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Laura Fryer: Culture Killed Concord
- Thread starter akira__
- Start date
Generic
Member
Vyse
Gold Member
Playing the long game. I get it.Ah I get ya
I guess I brushed it off with my old man way of looking at things and surface leveled it as most of those games I can see why the hooks were made and they dont really affect me personally.
As for Concord, games like that, no matter who they're for, will never take off. It doesn't matter what hooks are involved our brains are naturally wired to reject such trash
But..
Give it another twenty years, more feminising boys in schools/'social programs', indoctrination, trashing masculinity and hating our values..
This game will be fire
Unknown Soldier
Member
WB really likes these weird comic book adaptations, they also made Suicide Squad
Generic
Member
Most gamers play GaaS
nemiroff
Gold Member
I don't see any reason to avoid watching, it's a pretty good video.
[00:00:00] Introduction to Concord’s Failure
- Overview: The video begins by detailing the rapid decline of “Concord,” a game that was shut down just 12 days post-launch.
- Statistics: Despite a hefty investment exceeding $250 million, the game struggled to attract players, peaking at fewer than 1,000 concurrent users.
- Initial Expectations: Concord was anticipated to be a blockbuster, drawing heavy inspiration from the success of Overwatch. The developers had high hopes for its performance in the competitive gaming market.
[00:01:10] Market Evolution and Adaptation
- Changing Market: The gaming market underwent significant changes during the development of Concord. Trends shifted, and new competitors emerged.
- Overwatch’s Influence: Initially, Concord aimed to emulate Overwatch’s success, but failed to pivot as the market evolved.
- Adaptation: The video underscores the necessity of staying attuned to market trends and being agile enough to adapt development strategies accordingly. This includes understanding player preferences and technological advancements.
[00:02:31] Comparison with Vanguard
- Vanguard’s Failure: The video draws parallels between Concord and another failed game, Vanguard, which also suffered from an inability to adapt to market dynamics.
- Learning from Competitors: Emphasizing the importance of competitive analysis, the video suggests that developers should actively play and study rival games to glean insights and stay competitive.
- Player-Centric Development: Success hinges on developing games with a player-first approach, incorporating feedback and preferences from the gaming community throughout the development process.
[00:04:00] Impact of Broken Feedback Loop
- Internal Issues: Firewalk Studio, the team behind Concord, faced severe internal challenges, including a toxic work culture that stifled creativity and collaboration.
- Talent Drain: The toxic environment led to the departure of key talent, which further hampered the game’s development.
- Creative Dialogue: The video highlights the critical role of a healthy feedback loop and open creative dialogue within the development team. Without it, innovation and problem-solving are severely compromised.
[00:07:01] Character Design and Target Audience
- Inspirational Characters: Characters need to be more than just visually appealing; they must inspire and connect with the target audience on a deeper level.
- Audience Feedback: Gathering and integrating feedback from the target audience is crucial for refining character design and ensuring it resonates with players.
- Example: Gotham City Impostors is cited as a successful example where character design was closely aligned with audience expectations, contributing to its positive reception.
[00:08:00] Pricing Strategy and Market Reception
- Pricing Challenges: Concord faced significant hurdles with its pricing strategy, which may have contributed to its poor market reception.
- Free-to-Play vs. Paid: The video explores the advantages and disadvantages of different pricing models, such as free-to-play versus paid games. Each model has its own set of challenges and benefits.
- Gotham City Impostors: Once again, Gotham City Impostors is mentioned as an example of a game that successfully navigated its pricing strategy, balancing player expectations with revenue goals.
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HeisenbergFX4
Gold Member
Honestly I don’t need a video telling me why Concord failed
I watched the reveal and knew it was DOA
killatopak
Member
ChorizoPicozo
Member
nemiroff
Gold Member
You're posting in yet another thread literally telling you why Concord failed, ...but you draw the line at a video..?
..But I'm just fucking with you, as a fellow eccentric I get it
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Angry_Megalodon
Member
Saber
Member
Not trying to discredit yet another specialist, but I'm pretty sure the so "hated" gamers can tell themselves what they like/want and what they don't like/want.
This project was a rejection from public right from the start. You don't tell or impose what the audience wants. You make a product for them, not for you.
This project was a rejection from public right from the start. You don't tell or impose what the audience wants. You make a product for them, not for you.
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rnlval
Member
As with any consumer product, the product offered has to look pretty. This is basic business marketing 101.
ChorizoPicozo
Member
co
Concord looked pretty good. (for a coupe of dozen biologic entities)
Men_in_Boxes
Snake Oil Salesman
apocaliptic
Member
You know what is funny with the studio and Sony?
Sony is still paying them
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Dacvak
No one shall be brought before our LORD David Bowie without the true and secret knowledge of the Photoshop. For in that time, so shall He appear.
But can they see why kids love the taste of Cinnamon Toast Crunch?
Sushi_Combo
Member
This was made pretty clear during the beta period. They never came out to address the issue so it seemed like they just ignored the "noise" and continued with their heads down.
