Live Services fall, long live the industry

 

Yeah I simply had to chime in to talk about my favourite story of the year once again. The answer to the question- "Why is it that video game players feel the need to opine on their entertainment?" It seems like such a loaded question to begin with, and one that I find almost grossly dismissive on the rights of a paying consumer to find their product wanting or impressive- not everyone needs to be a nuanced critic, meanwhile anyone can offer their in depth opinion on a product they brought- I have no idea why these are concepts that need to be fought for and against in some circles. But if you want the slam dunk answer as to why it isn't some great imposition on the universe to allow gamers to give their view once and a while about what they like and don't, what they're tired of and what they want more of, maybe it's because the old adage of "you think you know what you want but you don't" more often than not is a 'get out of jail free card' for people who really should know better themselves. Because literally no one wanted Concord, and now it is quite possibly- if the suspected figures behind are indeed as true as people vehemently claim- the biggest flop in entertainment history. Let that sink in.

Brought about from a bunch of industry 'exs', including some folk from the other end of the multiplayer barrel over at Bungie- Sony invested a prohibitively steep wallet in order to not only buy the project and push it over the metaphorical finish line, but also to keep the studio behind it in-house just to keep the machine running. This being just the latest in the 'Live Service push' that gripped the industry in the wake of the one that changed it all- Fortnite. One must remember the breakout success of that story from a relatively niche-studio to producer to a Rockstar level mega-developer in the space of a mere year. Fortnite really is the kind of northstar that executives go to sleep dreaming about and wake up changing underwear over. Recurrent monetisation with no tie to style or vice paid by other advertising arms in order to expand their catalogue- the lazy dream... but not everyone can substainate that.

It seems bizarre that we have to learn the lesson again and again that 'games are hard to make' but it really does seem like this industry legitimately never learns. Back when World of Warcraft was the biggest thing ands god's green earth everyone and their mother wanted to get into the subscription-model for their own competing MMO's that would sweep the market with a grand total of one single conceptual shift away from what WOW was already doing. How'd that work out for them? A plethora of studios learnt that MMOs are stupidly big, stupidly expensive productions to run and the more of them that exist the harder it is to secure a viable user base. Then we did the exact same for survival games, albeit that was mostly a war waged by indie developers and Bethesda, for some reason. Battle Royales squeak in there too as an honourable mention- largely spurred by PUBG and Fortnite until people figured it was actually the Monetisation model which was the lesson to learn from. We're edging into the 'extraction shooter' meta next.

It is apparently so very difficult to comprehend the fact that maybe there is no easy schematic to success within a creative field were ingenuity and uniqueness are championed. When you catch all those doom-and-gloomers, largely in the public coloum of the Metro, whine about how terrible the industry and how hard it must be to get feedback on your work and how everyone is literally on the verge of transferring to the much more profitable general IT industry- they largely miss the point of why anyone desires to make art in the first place- because they want to create. The reason why seasoned developers flake out of big studios is because they long to make a substantive contribution to projects which is only possible in smaller teams. Developers want to make interesting games, and players want to play interesting games- the only sore point in this relationship is the publishers and the producers that insist a level of formulaic nonsense be stuck in there for good measure.

But the good news is this- recent years have shown the industry get absolutely trounced over their live service drive attempts. Suicide Squad, untitled Last of Us game, Hyperscape (bet you forgot that one), Final Fantasy 7: The First Solider, The Culling 2, Anthem, Radical Heights, The Day Before (if we indeed categorise that as even a game), Babylon's Fall (Wow! There's a blast from the past!), Lawbreakers, Marvel's Avengers, Paragon and now Concord- the biggest flop of the lot. Of any lot. A colossal disaster-piece. And I think that bow on top was Sony making the decision not to try and pave over the wreckage with a free-to-play launch that would have inevitably drawn in a crowd of the curious and made the game seem a little better than the worst failure in entertainment history- they cancelled their plans and even dissolved the studio: Sony let this lesson lie in the history books.

