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Laura Fryer: Culture Killed Concord
- Thread starter akira__
- Start date
StueyDuck
Member
Decent enough video, I don't think it's dropping any bombs or saying anything that we all don't already know. However it's nice to hear someone in the industry take off the kid gloves, although my only personal take would be that it's not that players evolved since overwatch, but the crazies at the studio were developing for this so called perceived evolution of gamers "modern audiences". I don't think the original overwatch fan when it launched was a modern audience player.
And all things considered when overwatch pandered that's when most jumped ship to other games, resulting in the embarrassment that was ow2.
And all things considered when overwatch pandered that's when most jumped ship to other games, resulting in the embarrassment that was ow2.
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DragonNCM
Member
Dr.Morris79
Gold Member
They peaked too early. The world just wasn't ready for the greatness of ConcordPlaying the long game. I get it.
Next time we might get three weeks, then four, then...
Eternity! Bigger than Fortnite
RetroGamingUK
Member
Concord was a much needed sacrificial lamb.
The games industry will, if they’re not completely dumb, steer away from crap like that from now on.
The games industry will, if they’re not completely dumb, steer away from crap like that from now on.
Wildebeest
Member
If you have a lack of genuine leadership, then loudmouths and bullies are more than happy to step in and do the job.
Dr.Morris79
Gold Member
Sportbilly
Member
Did someone say Culture? Iain Banks killing video games, damn him! It was probably that “Just Read The Instructions” GCU ship, wasn’t it?
More likely Mistake Not My Current State Of Joshing Gentle Peevishness For The Awesome And Terrible Majesty Of The Towering Seas Of Ire That Are Themselves The Mere Milquetoast Shallows Fringing My Vast Oceans Of Wrath.
Again...
Killjoy-NL
Member
People really need industry vets to explain why the game failed? Lol
Mohonky
Member
I find it fascinating that such a game was released.
"Hey, people are shitting on our game reveal; should we change anything?"
"No, they're just bigots, it means nothing, our own internal team says it's awesome."
Game flops...."damn those bigots!"
Like arguing your own shit doesn't stink. Listen to the market. They told you they didn't like it and you the team still had the hubris to double down and release the same thing, and now triple down saying it's not the game but the audience.
I've been gaming since the 80s, I cannot for the life of me work out how we got to a point where developers were so deluded with themselves they'll actually argue till they're black and blue that the people playing games are the problem, not the game itself.
"Hey, people are shitting on our game reveal; should we change anything?"
"No, they're just bigots, it means nothing, our own internal team says it's awesome."
Game flops...."damn those bigots!"
Like arguing your own shit doesn't stink. Listen to the market. They told you they didn't like it and you the team still had the hubris to double down and release the same thing, and now triple down saying it's not the game but the audience.
I've been gaming since the 80s, I cannot for the life of me work out how we got to a point where developers were so deluded with themselves they'll actually argue till they're black and blue that the people playing games are the problem, not the game itself.
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DussyPestroyer
Banned
looking forward to the "high quality" men in boxes takes
PeteBull
Member
Cyberpunkd
Member
Bro, there are execs much higher in the value chain that are much worse. Unfortunately. Thousands of scientific papers have been written about escalation of commitment, sunk cost fallacy, etc.
SJRB
Gold Member
Keep in mind that they worked on this game for eight years, and got purchased by one of the biggest videogame companies in the world while doing so.
They were not only so far up in their own bubble they were literally incapable of objectively looking at their designs, they got positive reinforcement from Sony because Sony apparently too thought they struck gold with this thing.
The massive, massive backlash after the reveal should've been an all hands on deck situation for drastic course correction (especially in terms of character design), but of course they doubled down because "surely everyone opposing this is a racist bigot transphobe". Again, zero self-reflection.
Let's just hope this 200 million dollar failure is a wake up call for Sony and other publishers that the "modern audience" doesn't exist.
Cyberpunkd
Member
I would like to thank Laura for making the video 11 minutes and getting straight to the point. She will not make C-Level with that attitude, but neither will I.
