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Is Concord being sacrificed in the current culture wars?

Why did Concord fail?

  • Unappealing visual design

    Votes: 261 81.1%
  • Mediocre gameplay

    Votes: 152 47.2%
  • Oversaturated market

    Votes: 232 72.0%

  • Total voters
    322

E-Cat

Member
Mafs

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Killjoy-NL

Member
It's not, even if thats what they wanted to. Of course teams can stick toghether, but no one was doing it in the hours I played the beta, nor was it ideal.
So basically, you got your ass kicked because you, like many others at the start of the beta, didnt realize the importance of cooperative play and use that to resort to confirmation bias.

Guess we cleared that up then.
 

The Cockatrice

Gold Member
So basically, you got your ass kicked because you, like many others at the start of the beta, didnt realize the importance of cooperative play and use that to resort to confirmation bias.

Guess we cleared that up then.

Nothing you said made any sense to what I said. Glad we cleared up you're an idiot.
 

Killjoy-NL

Member
Nothing you said made any sense to what I said. Glad we cleared up you're an idiot.
It does.

Your entire argument is based on you getting your ass kicked your first few matches during the beta, because you didnt play the game cooperatively when it's clearly designed for teamplay.

And while you rage quit and come up with excuses, others put in a bit more effort and realized the importance of teamplay.
Hence why most people who did so state that the core gameplay is solid and even fun (and yes, there's still room for improvement, nobody denies that).

It's mostly everything outside of that where they really fucked up.
 

The Cockatrice

Gold Member
Your entire argument is based on you getting your ass kicked your first few matches during the beta,

I never got my ass kicked in the beta. Do you pull turds out of your mouth every time you talk or just now? Im just going to block you which I almost never do, but congrats, you're a special person.
 

Killjoy-NL

Member
I never got my ass kicked in the beta. Do you pull turds out of your mouth every time you talk or just now? Im just going to block you which I almost never do, but congrats, you're a special person.
Why do people have to announce you blocking/ignoring me?

Like it matters.
 

Lunarorbit

Gold Member
-They announced it too early and then it just looked like a generic shooter

-Character design like suicide squads ms freeze. That's fine but you're telegraphing who the game is geared towards. Again fine

-But they got condescending. This almost never works out well for sales

-Sweet baby controversy several months ago helped cement the feeling of forced cringe diversity. Diversity is great but devs nowadays are in a culture war and make over the top characters that don't represent anyone in the end

-Market is overcrowded and $40
 

Arsic

Loves his juicy stink trail scent
I think the game would’ve done fine if it was free to play to sustain itself and a small community to fund it.

The other things are fixable if they are issues. Barrier to entry is not. If they pivot to f2p now it’ll be too late.
 

GymWolf

Gold Member
The reason is probably a mix of all 3 factors plus 40 dollars price but they do not weight the same in the overall disaster:

1 bad characters, not even because they are woke, they are just dogshit in terms of design and their abilities are boring (and no ulti), and the maps have zero personality (and forgettable music)
2 decent gameplay that does not wow anyone, the game does exactly zero things that you can call great except the charas animations in the selection menu.
3 oversaturated genre, but other games do just fine so this is the weakest reason.
 

Dynasty8

Member
First Descendant and Marvel Rivals are recent titles of the same subgenre.

Marvel Rivals releases this week but has 100K Steam followers. First Descendant had a 264K CCU launch peak and after it is at a somewhat steady 50K+ CCU daily peak.

Unlike Concord, both have appealing, charismatic characters for the hero shooter audiences.

I agree with you, but The First Descendant is a VERY different game. It's a PvE loot driven only game more akin to Destiny whereas Concord is PvP exclusive similar to Overwatch. But you're right, Marvel Rivals is a good comparison and that game's CLOSED beta had 6 figure players playing.

For those who didn't play Marvel Rivals during the beta, the game is VERY fun....and I usually don't even enjoy these "hero shooters". And it's gonna be free instead of $40 like Concord. It's gonna explode in terms of popularity.
 

diffusionx

Gold Member
If you're letting your blind devotion to culture wars stop you from enjoying any game, especially one that is a fun to play as Concord, you might have a problem.
This reminds me of that old quote, "if I owe you $100 that's my problem, if I owe you $1 million, that's your problem"

It's Concord's problem now.
 