And now we've just received word that Warner Bros. has seen the writing on the wall. Their recent best seller was a single player only game- the live Service push has only cost them money. There's even an unspoken surliness towards Multiversus being discussed as though the re-release isn't doing as hot as people might have expected. (Which I personally contribute to terrible marketing that failed to convey that the original release was a beta and that this is supposedly the true launch.) For once the consumer has finally won out with the shear strength of apathy. Leaving the idiots to flounder in their waste and empowered by actual developers out there releasing banger alternative purchasing options in better genres has left it's mark. 'Live Service' is now the scarlet letter.

The only hope now is that the wrong lesson isn't learn from all this- which is not helped by the doomsayers attempting to manifest gloom with their portends all over the shop. The amount of interviews I've seen from previous industry officials condemning the modern games industry as a death spiral is alarming- considering there is seldom a point in all of the games industry history that could be considered 'swimming'. The conversation about the strangling of game budgets is not a unique one, and we'd have to be certifiable idiots not to acknowledge that bigger bets into less risky releases are scoring more failures than wins- but the market appears to be teaching that lesson soundly enough- whispering doom from the rafters is only going to serve to scare off your Warner Bros. or your Disney's who see this entire venture as a side-gig to begin with.

Still, it's good to actually win one for once. At the cost of untold millions lost in waste- unfortunately the case when we're dealing with hairbrained suits so desperate not to do their jobs it's painful, but the hopeful result is that we can move towards a future with a bit more hope where further billions can be saved. Make more games for less, sanitise scope, stretch out the big blockbusters a bit more, throw away the saturated ideas. Make more games for the younger generations so that they get into this industry! Maybe this one stone rolling down the hill can pick up traction and lead to something great. That's how I'm choosing to look at all this.

The open casket autopsy of Concord

 

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?)

What has happened to our Concord?

 

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.

Yeah, Concord ain't gonna make it

 

Now I don't like to rag on a game for the sake of ragging on it- actually, I like to find a diamond in the rough if a game has something special that very few out there can see. On the flip-side I very much do like to step on the face of game that heaps in undue attention and threatens to spread it's filth if left un-disgraced- such as Assassin's Creed Valhalla- regrettably the most successful Assassin's Creed game to date. (But how many of those buyers actually finished the thing, eh?) All that being said there's something of an underdog slant to Concord that makes me wince everytime I hear a negative headline about it- because this is just a small team of developers given a shot at the big leagues and collapsing under the weight of mandates that probably didn't even come from them. 40$ entry fee in a free-to-play market? Oh, that just reeks of Sony!

That being said the studio are industry veteran refugees from across the space- which is probably what lends to the systematic robustness of what Concord offers- it is not an amateurish game by any stretch of the imagination and that is what probably gave Sony the confidence they needed to charge an arm and a leg for entry fees. It offers quite the gorgeous pastel pallet that stands out just that slightly from other space-themed games that either go full neon colours or the duller gun-metal standard. It's almost drawn from a pulp magazine out of the fifties- and if that style kept up to presentation and perhaps even to performance and narrative that alone could have been a blinding identity to build a brand upon. Modern retro space-opera; that could have really worked! But... we don't live in that world.

See whilst it works, and it looks nice- Concord just doesn't have that special something else to justify a higher barrier to entry than literally all it's over competitors on the market right now. There's very little functionally distinct about what the game offers and that which is distinct don't really feel like leaps forward but rather design choices that are proving highly contentious with genre regulars. The choice to have characters in Ranked becoming locked off after a single round won almost feels like a shot in the arm to mainers- whilst a slap in the face to competitive team builders. Also, strange point here, but isn't this a solved problem? Don't all Ranked modes in hero shooters do 'ban' phases? I don't really know what they were getting at.

People aren't really gelling with the maps either, which is a shame because I always think back to how iconic the original map rotation for Destiny was back in the day and wonder why more people don't set their shooters on alien planets. I guess the art of map design is a lot more complicated than we give it credit for given how recurring of a critique that appears to be- particularly in a game that is solely focused on being a good shooter. You'd have thought that scattered industry vets would know what to focus on but I guess not. Hell, even Overwatch got a slate of memorable locations and those were mostly just a world tour to vaguely famous locales with tech boosts here and there.