Subscribed.
Subscribed.
ShadowNate
Member
It's an interesting video, and her channel has many videos already with her insights and experience from working on Xbox.
She may not have all the answers and probably some of her estimations are wrong (she flat out states at some point that she "has no idea" if "The Professor" rumored stuff are even true), but her perspective and info is still valuable and worth considering.
The culture factor can definitely weigh heavily in the creation process of a game, and if the game takes a long time to be made, while game culture (and influences) are shifting, then it has to adapt as much as it can (always considering budget, resources, deadlines of course) or risk being irrelevant when it comes out.
If the developers or the ones who lead them are hard headed and push extreme trends/politics that can be popular one minute and the next minute people are fed up by them, then it gets even worse for the game.
If Concord aimed to introduce a new trend and do something completely different that would be a whole other discussion and a very risky move. But that wasn't its goal. It wanted to be a viable competitor in a market with space for 1 or 2 "winners" and a multitude of clones and failed projects that were never fun or accessible or unique enough to make gamers want to play them and leave the "old" winners aside.
But, if you don't listen to your target audience and don't keep listening to it or miss out on the people who won't talk to you because the loud insane voices are name-calling and "cancelling", then you get concord.
She may not have all the answers and probably some of her estimations are wrong (she flat out states at some point that she "has no idea" if "The Professor" rumored stuff are even true), but her perspective and info is still valuable and worth considering.
The culture factor can definitely weigh heavily in the creation process of a game, and if the game takes a long time to be made, while game culture (and influences) are shifting, then it has to adapt as much as it can (always considering budget, resources, deadlines of course) or risk being irrelevant when it comes out.
If the developers or the ones who lead them are hard headed and push extreme trends/politics that can be popular one minute and the next minute people are fed up by them, then it gets even worse for the game.
If Concord aimed to introduce a new trend and do something completely different that would be a whole other discussion and a very risky move. But that wasn't its goal. It wanted to be a viable competitor in a market with space for 1 or 2 "winners" and a multitude of clones and failed projects that were never fun or accessible or unique enough to make gamers want to play them and leave the "old" winners aside.
But, if you don't listen to your target audience and don't keep listening to it or miss out on the people who won't talk to you because the loud insane voices are name-calling and "cancelling", then you get concord.
Bernardougf
Member
I think this is the solely most stupid and asinine thing I ever saw in this forum
... so congratulations thats some achievement
rnlval
Member
Tell that to the general market.
Wildebeest
Member
We need to find a way to return to the glory days of gaming in the xbox 360 era.
Cyberpunkd
Member
He is not totally wrong. I am watching Laura’s video right now and at the moment she mentioned how “World of Warcraft change the rules” I rolled my eyes - I started playing in June 2005 and I can tell you this was hardcore grind - quests were broken, a single quest told you to go three zones away, etc., etc. This was not by far a casual experience, just look what people were writing all the way to the launch of the WotLK - Warlocks farming souls stones for hours ; guilds farming flasks for hours before the raid. I don’t know if she wears nostalgia glasses, trying to make a point or just doesn’t remember but early WoW was as hardcore as you could get.
Watching the video further it looks unfortunately she is trying to fit anecdotal evidence (“the Professor “) into her pre-conceived idea of what happened without being there when it happened.
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Elfstar
Member
I said lame or ugly. American audiences accept some kind of ugliness if they think it makes the character cooler. Concord characters look lie special kid that wear horrible halloween costumes that they picked up from a dumpster.
Wildebeest
Member
I don't think you really understand how extreme the level grinding was in MMO before World of Warcraft. With progression that seemed unguided and unhelped by quests, with quite nasty death penalties. All when most people were on dial-up internet as well. Myself, I chose to play Guild Wars instead of WoW because it seemed to do something new.
and counting, because now Sony have to pay for 170+ workers salary......and plus severance, if they have to lay them off.
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Holammer
Member
Are you trying to paint WOW as hardcore? Did you ever play Everquest? WoW had all the scary corners filed down with no Xp/level loss on death and vastly simplified corpse runs. No trains or chain aggro.