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DonF

Member
they handled EVERYTHING marketing about this game WRONG!

i've said it before. the first teaser gave me hope, then the cinematic trailer got my attention, but then the gameplay reveal...damn, what a letdown! We expect great single player experiences from sony, the setting was cool, but then its just a hero shooter, MP Only and no singleplayer whatsoever?!!? horrible. On top of that, they had the TERRIBLE idea of making a closed beta...wtf!?!?! With the numbers they had on social networks they should've used the beta as a plataform to show that the game is solid, make it an open beta.
also, the pronouns...awful idea. Im sorry, i have nothing against sexual minorities but dont give pronoun to robots and aliens...thats just dumb.
 
34hrs playtime beg to differ.

You don't think I take most comments seriously, right?
I am all for people enjoying a bad game. I put at least 60 hours into Resident Evil 6. I genuinely enjoyed it but I still have eyes and I can see how inferior it is to a lot of games.
 

Cyberpunkd

Gold Member
I've seen reviews that say the gameplay is pretty solid.
Explain to me why should people switch from much more established GAAS games that are more than solid + have years of content?
It’s “WoW killer” all over again. And as every single one of these (Wildstar anyone?) they will all fail.
 

hinch7

Member
No its what happens when you are extremely late to the party and release a $40 hero shooter in a saturated market. But not only that but overtly and unappealing, ugly knock off game inspired by existing games and franchises. One of the reasons why games like Overwatch are popular are because of the characters. This has none of that.

The DEI designs and choices just makes it even easier to take the piss out of. Game is an embarrasment and Sony and they should be ashamed to release a game like this. I think that people are speaking up more about this because companies are being too wrapped up by their inner circles including gaming 'journalists' and writers and who end up eating up their own hubris.
 

Boss Mog

Member
Seriously got absolutely nothing to do with culture war anti woke bullshit. It's just a completely unimaginative team shooter with a fee for entry in a world full of better f2p games. Sexy anime ladies who all look identical wouldn't save it.
While it's true that's its a bland and unoriginal game, wokeness played a huge part in its downfall. The open beta numbers were super low, so people didn't even want to try it out for free. That's how bad its reputation was. You think people want to play a game made by a mentally ill degenerate who demands that its co-workers call it "professor"?



Almost everybody in my circle of gamer friends was talking about how it was woke garbage long before the game came out, it was known. So you can't sit there and say wokeness had nothing to do with it like some of the games "journalists" are trying to say now. It's a big part of it.
 

AV

We ain't outta here in ten minutes, we won't need no rocket to fly through space
While it's true that's its a bland and unoriginal game, wokeness played a huge part in its downfall. The open beta numbers were super low, so people didn't even want to try it out for free. That's how bad its reputation was. You think people want to play a game made by a mentally ill degenerate who demands that its co-workers call it "professor"?

Almost everybody in my circle of gamer friends was talking about how it was woke garbage long before the game came out, it was known. So you can't sit there and say wokeness had nothing to do with it like some of the games "journalists" are trying to say now. It's a big part of it.

It just doesn't have the impact you think it does. TLOU2 sold 10m despite being the "wokest" game ever made. Spider-Man with its pride flags and BLM that got some people all riled up. Hogwarts and BG3 with the trans character options Youtubers raged about. Hell even Overwatch still does fine to this day. Mass market doesn't give a shit despite what insular circles of Gamers™ think.

It sunk because it had zero marketing and they tried to charge a full entry fee for a PVP hero shooter when you can just... go play Overwatch and get a better experience. It'll come back F2P and do "better" and people will forget all about what colour hair the developers had.
 

mdkirby

Member
My 2 cents (and essay I expect most won't read)....

Sort of....like it's imo mostly a self inflicted wound of the culture wars, vs an attack. Sure, they will have lost a lot of sales due to MAGA being primed to reflexively reject any such stuff (not a small amount of people). But this was compounded by a complete misunderstanding of the demographics for the 'type' of game they were making.

