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[Joel Was Right]

No one cares about your identity here one way or another, Meus, and it doesn't factor into whether your argument is valid or not. Just present your argument.

Anyway, it's true that people will still go to a movie or buy a game if it has "woke" elements as long as the rest of the product is seen as compelling. The compelling part is key and it's not a mutually exclusive proposition. In this case, though, it's difficult to market Concord to normal people. The game has no distinguishing characteristics other than its wacky morbidly obese heroes and pronouns. And that is likely a contributing factor to why it's seeing a stronger rejection by consumers than any other major release to date.

The game could have none any of the character pronouns, or controversial elements, and still sold 700 copies. I didn't even know about them until I came across this thread, and I've been 'following' the game, even played the Beta.

I don't think the internet discourse surrounding this particular element had a measurable impact, particularly when you weigh it against the other prominent factors that relate to game releases. Of course, it may have played a factor for some gamers, but there is nothing to suggest that gaming audiences are politically to the Right to the extent that a high profile Sony title could die at launch. And that's my argument; not that some would have been put off, but rather that it cannot account for sales this low.

 

[EviLore]

The game could have none any of the character pronouns, or controversial elements, and still sold 700 copies. I didn't even know about them until I came across this thread, and I've been 'following' the game, even played the Beta.

I don't think the internet discourse surrounding this particular element had a measurable impact, particularly when you weigh it against the other prominent factors that relate to game releases. Of course, it may have played a factor for some gamers, but there is nothing to suggest that gaming audiences are politically to the Right to the extent that a high profile Sony title could die at launch. And that's my argument; not that some would have been put off, but rather that it cannot account for sales this low.

It’s not about being right-wing. Seems you’ve been brainwashed though.

 

[BennyBlanco]

Considering the alleged dev costs and the number of players currently playing, is this the biggest bomb of all time? Honest question. I don't remember seeing such an expensive game being ignored this much.

Avengers probably had a much bigger budget and more devs working on it. But that had 31k players peak ccu. Not breaking 1,000 players is unbelievably bad but Avengers was probably more money down the drain considering the IP and all that. Skull and Bones also had a huge budget and was in development forever. I didn’t even realize it had came out because nobody gave a shit.

 

[Joel Was Right]

It’s not about being right-wing. Seems you’ve been brainwashed though.

I'm happy to hear opposing points of view. Feel free to DM if you want to continue.

 

[StreetsofBeige]

Down to 407 now. Its 10 pm eastern time in USA. when midnight hits, it'll drop to 300s, maybe even 200s.

 

[Antwix]

Down to 407 now. Its 10 pm eastern time in USA. when midnight hits, it'll drop to 300s, maybe even 200s.

Shit might be down in the double digits come Monday

 

[StreetsofBeige]

 

[Schmendrick]

I can't remember to have ever seen such miniscule numbers for a major release in over 30 years of gaming.
Is this actually the biggest flop ever in that category?

 

[TheAmazingSpiderMan]

If they really wanted a GAAS shooter they had great options in Socom, Resistance and Killzone, heck even MAG, but nope…. Let’s go with this trash of a game no one wanted or asked for.

I hope someone in PS HQ takes the blame for this awful purchase of a studio/project.

 

[Stuart360]

The game could have none any of the character pronouns, or controversial elements, and still sold 700 copies. I didn't even know about them until I came across this thread, and I've been 'following' the game, even played the Beta.

I don't think the internet discourse surrounding this particular element had a measurable impact, particularly when you weigh it against the other prominent factors that relate to game releases. Of course, it may have played a factor for some gamers, but there is nothing to suggest that gaming audiences are politically to the Right to the extent that a high profile Sony title could die at launch. And that's my argument; not that some would have been put off, but rather that it cannot account for sales this low.