That's what she compares with.
Bernardougf
Member
i dont think this has anything to do with "gamers dont even know why they like or dislike games" I think is a utterly stupid notion that you cant know why you like what you like and dislike what you dislike .... Im not asking anyone to agree with me ... but to me is absolutely condescending bullshit
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Cyberpunkd
Member
Fair point, WoW was my first MMO, I never played EverQuest so I cannot compare.
diffusionx
Gold Member
Think of how out a touch a "studio" has to be, to spend years and hundreds of millions of dollars working on a game that literally nobody wanted. The woman in the video discussed Vanguard Saga of Heroes, which was a big time failure, but it sold according to Wiki over 200,000 copies, almost 20 years ago. There clearly was a market for this type of MMO, it was just not big enough to sustain the game (and the game sucked, which meant that most people dropped it). Yet Concord maybe sold 1/10th of that. Nobody even wanted to give it a try.
I put studio in quotes because, obviously, as she points out, there were people in the place who knew, but they either were ignored or discouraged or understood that voicing the issue would get them in trouble. So it was a major issue. Great video.
www.ign.com
I put studio in quotes because, obviously, as she points out, there were people in the place who knew, but they either were ignored or discouraged or understood that voicing the issue would get them in trouble. So it was a major issue. Great video.
WoW did change the rules. It says more about how hardcore the old MMOs are but WoW did a lot to simplify and streamline the experience. IGN's review from 2004 goes into it some:
World of Warcraft Review - IGN
MMOs are a strange beast. They are designed to make you play as much as possible, yet addictiveness does not always equal fun. In the field of pyschology, there are several kinds of rewards systems, and the one that seems to be the most successful is the random reward introduced at a random...
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Shake Your Rump
Member
Homeboy, you aren't sure how quotation marks work. You, quite literally, just made up your own words and put quotation marks around them.
What she actually said:
"Let's take a look at one of the other problems: characters. Creating inspirational characters that people want to play. This is really critical to the game. I know, because we had this exact problem on Gotham City Imposters."
I think if we agreed to the cost of pro then we're on the same boat.
clarky
Gold Member
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digoutyoursoul
Member
I loved the 360 era, Xbox showing some potential despite RROD, some excellent new IPs, Sony getting their act together after a bad start, legendary E3s like the infamous Konami event, Nintendo waving their remotes in joy. Good times.
digoutyoursoul
Member
I would simply say to them
“Everyone has their likes and dislikes, including yourself. How do you expect to improve on anything if you simply listen to people who tell you what you want to hear . And even then, in current times in the age of shilling and grifting, how do you know what they say is sincere. You are being paid to do the job, not the consumer”
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Zacfoldor
Member
Not about the video, about those blaming gamers for concords failures:
They can blame “us” all they want, but we have no power if they make a good game. Our ridicule would ring as hollow as their ideology. To “beat” gamers, just make good games. Not your little political pet projects. Don’t try to brainwash me either. It will not work. Your work is most often way too simplistic and dumb to brainwash the dumbest people anyway. AI could do it better. Was Dustborne AI? Probably not. AI could do better.
They can blame “us” all they want, but we have no power if they make a good game. Our ridicule would ring as hollow as their ideology. To “beat” gamers, just make good games. Not your little political pet projects. Don’t try to brainwash me either. It will not work. Your work is most often way too simplistic and dumb to brainwash the dumbest people anyway. AI could do it better. Was Dustborne AI? Probably not. AI could do better.
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Men_in_Boxes
Snake Oil Salesman
Nah, I'm right to an extent. Obviously to some degree gamers can identify why they like certain games, but they're blind to subconscious biaslike everyone else.
With regards to Concord, you're getting a heavy anti Woke crowd who doesn't play 5v5 hero shooters knowing with certainty why Concord failed. What percentage of these people even played Concord?
It really is quite absurd.