The were making a competitive, FPS, Sci-Fi, hero shooter, GAAS. A combination of genres that overwhelmingly is composed of, and garners the interest of young, white, males (who are also more likely to be MAGA vs others, so yes, a tick for the culture wars). That's literally just the demographics, feel free to look into it, the data is out there. It's a hero shooter, so those things will live or die on their hero's, and for their demographic the two critical things are 'do I want to BE them?', ie young male power fantasy fulfilment, or 'are they desirable', again horny young males who will buy anything with a hot girl in it. Overwatch, despite it's 'wokeness' understood this, and all of the characters achieve that. Firewalk are as a studio, unashamedly focussed on creating a game within one side of the culture war (and have made many statements to that effect, including telling people they don't want their custom), and that 'mission' led them to create undesirable, boring characters that nobody looked at an went 'I want to be/fuck them'.

There was a LEGO study, when they were working out how to appeal to (and why they werent) girls. They concluded the types of play between the genders were quite different. Boys wanted to BE batman etc, and go on adventures and do things batman would do. Girls wanted to make the toys more like themselves and have them do things they would do (there are always exceptions of course), ie they want to see themselves in and relate personally to the characters. Anecdotally it seems Firewalk may be overrepresented (vs similar studios) by female and left wing creatives/decision makers (western game dev is also over represented by the left), who perhaps did not understand this, given their ideological approach, built a game for the wrong demographic, ie for a demographic that DOES exist...in other genres, but one which is tiny for the genre and theming of the game they were making.

So you had the core demographic either being HARD turned off by the culture war stuff (and TOLD not to play it), or for those who are indifferent to that stuff, looking at the characters with a big 'meh', which paired with middling reviews, $40 entry fee, and better well established competitors that DO resonate with teen males, it resulted in pretty obvious consequences.
 
This game isn’t failing because it’s woke. It’s just unappealing in an overcrowded segment full of free games.
really? I watched the developer preview and was repulsed by it, like literally repulsed by everything they showed. If I could spray it with Raid, I would.
 

Boss Mog

Member
It just doesn't have the impact you think it does. TLOU2 sold 10m despite being the "wokest" game ever made. Spider-Man with its pride flags and BLM that got some people all riled up. Hogwarts and BG3 with the trans character options Youtubers raged about. Hell even Overwatch still does fine to this day. Mass market doesn't give a shit despite what insular circles of Gamers™ think.

It sunk because it had zero marketing and they tried to charge a full entry fee for a PVP hero shooter when you can just... go play Overwatch and get a better experience. It'll come back F2P and do "better" and people will forget all about what colour hair the developers had.
You can't compare it to TLOU2 because it was a sequel to a hugely popular and successful game that wasn't woke at all. Most people went in blind based off of the first game.

Also there we tons of unsold TLOU2 at stores near me while Ghost of Tsushima was sold out everywhere. I got TLOU2 for 9,99€ only a few months after it came out cause stores were trying to clear out inventory. So even though it sold 10M, many of those sales were at a discounted price. As for Spider-man, the first one wasn't woke at all, and Miles Morales only a tiny bit woke (the BLM mural and the gender/race swap of the Tinkerer) you didn't really notice it, but Spider-man 2 on the other hand was uber woke, way worse than TLOU2. I actually made the mistake of going in blind on that one. I'll never go in blind to another Insomniac game that's for sure.
 
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Nydius

Member
The more hate I see for this game, the more I think it can't possibly be that bad.

It IS that bad. It’s a purely derivative game that brings nothing new to the table. The gunplay was passable but not as good as Destiny, the game it continually got compared to. The hero kits were bland and uninspiring. No ultimate abilities meant there was never any real memorable moments where players managed to turn the tide of a loss in an adrenaline filled push. The maps are some of the most bland, soulless crap I’ve seen out of professional developers — I’d expect these kind of bland maps from novices using community map tools, like during the Unreal Tournament days. The game modes offered nothing you couldn’t get from a dozen other games.

Then add in the visually unappealing characters, the laughably horrid cosmetic unlocks, and the forced ideology and it was a recipe for a total shit sandwich.
 