But you've got to bear in mind at all times the thing about Concord- it's at the very beginning of it's journey. Only way from here is up. And yet- in order to put yourself on the path on constant improvement you have to hit the track on your feet. Which is exactly what this game hasn't done, launching with player numbers that are poor enough to make your mother cry. I'm talking a worse peak player count than Gollum. Freakin' Gollum! Doesn't that show you the power of disaster tourism? The most players that this online-only game has ever seen at the same time is just shy of 700 players, and it's currently scrapping less than 200 which at the time of writing, is less than a week after launch.

Now concurrent players and current counts aren't everything, of course we don't know console numbers, but what we're looking at here is a game that Playstation paid over a hundred million to acquire the studio for- failing to scrape the kind of players you'd see in a half decent free-to-play title from a team of indie devs. From a failure of optics to an absolute disaster of marketing on the part of Sony- (I'm not sure how they expected people to know this game was coming- freakin' telepathy?) this big budget title with a gigantic promise of support behind it had dropped like a stone in freshwater and those who did bother show up are reporting something either not good enough to recommend or not bad enough to point and laugh at. Perfectly, depressingly, mid.

And beyond the gunplay you have the feel of the game- and I don´t need to tell you how little work is being done in that department. Not a single character in this game has the kind of staying power that Overwatch's cast has- their designs feel derivative or uninspired- like background characters from a scene in Guardians of the Galaxy. (I'm pretty sure 'Star Child' was literally a miniboss in the 'Guardians of the Galaxy' game.) People don't feel attached to this game and thus the one unique selling point of Concord- weekly cinematics to flesh out their cast, falls on entirely deaf ears because no one cares enough to listen.

All this is to say that Concord is not going to survive. It won't last that long stretch of time to build up a core audience capable of sustaining it and I suspect that the studio are probably going to have holes fired in them by Sony as they try to recoup this mess. And that is a shame. It's a shame because these are talented devs, this game is decently competent and there are dozens of other projects far more deserving of being the Internet's punching bag right now- just look at Dustborn. I wouldn't call it a 'tragedy' that Concord never found itself, it's still a reinforcement in the lamentable war to convert everything into a damned live service, but I certainly don't feel good watching it burn in that grave- for what that's worth.

The Gaurdians of the Galaxy problem

 

Now I am a fan of popular media product 'Guardians of the Galaxy', but I do have a problem with it. And that problem largely stems from how it exists as a 'popular media product'- which is to say, it's popularity and ensuing influence. You see, Guardians of the Galaxy proved to be the perfect crystallisation of the quirk dynamic team action movie which was first thought to have been nailed by Joss Whedon's retroactively largely dependent 'Avengers'. Whereas that previous film very much retains it's plaudits for successfully bringing a slew of various film characters together in one of the most cohesive crossover movies of all time- it was Gunn's Gaurdians that conjured a whole cast of characters out of nothing and made them funny, endearing and lovable within the space of a single film. And hence, made a lot of renown for himself and money for his studio.

So much money, actually. Gaurdians of the Galaxy starred actual nobodies in the grand scene of fictional character influence and it made household names out of the characters and their stars. Dave Bautisa was rocketed onto the scene by that movie, Chris Pratt was roundly ejected from the niche position of 'comedy show actor' into a generally accessible action-movie everyman and Bradley Cooper- well, he was already Bradley Cooper, he wasn't really gonna get a brand new big break playing as a CGI racoon, now was he? Same with Vin Diesel. Not so sure about Zoe. Look, the point is that Gaurdians managed to nail a very rare status in pop culture of not just generating money, but launching careers to greater heights. And with that level of success comes that dreaded phrase. 'Influence'.

The influence to cleave hearts from the chest of men, there is nothing more terrifying. You see, success will ever be the beacon in the desert that the thirsty rush through, whether it be fleeting or not. You'll get those desperate to drink from that well, those who expect their cut of it, those who flourish under it. And those who are influenced to copy it. Because after all, it worked for them. Why not for me? Isn't that just always the way? Why can't I have all that success! And to be fair- I suppose the logic is sound from a unconfident writers perspective. If these are the sorts of characters who appear to resonate with audiences then why wouldn't you try and copy that just a little bit? Don't you want to have resonate characters in your team-based property too?

