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@beastybaiter7378 I only heard about this game because they plastered it on the news section on my PS5. It looked so generic that I thought it was a joke game.
"I would be astonished if it's still around this time next year." My dawg, the news just broke: they're shutting it down on the 6th. It was hardly around for "this time next week".
To put Concords miserable 600 player count into a bit of perspective. The original Rome Total war a game released 20 years ago has 1000 people playing it right now and it has a full remaster with another 1000 players
On the character designs I think the issue is not that they are “diverse” but feel stale. Take Overwatch, Apex, or even early access Deadlock, they have similarly diverse casts, but they actually feel well designed and unique, not a bunch of everymen in sifi clothes. Hell, look at Concord’s “source material” Guardians, there is one white guy in that group, a white guy, two alien humanoids, a talking raccoon, and an Ent from LOTR. Make all the fancy motion capture movements you want, but if you don’t make the character feel special then no one will really care
Hit the nail on the head. People don't dislike these designs because they're inclusive. They dislike these designs because they're completely and utterly *sauceless*
@@TheTealHydra It's what a corporate boardroom ghoul who hasn't set foot in a supermarket since the HW Bush administration thinks inclusion looks like, yeah.
If the game was good, every single character could have been as diverse as possible without a single straight white man in sight, and people would still have played it. There's a reason why shows with diverse casts can be extremely popular. Think Arcane from League of Legends: one main character is a teenager with blue hair and has severe mental health issues, the other main character is a masculine lesbian with pink hair, and the main straight couple is an interracial couple. Arcane is extremely successful and has won multiple awards - not because it's diverse, but because it's *good.*
You can even go back as far as the first arcade blockbuster that was Street Fighter 2 which featured fighters from all around the world, black, women, fat, asian, mutant... Diversity isn't the problem, it's how well they are designed.
That announcement is why I'm here 😂 what a wild situation. Everyone refunded and they're taking down the game. I wonder who is getting fired as we speak
To be fair, I can immediately see the appeal for the former (giving your body for the Motherland in more ways than one 😉), while I have yet to see the appeal of Concord.
The worst art direction I’ve ever seen in a game. Mediocrity should be met with rejection and consequences. WuKong’s success and Concord’s downfall aren’t correlated. That section of your video makes no sense. WuKong has been hyped for years, barely anyone knows about Concord? People didn’t buy WuKong to combat Concord? Shocking take. Delighted personally.
@@Scoring57 tells us ur a not-C, without telling us ur a not-C. The other 98% of humans are tired of this bougie crap elitist privileged assholes are forcing upon the rest of us. The people steering the ship don't have the consent of anyone aboard. Its time to return to democracy
@@TeWaikopu66kg yeah, also all other Playstation IPs were pushed together into a single episode, this is the only one that has an episode dedicated entirely to it
Revelation 3:20 Behold, I stand at the door, and knock: if any man hear my voice, and open the door, I will come in to him, and will sup with him, and he with me. HEY THERE 🤗 JESUS IS CALLING YOU TODAY. Turn away from your sins, confess, forsake them and live the victorious life. God bless. Revelation 22:12-14 And, behold, I come quickly; and my reward is with me, to give every man according as his work shall be. I am Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the end, the first and the last. Blessed are they that do his commandments, that they may have right to the tree of life, and may enter in through the gates into the city.
@@JesusPlsSaveMe You guys have had 2000 years, how are you still so bad at this? I could make up a religion tomorrow and get more converts by the end of next week than you ever will posting on here.
@@photonaut_8875 Revelation 3:20 Behold, I stand at the door, and knock: if any man hear my voice, and open the door, I will come in to him, and will sup with him, and he with me. HEY THERE 🤗 JESUS IS CALLING YOU TODAY. Turn away from your sins, confess, forsake them and live the victorious life. God bless. Revelation 22:12-14 And, behold, I come quickly; and my reward is with me, to give every man according as his work shall be. I am Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the end, the first and the last. Blessed are they that do his commandments, that they may have right to the tree of life, and may enter in through the gates into the city.
Hi. Can you use another example like funeral dirge or something that’s not specific to xtianity? You’re alientating people by normalising references to a religion not everyone shares. Thank you
The $40 price tag in a genre with mostly F2P games was a crazy choice. They're probably gonna have to make it free soon, maybe even refund all 732 people that bought the game
For 40 dollars I'd expect a full specked game with lots of content at least. Multiple modes etc. But to have 0 art direction like this right off the bat is insane. Did NOBODY playtest and point this out?
Even if it was free the genre is over saturated and it being super generic doesn't help. Not to mention Deadlock is coming out and that has some innovation to be different.
Update: they just released a statement saying the game will be taken offline on September 6th; as of this comment it has been 11 days since the game released
By sheer coincidence, on September 6th I will be taking a novel I wrote off the site it's posted on so that it can go up on Kindle, and I *suspect* that more people will notice that than will notice Concord vanishing.
I was about to comment this. At least since Hopoo still has their autonomy, maybe someday they will make something even better... One can hope at least.
@@k3v1nkuu15 The problem is not the dlc, the dlc is fine but they changed the game’s base coding in order to release the dlc on the all platforms at the same time, aaand now we have a lot of bugs because they fucked it up.
@@k3v1nkuu15 The update along with the DLC added a bunch of bugs for PC players, as they wanted to unify the code between consoles and PC. Issue being like 90% of the games player base is PC. Biggest issue noticed is not enemy spawn and aggression is tied to FPS, so if you play above 60 enemy's are much harder.
I wonder what they worked on for 8 years. The "skins" are just different color variations... They tried to sell the idea of no battle passes, but in reality they had very little content to even offer one 😂
@@mrshmuga9 Yeah was going to say this. AAA dev is around 3 years now. 8 years means it got heavily scrapped and reworked multiple times. I think PatStaresAt's theory is the best. The game was copying Overwatch, had stylized designs that made those characters look good, then some higher up made them go full motion-capture and realistic aesthetitcs and that's why the characters look like bad cosplays now.
TBF, we’ve seen examples of games that have seen considerable success even after a questionable development cycle. Come to think of it, Fortnite was in a strikingly similar situation to Concord where it was announced at the tail end of 2011, tried to cash in on game concepts that were popular at the time (the base building of Minecraft mixed with the zombie survival of Left 4 Dead), and then the release was pushed all the way until mid 2017. What saved Fortnite from being a dated game was the addition of the free Battle Royale mode which took cues from PUBG’s (ephemeral) popularity. Some games can also be saved from death by having a dedicated fanbase; for example, Pikmin 4 was allegedly “almost finished” in 2015 and was released the summer of 2023. The game went on to being the best selling Pikmin game because there’s been a consistent minimum of ~1 million fans for each new mainline entry (even for Pikmin 3 on Wii U, believe it or not!) and fans had created their own guerrilla marketing campaign for the game (they had the series’s main protagonist shaking their bottom in Times Square).
TF2 famously took 9 years to make, and Infinity Ward was cooking up ideas for COD4 since the launch of the original. Baulder's Gate 3 also took 6 years to develop. Long development times are signs of studio mismanagement, which can LEAD to bad games, but it doesn't mean that any game that took longer than X years to develop is in trouble.
Botw, totk, Metroid dread, are all clear examples otherwise. As for non Nintendo game examples, baldurs gate 3 is a recent example that comes to mind. You know, that one little game that came out of nowhere sold 10s of millions of copies, and won game of the year last year. Yeah, that one.
Not really. As everyone else is saying, it basically signalled that you couldn't completely trust the game was going to be good, not that it couldn't be good. Like, I can see a less realistic style for the characters helping to "sell the game better". Unfortunately, they went for the most bland shit imaginable. Like, I can point to Apex Legends for a realistic game that at least finds ways to make their characters interesting visually, and to Overwatch for a bunch of technically bland visual choices for their characters being saved because the style helps make their outfits or physical characteristics stand out positively. The art team somehow shot into the black hole where neither the costumes nor physical characteristics look either very interesting or decently appealing, with a style that bring what little good it has and flattens it into the ground for good measure.
Kingdom Hearts 3 had nearly that much at a 7 year long development cycle. (2012 to 2019) Say what you want about that game and it's certain story decisions, but man did that game play suprisingly well considering how long it took and how troubled development was.
Revelation 3:20 Behold, I stand at the door, and knock: if any man hear my voice, and open the door, I will come in to him, and will sup with him, and he with me. HEY THERE 🤗 JESUS IS CALLING YOU TODAY. Turn away from your sins, confess, forsake them and live the victorious life. God bless. Revelation 22:12-14 And, behold, I come quickly; and my reward is with me, to give every man according as his work shall be. I am Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the end, the first and the last. Blessed are they that do his commandments, that they may have right to the tree of life, and may enter in through the gates into the city.