I have been on Steam since the start, and there have been many single dev Indie games with no budget and no marketing and have pulled in bigger numbers than Concord, literally.
There is no way an online multiplayer shooter, with a huge budget behind it, marketing behind it, and one of the most popular publishers behind it, is pulling these kind of numbers on launch day/weekend. It just doesnt happen, it really doesnt. There have been other examples of massively failed MP shooters like Battleborn, Lawkeepers or whateverit was called, etc that still have pulled in thousands of gamers, at least at launch.

So if you accept that fact, you then have to decide why its being ignored to such a dramatic effect. And since 90% of the talk surrounding this game on Steam and the web is around wokism, agenda ploitics etc, you then have to accept that its had a major effect on the performance of this game. I mean it really isnt rocket science, no matter how much the leftists want to stick their heads in the sand and pretend it is.

 

[WoJ]

Wow. This is embarrassingly bad. 8 years for this? Hopefully the lesson learned is to not spend 8 years making GAAS slop.

 

[xBlueStonex]

Redfall had 10x the number of players at its peak on Steam. That game was also free game on gamepass, which makes it even more wild.

 

[HeisenbergFX4]

I can't remember to have ever seen such miniscule numbers for a major release in over 30 years of gaming.
Is this actually the biggest flop ever in that category?

It has to be near the very top of biggest game flops ever

E.T. would have company if it was on physical disks

 

[Nydius]

Between Acolyte posts on Facebook and Concord “fans” this GIF has gotten a lot of use from me lately.

Another thought regarding the Parris tweet: I don’t subscribe to the theory that we should avoid criticism of new IP. Games is no different than any other product. Make something you hope will be compelling to an audience, do your best to convince the audience, and if it’s good enough the audience will be there. If it’s flops, try again. They’re not entitled to extra considering because it takes them years to make a product.

 

[Ozzie666]

The gaming industry and "journalists" will learn nothing and keep trying, because they will continue to blame the audience for various nartivie reasons. Making us the bad guys.
It speaks nothing to the studios skill as developers (animation is topic notch), but they lack direction or have very poor direction.

 

[StereoVsn]

Question is what does Sony learn from this.

Clearly the issue is that customers aren’t educated enough, are racists and homophobes. It’s the only explanation!

 

[StreetsofBeige]

I have been on Steam since the start, and there have been many single dev Indie games with no budget and no marketing and have pulled in bigger numbers than Concord, literally.
There is no way an online multiplayer shooter, with a huge budget behind it, marketing behind it, and one of the most popular publishers behind it, is pulling these kind of numbers on launch day/weekend. It just doesnt happen, it really doesnt. There have been other examples of massively failed MP shooters like Battleborn, Lawkeepers or whateverit was called, etc that still have pulled in thousands of gamers, at least at launch.

So if you accept that fact, you then have to decide why its being ignored to such a dramatic effect. And since 90% of the talk surrounding this game on Steam and the web is around wokism, agenda ploitics etc, you then have to accept that its had a major effect on the performance of this game. I mean it really isnt rocket science, no matter how much the leftists want to stick their heads in the sand and pretend it is.

Balatro came out of nowhere and sold 2M copies in half a year. Good game too.

It might look a game a couple dudes made it on Windows 3.1 with SVGA graphics on a shoestring budget, but who cares. A good game is a good game. Not every game has to be COD or GTA or the millionth Souls-like game.

Problem with lots of big corporations (especially gaming and tech and hollywood) is that you got to go bigger and bigger. Even if a game/movie seems destined to be a bad seller, they still plow through it to completion with big budgets because dumbing it down to single-A production values looks bad on the company and you probably got ego people at the office not wanting to go small ever again. Even though tons of other companies in other industries have divisions and brands that cater to high end, avg joe, and low end coverage, once a game company becomes big there seems to be a reluctance to go for value products. It's all about being splashy and big. You'll get the occasional pet projects like Pentiment or EA might have a mobile division making 99 cents games kind of thing, but for core games, the production value can only go up. and that brings big risk in costs and maybe folding a studio if it bombs. But doesn't matter. You got to keep going big rolling the dice like at a craps table.