The problem is that it's really hard to write an ensemble cast movie, and even harder to writer quirky and personality rich banter without it coming off as... desperate and contrived. And I think those are the two adjectives that ring most true in these sorts of movies. 'Desperate and contrived'. When you need to get the sarcastic asshole who is rude to everyone- but then because you don't really understand the archetype so you forget to add the layer of self-destructive pathetic-ness which makes such a character pitiful and not just unlikeable- well then you've just made an annoying character. But if you're so desperate for success and to be liked that you'll copy what you don't understand- then I guess that's something you're not going to recognise until it's on the screen and an uninvested party tells it to your face, huh?

The Borderlands movie was a product developed by an out-of-touch studio head shooting on behalf of an out-of-touch developer who's input was apparently so insubstantial to detail the spirit of Borderlands that the writers threw up their hands and went "screw it- let's do Guardians!" Afterall, it's Sci-fi set in space with an ensemble cast, right? What's the worst that could happen? Well they made Lilith: Gamora and Claptrap: Rocket and Tina... boring. But when all you're shooting for are effigies of more rounded and developed characters, you miss the nuance of the source material and, curiously in this case, forget how to develop characters. Apart from Lillith, I guess. She develops, albeit rough and inelegantly. (Although to be fair, that is actually depressingly accurate to the game's Lillith in trajectory.) The result- the movie has no soul.

Concord actually fairs a little better in this regard. That game more borrows the style of Guardians rather than just steals the character archetypes. They try to touch on that dynamic of the plucky underdogs capable of so much more, only if we're following the Overwatch model of storytelling I suppose they never will get on to 'something greater', because everyone will be too busy scrapping with each other. I don't think there's anything actually wrong with the characters themselves, it's more the concept that seems inauthentic, because we can plainly see how the moment of what Guardian's achieved is being aped by Concord. But if the game were to find a surprise audience and prosper, I could see something decent coming from this set-up. Afterall, the Guardians formula doesn't need to be exclusive- if some new direction can be taken with it I don't see a problem with that- wasn't that what Peacemaker did? (Ironically also a Gunn property.) Heck, the formula itself is an adaptation of your typical buddy duo set-up anyway.

The style of comedy for these sorts of properties are typically what suffers the most, as undoubtedly stories that ape Guardians will try to touch on Gunn's somewhat unique vaguely absurdist style of humour. Gunn is a very singular talent with the way he handles irony, absurdity and the childishness of the human spirit. There's a bit more going on with his work than the standard of sarcastic subversion ushered in by Whedon and his Avengers. Be that as it may pretenders approach it as though that branch of comedy is easily mimicked, even as mimicry itself beguiles the spirit of humour almost inherently in most cases. The result- such products feel tired, oversaturated and unimpressive. Concord lacks charm, Borderlands lacks wit, and the Borderlands movie lacks everything on god's green earth.

At the end of the day what makes a game or breaks it is, in my opinion, the heart beating through the product. That's what makes a scrappy indie game so very endearing and every Ubisoft game a barely memorable wisp. I don't think heart is something that can be sketched over and replicated wholesale elsewhere, but inspiration isn't itself the same sort of thing. I don't think there's anything wrong with quirky group dynamic games- I think Overwatch would have had a lot more cultural staying power if the team knew how to play into that side of it's lore, in fact. But you always know those who get it and are saying something similar versus those who don't and are simply following the trend with tracing paper and a stencil.

Concord? More like Boeing!

 Get it? Because they... mess up a lot... and are bad... Boeing? The planes? Like... like Concord...

Concord was not exactly a soaring superstar of the PlayStation conference when it was announced by Playstation as one of the unlucky survivors of their recent Live Service purge. Although, you might call it a 'lucky' survivor, given that Concord seems to be a game built from the ground-up to fit into the Live Service mould by a 'Firewalk Studios' who presented such an impressive vision of what they wanted the game to be when they showed it off to Sony that the entire studio got acquired. But when you ask what the special spark of that Quirky-character hero shooter actually was, you'll likely get blank stares from the swathes of people who simply saw Overwatch 3.0 with Guardians of the Galaxy character archetypes and simply rolled their eyes out of their skulls. But I actually think I know what they were going for.

