I honestly did not think there would be anything left to talk about on this topic unless I started hyper-analysing the character designs, but I find that kind of work to be hyper-reductive to the art of artistic expression unless we get very technical with what actually makes visual appealing- and that can be rather boring to discuss. Concord was just a failure of a launch and yeah- I would check the numbers no and then and wince at the ticker slowly going down from day to day- but for the love of all that is right in the world I figured it would be a few more months down the line before the news came of the shutdown. But yeah- they are shutting down the severs for Concord and taking it out of public circulation within two days time- what about the physical release? (Did this game get a physical release?) Yes it did, and yes- those copies are already going for gangbusters online. Capitalism is the death of rationality.
When I first heard the news I immediately called cap. There was no way in hell, I thought, figuring it must be a hyper critical reading of a fairly mundane maintenance period. I literally thought this was someone click baiting that Concord would be taking itself offline for a couple of hours as a way to try and say "Woah, this game just game out and they're already needing to fix things on the backend- how unprofessional!" I was ready to wipe by mind of this story. But then I read the blogpost. On Sony's official PlayStation site. The game would be swiped offline from September 6th until further notice. Current owners would be refunded. For all intents and purposes Firewatch, likely with Sony's hand on their shoulder, are trying to take back the launch they just did whilst they work on some stuff in the meanwhile. Needless to say- this kind of frazzled my brain.
Can they do that? I'm still asking that question now. And I mean... they can the game is online only so all the power lies in this hands. In fact, it is incredibly, suspiciously gracious of them to offer refunds when such was absolutely not required. (Makes me seriously wonder what the reasoning was behind that.) But should they be able to do that? Just unrelease something and say it wasn't quite ready yet- after the full global drop? This isn't just an early access or a beta period or something- the game was in people's hands. Heck, it still is! And I haven't talked about the time it's been up. The game was pronounced dead less than two weeks into release- it will be buried on the Sixth. Who does that? They didn't even give the game time to settle into it's regular player pool- although given the sort of numbers they were seeing I'm guessing that's because the pool was in danger of draining entirely...
Now it should be said that at no point has it been said that anyone is giving up on Concord- that is not what's happening here! Instead the team are pretty upfront with the plan, but they can't say it yet just in case that Sony pulls anymore- for which they would absolute get all the blame and become labelled 'hypocrites'. In the message they accepted that the game hadn't been received the way they wanted it to and want to take the time to make a few changes. Now it doesn't take a genius to look at what they've got and say- well they can't redesign this cast to be more interesting- they've already made all the cinematics. They can't rebuild the game to feel more fast and akin to all other hero shooters- those systems are done and dusted. All they can feasibly do is undue the one decision I am certain was mandated by the slobbering idiots at Sony HQ- they're going to reassess the pricing model and make it free to play. Why else offer refunds- it's the only thing that makes sense.
Of course, doing so would be frustrating too. Why? Because we all told them to do this months ago! I know there's the common perception from the games media that us masses who engage with the market are fawning troglodytes barely capable of stringing two thoughts together, but we also happen to be the people who give money to these games to begin with- when we want to be, our kind can be pretty darn knowledgeable about the market. True there are a bevy of close-minded fanboys who genuinely believe the world doesn't expand past their personal stable of preferences, but with a bit of self awareness it doesn't take much for me, who doesn't even like Competitive Shooters or Live Services, to see a game that isn't going to make it past the first hurdle. That first hurdle- all over the incumbents of the genre who have near-mastered their craft offer their games for free. So coming in hot with a premium price is about 8 years out of touch. (For a game that was in development for 8 years. How curious...)
I've seen really sad 'gotcha' articles talking about how us Gamers are critiquing the sales model of a game even when it is supposedly in line with how we say we preferred games to be. Single buy-in price with a complete game, but such reeks of the same ignorance those kinds of critiques project out into the world. Of course we'd prefer not be bled out of our money by vampire producers, but this is the reality we live in- and to reject that reality is to live in pure delusion. And pure delusion seems pretty full up with Jim Ryan and Co nowadays- don't think they can take any new members! And none of this even touches on how Playstation utterly refused to market the game... Which- I mean... what do you expect in that case? Suicide Squad Kills the Justice League was just as misguided with how it launched, but they got a much more sizable audience because they actually advertised! (Funny how Sony forgot about that, huh.)
Still, we really are looking at best case scenarios here- with the free-to-play rerelease: which I'm sure Sony hopes gives this game the fighting chance they themselves deprived it of. But let me take a guess how that is going to go. Disaster tourism alone with lure in the curious to check the thing out, leading to a spike in players far above their current pitiful total concurrent players. Then people get their hands on the general blandness of how these character actually play, the uninspired and generic framework of the maps and objectives, and then the curiously veteran unfriendly approach to ranked that they posit as their only fresh idea. That audience drop it, the game falls back to unhealthy numbers (although probably a bit more healthy then they are now) and we're back on the road to an imminent: "Thank you for joining us on this adventure, we did everything we wanted to, now we're taking the game off line for good- bye" message.
All of this paints a target on the back of Jim Ryan's head as Playstation move out of an era of sheer market dominance to what appears to be a coming deluge of cannibalistic flops that threaten to tarnish the near spotless Playstation name- for which they are only saved by the fact that Xbox is somehow fumbling harder then they are- if that's even possible. Firewalk are, I imagine, sizing up an exit strategy when the downsizing starts and we are most certainly looking at the latest utterly wasted chunk of money from this market once the studio closes up shop and reopens elsewhere under a totally different name to start this cycle all over again. How delightful.
No comments:
Post a Comment