imo the concept art is giving me 40k and starcraft marine power armors
While the final product just reminds me of...whatever the heck this is.
While the final product just reminds me of...whatever the heck this is.
Also just having them stood there holding the gun down by their side like they're bored. As opposed to the super intentional cool stance in the concept against a solid white background. It adds a lot.
Final one might as well be t-posing.
As opposed to something cool as hell like this
The pose is definitely part of the issue, the way she's leaning back gives the impression that she has a huge beer gut for some reason.
Devil's Third was on the WiiU, and was almost released under the radar. Willing to bet most people on this board either don't remember it or have even heard of it.
Concord might have lost close 10x as much money as Devil's Third. Concord sold less at a lower price (even if we ignore the total refund of all customers) while no doubt costing far more to make and being tied to a tv show. If it doesn't come back it will certainly be the biggest software failure in the history of the industry.
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I don't think Devil's Third even got 1/10th of this game budget.
Devils Third was basically an indie game compared to Concord in terms of budget. It was a cheap enough bomb that they could afford to retool it into the F2P multiplayer game it finally died as.
Everyone isn't going to end up refunded, but after all the refunds they do send are sent Sony is going to make basically zero dollars off this game and its budget was bigger than a game like Devil's Third could ever dream of getting.
It's the biggest bomb in video game history and it's almost impossible to manage anything topping it.
It's the biggest bomb in video game history and it's almost impossible to manage anything topping it.
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From an outsider's point of view:
If anything, it's the lack of greed. Someone signed a cheque and forgot about it.
This game likely got the benefit of funding during the era of ultra-low interest rates.
For a big company like Sony, it is surprising no one thought about the complaints that have been mentioned in this board and elsewhere (character appeal, dialogue/jokes, off brand gotg style, marketing, rollout, price, etc). They should have been minimized with focus groups and other marketing tools.
It needed a more hands-on kind of management. No one was greedy enough to do so.
I doubt there was anyone in charge to keep costs low and maximize profit and quality. They probably just asked for more $$ and got a green light.
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It's sad that the game has been closed. I didn't see many complaints about the gamplay itself, so I assume it was good. There was so much noise it never got a proper chance.
Shit even that game lasted a year vs Concord having the plug pulled 2 weeks later
Sony could have delayed the game and retooled it but at what point would it even be worth it? A major overhaul and a change to the graphical style could have taken another year of development time at a minimum. Maybe if you pivot to just F2P that would take less time but that would still likely would have been an additional few more months of development time. Sony probably knew the game wasn't going to do great and didn't want to spend more money on it but decided to put the game out to recoup some of the cost. They just didn't expect the game to do this poorly. I don't think anyone did. The nichest of niche games can sell more than 25k in one weekend in Japan and cost a hell of a lot less to make.
I disagree. CCU affects the narrative around games and this isn't just something I'm making up, development teams know this and seek to account for it. A lot of internal discussion goes on around surfacing CCU and sometimes CCU is even hidden among internal teams because of the effect it has on staff morale. It's naive not to think it doesn't have an effect on the discourse around the game, which has a knock on effect on performance.
I'm not saying it was the cause of Concord's issues, but it was one of them, and the extent to which it will have contributed to the game's performance is really difficult to know. I think CCU isn't one of the strongest factors overall, but it is one which advances the possibility that the developer can lose control of the discourse and marketing around a game. CCU conversations can amplify the biggest success and worsen the biggest failures. The difference between Concord's launch with and without the CCU conversations wouldn't likely have been enough to save the game, but it was most likely significant.
As for the idea that the game was boring and not special, both to play for the majority of people. I don't think that's fair. The majority of people in the game's addressable market did not play it. But I don't doubt it wasn't interesting to look at, especially when contextualised by various aspects of the discourse, but I don't think a majority of people that played it disliked it either. I think the price point was tough to get behind, and the player count was more than just online discourse, it had a real effect on the game's matchmaking and user experience that hurt the game even for those that wanted to give it a chance.