Overwatch's biggest failure is it's wide inability to capitalise on it's lore. Rich and potent but utterly disregarded in favour of a PVP game which directly contrasts with the setting presented- Overwatch exists more fluidly in the hearts of those that play it than on the screen itself- and after the cancellation of the single player mode for Overwatch 2 gamers just seemed to reach their breaking point of waiting. If Blizzard don't care enough to see the potential of this franchise hit it's zenith, then why should they? And I suspect it was exactly this gap that Concord sought to profit from. Because what exactly does Concord do unique? What does it do differently? One thing- it promises to provide weekly cinematics expanding the lore of the world for however long it can. (I suspect it's meant to be seasonal.) And if Overwatch did something similar- well, I would have watched them all back in the day. But... it isn't 'the day' anymore, you get me?

We're no longer in that space where imagining about the potential of Live Service games elicits anything but grumbling dissatisfaction over the ongoing state of the genre-type. The 'wonder' about quirky characters and wanting to see who they are, where they go and what they become kinda died at the hands of Blizzard themselves who seems to assert that their insanely colourful cast isn't worthy of any extrapolation beyond zany phrases uttered during matches or the odd exchange back and forth at the start of some games. To this day a lot of the big lore about interpersonal character relationships are informed solely by interpretations of these tiny snippets- and you know how unhinged the Internet is! They've convinced themselves that Pharah and Mercy are in an intense BDSM relationship! You simply can't expand complex character personalities in such a limited space!

What's more, Concord really is stepping into a very dangerous ring by announcing itself not as a free-to-play title, but rather as a $40 game- a business model all but unheard of with modern competitive games that aren't Call of Duty. With games like these that need to scoop up as many players as possible, the more barriers to entry you present the harder it is to build up that audience. Overwatch pulled it off in a different age with a vastly different public sentiment, Concord really is giving itself the hard path to success aping it's progress. Although I really do think the game needs that buy in money- afterall creating high quality animations to air on the weekly isn't exactly simple 'half ass' style content. They really are stuck between that rock and that hard place.

And it would seem that all the mixed feelings around Concord are coming to fruit given the recent pre-release numbers the game has generated courtesy of two Betas. The first Beta launched to horrifically bad numbers, less than 2000 players which quickly dwindled- indicating a particularly weak number of pre-orders to get into the closed beta. And the recent open beta, for which you need absolutely nothing in order to play the game, hit just under 2400. Abominable numbers for a game like this reflective of the very real fact that no one is talking about Concord in the general gamer spaces. No one cares about this game. If people won't even show up when the game is out there for free- what do you think the numbers will look like come launch?

Those who have actually taken time to play Concord seem mixed to unsatisfied with the game. The game's basic layout both fails to inspire anyone bored with this style of game and satisfy those who are enfranchised with it. Most notably in the gameplay department seems to be the utterly hair-brained idea to make a 'character elimination' style mode for Ranked which prevents players from re-selecting any character they've won a round with- essentially forcing players to play every other character rather than the one they main during important 'Ranked' sessions. To call that misguided is one thing, I'd go so far as to label it straight oblivious.

Then there are just the general characters themselves that don't seem essentially badly designed by any stretch of the imagination but just- unoriginal. We've seen these archetypes present before and even throwing impressive visual character designs atop them does little to mask the impression that we've seen this all before and Concord has nothing new to bring to the table. Which is especially sad considering that Concord is relying on you caring about it's cast in order to be drawn in by the promise of new animatics every few weeks or so. If you don't care about the cast, what does any of that actually mean?

Concord seems to be yet another Live Service set to launch to a world that doesn't want it. And although we have aficionados of the genre-type like Warframe insisting that these kinds of games are abandoned far too soon- I think for a lot of these games you really can see the writing on the wall. Suicide Squad was dead on arrival, before arrival in fact. The public just doesn't want these kinds of games unless they strike with lightning, because the amount of investment they demand from the player, in terms of time, defies common reason. Now I really don't think Concord is overall a bad product- I just think it is perhaps landing at a terrible time for games like it- and I think it sucks how much genuinely good work is going to be lost when this game is left to shrivel and then shut off in a year or two.