Less than 700 currently on Steam. It's over. Purchasing for online after buying the game for 40 USD to be able to keep playing it on PS. The game is dead. 8 years down the drain.
@@ohno5559 Even in open beta which was completely free game only had 2500 players. still an absolute failure by any standard. Best yet, they commited themselves to making expensive weekly cutscenes nobody cares about. This game will lose them SO MUCH money it's insane.
@@dud5606 tbf that's a beta, full release would expect to do better than that even at the same price. But yeah this is a massive flop regardless. One thing I am wondering is if a significant fraction of people saw the flop coming and decided to hold off for a price drop or for the game to go free-to-play.
The designs are bad no matter what side of the "representation matters," spectrum you're on. They're what a CEO thinks of as inclusive rather than, say, what a designer comes up with with inclusivity in mind. It's just so corporate. That isn't even the biggest issue, though. The designs are just bad POINT BLANK. Ugly, lukewarm, generic. They clash, they're bulky, etc. Overwatch took a lot of inspiration from Team Fortress 2 in terms of recognizability and character silhouettes. There's a lot you can infer from a character from just looking at them or hearing them spit a few lines. With Concord, the only thing you get it... "manic pixie dream girl," or "fat and black," and it hits neither dudebro gamers or the people who WANT characters. I just don't understand how you can shill having "such variety," in your characters and yet they come out so bland. There needs to be a masterclass in how Concord fucked it up so bad.
The best thing I can say for Concord's character design is that they're at least fun to roast. Trashcan with arms and legs and germaphobe grandma at LEAST have some visual distinction, but like... the one that baffles me the most is the one that looks like a 13 year old boy's airsoft loadout.
I was waiting for TF2 to be brought up because it truly seems like the opposite of this. This game seems too realistic looking to the point where the colors all blend together and the designs come off as uncanny, but TF2 has a cartoony design and they still look identifiable. Plus TF2 when you look into it is pretty diverse, each of the characters have distinct personalities and cultural backgrounds which makes them recognizable. They also play into stereotypes but in a respectful and funny way, like the mad German scientist and suave Frenchman and so on. It feels like characters people would naturally come up with and put together to create a diverse cast, rather than what a random CEO thinks is diverse.
@@NeverwascooLThere is another "Concord", in Massachusetts that is the site of the famous 1775 Battle of Concord that was immortalized in Henry Longfellow's poem of the same name. "The Shot heard 'round the world"...
@@PunishedKrabnew Vegas is still also on sale on steam and has been ported and re-ported for newer consoles. Game companies just need to learn that people don't care for certain things in games. We play games to escape the real world drama for a reason.
@@PunishedKrabThough New Vegas is buggy without mods and was rushed a bit to meet that deadline but if a game is good no matter what, It should do well.
The character designs for Concord are every LGBTQ+ stereotype and nothing else. There is little in their designs that tell me about who they are or what their stories are other than "this was made to check diversity boxes". I love having queer representation in the games that I play, but queer representation cannot be only "look at our queer characters," I want them to be interesting characters who are also queer. It feels more like representation made by committee, not representation made by artists.
Just stop it with that queer stuff it’s annoying putting it everywhere and shove it down our throats just make a good game like jeez . Look at space marines no queer stuff or lgbt or whatever weird shit you guys make up
I think its a bit dishonest to say Wukong got a majority of it's success from media controversies. I mean, I'm sure it helped it out, but I think it has to do a lot more with how starved the gaming industry is for honest, quality, full-fledged single-player experiences like the all-too-commonly-referenced Elden Ring. Better Wukong than another AAA live-service slop fest, and it brings such a large smile to my face to see Concord absolutely f a i l.
Also 90% of its sales are from china, since it's a Chinese game. Pretty sure it just got massively popular over there and that just helped push it up in the steam store and places people look for games.
@@JayJeeJay 9 out of 10 players are chinese If you mean it "wukong got a majority of its success in the west" then yes, he gives a compelling argument for it. You may disagree but he did more than your "i think its x" so slow your horsies with alleging dishonesty I read your comment as meaning success overall, and the Chinese part gives no shit about the kerfuffle. So which reading was right?
@@thonktank1239 And even the remaining 10% still blows Concord out of the water. Certainly no smash hit, but at least a small succes for an unknown studio with zero brand recognition entering a foreign market.
Preface: I'm an illustrator with a background in animation and video games specifically. I'm also a hard leftist. I didn't know about Concord until it was out, but I could have told you those designs wouldn't fly, even without culture war baggage. It isn't because they have pronouns or something, it's because they're just bland. For most purposes, silhouette is top dog, and especially so in reflex based gaming. Are you looking at a Tracer or a Winston? It has to register in less than seconds. For all I can criticize Blizzard for- and it is a lot- their design work is usually aces. No one would call Road Hog a wake snowflake character because he's fat because he's in a game with a good design ethos. Zarya is a buff queen with a jawline that could cut glass, but I don't often people going after her very much for that. I'm sure some incel has a problem with it, but I don't see it as much as like Alloy or whatever. In a perfect world where there were no political issues, Concord's designs would still be bad. The whole things is just a perfect storm of shit going on. It was a game for no one.
You're so out of touch. People are sick of being slapped in the face constantly with the diversity nonsense. It's already infected our TV shows & movies. We play video games to escape that bs. No one wants to see a fat black non binary character in their games
You're really out of touch. media & entertainment is suffering because now the dialogue, the acting, the plot & the writing all revolve around ticking the diversity boxes.
Black Myth Wukong isn't selling well because of a 'culture war' - it's because it's a well advertised, well made character action game that people wanted to play. The polar opposite of Concord, which is what happens when you make a game for an echo chamber that barely exists. The vast majority of people don't care about the politics of gaming or the discussion around certain games. They'll just look at trailers, say 'oh that's cool' or 'oh that sucks' and buy accordingly. Concord didn't provide one single reason for anyone sane to buy it. Black Myth Wukong did in spades. That's the difference.
REAL. This is the stuff I like to hear. I really don't believe that people care about the whole culture war thing enough to heavily influence whether they want to buy the game or not. At the end of the day, people would obviously rather play a game with a serious story, good advertising, and intense gameplay than another colorful sloppy hero shooter that has no story and has some of the worst character designs in recent memory. It's not even for political reasons, they just straight up look bad!! I think blaming flops like this or successes like Black Myth: Wukong on the culture war is bad practice, and it makes it easier to look over the clear issues with AAA studios in the current day while devaluing the success of other, accomplished studios.
bang on. Concord oozes corporate generic slopfest. That crap might have worked a decade ago when it started dev, but people find it boring now. Wukong is something different, with passion put into it.
I can see how culture war stuff might get the ball rolling on people talking about one game or another and influencing their decision on whether to buy at all, but at the end of the day, if the game isn't good enough, then all the marketing in the world can't help anything. Concord, while it looks polished and the gameplay looks the same, it is very mediocre, and, as such, would not be able to compensate for bad marketing and, well, lack of anything eye-catching by the quality of the game itself. Compare that to Wukong: if the game had the same level of quality as Concord, it might have gotten a bit of a spike in interest and sales from culture war stuff and its own marketing, but would have quickly died off if the game itself wasn't interesting enough to sustain interest for its own players and have them spark the same for other potential buyers. As for whether the sales in these two games were heavily influenced directly or indirectly by culture war stuff, idk, I'd need to see the statistics and demographics, but my gut feeling and my observations say that most of the people who did buy either of the games or saw marketing for the games but choose not to buy did not know or care about niche internet stuff that was journalists and within a niche inside of twitter.
I really don't buy the culture war angle of this video. Sure it played a role, but more of a making sure the last possible few who would give it a chance did not. A game with no appeals released in a dying genre that is still thick with better options. The idea most people care to whine about pronouns and inclusion just is not feeling accurate to why everyone I know did not spare this game a second thought.
@@Unf0rget the culture war stuff was just the final nail. All of the other things you mentioned killed the game before release, the pronouns were the death knoll.
The presentations were trying to talk about Concord as if its universe was already widely beloved by a rabid fanbase, and they expected it to sell like hotcakes and keep whales spending on it in the thousands for years to come. It's so sad. They enter an already over-saturated segment of the market with absolutely nothing new or excitingly unique to offer and thought they were entitled to their share of the live service micro-transaction whales.
I feel like you missed a point Black Myth Wukong is popular because it is Chinese game. It is very popular as a celebration of chinese culture and a huge breakout PC game from China which was otherwise known more for mobile stuff. It isn't doing gangbusters in the west, just okay, but great in China.