 

[Makki]

The game could have none any of the character pronouns, or controversial elements, and still sold 700 copies. I didn't even know about them until I came across this thread, and I've been 'following' the game, even played the Beta.

I don't think the internet discourse surrounding this particular element had a measurable impact, particularly when you weigh it against the other prominent factors that relate to game releases. Of course, it may have played a factor for some gamers, but there is nothing to suggest that gaming audiences are politically to the Right to the extent that a high profile Sony title could die at launch. And that's my argument; not that some would have been put off, but rather that it cannot account for sales this low.

The heavy dislike of the characters is not a right leaning thought though. Beyond the pronoun nonsense that very few would likely stop considering a game over, you have to recognize that on this game genre people identify and make favorites with the cast of characters. The ones in Concord are in large objectively jarring and dislikable except by few people who feel included with them or plain just dont care about cosmetics, and as such your market shrinks to just those people. Its not a popular offer

 

[Fake]

The game is so fucking bad that Sony is putting some of their own devs to play this crap.


I never saw anything like that before.

 

[StreetsofBeige]

The heavy dislike of the characters is not a right leaning thought though. Beyond the pronoun nonsense that very few would likely stop considering a game over, you have to recognize that on this game genre people identify and make favorites with the cast of characters. The ones in Concord are in large objectively jarring and dislikable except by few people who feel included with them or plain just dont care about cosmetics, and as such your market shrinks to just those people. Its not a popular offer

Not just the characters. The game has an ugly pastel colour palette look to it which I doubt many gamers things looks good. So when you combine wacky characters with a washed out look t the maps, right away at face value without seeing 1 second of gameplay, any PR images are going to be a turn off for many.

 

[Dynasty8]

Even though many gamers may have strong political views, the medium is still largely isolated from political division. Concord failed because of it's awful, ambiguous reveal; poor reception; lukewarm character designs, and being released in a saturated market at $40, while its competitors are free. It did not fail because the characters had pronouns, or because Firewalk wanted to appeal to 'modern audiences'.

What surprised me were the extent to which some people here were so persuaded that, in fact, it failed specifically because it was 'woke'. With all due respect, that's completely delusional - you are in too deep at that point.

You can be 'anti-woke', anti DEI and still think Concord failed because of a myriad of reasons games tend to fail, particularly Sony GaaS titles. If this were a chapter discussing this game's failure, the pronoun controversy wouldn't be more than a sentence. Instead, some of you have made it to be the Title; Sub-title; Captions and even the Barcode. It is extraordinarily inflated sense that really stood out to me.

You're absolutely right, that is the MAIN reason the game failed. But we also can't ignore the simple fact that the game adding "woke" elements is also another reason. It's not doing the game any favors.

There used to be extensive market research on this kind of stuff to help cater to certain demographics and focus on your core audience. That's been heavily replaced now with this obsession about increasing ESG and Diversity scores in the name of some fake political virtue and justice that these companies pretend to care about. Let's be 100% real, the execs at these companies DO NOT CARE at all, they're pretending. It's not authentic in the least and it doesn't do these games any favors when it comes to quality.

When these lead developers start incorporating their political agendas in games instead of creating authentic content, it affects quality. It even gets worse when they start messing with existing IP's and blending their ideologies into existing beloved source material. That's when you get catastrophic failures like the newest Saints Row game or the last season of the Witcher TV series that's now been cancelled.

Going back to the topic of Concord...again, I agree with you. The genre is diluted and the $40 hurts the game significantly...but I honestly think the game would have done better had the characters within the game resonated more to the core audience. It would have more appeal.

 

[Punished Miku]

The game is so fucking bad that Sony is putting some of their own devs to play this crap.


I never saw anything like that before.

I wonder if Haven is playing it.