The more hate I see for this game, the more I think it can't possibly be that bad.

I've seen reviews that say the gameplay is pretty solid.
Obviously, not many people have played the game anyway, so that can't be the real problem.

The main problem people seem to have is the character designs.
I'm no fashion expert, but they made me think of something like "Most bizarre outfits from Paris Fashion Week".
Definitely made by somebody who knows their stuff, but made to stand out rather than to be likable.

But what makes the designs so incredibly unlikable to a vast majority of gamers?
I honestly can't tell.

They actually remind me a lot of Mass Effect and Apex Legends, which didn't receive any backlash of this magnitude.

It seems this game isn't being judged on its merits, and rather became a target in the ongoing culture wars.
A collective message from gamers to the gaming industry.

It is the perfect sacrifice - large enough to flop, but mid enough to skip.
Just super bad luck for the developers.
Saying that this looks like Mass Effect makes me want to puke in my mouth and I'm not even a Mass Effect fan, nor have I ever played them myself.

This game is a pure piece of shit. So happy it's being snuffed out. It feels worse than Destiny's crucible, like I'm controlling a sentient brick with a gun in it's hands.
 
It IS that bad. It’s a purely derivative game that brings nothing new to the table. The gunplay was passable but not as good as Destiny, the game it continually got compared to. The hero kits were bland and uninspiring. No ultimate abilities meant there was never any real memorable moments where players managed to turn the tide of a loss in an adrenaline filled push. The maps are some of the most bland, soulless crap I’ve seen out of professional developers — I’d expect these kind of bland maps from novices using community map tools, like during the Unreal Tournament days. The game modes offered nothing you couldn’t get from a dozen other games.

Then add in the visually unappealing characters, the laughably horrid cosmetic unlocks, and the forced ideology and it was a recipe for a total shit sandwich.
For real, I've seen more in depth and inspired Far Cry 2 maps on PS3.
 
sacrifice? what? OP trying to paint Concord as a victim?

Highly saturated market in a genre that needs mass appeal in order to succeed, and what did they do? Make many terrible business decisions because they were more concerned about ideology than making successful product.

Unattractive, forgettable character designs, not just because they are pandering. Good designs can convey the role of each character by just looking at it. Proportions, props, costumes, colour palettes, and silhouettes are all key factors that help players identify each character in a fast paced game. Concord's designs don't really do that. Some share similar silhouettes. They are just mid at best.

Never attack the customers. It's hero shooter. It needs players to thrive. The game can't function without a dedicated player base. Telling people to not play your game when they are so many competitors out there is beyond stupid.

This game would bomb even if it were f2p.
 

near

Gold Member
The game lacks content. It's 2024, and you're trying to sell a PvP multiplayer game for £35, with no character progression or campaign? Like, the bad character designs are just compounded by the rest of the game itself, which is average to bad. Some of the trailers actually look decent in my opinion, and the character designs can be easily overlooked if the rest of its offerings were worth investing into.
 

Doom85

Gold Member
You can't compare it to TLOU2 because it was a sequel to a hugely popular and successful game that wasn't woke at all. Most people went in blind based off of the first game.

Also there we tons of unsold TLOU2 at stores near me while Ghost of Tsushima was sold out everywhere. I got TLOU2 for 9,99€ only a few months after it came out cause stores were trying to clear out inventory. So even though it sold 10M, many of those sales were at a discounted price. As for Spider-man, the first one wasn't woke at all, and Miles Morales only a tiny bit woke (the BLM mural and the gender/race swap of the Tinkerer) you didn't really notice it, but Spider-man 2 on the other hand was uber woke, way worse than TLOU2. I actually made the mistake of going in blind on that one. I'll never go in blind to another Insomniac game that's for sure.

Spider-man 2 had sold 5 million in the first two weeks. By April of this year, it reached 11 million sales. There was no longer any “blind buying” after the first few weeks, the small amount of people invested in this stupid “culture war” would have heard by then, yet those six million additional sales came from people who don’t care about this irrelevant stuff that nerds on forums scream about and just bought the game because they like Spider-man. Just like Hogwarts Legacy succeeding and the third Fantastic Beasts film failing had nothing to do with certain opinions JK Rowling had.