I'm chinese indonesian, so i know about the journey to west lore, but as soon as i saw the trailer, i was captivated by the beauty of the graphic, character and the gameplay. Comparing wukong with this trash would be an insult to all chinese people in whole world
it's a Chinese game based on Chinese mythology, yes. Plus.given the fact that PRC fights its own "culture wars" with the West buying and playing Wukong was is almost considered a patriotic duty.
What is most odd for the Concord is that it's unclear how or why this game got these character designs. They aren't bad in terms of character designs for "culture war" They are just bad. They are boring. They have nothing that would depict character abilities. They have nothing to show of their personalities. Like the robot character - he looks like a Baymax crossed with a trashcan. Very unique style, definitely. A flying character that looks like a slim person with a helmet armed with rocketlauncher from Commando. Mmmm, original design! I am not a huge on the hero shooter, to be frank, I never played Overwatch myself, but I played Titanfall 2, Team Fortress 2 and Deadlock and I know that characters should be easily identifiable by their features - be they small, big, easy or hard to see - you need clear visuals and characters should look memorable and not boring. It feels like Concord character designer has no grasp on color theory - how colors should be separated and all that. I never went to art school, but I've been mixing and matching armor pieces in MMOs long enough to learn how in good design colors should be done properly and not haphazardly - best designs are ones where different colours complement one another and give a nice contrast. Hell, you look at ANY good character design and you will see that. Let's go for like 3 characters from absolutely different games: 1. Dragonslayer Ornstein from Dark Souls. You would think "Oh, this is easy, he's just gold and that's it!" but nope! His armor has lots of details, and golden metal on legs, arms and armpits is broken by brown cloth/chainmail parts and there are lots of contrasting pockets of black at the armor edges. He has red plumage on top of his helmet and his spear has almost ivory tip - all of this with mostly golden tones makes him great and not over-designed character with great detail and his slender form eludes to his speed. 2. Jesse Faden from Control - a relatively young 30-something redhead forced to become director of Federal Buerau of Control after picking up Service Weapon. You would think that her slim and not imposing look won't be memorable, but it is quite the opposite. She wears all dark colored clothes - a jacket, jeans, tank-top and boots. Everything is light to ease her movement. She's armed with a gun. She's fast but can also protect herself. Red hair well contrasts with mostly black body - it's a good, realistic character design (and she is designed to look realistic - her appearence is 100% based on her actress - Courtney Hope. But that doesn't mean she doesn't have a character design. She has and it's in her hairstyle and choice of clothes - that's so important for her as a character. 3. Kazuma Kiryu from Yakuza/Like a Dragon series. Kazuma, especially younger version of him, has striking white (or grey) suit, same colored pants and shoes, with contrasting red shirt under it. He has really neatly put back hair but also he has very complex and beautiful dragon tattoo on his back, showing his strength, his posture and his demeanor - he's intimidating for those who dare to be his enemies, but his friends know better that he is actually kind and friendly under that mencaing persona. But when needed - he will easily punch, kick or suplex whoever is trying to attack him All these three characters have way more personality and design put into them than ANY of Concord's characters. Because their designers knew that players will have to remember these people. They will have to learn to love them. Not do what Concord devs did, lol
They are the [LGBT FREAK VOMIT] we have been getting for YEARS now, wanna make money with a live service game? Make your characters attractive, and politically disconnected [Don't address their sexuality, leave it open to fans to decide] stop hiring activists, and make your employees and voice actors sign a controct preventing them from using social media
I read “all that” and genuinely loved the way you pointed out the features of the character designs that stood out. You really expressed it all so elegantly and concisely for each character-this sounds sort of odd, but with how well you articulate your point, I think you could make a great video essayist LOL
Dude, Wukong is just genuinely really fucking good, all the gameplay I've been seeing from it is INSANE, the developers poured a FUCKTON of passion into it, _there's full anime episodes at the end of every chapter_ that are ALL film festival award worthy, it is a genuine expression of human creativity, with no modern gaming revenue pipelines worked in. Meanwhile you have Concord as the utter embodiment of Triple A slop, it's a face put to a problem that everyone is aware off by now, it doesn't matter that there's no battlepass, because that fact is news to everyone who has watched this video.
Wasn't wukong made by a chinese company? That probably explains why its good. Since its the literal chinese goverment funding their own games, and the source material is badass.
@@josevictorribeirolisboa7576 that fuck you China money definitely gave them a ton of leverage in making something great. But you gotta remember, it's not like large studios don't have similar budgets to throw around for their projects, it's all about putting that cash toward developing games that are _actually good,_ hiring people who know what they're doing, etc.
@@josevictorribeirolisboa7576when a western government fund a game we got Dustborn and when a eastern government fund a game we got black myth wukong this tells the state of present western government
@@josevictorribeirolisboa7576why do ppl assume everything in China is funded or associated with the government lol. Do you have evidence that Game Science is owned by the government? Give me a break
Western audiences were interested in Wukong because it uses Chinese mythology, which hasn't really been in any major AAA game before. A lot of Western video games use Greek, Roman or Viking mythology, sometimes Ancient Egypt. Concord is competing against a bunch of other FPS hero shooters, charging money when many of its competitors are free-to-play, while bringing no new or fresh ideas. It also has a very stupid, forgettable title.
I think the culture war argument is severely overblown in this case, especially for Black Myth: Wukong. The Asian marketplace doesn't just take up "many" of the sales, it's the overwhelming majority. Concurrent players on steam for Wukong variate from as low as 200,000 to as high as 2 million day after day, always peaking in the early morning hours (in the west). Literally 90% of the playerbase is in the east. Journey to the West is kind of a classic over there, it's not some niche property. I promise you these players are not being swayed to buy the game due to western culture/identity politics of all things. The situation is just kind of sad. Gameplay wise Concord seems... fine. Its greatest sin is being derivative and bland stylistically.
it's mind blowing to me that in the 2020s after Decades of massive DragonBall fandoms in the west; there are still people that ignorant. Imagine if a LoTR game went gangbusters, and a bunch of chinese dudes on Weibo videos were saying it only sold because of 'a reverse boycott', no one cares about that franchise. That's how idiotic his statement sounds to me, and I'm a white person who lives in Australia.
The problem with Concord is it has no reason to exist and was literally made for no one. But the culture war definitely hurt it, 100% if they would have made some of the characters “hot girl” teens would have bought it. and there are definitely people not buying purely because it has political pronouns. Then it doesn’t do anything to make people want to ignore the political aspect, it has no redeeming factor… so it was 100% hoping the “modern audience” would show up. But its just every thing is wrong, like there is nothing here for anyone
@@RusticRonnie I disagree. The continued success of the Guardians franchise shows that there's definitely a market for Space Westerns, games included. If you told me we were getting a Guardians of the Galaxy-esque Hero Shooter, I'd have been down to at least check it out. We're out of the golden age of Hero Shooters though, and they've definitely reached the point of oversaturation, that's for sure. Like I said before, the game itself is fine. Reviewers have consistently said it's fun and well polished. The problems are mostly outside of gameplay. - Character designs are boring, derivative and unfocused. - Writing is flat and sanitized. - Game costs 40$ when most competitors are free to play. - Received a poor marketing campaign. - Horrific reveal cinematic which turned it into the poster child for "Shareholder Approved AAA Game". Honestly, if the robot character being listed with he/him pronouns was the deciding factor and not everything else listed, it's time to step out of 2017.
@@SBroproductions Man... This game is a hero shooter. Having the gameplay just be fine is not enough. Hero shooters effectively hinge themselves by their characters. And the characters are not interesting enough, i dare to say. Just look at Overwatch, it has representativity, yes, what else? The characters are interesting. If Overwatch characters had pronouns, some people would be bothered but likely still play the game anyway's. But it it's a game like Concord, having pronouns is like a contract with woke agenda. That inherently goes to a political side, and as such, anyone who doesn't like politicals view from the opposite side will naturally not play the game. Sorry for my scatterbrained comment, but what im saying is, Concord is not a good heroshooter, aswell as it pleases to a specific political side, so its audience is immediatly cut several times with several filters "Players, who agree with pronouns, who also play heroshooters and that DO NOT play Overwatch and that are willing to play" with the game itself being not interesting. It was obvious it was going to be a flop.
I don't think the culture war was the big killer, I think it could have been part of it, but not all of it. I think it's the fact that there's like what, 4 or 5 massively successful free to play hero shooters already out there and this is the most generic looking one on the table, while also costing money. This was literally trying to sell ice to Eskimos.