Hrk69
Member
It's n
Role model obviously
StreetsofBeige
Gold Member
Everything that go wrong did go wrong. The only thing that was actually pretty good was the mocap and the custom gamepad.
It doesnt take a genius to put together a solid business plan. Succeeding isnt easy or guaranteed but at least, but if a giant corporation can at least dot their i's and cross their t's they did a good job prepping the product for the market with a good product, marketing and price then that's really all you can ask. At least "get the on paper plan right".
Gaming is even easier because it's a digital download. You dont even have to focus much at all on manfacturing, shipping products from China going through ports, supply chain out of stock like covid or anything like that. Aside from a small batch of pressed discs here and there, the market is mostly digital. And PC/mobile are both 100% digital already.
You got a wacky floor of employees who have too much time, budget, zero marketing sense, bosses greenlighting junky products, stubborn employees who dont to listen to feedback or even solicit feedback during the 5 years of dev, and also a grassroots design team that probably has half the team being pink haired and weird to begin with, and some who enjoy doing Twitter battles with gamers.
Add it all up and you got a fucknut pile of stupidity and costs trying to sell a game to an audience they dont even think about hoping by pure luck it sells 5 or 10M copies.
Good luck with that roll of the casino dice.
At least if a game is niche or the game maker is a random nobody making indies for $5 not giving a shit because he's making a game after dinner for the love of it and not $100M of costs, you cant grill them too much because you cant expect billion dollar success from people goofing around in their spare time at low costs. But for any AAA game from any studio being as bad as Concord, you got to almost purposely screw up. It gets to a point I almost believe those conspiracy theories the employees wanted to tank the game to just move on to the next project. Like you heard about Suicide Squad where when the game was changed too much during dev, some employees sabotaged the game not giving a shit anymore.
Probably not likely. But you never know when it comes to trainwrecks this bad.
It doesnt take a genius to put together a solid business plan. Succeeding isnt easy or guaranteed but at least, but if a giant corporation can at least dot their i's and cross their t's they did a good job prepping the product for the market with a good product, marketing and price then that's really all you can ask. At least "get the on paper plan right".
Gaming is even easier because it's a digital download. You dont even have to focus much at all on manfacturing, shipping products from China going through ports, supply chain out of stock like covid or anything like that. Aside from a small batch of pressed discs here and there, the market is mostly digital. And PC/mobile are both 100% digital already.
You got a wacky floor of employees who have too much time, budget, zero marketing sense, bosses greenlighting junky products, stubborn employees who dont to listen to feedback or even solicit feedback during the 5 years of dev, and also a grassroots design team that probably has half the team being pink haired and weird to begin with, and some who enjoy doing Twitter battles with gamers.
Add it all up and you got a fucknut pile of stupidity and costs trying to sell a game to an audience they dont even think about hoping by pure luck it sells 5 or 10M copies.
Good luck with that roll of the casino dice.
At least if a game is niche or the game maker is a random nobody making indies for $5 not giving a shit because he's making a game after dinner for the love of it and not $100M of costs, you cant grill them too much because you cant expect billion dollar success from people goofing around in their spare time at low costs. But for any AAA game from any studio being as bad as Concord, you got to almost purposely screw up. It gets to a point I almost believe those conspiracy theories the employees wanted to tank the game to just move on to the next project. Like you heard about Suicide Squad where when the game was changed too much during dev, some employees sabotaged the game not giving a shit anymore.
Probably not likely. But you never know when it comes to trainwrecks this bad.
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BlackTron
Member
I don't think you should be allowed to post in this thread while ignoring the 250 Million Dollars
Ridicululzz
Member
Character designs aside - the game had a lot of things going against it. The price of entry being a huge one, and from what I've heard it seems like the gameplay loop itself was just not fun enough to keep players engaged.
blacktout
Member
Seriously. It actually popped up in my YouTube feed earlier today and I'm glad I gave it a shot, because it's far and away the most insightful and grounded take on this fiasco that I've seen.
Bojji
Member
Yep, great video.
yurinka
Member
Great video. Wise words from an experienced dev.
EverydayBeast
ChatGPT 0.1
Concord did enough
digoutyoursoul
Member
I’m watching her videos and she is excellent. She’s exactly what Xbox needs right now. Enthusiasm , objectivity and constructive thinking.
Thanks for the heads up OP, subscribed to her channel
Thanks for the heads up OP, subscribed to her channel
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Saturn Dragon
Member
It failed because it was a VERY BAD IDEA to "offer" a 40usd pay up front and 8 years too late overly woke overwatch clone...
MiguelItUp
Member
It really does.
I know a lot of people bring up the "woke" stuff, but the reality is that isn't the reason the game failed. It created talking points, sure. But if the game was REALLY good, more people most certainly would've played it, but they didn't. Because, it wasn't really good, it wasn't even good, and for a lot of reasons.
Fess
Member
I find it weird that they did an open beta, had a low player count, likely noticed that people were complaining about character designs, then just kept going and released the game with little to no changes shortly therafter.