Either way, agree to disagree. Obviously, I think the game had a lot of issues too, but I think people are very keen to focus on the issues that align with their personal beliefs and downplay everything else. In my opinion there are a lot of factors, and they are complex and difficult to measure because of how games exist not just as artefacts in a vacuum but as social phenomena, with all the complexities that comes with.
I think to believe anything otherwise, would be to believe that the most popular forms of entertainment were the highest in quality. I think across all forms of entertainment media the correlation between quality and commercial performance is tenuous at best. Much of what makes a product successful is marketing, word of mouth, discourse... and while I don't doubt that Concord had its share of issues inside of the game itself, people are very eager to point fingers at the area of the game they personally disliked, on the basis that it will teach the publisher some bizarre lesson, neglecting the role that other factors might have played.
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This is why I am surprised it's so easy to find the CCU.
Like if I wanted the CCU for the Ps5 or Xbox - I wouldn't - as the public be able to find it. if I'm paying Steam 30% of each sale or whatever it is, why is this information public to my competitors?
Anyways, once CCU #s are published - you basically have no PR narrative to combat that unless Sony wanted to publish its own console numbers which unless it was an overwhelming success, they would never reveal. No one knows how many people play or purchased X Game digitally on console unless it's announced.
I'll say this - everyone was "meme-ing" on the lack of players, but other than the No Respawn mode, it never took me more than 10-20 seconds to find a game.
From a marketing point of view, the game wasn't given the care it deserved. It needed many betas, earlier gameplay viewing/access, and not be in the same playstation direct as Marvel Rivals - a more recognizable IP.
I think they should have been more heavy handed with the 70s/80s sci-fi too in its marketing material. Tell people the inspiration is Star Wars/space bounty hunters.
Like if I wanted the CCU for the Ps5 or Xbox - I wouldn't - as the public be able to find it. if I'm paying Steam 30% of each sale or whatever it is, why is this information public to my competitors?
Anyways, once CCU #s are published - you basically have no PR narrative to combat that unless Sony wanted to publish its own console numbers which unless it was an overwhelming success, they would never reveal. No one knows how many people play or purchased X Game digitally on console unless it's announced.
I'll say this - everyone was "meme-ing" on the lack of players, but other than the No Respawn mode, it never took me more than 10-20 seconds to find a game.
From a marketing point of view, the game wasn't given the care it deserved. It needed many betas, earlier gameplay viewing/access, and not be in the same playstation direct as Marvel Rivals - a more recognizable IP.
I think they should have been more heavy handed with the 70s/80s sci-fi too in its marketing material. Tell people the inspiration is Star Wars/space bounty hunters.
DaVeers kinda had them, but I actually liked their look. One of the cooler ones. Like their boxy helmet.
I don't mind the shape of the helmet, but the clear sides and back of the helmet make me irrationally mad. It makes it look like she's wearing tupperware on her head and there is nothing in the character's design to convey the purpose of those clear panels like the character having additional eyes and maybe gameplay abilities like quick 360 looking or maybe she's a living head on a robot body so the head can swivel around inside the helmet to make use of it.
It's almost like they went with the classic fishbowl astronaut helmet, but made it shit and look like it's made out of plastic??? And honestly the weird body horror intestine life support tubes just look so weird when you're unwilling to commit to the bit. They look so out of place as just additional flourish details. Like an actor that is too embarrassed to fully play the part so it just ends up awkward.
CCU does affect the game's narrative after it comes out, but the CCU was so low on this game it didn't matter. The game was toast far before CCU. CCU reaction didn't affect the initial numbers.
Could CCU affect follow-up purchases? Sure, but not to a standard deviation. Not this soon / early after release.
We weren't discussing the discourse around the game itself (i.e. woke crap).
We weren't discussing losing control of the discourse / marketing around the game, we were talking about the actual failure in the game even launching successfully....and that happened before CCU.
Concord did have a 3-day early access, this is true, but the well was poisoned far before that judging by the betas alone. Even the open beta couldn't muster numbers and dropped during the beta. During the beta. People were uninterested in what they were playing, those who did play.