Synless
Member
Why would any of that crowd want to play it? That’s the whole point of not supporting something you don’t agree with…
Men_in_Boxes
Snake Oil Salesman
Gamers: IGN only played 45 hours of the 55 hour game and they still reviewed it?! Those hacks!
Also gamers: Why would we play a game we're not interested in before judging it?! Hate hate hate hate!
Synless
Member
One is a review of a game to decide whether or not it’s worth a persons money (which, btw I couldn’t care less about if they finish it if they get the gist of the games mechanics), the other is a decision not to support a product that had ideological views they didn’t want to support.
Your telling me you can’t see the difference?
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Men_in_Boxes
Snake Oil Salesman
Oh, we can see a difference.
The person who plays a game generally has a better understanding of the game than the person who doesn't.
Synless
Member
What you’re missing is the game could have been great. However that doesn’t matter if you do not agree with the philosophical and political views built into the game. You don’t have to play to know it, they demonstrated it throughout pre launch videos, gameplay demos, and outright saying it on social media.
Your conflating two different scenarios.
TheThreadsThatBindUs
Member
If you don't understand the difference between and average gamer choosing not to waste their hard earned money on a game they have no interest in, and a professional VG reviewer whose full time job it is to review all games while also getting them for free... then I really don't know what to say to you.
Holammer
Member
Grab some chums and try some Everquest on Project 1999 servers. It's a fan run server emulator (with official permission) which only includes the first two expansions.
The MMO grandpa used to play, warts and all, but without dial-up modem internet.
Project 1999 - Classic Everquest
Project 1999 and Project 1999 Red (PvP) are Everquest Emulated Servers committed to providing the classic Everquest experience as it was beginning in 1999.
www.project1999.com
Men_in_Boxes
Snake Oil Salesman
Concords engagement metrics, over time, were abysmal. That means the small number of people who didn't care about the DEI characters and pronouns didn't enjoy the game enough to keep playing...let alone try to get their friends to play. That's not an "unappealing characters issue".
I'm comparing low information individuals with moderate information individuals. Isn't it funny how often low information individuals are often the most certain of their beliefs?
Men_in_Boxes
Snake Oil Salesman
I'm saying the person who plays a game for a length of time generally has a better understanding about the game than the person who didn't play the game.
If you don't understand that, I don't know what to say to you.
kruis
Exposing the sinister cartel of retailers who allow companies to pay for advertising space.
It's a good video, it explains how a toxic work environment where criticism is frowned upon can lead to flawed games that don't sell. So the professors in charge at Firewalk didn't see a problem with the character designs, the pronouns, the stale gameplay at the wrong price point. OK,
But how come nobody at Sony intervened? They were the ones who straight out bought Firewalk because they were so impressed with Concord. Sony provided Firewalk with the money to create all those mini CGI movies, they were the ones who paid to get Concord included in the upcoming Amazon TV series "Secret Level".
Sony management should take a good look at the people who greenlit everything related to Concord, those people are completely out of touch with what PS gamers actually want to play.
But how come nobody at Sony intervened? They were the ones who straight out bought Firewalk because they were so impressed with Concord. Sony provided Firewalk with the money to create all those mini CGI movies, they were the ones who paid to get Concord included in the upcoming Amazon TV series "Secret Level".
Sony management should take a good look at the people who greenlit everything related to Concord, those people are completely out of touch with what PS gamers actually want to play.
Synless
Member
This is critical thinking 101 and it seems to elude you. There are multiple issues with the game, however the vast majority of backlash started before the game launched due to its shit reveal with obvious left leaning political culture influence.
You’re not making any good arguments here. I didn’t say the game was good, bad, or indifferent. I am saying it had heavy negative user impressions from the offset from obvious art direction and developer comments. First impressions matter, so do subsequent ones and they doubled down so they got what they wanted.
But hey, you seem to have it figured out. You can go ahead and have the last word, I’m not trying to help you see the fallacies of your logic any further.
ChorizoPicozo
Member
they made a game without market research or focus testing?!
.... they knew exactly what they were doing...and they paid the price.