 

[Rawbutt Jellybean]

Guess now they need to make more GaaS games until they earn back the $100 million they lost on Concord plus whatever's needed to fund more SP games.

 

[Timberwolf25]

How many games does Mr Corporate Kiss Arse buy a year

 

[StreetsofBeige]

They couldn't break 500 on their second day, which was a Saturday for crying out loud.
The game is dead.

I'd dabble with playing COD World at War on Xbox. Even recently this year. It's a 16 year old game and no joke at all, the player count surprisingly holds at about 500 during the weekend or early evening.

 

[iorek21]

Might just be the biggest bomb in any entertainment medium ever.

 

[Bernardougf]

Re: follow-up to my previous post.

As a Black, Muslim man, it's really difficult for me to weigh into this discourse surrounding 'DEI' topics because it delves into a theme of identity politics that were a large part of my formative years. This isn't even to mention the fact it seems to be used as a dog whistle by certain corners of the poltical Right. Full disclosure; I am not unbiased when it comes to this.

Having said that, I'm not entirely ignorant of the arguments surrounding it, either. But this is not a Coor's Light moment.

Even though many gamers may have strong political views, the medium is still largely isolated from political division. Concord failed because of it's awful, ambiguous reveal; poor reception; lukewarm character designs, and being released in a saturated market at $40, while its competitors are free. It did not fail because the characters had pronouns, or because Firewalk wanted to appeal to 'modern audiences'.

What surprised me were the extent to which some people here were so persuaded that, in fact, it failed specifically because it was 'woke'. With all due respect, that's completely delusional - you are in too deep at that point.

You can be 'anti-woke', anti DEI and still think Concord failed because of a myriad of reasons games tend to fail, particularly Sony GaaS titles. If this were a chapter discussing this game's failure, the pronoun controversy wouldn't be more than a sentence. Instead, some of you have made it to be the Title; Sub-title; Captions and even the Barcode. It is extraordinarily inflated sense that really stood out to me.

If DEI and the woke elements of this game were obviously very important to the DEVs why it isnt important to the buyers ? If I make a game with one theme set in mind, that means this theme wont count when the game flops ? Thats just absurd... every woke/dei element that they chose carefully to put in their game, gamers are choosing carefully to look at this package and say NOPE... sorry dude.. you cant create something and after choose what part should be counted or ignored for its success or failure... and I can guarantee you.. if this game was a resounding success.. the DEI/woke elements would be paraded left and right as the motive this game succeeded no matter how great the game play was.

Games much like food have to be tasted to know if its good or not .. but presentation is everything... if the food looks like shit no way you will try it ... the game thanks to the woke mentality and execution looks like shit... so even if the gameplay is good.. why try it ?

 

[James Sawyer Ford]

Guess now they need to make more GaaS games until they earn back the $100 million they lost on Concord plus whatever's needed to fund more SP games.

Nah, Helldivers 2 already made multiple hundreds of millions for them already. Concord's failure doesn't mean they need to make more GaaS. It's just crossed off the list of 12.

 

[FoxMcChief]

Might just be the biggest bomb in any entertainment medium ever.

 

[StreetsofBeige]

I've never watched a twitch stream for gaming, but for sake of interest I picked the first feed in the site for Concord. Some guy named Matimo. And he keeps ragging on the game making sarcastic jokes he's liking the game, but has to play it since he said he's been sponsored to. He just joked that's he's a Top 500 Steam player and he's never did that before ever..... Oh, that's because there's only 400 people playing. lol.

He waited for minutes and couldnt get into a Rivalry match because there's not enough PC gamers playing that mode. So he quit and picked a different mode. lol

 

[Kacho]

 

[adamsapple]

Might just be the biggest bomb in any entertainment medium ever.

Looking forward to the inevitable Jason Schrier "What went wrong with Concord" article in a couple of weeks time to find out specifics on the games possible budget and future roadmaps.