Heck, if you pre-ordered you got 4 keys to give to friends for the closed beta and still the numbers were pathetic.
I think you're being overly optimistic. We'd just been discussing how the main standout feature, the crew system, probably wasn't a good idea and there have been examples of the actual playerbase dipping during the very short windows it was open showing a lack of interest.
It reminded me of Rocket Arena. Slow and players dropped almost as fast....but that wasn't a huge game.
Heck, I don't think it was a TERRIBLE game. I agreed with the comment of it was just...there. Nothing to stand out (aside from fidelity and the cinematics, which don't matter) with some obviously poorly received characters.
If anything, that is also an argument that it's not the CCU that had anything to do with Concord's downfall.
Liking or disliking games is subjective, of course, so who can really say who all might or might not have liked it. But we do have some more objective ways to at least somewhat assess this. My understanding from the CCU thread is that CCU count dropped both during the beta and the first week, at a rate that suggested people were dropping the game more quickly than other, similar games. Or more easily readable and verifiable: the Metacritic score is 62. I'm happy to acknowledge that this isn't absolute proof of anything, and that some reviewers, like Gerstmann, may have gotten quickly bored with the game and not given it A True Chance To Shine. But also, like. That 62 is very, very suggestive.
Honestly, I think it's mostly just people trying to figure this out and maybe latching on to certain aspects that seem most likely to them to have caused things to go awry. The character designs look bad to me, maybe they did to other people? The price model seemed weird to me (how could they possibly maintain a service game on up-front sales without any microtransactions or other payments?), maybe other people assumed microtransactions were coming anyway? Or just didn't want to pay the $40? Most likely it's as you say, a lot of factors came together to cause this surprising total failure. But it's interesting to discuss and speculate anyway!
Given it's an online multiplayer game, low CCU can affect people's decision to buy a game since it can indicate long queue times, especially when there isn't another push by marketing to cause a spike. I'm surprised that's a controversial statement. The low CCU obviously didn't affect the initial turn period when the game launched, but it plays a part in the conversation afterwards.
They actually remained, as seen in the character's legendary skin
Couple of things:
1- The concept art does look better than the 3D render. The armor looks utilitarian.
2- On this particular skin: Come on man, this just keeps getting worse. Who really choose this color palette for this particular 3D shape?
I mean
That's the problem though, the game didn't even get out of that period
Like if we're talking about the effects of visible playercounts re: something like Titanfall 2 months after release then maybe there's a conversation to be had, but a shooter's launch shouldn't be in that position to be so severely affected by playercounts in the first place.
It's why I'm so fascinated to hear about the behind-the-scenes of this - surely Sony would have had some idea how well or poorly it was faring in terms of pre-orders beforehand. Were they already talking about the possibility of doing a wholesale refund even before it came out?
Wow this concept art looks good. I see what they're going for with intestine tubes, but the final models from the few above where they slap it on the outside is such an ugly after thought
Something REALLY OFF happened to the art direction and character design came transition time. You can see where the concept art was going and I'd buy that vision.
Certainly if many people aren't using one of the main systems correctly, it's on the devs — many fans of the game had brought that up as a main criticism in the OT.
With that said, I would expect professionals giving their opinion on/reviewing the game to figure it out. It's giving off vibes of a reviewer playing a whole game not realizing there's a run button.
In Jeff's case, maybe he did know and understand the crew bonus system, but if his character screen was anything to go by, he didn't utilize it. His brief time with the game was spent 99% with a character that grants improved weapon recoil.
It's a pretty simple concept. Obviously it's just one part of a bigger picture, but it is a part.
Reading the discussion, especially about the lack of server creation, it reminded me why I stopped buying games that don't have an offline mode or the option to create your own server. Big corporations dream of making it so that we no longer own the games we buy. One day, they'll just decide to shut things down, and you'll lose your game and all the money you put into it.