Yeah it would have been enough to disuade a few % of your target demo but not nearly enough to kill a game. Also the narrative the BM:W is successful because of the traditional games journalists' narrative is completely laughable and completely ingnores how soulslikes are the shit right now, especially after elden ring. It also completely underestimates how big of a market china is
That first descendant character design comparison actually proves a whole lot. No one wants to play as a character that looks like Pre-nerf Lizzo. Sorry wokies.
Wukong's success isn't a suprise. People have been hyped for that game for 5 plus years, it garnered an audience in all that time and most people who bought it did so because the game looked cool not because some game journos trashed it.
Not to mention its a game based on Chinese mythology, so it could cater to people who like soulsbourne, Chinese people, mythology nerds and people who grew up with journey to the west.
"Looked cool" isn't really a good excuse imo Lots of really, REALLY good-looking games immediately flop for lack of gameplay or quality. In fact, Wukong isn't polished either. It "looks good", and thankfully the gameplay is good, but the collision in a lot of parts around the map are funky and the camera work is still rather strange... Its not CP2077 or NMS levels of launch jank, but it isn't a 5-year hype beast; GoW Ragnarok is. That is to say that Black Myth Wukong has a LOT of potential. Concord never had it.
it is very clear wukong is not actually selling 10 mil for any reason other then china having 1.2b people and a vested interest in the government to get it to sell and it being supported to be sold in china on a level no game is.
You hit the nail on the head in regards to the development cycle. Concord started development at a time where its themes and ideas were both fresher, and less inflammatory. By the time it came out the ideas were stale, and the tone, insufferable. The landscape had changed and left it in the dust.
10:14 this is such an interesting comparison because as someone who doesn't really play this genre of games, Elden Ring and Wukong look like they have the exact same appeal to me. Both are ~$60 high production value third person 3D action RPG's in a fantasy setting with a grim, souls-like looking vibe. The only outward difference to me is that Wukong's fantasy setting and characters are directly based on a well known piece of mythology/classic literature, so it has an additional appeal to people familiar with the story. I'm just as impressed/shocked at Wukong selling 10 million copies as I am that Elden Ring has sold 25 million.
China is huge, censorship means a slimmer selection of games to choose from, and they love their myths and history. KnowledgeHusk is severely underestimating how many of the people playing this are in China.
@@eightcoins4401eh why cynical The main selling of Wukong in East Asia and South East Asia are not the gameplay but the story One could argue that Black Myth if not based on Wukong wouldnt not hit 10 million sales
Personally I don't think the culture war had anything to do with any of this. Concord's gameplay was not only basic, but *glacial* by hero shooter standards and even general standards. It's like they made a hero shooter with the controls of a walking sim. So yeah, bad gameplay claims another victim.
People will take absolutely any chance they can get to blame black people or gay people or women for everything bad that happens. This game sucks ass, obviously that means that somehow minorities are behind it. The alt-right Great Replacement psuedo-holocausty conspiracies about "the undesirables" being the secret force behind the decay of the World is what you're witnessing.
I disagree. Just look at those terrible gacha games that have pay2win gameplay. It still has more players than concord just because of generic anime girl
Valve's game Deadlock as you said "Isn't publicly available right now" has 128,045 players as of writing this comment and an all time peak of 171,490. The only way to play it is to get invited by a friend. A closed alpha game with invite only and placeholder assets has 2460 times the playerbase.
You are vastly underestimating how big China's gaming market is. Almost no one in China has any idea about Americans arguing about pronouns, but they want to buy the biggest game their country has ever created based on one of the four most important pieces of classical Chinese literature.
@@heliumpai7627also has a billion people and a growing middle class. The govenrment has also begun rolling back some of their policies to restrict video games
Yea these people put themselves into the games and the get mad when people don’t want to play them. No one wants to look at you in real life why would anyone want to freely associate with you in a game either
Right? People want to play as badass heroes. Look at the reception of Space Marines 2 or Helldivers 2. People want to escape from reality and go on a power trip in their video games. Not enter a quasi shortbus reality.
Why not play Concord? We have: -Your coworker who got way too into airsoft -Your annoying overweight 13 year old nephew who got way too into airsoft -"I'm glad the Green Goblin's HRT is going well!" -DALL-E trying to come up with a Disco outfit -"Who gave the trashcan a gun?" -Your HOA chairwoman aunt one week after COVID hit
IMO, Wukong doing this well is because it’s like the only game of its caliber made by a Chinese company for a Chinese audience. For some reason the chinese game industry doesnt really make single player games. The Culture War aspect did certainly help it get coverage in the west though
No it didn't. People were hyped for Wukong since the first reveal. I guarantee you the only people who knew there was any culture war bullshit associated were the terminally online basement dwellers stirring it up in the first place.
I think the culture war is far too termnially online of a take, I truely believe Concord failed purely because It had NOTHING unqiue. People joking about pronouns isn't something that sinks games. It's that Concord failed by the same rule acceptionally pure water is harder to freeze than tap water. It looked generic, played generic, had middling writing, it released into a genera that is saturated. There is nothing a fanbase can crystallize around.
I was thinking the same. Horizon as another example has been on the receiving end of the "culture war" for its design, and so was The Last of Us 2, but those games still did very well. Similarly GTA surely got boosted by its media coverage but I do not think it would have continued its immense popularity if it wasn't also regularly one of the most extensive open worlds ever made. I haven't seen anything in Concord to generate good will.
@@thelegendaryhunter0 The culture war thing? Hard disagree, the only uptick in interest in Concord came AFTER the horrible launch and anything past that is post-mortem.
@@kueller917 because horizon and last of us were established franchises. Last of us was an insane hit for sony. It could have been joel on a toilet for 5 hours straight and still would have sold millions of copies.
This game was DOA as soon as they decided to charge $40 for it. _Maybe_ if they’d cranked it out when they had the idea for it while GOTG hype was still at its peak and the market wasn’t flooded with online shooters like this, it could have charged that much and had a chance but now? Absolutely not. Not only is the brand of humour they’re trying to appeal to, nevermind the specific character archetypes, long out of fashion but the market is so overcrowded with *free to play* shooters that a game like this never had a chance. What sucks is I can see passion and interest from the devs, and I know the game could have found an audience if it was FTP, but an outrageous asking price for a very mid, not at all unique experience when Overwatch is right there? No amount of cutscenes can justify that.
TBH I don't think the money matters that much, it's even said so in the video. People have no problems paying even more than $60 for a game - IF IT'S GOOD. For me the main reason is the woke shit (yes haha very lame reason but it's true) and being so safe. People don't want safe, pussy games, they want the real deal.
@@MadafakinRio Also the first trailer really tanked any hype this game had. It already had to deal with being an overwatch clone, then the trailer forced it to be an MCU clone, in a time when the MCU is getting tired and lame.
To quote Gabe Newell, “Welcome to Team Fortress 2. After 9 years of development, we hope that it will have been worth the wait. Thanks, and have fun.” And then TF2 became one of the longest running successful multiplayer and single player game. Concord was made after 8 years. Think one more year would have saved this game?
@@sirbillius@Doodlydigital I think you are both right but team fortress 2 was just a great concept from the start that would have worked anyway because it was perfectly executed. The marketing was great with the meet the team. the characters we're cool and charming. The gameplay was tight and the art style was unique and eye catching. I think it would have worked regardless because they did everything right and my evidence is that despite all these years and the complete lack of support a crazy amount of people still play it despite the insane competition
@@sirbilliusYeah, though in retrospect it honestly didn't. It's just that at the time, people kept pushing it to be a TF2 killer, when it was never actually meant to compete with TF2.
It’s disingenuous to pin all of Concords flaws and Wukong’s success on “woke culture war”. Wukongs just a good game, and concord is just…bad, its designs and characters are bad beyond corporate representation and it feels very shallow to think a culture war is the root of the issue.
Black Wukong just looks fun and has insane graphics... 90% of gamers couldn't care less what journalists are saying... That jump you made there is far from reality
i think ur right about common folk not caring about what rich assholes in media company's are saying. But its interesting to notice they've hyped up several turds, and try to crap on some stuff people will obviously love. "Journalist" seem to be a good indicator of what not to do
@@doctordoubledakka3939 Journalism is not a job based on writing quality. Its a job based on amount of clicks you get on an article. Its why they instantly go for anything that could cause outrage. They want people to rage-read it and generate Also they have to hype up turds, they have been paid by AAA companies since inception.
Next to all the given legit reasons, I think its also just a saturated market. There are too many "big" games, you have to offer something interesting and to hype about, for gamers to stop what they are already playing.
