So the fall of the Concord as it was shot out of space is a well documented disaster we've all had our fill of. Some may call it morbid and destructive how giddily people latched on to the downfall, as though we are now celebrating failure more than success- but I think such a viewpoint wontly forgets what the product we're talking about represented. As a live service, that stuck of the cynicism of corporate pandering and trend chasing- the success of Concord very much was pitted to make waves across the industry. Just like how the success of Fifa introduced the medium to harmful practises, if Playstation's push for a Live Service future had it's chance to cement that would have led to wide spread stunting of the development of this art as a medium. Heck, some might argue the stunted development of this generation in particular is tacitly due to Live Service trash shackling the leaders of our Industry. Personally I think the cause is the Series S, but that's an argument for another blog.
What I want to talk about today is not so much the Concord we got, but the Concord that was dreamt about by sweating executives up in their ivory towers. What was it about this seemingly inoffensive franchise game that made everyone totally immune to the readily apparent truth that the audience this title was gearing itself towards had moved on elsewhere. Personally I think any aspirations of an Overwatch clone should have entered some serious doubt stages when the Steam launch of Overwatch 2 was met with overwhelmingly negative reception. Although I guess an optimist might see that as an opportunity to leapfrog the competition with a well placed successor. Truly there is no black and white with these sorts of projects.
Now before Sony Firewalk Studios was a Washington based asylum for refugees of Bungie and Activision that came together with an image in mind for high quality multiplayer experiences outside of the purview of the big studios. They put their talents to work on a successor game to Overwatch and nurtured that baby with an eye for cutting edge fidelity and uncompromising quality- very high bars set by industry professionals who thought they knew what they were doing. How, with that experience behind them, they ended up manging to bloat their development to 200,000 million (reportedly) is beyond me, as those are the kind of numbers that would make a big publisher blush. Outside of one incendiary and explosive new podcast mention there doesn't really seem to be any other journalist who can validate it- let alone what Playstation put in afterwards.
Because yes, Sony saw the game, what they made and decided to throw another 200 million to get it finished- which were needed because the game was not in a pretty state back then. Now should we take these highly contentious numbers as true, and I personally veer to disbelief simply for how nonsensical that even is as a proposition, then this would make Concord one of Playstation's biggest spends of all time. Not including the money to buy the studio, of course. But saying it is all true, the question would have to be asked of 'why'? Why did Sony spend some much money on this game, why did they acquire the studio and most importantly, and confusingly, why did they bitterly refuse to market the thing when it came to launch?
As the stories go, Playstation saw something in Concord that no one else in the planet could see- they saw the future. Their future. Concord was the embodiment of everything that the company was building itself towards in all of it's gangly and gaudy life service ignominy- whatsmore as a new franchise with the promise of heavily sci-fi world building- the analogy to this being a new-age Star Wars was dropped which, in a vacuum, kind of makes sense. How you could realistically compare what Concord had to offer with a pop culture phenom like Star Wars is a bit more questionable but I guess when you live and breath corporate speak overinflation is a way of life- isn't it? The point is that Concord was a bet that Playstation thought it was their duty to take- hence the heavy investment in buying up the studio and ensuring the product made it to ship.
But with that much pressure in the tank, with big boy Sony itself kneeling on your back, it can become all to easy to slip into that pattern of 'this has to come out no matter what'. With everything that was said to be riding on Concord, dissent was less seen as constructive critique and more roadblocks to the future that everyone was striving towards. The term 'Toxic positivity' has been coined for environments such as these, where cracks and issues are smoothed over and undue praise is visited where perhaps it isn't deserved allowing for missteps to be ironed into stone. As much as I consider the sourcing vague and unsubstantiated in this matter- this would go someway to explain how feedback as clear as the pathetic performance of the game's open beta sparked on alarm bells whatsoever for how the full, premium priced, product would perform.
The only question that these revelations don't answer- and in fact the one they just draw a bigger underlining mark under, is what the heck Sony were doing with their marketing! I mean sure, they funded a Concord exclusive episode in Amazon's upcoming 'Secret Level' series- but that doesn't assist the launch! Honestly if this game were at least given the typical banner ad + Advert barrage marketing push it would have at least crossed the 5000 player mark on Steam. The fact that no one knew it was coming out from outside of the circle of industry followers- and we didn't care for it- was just the perfect nail in the coffin for this game's chances. Unless Sony really believed the product was strong enough to promote grass routes marketing. It wasn't.
Before this I assumed that Concord was a relatively low stakes investment outside of those invested in the studio itself and that this game would see a quiet free-to-play rerelease in December and fade into the background with a small audience that would stick with it for a year until the plug is pulled. That was my assumption. Now I wonder if Sony even has the hubris to admit that this never had the potential that they thought it did and give it a solemn and toned-in launch. At this point it really is an insult to their bottom line not to push this game into becoming their next multimedia empire and if it can't be that- it would be better off cancelled altogether. But how does one cancel a game that was already released and then un-released? These next few months are really going to show us the face of Sony in crisis and how well they react. (Can't be worse than modern Xbox, surely?)
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