It's especially strange how many people defend a $40 price tag for a multiplayer-only game. You're paying "on demand" for a game that will stop working when the publisher decides it's no longer profitable. In this case, we were lucky the game failed and everyone got their money back. But if SONY had kept the servers up for even six months, no one would've gotten refunds.
That's why if a game is multiplayer-only, it should be F2P, and any payment should be optional through cosmetics or battle passes. We need to stand together and say no to paid games without some kind of offline mode! But unfortunately, people don't think about the future and keep spending money on games like Diablo 4, The Crew, etc. Meanwhile, publishers are getting greedier every year. Eventually, it'll end in digital slavery, where under the threat of being disconnected, you'll be ready to do whatever they say.
P.S. What scares me the most is that when Gabe decides to step down, Steam will probably be sold to a mega-corporation, and that will be the end of even the illusion of owning games. The only alternative will be GOG.
It's especially strange how many people defend a $40 price tag for a multiplayer-only game. You're paying "on demand" for a game that will stop working when the publisher decides it's no longer profitable. In this case, we were lucky the game failed and everyone got their money back. But if SONY had kept the servers up for even six months, no one would've gotten refunds.
That's why if a game is multiplayer-only, it should be F2P, and any payment should be optional through cosmetics or battle passes. We need to stand together and say no to paid games without some kind of offline mode! But unfortunately, people don't think about the future and keep spending money on games like Diablo 4, The Crew, etc. Meanwhile, publishers are getting greedier every year. Eventually, it'll end in digital slavery, where under the threat of being disconnected, you'll be ready to do whatever they say.
P.S. What scares me the most is that when Gabe decides to step down, Steam will probably be sold to a mega-corporation, and that will be the end of even the illusion of owning games. The only alternative will be GOG.
But to what degree? It's easy to consider; imagine CCUs are totally hidden on all platforms. No sales data is available. How many additional players do you really believe that adds? Versus all of the other reasons people have pointed out?
I think it's a vanishingly small number of people. My boss would be angry that I even brought it up in a post-mortem.
For this game to have been a success it needed to hit a few million sales. When a game hits a few million sales it does so with hundreds of thousands of preorders who show up on day one. When you've got a whopping 600 concurrent users worldwide on the day you launch, and fewer than that the next 2 days, you're unbelievably far off from hitting the sales numbers you needed to hit to be a success and you were unbelievably far off before sales even started. To a first approximation, essentially nobody preordered this thing. That's a big fucking problem with your consumer interest!
Acting like the news articles about the low CCUs that showed up the following Monday were a significant factor in why it failed is a bit like acting like the birdshit on the deck of the Titanic was a significant factor in why it sank; in some infinitesimal, technically correct sense yeah that added weight probably contributed to it sinking ever so slightly faster, but that's overlooking the fact that it was still utterly and completely fucked regardless.
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This is where the argument that CCU discussion had a substantial impact completely falls apart.
Concord reportedly sold less than 25,000 copies on Day 1.
It was already an absolute disaster even if we do assume that the CCU numbers scared off buyers after that point.
With that said, I highly doubt there was a meaningful number of potential buyers waiting in the wings. You can extrapolate a lot from that 25k figure. Plus, the type of person who would even be aware of the Concord CCU discourse would mostly be enthusiasts, which is an incredibly small contingent of the game market at this point. Concord's issue is that it didn't draw any interest at all from the general public.
SteamDB didn't kill this game, people would have still know there was no hype, issues with matchmaking, or engagement on streaming sites.
I think at the end of the day, there wont be a definitive answer on what cause the general market to turn on this game so hard as they did, After reading so many post, I think its more "death by a 1000 cuts" kind of thing, not one thing did but it was a perfect storm of all things going agaisnt the game.
Like putting the CCu thread as a mayor cause is insane, did it cause some people to not buy the game sure, but that amount was so low to begin with that like many have said by time the game was out it was already done.
For what ever reason the vast mayority of poeple saw Concord and said no thank you and while 5 people really loved that game its a business and if the game was as dead we saw, killing it was probably the best choise, cause even if those 5 people are going to be really angry the rest of people will at best say "thats sad" or "who cares".
