official timeline, roadmap, and set plan for the community to see over the course of its development. For a privately operating business, there are lawful exceptions, of course. M stated outright for the first time to his community in March 2019 that Pixel Park is a private business, operating under user-based donations. Money Matters (part 1) It is also worth noting that M has stated that Pixel Park does not operate for a profit. He has even gone as far as releasing an expense sheet in a blog post to show where the expenses and donations go, supposedly. I say "supposedly," because even despite this, it is worth noting that M has not released any public professional information about himself or his team. There are no business profiles centered around Pixel Park on the web, such as a LinkedIn profile or Facebook page; however, there is an Instagram. There are still no known names of his teammates or co-developers, nor official statement of anyone else developing the game. Communications It is worth noting, that back in January 2019, not even the community leader at the time, Jimmy, knew any specifics of the game. Reportedly, the concept of Pixel Park was a work-in-progress ever since the month of January '19, or even before that; below are users asking about the stage of development. M has specified what was currently being worked on at the time. Click any image to enlarge. Private server or Pixel Park? Moving forward to March 2019, when it was stated that Pixel Park would resemble Fantage. This was reasonable to expect, and most users of the community wanted a game very much like Fantage. Back in November 2018, M stated that Pixel Park was a vision of a completely new game, different than Fantage. Here, he retracts that statement. Below is a gallery of screenshots from the current Pixel Park game. Lots of users in the FC server created and submitted avatar concepts and designs to the Pixel Park team, but we do not see very much evidence of other assets in the game besides Fantage's assets. Another important question this raises - is it legal to use another business's assets as "placeholders" before raising a profit, especially without permission, while Fantage's assets are legally still in use by LeShop App? Another question that sticks out is, why resort to another game's assets for placeholders instead of consulting the artist community; especially since the artist community is very closely following and monitoring Pixel Park? It is worth noting that, despite possible answers such as "for the Fantage nostalgia" or "to remind us of the old days" do not go over well with copyright laws. I will be detailing that in a later post. But Pixel Park is, supposedly, not operating at a profit, or for profit, according to M. Click any image below to enlarge. Code M also made multiple switches in the style of coding for Pixel Park. It is unknown why. It was first coded in Flash, then HTML5, then Unity. It is implied here that he knows how to exploit flash (how users used to hack into Fantage to "dupe" for items). Below, is also an anonymous user who reported to me how "duping" Fantage items worked. Numerous user findings in the FC server reported M being a previous hacker named "camfroggy" with multiple accounts. Click to enlarge. It is reasonable to assume that a beginner at coding would try to figure out a comfortable coding language and experiment with a handful of popular languages until figuring out which one is a good basis to use for a new game. However, this raises some questions. How long does it typically take to copy a line of code, paste it, and then manipulate it? There are lots of resources for beginning coders and game developers at a simple Google search. Some FC server users with differing levels of coding experience have commented on the matter. Click to enlarge. This anonymous user was asked whether or not it takes a while to set up a test MMO server and a chat box; they asked an experienced coder, to which the coder did not take very long to create a login, chat box, and open a test server. Which raises the question, why did it take several months to a year, for an intermediate level coder such as M, to open a beta test, which was still lacking in core functions? Was it the cost of labor for API (application interface), or costs of design and UI (user interface)? Why would it have taken so long? It's not unreasonable to ask questions such as those, and there are, presumably, simple answers such as people flaking out, delays in payments, and so on; though, it is still worth questioning. After checking out a couple different sources, the next questions raised were about the validity of server costs, which M has stated before, costed about $300 a month. Money Matters (part 2) M released an accounting sheet detailing Pixel Park's expenses, due to the community's demand for monetary transparency. It looks reasonable, but the labor cost table and "future project" table raised questions among the FC server members on the days following Pixel Park's beta release. Below are images of the mentioned tables. It is worth noting that for whatever reason, M has chosen not to reveal who the two other co-developers are on his team. It is also worth pointing out the names associated with the future project item costs are questionably vague, and that there's a lack of explanation for the expensive