The next Concord

 

Following the smash hit that was Concord- game of the decade- many are wondering what will come next in Jim Ryan's great plan to introduce Live Services' into the conversation when talking about Playstation's commitment to quality. Because yes- whenever a new one of these are announced the marketing statement makes sure to dust off that old gimmick about how these are yet more experiences that can- only be played on Playstation. (And PC, of course- because they'll never say no to a bit of extra money.) We've already seen the mandate for a dozen Live Services straight up get rejected by Naughty Dog, an internal studio big enough to get away with publicly spitting at the hand that feeds them without being ripped apart in retaliation, so we know that the right hand ain't always clapping with the left over at team Playstation- but that doesn't mean the mandate is going to stop.

Afterall we have 'Marathon' coming at some point. The franchise resurrection of an old Bungie title that is said to be the progenitor to the original Halo- a legendary studio to those who's gaming days go back to 1994. (I wonder how many such people still remain at Bungie in the current age?) I'd call that probably the most intriguing of these mandate given the pedigree of the studio involved as well as the prospect of bringing such an antiquated brand back from the dead. But in the meanwhile there are likely to be a few more... Concords to wade through. You know- riffs on other popular brands that feel like they were cobbled together less because someone on the team was struck with a great idea but rather because Sony are footing the bill and that's the kind of cheque you do not turn down. (Oh, and Concord doesn't have that excuse, by the way- they were making that game long before Sony rolled around.)

Jim Ryan doesn't strike me as the kind of executive who is lock-step with his community, but rather the kind of hardhead that has done the numbers and knows that if he sacrifices a dozen studios at a nowhere project that will sacrifice jobs and investor dollars on nowhere ventures- all he needs is one success to cover all the failures. Like a gambler he just can't help but dump quarters in the one-arm bandit because "Next pull baby, that'll be the one! The wife has left me and several different criminal organisations are waiting outside the casino haggling ownership over my various organs- but when I hit it big everything will be solved!" Yeah, how did work out for Adam Sandler in 'Uncut Gems' again? I forget...

Well wouldn't you know it we actually have the next Live Service game lined up and ready to go because it turns out that Sony were already overlapping these projects atop of each other as early as last showcase! That's right- who remembers the competitive heisting game from ex Ubisoft devs? No one because it was revealed with a bloody CGI trailer which is already questionable for a single player game but turns into straight useless for a multiplayer one! It gives us a rough approximation of the art-style and some suppositions on how the team hope the game will play with the tools they provide- I ain't engaging my faculties to analyse someone else's hope-ium!  

Fairgame$ as far as anyone can tell is a punky millennial-coded wet dream of young adults waging audacious heists on the ultra rich whilst... shooting other crews attempting the same heists? (There's a bit of cohesion problem amidst the disenfranchised, it would seem.) To this end these trendy hipster-types are adorned with lightly sci-fi colourful tech like heavy duty ziplines, purple paint loaded carpet sprays and laser refracting shield walls- admittedly decently cool looking tech- slightly hampered by nose-wrinklingly try-hard 'Anonymous'-lite imagery. Kind of like a less pathetic iteration of Watch_Dogs' Dedsec. Same wannabe style- but these guys actually walk the walk.

It's... confused from a messaging angle. Kind of lightly New Saints Row coded with a sliver of originality some might construe as hope, but I would remind them that the original CG trailer for Saints Row didn't look totally awful- we had to wait until gameplay before the real concern started to settle in. This could be a similar case. Also, I don't know what angel swooped down to prevent the script writer for the trailer from penning the dreaded cliche line of "Student Loan debts" but I fear even Metatron itself would struggle to stay their cursed hand for the entire development cycle. I can just smell the 'this is what the young people yearn for!' dripping from the deranged mouths of the scenario writers and it pains me to see these ex-Ubisoft devs carrying the 'uncool' out the door with them.

And the masses seem equally non-plussed. I actually think there's a lot less outward hostility then Concord received, largely because there's clearly a bit more of an original identity to this idea that some are interested to see play out- but I still wouldn't call the general consensus 'positive'. In fact, I'd say people might have just laid off this game because they were preparing to gorge on the carcass of poor Concord- and now that meal is done they very well might turn Fairgame$'s direction with ravenous abandon. The heavily commercial anti-corporate live service game does invite the same sort of mockery in it's conception afterall.

My prediction is that this game will do a lot better than Concord did- simply because there's more of an idea with this game- but it's still under the purview of Sony and Ryan so there's a good chance that any momentum this game might have earned will be crushed under the weight of a 40$ price tag. Unless the game is really unique- that ain't gonna cut it in the modern landscape and seeing as we have yet another giant Live Service style game brewing over the corpse of Concord- Valve's 'Deadlock' with it's 100,000 concurrent players during the unannounced playtest- the amount of room this industry still has for more competitors is squeezing ever-so tighter. I wonder if there's room anymore for anything less than exceptional?