Too many multiplayer games as well. Two console gens ago almost every game came with a multiplayer mode with online play. Most people never played them and stuck with CoD, Halo, Gears, and Battlefield. The only difference now is that a lot of games don't come with MP anymore so the devs can focus on SP and making an online only, multiplayer only live service game is a hit or miss
5:03 Important correction: Deadlock is a MOBA, not a hero shooter. It plays nothing like Overwatch and co. So, Concord isn't competing with it directly.
@@lemonsquishy197 It's not a hero shooter. The TTK is insanely high and the game is very much focused on farming, roaming, and ganking. I suppose it depends on how strictly you define "hero shooter," but anyone who likes Overwatch and dislikes Dota is going to hate Deadlock.
Deadlock is a MOBA with Shooter elements. Though a MOBA already is a 'Hero' game. Calling it a Hero Shooter is redundant, although it technically could be considered one.
I don’t even think it’s that deep , I think Black Myth Wukong is à passion project made to be played and enjoyed it’s a video game , from attention to detail to the art style and game polish, you can tell the game is worth every penny even just by the posters it self (kinda like ghost of Tsushima when it came out). On the other hand u got concord , it looks like a corporate pruduct designed to sell. With no soul. It’s bland uninspired the art style is generic the character design is generic. Nothing makes u go ohh wow. I think that’s what the games failure is. Not necessarily the “woke” culture behind it. I’m convinced we can get a woke game that’s absolutely incredible, it all depends on how the ppl making the game feel if it’s for it to be a great game or just another generic product
I think they officially ended inFAMOUS after Second Son which is a shame because the new abilities were awesome. I'm fine leaving Uncharted behind since Nathan's story is finished. Motorstorm would be awesome
Concord doing bad and BMW doing well has more to do with Concord being overpriced and looking generic and BMW having easy access to the Chinese market, than Concord having overweight POC and BMW being “the game journalists don’t want you to play.” I think most normal people don’t care that much that characters have pronouns in their bios.
mildly irritated by them, but most people would ignore it if the product was worth while. The real problem is that, that particular type of politics has always been a shield/sales tactics for garbage products, and many many people have noticed the trend. People will eat at a shady looking hole-in-the-wall restaurant, but the food has got to be good. Concord looking kinda like slop
Well journalists always has been biased against video games that if they start saying don't play a specific game it does make me wanna check out the game more, but if they start praising a game for reasons that doesn't even matter, like diversity, etc, then it automatically turns me off it. Not because I don't like diversity but because if it's all they talk about then it means the game doesn't have anything else good going for it. Things that actually matter.
@@user-yuri665 Game Journalist is a job based solely around ad revenue from clicks and sponsoring. They will run politically charged articles like DONT PLAY WUKONG BLACK MYTH because they KNOW rageclicks will bring in ad revenue. Any time they praise trivial aspects of a game its because the studio literally paid them. Not a new phenomenon either. Back in 1991 Action 52 got amazing scores in NES magazines.
I don't think the culture war element of it has nearly as much impact as you claim. The main issue in my opinion is simply that this game does not stack well to it's competitors. It being paid for is a factor but the lack of character, the lack of an interesting hook is it's main detriment
"the culture war element" is indicative of those things. Its a warning label for slop the general public has figured out. "culture war" products usually don't stack well to their competitors, lack character and an interesting hook. You have correctly identified the problems, others have found a shorthand. If it smells real bad, it usually tastes real bad. Very few were surprised about how Concord tasted, it smelled like shit
it definitely isnt the "culture war," its just hero shooter burnout and corperate greed. after all, they are selling art. when you make art, you either make it for the sake of creativity, or you make it for money - whatever you base your art on will determine the soul that you give it.
And to western playesrs its feels fresh. People maybe have heard about journey to the west or know a few snippets about it. But this game just looks badass in terms of design and gameplay. Sure most of the numbers are from China but the game just looks good and fun and really sticks out from a lot of other games.
@@Zulfrak I think the real reason concord failed is because there wasn’t so much marketing to it and it probably had a troubled production history. If it took 8 years to make and came this generic looking, it definitely had a trouble production. Sony probably had little faith in it because of that and put little effort into marketing. The only people who heard of it before it came out were the ones making fun of it. Black myth has actually been fairly well known for a few years now. I doubt some of the negative coverage form journalists played a large role in its success outside of China. This game was actually hyped since it was first announced, the trailers outside of China were getting millions of views
Okay? The numbers are still nothing to sneeze at. And it's still the number 1 selling/played across the globe because it looks fun to play, and feels like a breath of fresh air.
Imagine being Sony and bying a big, famous studio known for highly acclaimed games like Halo and Destiny with great graphics, gameplay and STORY... and forcing them to make a copy Overwatch for them. What were they thinking?
To be fair, a lot of games for a decade or so has been generic. People acting like Concord is the first. it's not. Concord is just a lot of consumers being tired of it. We all got used to slop and people acting like we haven't been eating the slop for years.
quality since covid has been in freefall. Theres a lot of games that are just barely alive because nothing in the past 5 years has been made to outcompete them, even though these games are absolute garbage compared to where they used to be. FPS pvp is the epitome of this
Honestly, this failure can Best be summend up by bad marketing. I had genuenly never Heard of this game, Never saw it on the steam front page saying "coming soon". Never Heard any reviewers talk about it. It had no news articles, none that i saw anyway. Nothing. From the little clips you show this genuenly doesnt seem that bad, but the price along whit it's new reputation as a flop, im Just not interested
marketing would have been a waste of millions of dollars, they decided to cut their loses, prolly a smart move. Its just 10lbs of slop, in a 5lb rainbow bag
China's government is also anti video games and MOST of China is full of poor people who can't afford gaming. Most of them don't live in Beijing and China's going through an economic/housing crisis right now, while the rest of the world sanctions them due to their threats to Taiwan. For this game to still sell well, despite all of that, is still a success.
@Web720 it would definitely have more players than Concord, but that's an extremely low bar. It would have nowhere near the olayer count it does now. It probably would have no more than 50,000
Remove Wukong's chinese players (NOT dissing the game, it's amazing) and you still get more than ten times Concord's peak, right now, at any point of the day
The culture war part is so incredibly off base that I have to urge you to log off Twitter for a while. It's not the real world. Concord failed because it's boring, unoriginal and unappealing, and it's all of those things because it's a corporate mandated product stuck in development hell for way too long and released into a market that moved past it years ago. Wukong is succeeding because it's a competently made, easily digestible game and it's a huge cultural event in its home country, with said country having a playerbase in the hundreds of millions. It's not rocket science, and it most certainly isn't the culture war. The fact that you have so many people in the comments telling you they had no idea about that whole thing should give you a clue. Very entertaining video as always tho. Keep up the good work.
The politics is an indictor of boring, unoriginal and unappealing. Its how soulless corporations sell their slop to idiots, and shield themselves from genuine criticism. Wukong was definitely successful because of a sizable Chinese market, but it also avoided the stink of politics.
I've learned that a good metric to measure how well a game is going to do is to look at the amount of fan-art that is created before launch and after as well. If a community is invested in a product, a lot of art will be created, if not, well you can look at Concord and see a desert of content.
Concord failed because it wasn't COOL. The one single most important factor in a video game's success is whether it's COOL or not. GTA was cool,. DOOM was cool. This one is lame. The whole woke thing is lame. It doesn't even matter whether they are right or wrong. They're simply not cool.
This video brings up an interesting point: Long development cycles leading to dated trends being rehashed. Instead of copying popular IPs, business models and politics at the time, devs should focus on making something timeless and new. If they need close to a decade to release something, any idea they started out with is going to look dated and aged like milk.
that entails taking risks though, and shareholders, execs, and ceos hate risking on new gaming thing, something nostalgic to remake or follow trends is much more palatable when greenlighting project, even when those trends will be long dead by time of release, or if not due to extreme crunch or rushing, than the natural problems those two things cause rear their ugly heads with broken and sparse game
The problem with that idea is that it's very difficult to be timeless until time has passed, and it's hard to predict. And being new and original is a very, very big risk. That kind of thing kills studios. Heck, many popular indie games are just iterations on other popular games and genres (EG Hollow Knight, Shovel Knight, Vampire Survivors, Cuphead, etc.). Ideally, a big studio would have a mix of original indie games, and then more safe, reliable games. In this case, it looks like (smaller, cheaper, more quickly-developed) Astro Bot might be more popular for Sony than Concord.
I think for the first couple of years, Rainbow 6: Siege did exactly that. The base game and first few DLCs are timeless, they aren't trendy, they don't have pop culture references, it's just counter-terrorist forces and strategy.
I think easily the worst part of the game (from a sales point) is the realistic art style of the cast. They look so oddly unappealing l when you compare it to the pixar-esque appeal of overwatch, tf2, and even fortnite.