 

[ChorizoPicozo]

Looking forward to the inevitable Jason Schrier "What went wrong with Concord" article in a couple of weeks time to find out specifics on the games possible budget and future roadmaps.

he is an Allie. nothing went wrong it seems.

Do we know if any creative directors left the studio before the game was released, similar to the reports about Halo Infinite?

This game seems more like the result of Sony being swayed by its GaaS initiative and inexperience in the genre, especially since Helldivers 2 was also in development for many years, and its success appeared to catch Sony by surprise.

remember that heads have roll within play station.

 

[StreetsofBeige]

Someone posted this video in one of these threads yesterday or the day before, but it's a really good video.

Even if you dont care about the game critique. Go to the 12 minute mark and he talks more about the business side of it in a holistic way. Very similar to what many of us (me included) when it comes to making games with budgets. Zero market research. Just launch stuff on a prayer and hope it sells by pure luck.

 

[Bruno_Arrais85]

I've never watched a twitch stream for gaming, but for sake of interest I picked the first feed in the site for Concord. Some guy named Matimo. And he keeps ragging on the game making sarcastic jokes he's liking the game, but has to play it since he said he's been sponsored to. He just joked that's he's a Top 500 Steam player and he's never did that before ever..... Oh, that's because there's only 400 people playing. lol.

He waited for minutes and couldnt get into a Rivalry match because there's not enough PC gamers playing that mode. So he quit and picked a different mode. lol

he is not sponsored by Concord. He explained that the Sponsor is for Amazon Gaming.

 

[Edmund]

There are so many fat ladies in the game I could smell their body odour through my screen when I played the beta.

 

[StreetsofBeige]

Past midnight eastern time USA/Canada. Below 400 now.

 

[adamsapple]

Past midnight eastern time USA/Canada. Below 400 now.

This ain't making it past September at this rate.

 

[Robb]

 

[Fess]

Isn't it interesting how game which should include everyone hardly appeal to anyone? Maybe people want play cool heroes, which has none of the problems or struggles they have in their real life... Just a thought

Yeah player stats from the beta showed that most skipped the Sweet Baby Inc LGTVBBQ+- focused characters.

The devs could’ve saved the game if them had listened to the criticism after the beta and used the data to actually improve it the way the player base requested. Isn’t that the point of a beta?

Could’ve delayed it and redesigned the characters, could’ve listened to the many Men_in_Boxes suggestions when he tried hyping it, could’ve added a single player campaign, could’ve dropped the price.

Also, different genre but was probably not the best idea to release it same week as Black Myth. Goes for Starfield and the vehicle update as well, I’ve been wanting that since launch but this week I’m playing Black Myth.

 

[hemo memo]

Past midnight eastern time USA/Canada. Below 400 now.

Sony probably gave free codes to all their studios and that’s where the majority of the 400 number.

 

[ToneyJ]

There is no way the developers actually think these characters look cool. Seems like inclusive, desexualized, diversity focus tested design that nobody objected to for fear of losing their jobs.

 

[Brigandier]

As a Black, Muslim man

 

[Danny Dudekisser]

There is no way the developers actually think these characters look cool. Seems like inclusive, desexualized, diversity focus tested design that nobody objected to for fear of losing their jobs.

That brief clip of the uzi chick with the protester haircut yelling "LETS GOOOO" literally made me cringe. I don't think they focus tested it. Unless they ignored literally all of the feedback, there is no way they got a positive indication on these design choices.

If there was, they wouldn't be sitting at 343 players on a Saturday night during launch.

 

[Fbh]

To be fair, it is impressive how this post got a reaction from literally the entire Concord playerbase

 

[Robb]

That brief clip of the uzi chick with the protester haircut yelling "LETS GOOOO" literally made me cringe. I don't think they focus tested it. Unless they ignored literally all of the feedback, there is no way they got a positive indication on these design choices.

If there was, they wouldn't be sitting at 343 players on a Saturday night during launch.

