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.