Agreed. Though I'd focus more on their skins instead of the cast itself. Cast looks borderline ok (and like 1 or 2 are quite good), but the skins look like ass. What the fuck is that yellow jacket??!! What the fuck is that thick plate of armor? It looks like the armor from Doom, but without any added details/textures. The robot character looks like a damn barrel.
@@TheAwkwardGuy The sad part is, that yellow barrel robot stands out the most because he look so unique compared with everyone else! If they leaned into the 80's-ness of the logo and straight up use an 80's aesthetics, even if they kept the characters silhouette the same, it would have probably be more eye catching and people wouldn't dismiss it that quickly. Or give everything cel-shading and change the effects to cartoons for that 80's Saturday morning TMNT, GI Joe vibe!
It also makes it more difficult to have unique character designs, Overwatch has a hamster in a wrecking ball, and a robot centaur, Paladins has a dragon with a jetpack All of concord designs are very humanoid and boring Ironic, they couldve spent a fraction of the budget on a cartoony artstyle, wouldve given them more freedom with the designs and the designs wouldve aged better This is clearly one of those decisions taken early on that had catastrophic repercusions during development
From what I can gather the game had a more styled cell shaded look earlier in development that did the character design more of a favor. They look like comic book characters and they look best in that style
Even though most gamers don't give a crap about culture war? Not to mention even gaming outlets gave Wukong positive reviews, and that comparing it to GTA is just ungodly asinine.
Gamers dont care about the culture war, but the culture war cares about gamers. Gamers hate ugly character designs, and left doctrine/views in the culture war incentivise ugly designs. Thus, gamers are indirectly, naturally opposed to stuff that's overly culture-war left.
Many don't care, but those that do care usually aren't on the side of woke. Besides, what wokeness does to games and movies is just bad in general. You don't have to be a far right culture warrior to not want to play a game that unappealing.
I own a copy of ET for the Atari 2600 simply since it’s known as such a disaster. Looking at its plastic case I’m realizing history is repeating itself
On a correction for the secret level show, god of war isn’t getting its own dedicated episode, it’s part of the PlayStation episode with multiple IP’s of PlayStation. The only 2 PlayStation ip’s to get their own episode are concord and sifu. Idk why they choose concord out of so many of their games..
Wu-Kong did so well because of China and being a story so dear to their culture, not because of the culture war. Most steam sales are in China, not the United States or the West.
I don't think the culture war has much to do with its failure. Yeah the character designs are a bit ugly but it mostly comes down to people getting tired of hero shooters and live service games.
Honestly most people I know didn't realize the game is woke and they're the type to dislike them. They were 99% on how generic, boring, and bad the characters design is. And we mostly poke fun at corporations being out of touch.
@@vianabdullah2837 I think the woke don't realized they have more enemies than just right wing. Other political group including left wings don't like them either but tend to be a bit more open with progressive ideas. They probably be the main customers of Hades. Probably me as well but I'm not found of roguelite games.
Thanks to @Fabletics for sponsoring today's video! Get 80% off sitewide when signing up to be a VIP member at www.fabletics.com/KnowledgeHusk #fableticsAmbassador #sponsored
nice, keep up the good work.
When you go woke you go broke
❤
Great video
ET was best selig game on new Atari platform. That explain the whole company and market crysis.
If people werent talking about how much of a flop it was, I never would have heard of this game
This video is the first time I heard about it.
Fr, the only reason I heard about it is because ppl are talking about how crappy it is
@beastybaiter7378 I only heard about this game because they plastered it on the news section on my PS5. It looked so generic that I thought it was a joke game.
Yea, I got a friend who just now heard about Concord flopping lol Crazy shit.
I remember seeing the ads for this ad nauseum on the EVO 2024 streams.
The South Park "And it's gone." meme would be tres appropos.
"I would be astonished if it's still around this time next year."
My dawg, the news just broke: they're shutting it down on the 6th. It was hardly around for "this time next week".
I immediately looked up concord on UA-cam after seeing the news break and what exactly was wrong, quick flop.
@@wubzschlubz5318SAME 😂
I love democracy
Came here to say this lmao!
Fucking Incredible😭
To put Concords miserable 600 player count into a bit of perspective.
The original Rome Total war a game released 20 years ago has 1000 people playing it right now and it has a full remaster with another 1000 players
Still a lot of gamers thinking about the Roman Empire.
@@cattysplat I'm thinking of Caesar's Legion, it was so fun to turn Vulpes Inculta into a fine red stain with my sledgehammer
That's a little unfair as RTW fucking slaps.
the original rome total war is still one of the best of the series only surpassed by medieval 2.
I was thinking of this but with Empire total war 😂
On the character designs I think the issue is not that they are “diverse” but feel stale. Take Overwatch, Apex, or even early access Deadlock, they have similarly diverse casts, but they actually feel well designed and unique, not a bunch of everymen in sifi clothes. Hell, look at Concord’s “source material” Guardians, there is one white guy in that group, a white guy, two alien humanoids, a talking raccoon, and an Ent from LOTR. Make all the fancy motion capture movements you want, but if you don’t make the character feel special then no one will really care
Hit the nail on the head. People don't dislike these designs because they're inclusive. They dislike these designs because they're completely and utterly *sauceless*
@@TheTealHydra It's what a corporate boardroom ghoul who hasn't set foot in a supermarket since the HW Bush administration thinks inclusion looks like, yeah.
If the game was good, every single character could have been as diverse as possible without a single straight white man in sight, and people would still have played it. There's a reason why shows with diverse casts can be extremely popular.
Think Arcane from League of Legends: one main character is a teenager with blue hair and has severe mental health issues, the other main character is a masculine lesbian with pink hair, and the main straight couple is an interracial couple. Arcane is extremely successful and has won multiple awards - not because it's diverse, but because it's *good.*
Putting priority into being inclusive is a sure fire way to make a garbage game.
You can even go back as far as the first arcade blockbuster that was Street Fighter 2 which featured fighters from all around the world, black, women, fat, asian, mutant... Diversity isn't the problem, it's how well they are designed.
"I'd be astonished if it survived this time next year" Bet you didn't expect it to not even make it to this time NEXT WEEK
Lol trueee
That announcement is why I'm here 😂 what a wild situation. Everyone refunded and they're taking down the game.
I wonder who is getting fired as we speak
IT'S OFFICIAL
LIZ TRUSS > CONCORD
@@itryen7632 Liz truss: "Finally! A worthy opponent!"
@@basedmekcertainly bot the people responsible
I can’t lie I thought you meant the supersonic airliner. That’s exactly how little people cared about Concord’s release
it tarnishes the name
also i think it has an e
"Costa Concordia joins the chat"
Anything with Concord in the name are simply cursed
Concord also got screwed over during the American revolution. Cursed as the Pyramids.
Who thought it was a good name? It's so boring and uninformative
Aptly named
I think the most hilarious part about this is something, someone brought up: More people played Sex with Stalin, than Concord on launch.
Give me link, give me info, give me sauce
That is the best thing I've heard all week thank you for this glorious tidbit of info.
To be fair, I can immediately see the appeal for the former (giving your body for the Motherland in more ways than one 😉), while I have yet to see the appeal of Concord.
Ironic, as that's the dream of every developer of Concord.
@@RationalificIf you had seen young Stalin, it'd be your dream too.
The worst art direction I’ve ever seen in a game. Mediocrity should be met with rejection and consequences.
WuKong’s success and Concord’s downfall aren’t correlated. That section of your video makes no sense. WuKong has been hyped for years, barely anyone knows about Concord? People didn’t buy WuKong to combat Concord? Shocking take.
Delighted personally.
There's also Soulash 2, another game people bought to combat Concord.
Fun fact: More people watched this video than the all time peak player count in Concord
More ppl liked your comment than are playing concord today
@@dmurray2978 lmao
@@dmurray2978 insane
@@dmurray2978 and yours lol
It's more than the total amount of people who purchased it
Executives: “what went wrong?!”
Everyone: “you”
Larry Fink
@@elcidleon6500y'all give him too much credit
I'd argue the biggest flop in recent gaming history has gotta be The Culling 2
@@aquilleswinkler5051 Close, but really Concord beats it because it cost way, way more money and time to produce.
@@Scoring57 tells us ur a not-C, without telling us ur a not-C. The other 98% of humans are tired of this bougie crap elitist privileged assholes are forcing upon the rest of us. The people steering the ship don't have the consent of anyone aboard. Its time to return to democracy
The fact that the Concord episode of Secret Level is coming out after the game has been shut down is peak comedy
They are robbing us of a secret level episode!!!!