We did have this thread back in June:

“Concord team is (rumored to be) shrugging off the criticism of their characters as ‘white noise,’ and dismissing it.“

 

[ToneyJ]

That brief clip of the uzi chick with the protester haircut yelling "LETS GOOOO" literally made me cringe. I don't think they focus tested it. Unless they ignored literally all of the feedback, there is no way they got a positive indication on these design choices.

If there was, they wouldn't be sitting at 343 players on a Saturday night during launch.

You’re right. Focus testers would have said this shit sucks.

 

[PeteBull]

It isn't altogether dissimilar from Suicide Squad, but even that got a significant delay.

(and I don't for a minute believe it was for polish, it was to try and hope the time would alleviate some of the negative discourse surrounding its reveal)

These developers made a game almost nobody wanted and it's astounding they went ahead and pushed forward.


They, not to put too fine a point on it, made a game for 1% of the population and well, it looks like thats exactly what they got.

I agree, just instead of 1% of population(worldwide 8b so 1% would be 80m players ;p), its 0,00001% ;P

Thats a game made for 1% of human population (even taking into account many of those sold copies are double or even tripple dipped)

Grand Theft Auto 5 Surpasses 200 Million Units Sold - IGN

Grand Theft Auto 5, an 11-year-old game that's been released on three generations of consoles and which continues to sell roughly five million copies every three months, has at last surpassed a big milestone: over 200 million copies sold in its lifetime.

www.ign.com

 

[PeteBull]

Re: follow-up to my previous post.

As a Black, Muslim man, it's really difficult for me to weigh into this discourse surrounding 'DEI' topics because it delves into a theme of identity politics that were a large part of my formative years. This isn't even to mention the fact it seems to be used as a dog whistle by certain corners of the poltical Right. Full disclosure; I am not unbiased when it comes to this.

Having said that, I'm not entirely ignorant of the arguments surrounding it, either. But this is not a Coor's Light moment.

Even though many gamers may have strong political views, the medium is still largely isolated from political division. Concord failed because of it's awful, ambiguous reveal; poor reception; lukewarm character designs, and being released in a saturated market at $40, while its competitors are free. It did not fail because the characters had pronouns, or because Firewalk wanted to appeal to 'modern audiences'.

What surprised me were the extent to which some people here were so persuaded that, in fact, it failed specifically because it was 'woke'. With all due respect, that's completely delusional - you are in too deep at that point.

You can be 'anti-woke', anti DEI and still think Concord failed because of a myriad of reasons games tend to fail, particularly Sony GaaS titles. If this were a chapter discussing this game's failure, the pronoun controversy wouldn't be more than a sentence. Instead, some of you have made it to be the Title; Sub-title; Captions and even the Barcode. It is extraordinarily inflated sense that really stood out to me.

U say all that, bro, but put that ugly roster of heroes into any other game/genre, even most popular ones, and the game fails, mario kart 8 sold some 60m+ copies on switch, if it had characters like from concord it would bomb spectaculary with exactly same game mechanics/gameplay etc.

And about DEI and u being black muslim- answer this to urself honestly- what would be ur preference- other ppl acting towards u differently coz of ur religion/skin color or treating u like any other person and actually value u for what u do/achieve in live/ur character?

 

[Pasta la Vista]

Most people knew this game was gonna flop, but to this degree... truly impressive especially considering Sony is behind it. They have lost me for most of this gen and this is the wake up call they need to correct their course.

Just to quote myself from a thread last month:

This will be a monumental flop for Sony and I'm glad it's happening now. They will get the message and reset their focus. It's probably too late for some other games they have in the pipeline though.

Emphasis on the monumental here. No doubt this is what it has become. Not every game can succeed, but when you fail this spectacularly with the pedigree of a first party studio that was acquired for the prospect of this game being a break-out hit, well this is the kind of failure that ripples through the industry. I couldn't be happier about the failure of this game. Not only will Sony get the message, but others will too.