I first talked about Paralives in one of my articles about The Sims franchise. A lot happened during the second half of May, from the Parafolk reveal to Roxane, one of the team members, being fired.
I decided to talk about all the news about Paralives since I am following it’s development closely: I am supporting on Patreon and trying to be as active as possible on the Discord channel (available not only for Patrons). I will not talk about any of the exclusive posts on Patreon, just about the public infos.
What Is Paralives?
For those who never heard about this game until now, Paralives is an indie life simulation game in early stages of development. Its creator, Alex Massé, is working on it thanks to the support of many (me included) interested in an alternative to The Sims.
Until now The Sims has lived in a market without competitors, so it is refreshing to actually see someone trying. An healthy competition helps the market and the players.
Paralives is still in early development, but the development team is growing and making progress faster and faster. We still have a long way to go, and we have yet to know a release date and if there will be a demo or Early Access on Steam.
Maggie’s Reveal
May 19th 2020, the day the first Parafolk, named Maggie by the community, was revealed. On Patreon there was a sneak peek the day before, but I still got really excited about it.
Maggie remembered me the art style of The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, which is great since I love its art direction. We also saw bits of customization, which included the height of the Parafolk, a total news in life simulation games.
After the reveal, there was a boost of supporters on Patreon, and the Paralives Team achieved rapidly some of its set goals, making it possible to hire new people to work on the game. If you live in Montreal, Canada, you can apply for a position as Senior Game Programmer, Senior 3D Animator or Senior 3D Artist!
Fun fact: on the same day of Maggie’s reveal, which was announced a few days before,Electronic Arts dropped out of nowhere the announcement trailer of a new Expansion Pack for The Sims 4, called Eco Lifestyle. Was it an attempt to try stealing the attention?
Roxane’s Tweets About Being Fired and Its Consequences
A few days after Maggie’s Reveal Roxane, one of the team members, was fired. The reason why we are talking about this is because of some Tweets published by her account. The account is no longer public and the tweets were rapidly deleted, but thanks to the Reddit user North_Activist we can still read them (North_Activist made three posts about the situation, you can find them here, here[2] and here[3]).
There is one tweet in particular that is concerning:
I guess I shouldn’t be surprised since this comes from someone who keeps delaying the actual live mode game design, and barely develops anything outside of what is shown in videos
Life simulator fans had a really bad experience in the past with a hoax named Project Vie. Roxane’s claim scared some of Paralives Patrons and they stopped supporting the game.
I personally don’t think that Paralives is a hoax: there is too much going on, from hiring new staff members to the Patreon account. Alex Massé is not a nobody in the gaming community since he already worked in the industry and developed a few indie games.
Project Vie was a different situation: there were only a few screenshots and they weren’t even that great. Also, there wasn’t even the name of a single developer known in the industry that was working on the project.
Plus, I don’t need to point out that Roxane is clearly upset about Alex’s decision to fire her. She was actually on a six-months probation period, and it was decided to not renew her contract. I feel for her, but I don’t approve any of her tweets. All of them are unprofessional and offensive towards Alex Massé and all the Paralives Team.
Roxane was the most active with the fans, she knew that and yet she ranted on Twitter.
Alex addressed the whole Roxane situation in a tweet, later deleted, but you can find it on this Reddit post by joongotnojams.
My hopes are that we can keep following Paralives development without any more drama, and that the team will show us that Roxane’s claim is just driven by anger and untrue. I will try to keep you updated from time to time about this game!
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