Like putting the CCu thread as a mayor cause is insane, did it cause some people to not buy the game sure, but that amount was so low to begin with that like many have said by time the game was out it was already done.
For what ever reason the vast mayority of poeple saw Concord and said no thank you and while 5 people really loved that game its a business and if the game was as dead we saw, killing it was probably the best choise, cause even if those 5 people are going to be really angry the rest of people will at best say "thats sad" or "who cares".
The complete lack of interest in the beta already told us how dire the situation was before the general release CCU numbers went viral to the masses.
Concord was simply never going to find an audience and I wouldn't be surprised if this happened so swiftly because Sony started planning for what to do after the beta flopped.
Its strange to talk about how the conversations about CCU is portrayed as something negative here since Concord is exactly the type of game the consumers need to have a knowledge of on how exactly the amount of players the game is having---it directly impact the gameplay experience and the future of the game where the customers is spending their money on.
This is all I wanted to say about the whole thing but you said it much nicer than my very salty thoughts.
Whenever I look at what big expensive games are like graphically a lot go with photorealism and that's probably just because it's what most people prefer. Then I get blackpilled on it and I don't even wanna think or talk about it anymore.
The fact that Sony heavily featured Marvel Rivals at Concord's State of Play baffled me to no end.
Sony showed off a 40 dollar hero shooter with a cinematic trailer that was desperately trying to ape Guardians of the Galaxy.
Then ten minutes later Sony advertised a f2p hero shooter with actual Marvel characters that was much more visually appealing and looked more fun to play.
Everything about Concord's development and marketing confuses me.
I would honestly be surprised if 1 out of every 10,000 gamers even know what CCU meant let alone that Concord existed and had low CCU numbers. Ya'll are acting like we're not an extremely weird and niche subset of consumers that pay more attention to games than we should.
Most people didn't buy Concord because they didn't want what it was selling, that includes casuals and people obsessing over the CCU numbers for the single week the game existed. It was going to bomb regardless of what shit was posted here.
Most people didn't buy Concord because they didn't want what it was selling, that includes casuals and people obsessing over the CCU numbers for the single week the game existed. It was going to bomb regardless of what shit was posted here.
I talked about Concord's marketing and totally forgot about this. Baffling choice, you're right! I'm not sure if Sony could not show Rivals, because that game will bring money to the platform, but maybe they should have done something separate for Concord.
Yep, it's outright delusional.
I can't believe it's still a discussion point days later.
We've seen plenty of posts from Concord fans now about how negative discourse around the game drove sales/player count to be poor versus the reality which is the poor sales and player count created discourse.
I do think this comes from an unwillingness on their part to admit they like a game which the gaming community as a whole has deemed "sauceless" rather then understanding the argument in good faith.
I do think that Sony did a disservice to the players who were playing the game by refunding and shutting down the servers so quickly. Some of my favourite online multiplayer moments were playing dying games where the community became so small that you ended up being familiar with the ever dwindling playerbase and could actually tie personality types and play styles to the people you come up against. It's very cool and reminded me of back when you'd just play on the same couple of multipayer servers.
For whatever reason, Concord was going to be/become the game for certain people and it got pulled so quickly that they couldn't even mourn it. In that sense it's understandable that the frustration is pointed at external factors such as CCU numbers or criticism around art or design cause it's the only way to get people to engage. Sony basically did the dirty on these players and gave them a thing they enjoyed and then snatched it away.
I do think this comes from an unwillingness on their part to admit they like a game which the gaming community as a whole has deemed "sauceless" rather then understanding the argument in good faith.
I do think that Sony did a disservice to the players who were playing the game by refunding and shutting down the servers so quickly. Some of my favourite online multiplayer moments were playing dying games where the community became so small that you ended up being familiar with the ever dwindling playerbase and could actually tie personality types and play styles to the people you come up against. It's very cool and reminded me of back when you'd just play on the same couple of multipayer servers.