costs. There is no elaboration as to what the costs represent. Are they labor costs? If so, why does it cost those amounts? Is the labor for those items that difficult? It is reasonable to assume that labor costs add up over time and are the most expensive cost of any business. However, this brings the integrity of the labor into question when the community does not know who else is working with M, or who exactly these people are, for that matter, besides possibly being other college students. Another concern is, why was it necessary to outsource co-developers for, supposedly, simplistic coding? This goes back to the Progress over time and Code sections. It is reasonable to pay the game designers themselves - those in charge of pixelated assets such as backgrounds, characters, user interface (UI), or character outfits; however, it is not specified in this document that any designers did get paid or whether these labor costs are associated with visual designers or coders. However, there are reports directly from the lead designer Jalil that he was indeed paid by M; this will be further touched upon in the next blog post. Going back to the table: assuming each individual in-game inventory item has a unique string of code, it is worth questioning whether or not each inventory asset takes a long time to code, or if designing the inventory itself takes a lot of labor, how much labor does it take for the whole project, and so on. Is $800 a reasonable price tag, and if so, why? Is this a labor cost, and if so, does it take a lot of labor to code each individual asset within an inventory? The same questions can be asked for player cards. Is the labor that costly to code a few unique lines of an MMO player card? If so, why? Lastly, the same can be asked for the mini-game cost. That is a single mini-game cost. The question is still, "why?" It might be understandable from a game design point of view that a single mini-game is complex in nature since it is a game within a game; but, still, if we look at simplistic games such as those found on Scratch, it is worth arguing that a single mini-game should not take $300 in labor costs. It's worth pointing out that the inventory below looks too suspiciously simplistic to take $800 in labor costs to code, arguably. There is a lot to cover about Pixel Park. I am not telling you what you should believe; you are free to make up your own mind after reading this piece. The next post(s) will discuss the following:
I'd like to thank you all for reading today's post. I hope you all have a happy new year, make the best of it! ( ^_^)/
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Hey, viewers!I have got so much news from the Fantage Community circles... just where do I start!? I guess I will start with news related to Fantage itself. This is probably not new information to most of you reading this page, but I will talk about it anyways. There was once a widely known project for a Fantage private server long ago named "Fantage Legacy," made with the intention of keeping Fantage around after it shut down. It has been discontinued since July 2018 when the project received so much attention that word of it got all the way to the Fantage support team. This was the email the "Fantage Legacy" team received, being requested to cease operations: Now, you might be wondering, is Fantage completely gone? Actually, the answer is no! The assets of the game are still floating around out there... backgrounds, characters, and all, if you can find them, as well as APK files to several of their old mobile applications. However, there is a new mobile app game called LeShop Color by Number on the Google Play and App stores.
The developers of this application own and reserve the rights to use Fantage assets (any and all images from the online game and its applications), since it is now their business to profit off of users through in-app purchases. This means that if anyone were to be reported to these developers, they will keep close watch on entrepreneur profit-seeking developers seeking to use their assets, illegally for-profit. Surely, any of us who used to play the game would have loved the idea of a private server, like how Club Penguin had several private servers sprout up after its shutdown. However, former Fantage users from around have saved the old flash mini games from within Fantage itself, most of which you can find here, and various small but unfinished "simulations" have sprout up here and there online. Since the "Fantage Legacy" idea was shot down swiftly, the developer(s) behind it planned a new game that was under the name "Plan Z" as an alternative in case the private server didn't work out. This was the case since July of 2018. The name has been revealed as "Pixel Park," or "MyPixelPark," since April 2019. In my next post, I will be going over information that may jump out, but I will not be making any allegations. It will merely be available to help inform viewers of the story behind Pixel Park's development from my perspective and the information I've gathered in the Fantage Community discord server over the span of this year. I know the next posts will be highly anticipated, as numerous online users have been awaiting my great info-drop. Hang in there, it's coming soon! :P See you guys next time! (。・∀・)ノ |
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