Why even do a beta if you’re not listening to player feedback??
JerryinSoCal
Member
Remember this trailer? I remember tweeting some of the PlayStation execs not to forget that white men play their games too lol.
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Dorfdad
Gold Member
Anyone who played the game knows it wasn't bad, the problem is no one felt any connection to the characters, they somehow pushed woke agenda. Why anyone would do this when you spent 250 millions dollars on a game is beyond me. Concord will come back and it will have new skins, characters, and be FREE to play. It will never recover but I think it will become serviceable.
JerryinSoCal
Member
There are too many white knights and purple haired they/thems in positions of power in these studios.
StreetsofBeige
Gold Member
They were so confident and stubborn, they did their own thing and never bothered with the business side and feedback. Game supposed was first conceived 8 years ago in prelim planning. So at the 7 year and 9 month mark they finally showed gameplay. It was so off vs what people expected and wanted, it makes you wonder how blind the studio is.
So when shit hit the fan at the first gameplay video and cheesy character select screen with ugly graphics and pronouns and a beta shortly before release it's too late.
To delay the game and retool it would mean way more time and money.
So what they did was just say fuck it and release what they got for $40 and hope to make back as much as possible. They probably thought if they could scrape up even 500,000 copies at $40 each, that's a chunk back. Heck, even 1M copies at $40 is good coin back. They probably looked at Helldivers 2 selling 12M at $40 and thought it cant be this bad. But it was worse than anyone expected.
Then close it up as it's destined to fail, but sell some copies keeping the lights on, make some mtx and shut it down 6-12 months later like other failed games. Even games that are a complete disaster like Babylons Fall usually still last 1 year of service. Awful games with hardly any online users is actually rare to shut down under a year, and at 2 weeks in virtually unprecedented. Maybe there have been others, but likely not AAA budget games. And a refund asap to boot.
But instead they sold little, they did a 180 and canned the game, issued automated refunds and cleanses it off PS5 and PC gamer's hard drives. They want nothing to do with this game.
But fucking oddly, they still just started selling Concord hats and coffee mugs online for $30 each. So Concord lives on the PS ecom store. Similar to the game, they probably want to sell as much of this physical shit as possible before dumping it at -50% off and junking the rest.
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Knot3D
Member
Gambit2483
Member
In other words Toxic positivity. No one wants to outright say "This part about the game sucks, we need to change it" in fear of being called an "ism" or being looked at as "insensitive".
That's what happens when you have a team full of feminists who don't want to hurt each others feelings with genuine criticism. Sometimes you just have to say "No, this sucks/doesn't work/won't work. Change it". Not every idea is a good one.
That's what happens when you have a team full of feminists who don't want to hurt each others feelings with genuine criticism. Sometimes you just have to say "No, this sucks/doesn't work/won't work. Change it". Not every idea is a good one.
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StreetsofBeige
Gold Member
I've never work in gaming, but I was thinking the same thing.
Old school studios of mostly guys I'd bet any dollar they can have fun, but also act brash and criticize something sucks and guys get it.
No different than hanging with the guys. Try doing that with a floor full of women. Good luck with that unless you get lucky where 1 woman out of 10 are those cool ones who can take a joke and dish it back for laughs.
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Gambit2483
Member
Hey guys here's another good video on how Toxic Positivity is hurting the gaming industry.
Robot Carnival
Member
great video. and honestly just watch it if you had not. she didn't just said the "ugly charater design" is the only reason there. let's face it, it's just one of many reasons the game failed. as many had already pointed out, the price point is one thing. the market of the genre being saturated already is another. I think they probably looked at Helldivers 2 and think, "hey, Helldivers 2 got away with $40 price tag and sold gankbusters. I'm sure we'll be too!". but the problem here is Helldivers 2 is not a hero shooter. it's a in a very different market with very different target audenice. look into all the big hero shooters that's dominating the market right now and you'll see that none of them are running anything like Concord. almost of all them are free to play right now and all of them have very exaggerated and sharpe/bright character design. that's what the customers in that market wants. and if you want to crack into that market, you better be doing those things, be it for better or worse.
elbourreau
Member
What really bugs me in all those Giga Bombs scenario (Concord, Dustborn, etc...), is that everything listed here is just common sense if you got a 3 digit IQ and not totally brainwashed by the pink hair squad (or worse, you ARE one of those pink haired toxic retarded)....
When I followed videogames oriented management financial and marketting trainings, I been shocked to see guys and girls like : "hoooo yeah that's great, never thought of this..." and I was "Yeah that's just one of the first question we asked with my partner, it's common sense FFS."...
The guys at the tops are so dumb and / or full of substance they can't even realize that.
When I followed videogames oriented management financial and marketting trainings, I been shocked to see guys and girls like : "hoooo yeah that's great, never thought of this..." and I was "Yeah that's just one of the first question we asked with my partner, it's common sense FFS."...
The guys at the tops are so dumb and / or full of substance they can't even realize that.