For whatever reason, Concord was going to be/become the game for certain people and it got pulled so quickly that they couldn't even mourn it. In that sense it's understandable that the frustration is pointed at external factors such as CCU numbers or criticism around art or design cause it's the only way to get people to engage. Sony basically did the dirty on these players and gave them a thing they enjoyed and then snatched it away.
But the playerbase was actually abysmall. This is how massive flop this was.
I mean data showing that something is cratering doesn't have positive effect on that pruduct? What else is new.
Abysmal Borderlands film's opening weekend box office numbers certainly didn't make people rush to theaters to see it, duh.
Those pesky Steam publicaly avaliable CCU numbers, won't anybody think about corporations and how it's harder for them to put wool over consumers eyes and do PR spins?
Let's also not forget about console fanboys and their feelings, it's really hard time for them.
While we are at it how come Xbox fanboys have coping pillow of "it's doing great on gamepass" whenever there is lower then expected Steam's CCU of Microsoft game, is there no justice for Playstation fans?
In all seriousness though I can understand people being unhappy or sad that game they liked was put down like that and I know that Era goes so hyperbolic about video games (myself included) but a lot of takes about Steam CCC are just embarrassing fanboy's coping nonsense.
I thought I saw the max extent of that in Insomniac's leak threads where some people were unable to handle even basic financial information (that shouldn't be secret in the first place) of how much Disney's license cost.
Abysmal Borderlands film's opening weekend box office numbers certainly didn't make people rush to theaters to see it, duh.
Those pesky Steam publicaly avaliable CCU numbers, won't anybody think about corporations and how it's harder for them to put wool over consumers eyes and do PR spins?
Let's also not forget about console fanboys and their feelings, it's really hard time for them.
While we are at it how come Xbox fanboys have coping pillow of "it's doing great on gamepass" whenever there is lower then expected Steam's CCU of Microsoft game, is there no justice for Playstation fans?
In all seriousness though I can understand people being unhappy or sad that game they liked was put down like that and I know that Era goes so hyperbolic about video games (myself included) but a lot of takes about Steam CCC are just embarrassing fanboy's coping nonsense.
I thought I saw the max extent of that in Insomniac's leak threads where some people were unable to handle even basic financial information (that shouldn't be secret in the first place) of how much Disney's license cost.
The CCU stuff is fascinating for Sony's next GaaS titles
If I was interested in Fairgames Dollar Sign then based on how Concord has gone I would 100% be waiting for the CCU figures before buying the game (assuming it's a paid game and not free to play) as if the game launches with a terrible CCU count then I wouldn't get it, as why buy a game that Sony will probably (based on Concord) haul out back and shoot in the head after a few weeks?
If anything, if I were Sony I would scrap the idea of releasing any paid service games for a while, especially if like with Concord and Fairgames Dollar Sign, 100% of the impressions pre launch are "this looks bad" or "who is this for"
Fairgames Dollar Sign hasn't shown gameplay yet, so maybe that game can win people over with a gameplay trailer, but if it's gameplay trailer falls flat then I'd be shitting myself if I were Sony
If I was interested in Fairgames Dollar Sign then based on how Concord has gone I would 100% be waiting for the CCU figures before buying the game (assuming it's a paid game and not free to play) as if the game launches with a terrible CCU count then I wouldn't get it, as why buy a game that Sony will probably (based on Concord) haul out back and shoot in the head after a few weeks?
If anything, if I were Sony I would scrap the idea of releasing any paid service games for a while, especially if like with Concord and Fairgames Dollar Sign, 100% of the impressions pre launch are "this looks bad" or "who is this for"
Fairgames Dollar Sign hasn't shown gameplay yet, so maybe that game can win people over with a gameplay trailer, but if it's gameplay trailer falls flat then I'd be shitting myself if I were Sony
CCU can affect narratives but Concords numbers were so low the discource didn't matter.
It was also loosing the few players it had fairly quickly.
These numbers might sustain a 1v1 niche Anime fightet. But a 5v5 shooter with those numbers is dead. Even more so withoutva server browser.