Stop thinking this “culture war” is that relevant. It really ain’t, pal, no matter what either side wants to tell themselves so they can feel special and superior to the “opposing side”.
 

Mattdaddy

Gold Member
I hate woke shit, but it can maybe be ignored if the rest of the game is strong.

I think the idiotic and extremely unappealing character designs kicked off the hate... then follow up that up with apparently the actual gameplay was nothing special... then the woke is just bonus dogpiling.

If Stellar Blade used gender pronouns I might have rolled my eyes... but I still would of played because Eve is hot as fuck and the game was fun.

These character designs were some of the absolute worst Ive ever seen. Brutally lame. I hated these characters just by looking at them. Absolutely hated them and wanted nothing to do with them straight from the jump off.
 
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Bernardougf

Member
Right now as long people dont take
Wokeness as a real problem that will make your game sell less , games will continue to flop ... this notion that the grand gaming public is just this bunch of retarded masses who mindless buys games is so outdated .....

This phenomenon its not exclusive to gaming... woke shit is getting rejected everywhere... yes people didnt car est the beginning but now its so prevalent and your face in everything that normal peolle are done with this shit.

But just keep denying.... and see continue to happen again and again.
 

Pop

Member
Can't believe 93 of you voted for oversaturated market.

Umm Marvels Rivals and Deadlock. Its not an oversaturated problem, its this game was trash.
 

wipeout364

Member
This is when I realized the OP was either gaslighting or being disingenuous just look at these the bolded lines from the OP:
The main problem people seem to have is the character designs.
I'm no fashion expert, but they made me think of something like "Most bizarre outfits from Paris Fashion Week".
Definitely made by somebody who knows their stuff, but made to stand out rather than to be likable.

But what makes the designs so incredibly unlikable to a vast majority of gamers?
I honestly can't tell.

They actually remind me a lot of Mass Effect and Apex Legends,
which didn't receive any backlash of this magnitude.

It seems this game isn't being judged on its merits, and rather became a target in the ongoing culture wars.
A collective message from gamers to the gaming industry.

It is the perfect sacrifice - large enough to flop, but mid enough to skip.
Just super bad luck for the developers.
 
Look, the game's just not great, it felt bad in the hand, weapons were weak, enemies were too spongey, the characters were some woke agenda driven player models, it's just not appealing to the CORE demographic who play games.

If you're trying to make games for a tiny but vocal corner of the market, you're going to get tiny sales figures and alienate the large majority of players.
 
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MrMephistoX

Member
The more hate I see for this game, the more I think it can't possibly be that bad.

I've seen reviews that say the gameplay is pretty solid.
Obviously, not many people have played the game anyway, so that can't be the real problem.

The main problem people seem to have is the character designs.
I'm no fashion expert, but they made me think of something like "Most bizarre outfits from Paris Fashion Week".
Definitely made by somebody who knows their stuff, but made to stand out rather than to be likable.

But what makes the designs so incredibly unlikable to a vast majority of gamers?
I honestly can't tell.

They actually remind me a lot of Mass Effect and Apex Legends, which didn't receive any backlash of this magnitude.

It seems this game isn't being judged on its merits, and rather became a target in the ongoing culture wars.
A collective message from gamers to the gaming industry.

It is the perfect sacrifice - large enough to flop, but mid enough to skip.
Just super bad luck for the developers.
I either have weird tastes in gameplay or it is actually good and in fact most professional reviewers said as such but it failed due to the character design: it grew on me but I’ll admit it’s not everyone’s cup of tea and looked a lot better in game. Full disclosure I hate Elden Ring, Fortnite and COD so my opinions are not mainstream at all.
 

SHA

Member
People love to dislike stuff as they like other stuff, unfortunately there's no middle ground to hold all the games for us, there is always place for dislikes, it's human nature.
 

diffusionx

Gold Member
Spider-man 2 had sold 5 million in the first two weeks. By April of this year, it reached 11 million sales. There was no longer any “blind buying” after the first few weeks, the small amount of people invested in this stupid “culture war” would have heard by then, yet those six million additional sales came from people who don’t care about this irrelevant stuff that nerds on forums scream about and just bought the game because they like Spider-man. Just like Hogwarts Legacy succeeding and the third Fantastic Beasts film failing had nothing to do with certain opinions JK Rowling had.