Gotta be hundreds of other games worthy of that episode.
@@TeWaikopu66kg yeah, also all other Playstation IPs were pushed together into a single episode, this is the only one that has an episode dedicated entirely to it
The life expectancy of a housefly is generally 15 to 30 days and depends upon temperature and living conditions.
Revelation 3:20
Behold, I stand at the door, and knock: if any man hear my voice, and open the door, I will come in to him, and will sup with him, and he with me.
HEY THERE 🤗 JESUS IS CALLING YOU TODAY. Turn away from your sins, confess, forsake them and live the victorious life. God bless.
Revelation 22:12-14
And, behold, I come quickly; and my reward is with me, to give every man according as his work shall be.
I am Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the end, the first and the last.
Blessed are they that do his commandments, that they may have right to the tree of life, and may enter in through the gates into the city.
@@JesusPlsSaveMe You guys have had 2000 years, how are you still so bad at this? I could make up a religion tomorrow and get more converts by the end of next week than you ever will posting on here.
@@Fricasso79It's not even saying which denomination of Christianity. I'm Catholic and I do not recall seeing something like this in my local chapel.
@@Fricasso79 You should learn some history then.
"I'd be surprised if it's still around this time next year"
Boy howdy was that optimistic in hindsight
indeed
@@photonaut_8875
Revelation 3:20
Behold, I stand at the door, and knock: if any man hear my voice, and open the door, I will come in to him, and will sup with him, and he with me.
HEY THERE 🤗 JESUS IS CALLING YOU TODAY. Turn away from your sins, confess, forsake them and live the victorious life. God bless.
Revelation 22:12-14
And, behold, I come quickly; and my reward is with me, to give every man according as his work shall be.
I am Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the end, the first and the last.
Blessed are they that do his commandments, that they may have right to the tree of life, and may enter in through the gates into the city.
Everytime i check the player count for concord i swear i hear church bells
The bells of Notredame
Hi. Can you use another example like funeral dirge or something that’s not specific to xtianity? You’re alientating people by normalising references to a religion not everyone shares. Thank you
Bingo?
For me, it sounds like Zelda MM the final minutes before the moon crashes
@@bun197 awful bait
The $40 price tag in a genre with mostly F2P games was a crazy choice. They're probably gonna have to make it free soon, maybe even refund all 732 people that bought the game
the free beta had a peak of about 2000 players, this game is going to die soon no matter what they do
For 40 dollars I'd expect a full specked game with lots of content at least.
Multiple modes etc. But to have 0 art direction like this right off the bat is insane.
Did NOBODY playtest and point this out?
Even if it was free the genre is over saturated and it being super generic doesn't help.
Not to mention Deadlock is coming out and that has some innovation to be different.
They're charging upfront because they knew the game was gonna flop and needed to guarantee at least some cash.
And make money how? Selling skins for Daw?
"...Tried to appeal to everybody, and appealed to nobody" 🎯🎯🎯
You mean like Fortnite?... yeah, that makes sense. Twit.
I think the difference is Fortnite tried and succeeded.
You couldn't even get the quote right 😂
Idk what the character designers were on
Was the goal literally to make the heros of a hero shooter as unappealing as possible?
They probably didn't even have a concept art phase.
Communists revile beauty
@@metalgear6531they had 8 FUCKING YEARS, and all they did was shit the bed
the only thing they care about is diversity
@@ArtichokeAnarchythey prolly spent those years for those animated scenes
Update: they just released a statement saying the game will be taken offline on September 6th; as of this comment it has been 11 days since the game released
I just saw it too. It will die faster than the day before, a fucking scam game
Can't wait for the NerdSlayer video lol
@@tranquility6789this is the video game equivalent of a stillborn
By sheer coincidence, on September 6th I will be taking a novel I wrote off the site it's posted on so that it can go up on Kindle, and I *suspect* that more people will notice that than will notice Concord vanishing.
Its already dead you dont gotta add salt to wound of a dead flop lol @Argusthecat
minor correction: Gearbox didnt buy the studio,they buy the IP from the developer
I was about to comment this. At least since Hopoo still has their autonomy, maybe someday they will make something even better... One can hope at least.
Can someone explain to me what’s wrong with the new DLC? My friend bought it and I haven’t heard any complaints.
@@k3v1nkuu15 The problem is not the dlc, the dlc is fine but they changed the game’s base coding in order to release the dlc on the all platforms at the same time, aaand now we have a lot of bugs because they fucked it up.
@@kaankurtuldu8958 oh ok thanks for explaining it to me. Been recently playing risk of rain 2 again and am having fun.
@@k3v1nkuu15
The update along with the DLC added a bunch of bugs for PC players, as they wanted to unify the code between consoles and PC.
Issue being like 90% of the games player base is PC.
Biggest issue noticed is not enemy spawn and aggression is tied to FPS, so if you play above 60 enemy's are much harder.
"I will be astonished if its still around this time next year" didn't even last a month lol
I wonder what they worked on for 8 years. The "skins" are just different color variations... They tried to sell the idea of no battle passes, but in reality they had very little content to even offer one 😂
Guaranteed it was rebooted multiple times. It took longer to make than a AAA open-world game.
This build is doubtlessly younger than a year or two old, not eight
@@mrshmuga9 Yeah was going to say this. AAA dev is around 3 years now. 8 years means it got heavily scrapped and reworked multiple times. I think PatStaresAt's theory is the best. The game was copying Overwatch, had stylized designs that made those characters look good, then some higher up made them go full motion-capture and realistic aesthetitcs and that's why the characters look like bad cosplays now.
It runs on UE 5 so it can’t be older than four years. It was probably stuck in development hell for many years.
@@hosvet_animationI'll bet that Bungie 's ""consultation"" is what led to this flop.
Hot take: the development time alone would have been plenty to inform most that this game was gonna flop. 8 years is Duke Nukem: forever tier.
TBF, we’ve seen examples of games that have seen considerable success even after a questionable development cycle. Come to think of it, Fortnite was in a strikingly similar situation to Concord where it was announced at the tail end of 2011, tried to cash in on game concepts that were popular at the time (the base building of Minecraft mixed with the zombie survival of Left 4 Dead), and then the release was pushed all the way until mid 2017.
What saved Fortnite from being a dated game was the addition of the free Battle Royale mode which took cues from PUBG’s (ephemeral) popularity. Some games can also be saved from death by having a dedicated fanbase; for example, Pikmin 4 was allegedly “almost finished” in 2015 and was released the summer of 2023. The game went on to being the best selling Pikmin game because there’s been a consistent minimum of ~1 million fans for each new mainline entry (even for Pikmin 3 on Wii U, believe it or not!) and fans had created their own guerrilla marketing campaign for the game (they had the series’s main protagonist shaking their bottom in Times Square).
TF2 famously took 9 years to make, and Infinity Ward was cooking up ideas for COD4 since the launch of the original. Baulder's Gate 3 also took 6 years to develop. Long development times are signs of studio mismanagement, which can LEAD to bad games, but it doesn't mean that any game that took longer than X years to develop is in trouble.
Botw, totk, Metroid dread, are all clear examples otherwise. As for non Nintendo game examples, baldurs gate 3 is a recent example that comes to mind. You know, that one little game that came out of nowhere sold 10s of millions of copies, and won game of the year last year. Yeah, that one.
Not really. As everyone else is saying, it basically signalled that you couldn't completely trust the game was going to be good, not that it couldn't be good. Like, I can see a less realistic style for the characters helping to "sell the game better". Unfortunately, they went for the most bland shit imaginable.
Like, I can point to Apex Legends for a realistic game that at least finds ways to make their characters interesting visually, and to Overwatch for a bunch of technically bland visual choices for their characters being saved because the style helps make their outfits or physical characteristics stand out positively. The art team somehow shot into the black hole where neither the costumes nor physical characteristics look either very interesting or decently appealing, with a style that bring what little good it has and flattens it into the ground for good measure.
Kingdom Hearts 3 had nearly that much at a 7 year long development cycle. (2012 to 2019) Say what you want about that game and it's certain story decisions, but man did that game play suprisingly well considering how long it took and how troubled development was.
"I would be astonished if it's still around this year"
Oh buddy buddy buddy...
Bye bye forced diversity the game coming out at a time where people are most sick of forced diversity trying to be shoved down their throat.
Revelation 3:20
Behold, I stand at the door, and knock: if any man hear my voice, and open the door, I will come in to him, and will sup with him, and he with me.
HEY THERE 🤗 JESUS IS CALLING YOU TODAY. Turn away from your sins, confess, forsake them and live the victorious life. God bless.