Stop thinking this “culture war” is that relevant. It really ain’t, pal, no matter what either side wants to tell themselves so they can feel special and superior to the “opposing side”.

There is one thing you are missing about Spiderman 2, that whole thing where you play as Spiderman. That counts for a lot.

And, yea, Miles Morales, well MM has been around for a long time, he had his own (well regarded) game, IOW the people behind Spiderman and Insomniac put in the work to make black guy Spiderman an alright character. They earned it. They didn't just drop wokeslop in there and call us a chud when we say no thanks.
 

XinTniX

Member
I've seen reviews that say the gameplay is pretty solid.
Obviously, not many people have played the game anyway, so that can't be the real problem.

The main problem people seem to have is the character designs.
I'm no fashion expert, but they made me think of something like "Most bizarre outfits from Paris Fashion Week".
Definitely made by somebody who knows their stuff, but made to stand out rather than to be likable.

But what makes the designs so incredibly unlikable to a vast majority of gamers?
I honestly can't tell.

They actually remind me a lot of Mass Effect and Apex Legends, which didn't receive any backlash of this magnitude.

It seems this game isn't being judged on its merits, and rather became a target in the ongoing culture wars.
A collective message from gamers to the gaming industry.

It is the perfect sacrifice - large enough to flop, but mid enough to skip.
Just super bad luck for the developers.

I have this problem with the last Ubi Soft games, such as Watch Dogs Legion, XDefiant, it feels like I'm playing with a buch of TikTokers, attention wores...
 
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Quantum253

Gold Member
It isn't.

It is.

One of the main issues.

Pretty much.
Here's the issue I see with this. It is in no means captures everything that is happening as it's a widely- based cultural issue.
I think there is such an implicit bias when games are revealed not because of the inherent internal biases (not fully at least), but from the deficiency of goodwill games and the development studios have produced.
It seems that most games, and the studio/social commentary around them, criticize, preach, and distort their messages; it's really derisive . It's unfortunate that games are in the middle of a cultural war, and when titles are introduced with these indicators, most people who don't agree with that messaging will not give an opportunity to not like it. Is Concord a good game? Maybe. It could have been more, but the messaging was more important.
This doesn't stop with Concord, however. It's going to start breaking down all over and through different studios.
 
Nah, the game is mediocre and has atrocious art design. Everything from the characters to the muddy looking environments screams mediocrity.


Yea, it's a technically competent game. Animations are fluid, gameplay is solid enough, and technically it runs well but everything beyond that is extremely mediocre and uninspiring. Some of the hate it's getting is definitely fueled by culture wars but I think a majority of the hate is due to how mediocre it looks. The game looks like something an AI came up with if you told it to randomly generate generic sci-fi characters that look like Disney rejects and then place them in a dull and boring setting. The game's art design is some of the worst I've ever seen. It's like they went out of their way to make the most annoying and ugly characters possible.

The game commits many sins from a visual standpoint and it released into an oversaturated market littered with much better and more competent games that are F2P, and Sony dared to charge $40 for it. I'm surprised Sony didn't cancel it immediately after the poor reception it got during the beta and they let it launch in such a state. It's a game made for nobody. Most of the people on Twitter that said they were enjoying it were actually just flat out lying (most of them abandoned it after the first day lol). It's not a game for Sony's hardcore audience who mostly prefer Sony's single player games, and it's definitely not something the PC community has any interest in especially with their much better options on the PC platform.


The game was doomed to fail from inception. I knew this game would be a disaster when Sony revealed it with a teaser CGI trailer that had zero character reveals or hint of gameplay. First time I can recall that Sony has done that in ages. It's like they knew themselves that the game was going to be shit.
 

ZoukGalaxy

Member
Concord is... useless and serves no purpose, this is why it failed so hard.

Hiphop Trending GIF by 4 Lil Larry


And raised devs in a excessive self confident environment gave... this abomination.
 
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