Revelation 22:12-14
And, behold, I come quickly; and my reward is with me, to give every man according as his work shall be.
I am Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the end, the first and the last.
Blessed are they that do his commandments, that they may have right to the tree of life, and may enter in through the gates into the city.
“I would be astonished if it was still around next year”
It lasted less than 2 weeks
Less than 700 currently on Steam. It's over. Purchasing for online after buying the game for 40 USD to be able to keep playing it on PS. The game is dead. 8 years down the drain.
maybe if they take it free to play it'll just be a regular failure rather than an abject failure
@@ohno5559 Even in open beta which was completely free game only had 2500 players. still an absolute failure by any standard. Best yet, they commited themselves to making expensive weekly cutscenes nobody cares about. This game will lose them SO MUCH money it's insane.
@@dud5606 tbf that's a beta, full release would expect to do better than that even at the same price. But yeah this is a massive flop regardless.
One thing I am wondering is if a significant fraction of people saw the flop coming and decided to hold off for a price drop or for the game to go free-to-play.
You have to pay to play it? Like a subscription?
115 right now according to SteamDB lmfao
The designs are bad no matter what side of the "representation matters," spectrum you're on. They're what a CEO thinks of as inclusive rather than, say, what a designer comes up with with inclusivity in mind. It's just so corporate. That isn't even the biggest issue, though. The designs are just bad POINT BLANK. Ugly, lukewarm, generic. They clash, they're bulky, etc. Overwatch took a lot of inspiration from Team Fortress 2 in terms of recognizability and character silhouettes. There's a lot you can infer from a character from just looking at them or hearing them spit a few lines. With Concord, the only thing you get it... "manic pixie dream girl," or "fat and black," and it hits neither dudebro gamers or the people who WANT characters.
I just don't understand how you can shill having "such variety," in your characters and yet they come out so bland. There needs to be a masterclass in how Concord fucked it up so bad.
The best thing I can say for Concord's character design is that they're at least fun to roast. Trashcan with arms and legs and germaphobe grandma at LEAST have some visual distinction, but like... the one that baffles me the most is the one that looks like a 13 year old boy's airsoft loadout.
I was waiting for TF2 to be brought up because it truly seems like the opposite of this. This game seems too realistic looking to the point where the colors all blend together and the designs come off as uncanny, but TF2 has a cartoony design and they still look identifiable.
Plus TF2 when you look into it is pretty diverse, each of the characters have distinct personalities and cultural backgrounds which makes them recognizable. They also play into stereotypes but in a respectful and funny way, like the mad German scientist and suave Frenchman and so on. It feels like characters people would naturally come up with and put together to create a diverse cast, rather than what a random CEO thinks is diverse.
@@seagaulle Apparently they made an animated short with Concord's characters and they actually looked like five times better when they were cel shaded
What they look like to me, IMO, is someone trying to cosplay characters, badly, from one game in a completely different game's character creator.
@@Bustermachine Honestly, you kinda nailed it!
Somehow the game Concord is worse than the location of Concord in fallout
I think the City in California is gonna change it's name to distance itself from this mess lmao
Speaking of Fallout, but New Vegas was made in like less than a year, meanwhile _this_ took 8 years
@@NeverwascooLThere is another "Concord", in Massachusetts that is the site of the famous 1775 Battle of Concord that was immortalized in Henry Longfellow's poem of the same name. "The Shot heard 'round the world"...
@@PunishedKrabnew Vegas is still also on sale on steam and has been ported and re-ported for newer consoles. Game companies just need to learn that people don't care for certain things in games. We play games to escape the real world drama for a reason.
@@PunishedKrabThough New Vegas is buggy without mods and was rushed a bit to meet that deadline but if a game is good no matter what, It should do well.
The character designs for Concord are every LGBTQ+ stereotype and nothing else. There is little in their designs that tell me about who they are or what their stories are other than "this was made to check diversity boxes". I love having queer representation in the games that I play, but queer representation cannot be only "look at our queer characters," I want them to be interesting characters who are also queer. It feels more like representation made by committee, not representation made by artists.
They feel more like caricatures created to mock the queer community rather than representation.
Just stop it with that queer stuff it’s annoying putting it everywhere and shove it down our throats just make a good game like jeez . Look at space marines no queer stuff or lgbt or whatever weird shit you guys make up
@@chokemyrooster2417 cope
@@piragintheevercorpulent1526 that’s why those games are bombing , cope with that
@@piragintheevercorpulent1526 just pointing out the obvious so don’t get butthurt
I think its a bit dishonest to say Wukong got a majority of it's success from media controversies. I mean, I'm sure it helped it out, but I think it has to do a lot more with how starved the gaming industry is for honest, quality, full-fledged single-player experiences like the all-too-commonly-referenced Elden Ring. Better Wukong than another AAA live-service slop fest, and it brings such a large smile to my face to see Concord absolutely f a i l.
Also 90% of its sales are from china, since it's a Chinese game. Pretty sure it just got massively popular over there and that just helped push it up in the steam store and places people look for games.
Yes its a dishonest take, probably why it wasn't a point argued in the video 😂
10:18 sit @@TheGahta
@@JayJeeJay 9 out of 10 players are chinese
If you mean it "wukong got a majority of its success in the west" then yes, he gives a compelling argument for it. You may disagree but he did more than your "i think its x" so slow your horsies with alleging dishonesty
I read your comment as meaning success overall, and the Chinese part gives no shit about the kerfuffle.
So which reading was right?
@@thonktank1239 And even the remaining 10% still blows Concord out of the water. Certainly no smash hit, but at least a small succes for an unknown studio with zero brand recognition entering a foreign market.
6:44 well, you didn't have to wait long to get that confirmed lol
I think he misspelled week XD
“I would be astonished if it’s still around this time next year”
2 days later… 😂
Yeah it didn't take long for them to pull it off the market 😂😂
Preface: I'm an illustrator with a background in animation and video games specifically. I'm also a hard leftist. I didn't know about Concord until it was out, but I could have told you those designs wouldn't fly, even without culture war baggage. It isn't because they have pronouns or something, it's because they're just bland. For most purposes, silhouette is top dog, and especially so in reflex based gaming. Are you looking at a Tracer or a Winston? It has to register in less than seconds. For all I can criticize Blizzard for- and it is a lot- their design work is usually aces.
No one would call Road Hog a wake snowflake character because he's fat because he's in a game with a good design ethos. Zarya is a buff queen with a jawline that could cut glass, but I don't often people going after her very much for that. I'm sure some incel has a problem with it, but I don't see it as much as like Alloy or whatever.
In a perfect world where there were no political issues, Concord's designs would still be bad. The whole things is just a perfect storm of shit going on. It was a game for no one.
You're so out of touch. People are sick of being slapped in the face constantly with the diversity nonsense. It's already infected our TV shows & movies. We play video games to escape that bs. No one wants to see a fat black non binary character in their games
You're really out of touch. media & entertainment is suffering because now the dialogue, the acting, the plot & the writing all revolve around ticking the diversity boxes.
You lost me at "I'm also hard leftist"....
You forgot that it’s also because of the pronouns
Black Myth Wukong isn't selling well because of a 'culture war' - it's because it's a well advertised, well made character action game that people wanted to play.
The polar opposite of Concord, which is what happens when you make a game for an echo chamber that barely exists.
The vast majority of people don't care about the politics of gaming or the discussion around certain games. They'll just look at trailers, say 'oh that's cool' or 'oh that sucks' and buy accordingly.
Concord didn't provide one single reason for anyone sane to buy it. Black Myth Wukong did in spades. That's the difference.
REAL. This is the stuff I like to hear. I really don't believe that people care about the whole culture war thing enough to heavily influence whether they want to buy the game or not. At the end of the day, people would obviously rather play a game with a serious story, good advertising, and intense gameplay than another colorful sloppy hero shooter that has no story and has some of the worst character designs in recent memory. It's not even for political reasons, they just straight up look bad!! I think blaming flops like this or successes like Black Myth: Wukong on the culture war is bad practice, and it makes it easier to look over the clear issues with AAA studios in the current day while devaluing the success of other, accomplished studios.
Deny it if you want but, Not being wokeee also played a role in it's success. Eat it, wokeesterz!
Not being woakee, also aided in it's success. Eat it, wokesterzz!
bang on. Concord oozes corporate generic slopfest. That crap might have worked a decade ago when it started dev, but people find it boring now. Wukong is something different, with passion put into it.
I can see how culture war stuff might get the ball rolling on people talking about one game or another and influencing their decision on whether to buy at all, but at the end of the day, if the game isn't good enough, then all the marketing in the world can't help anything. Concord, while it looks polished and the gameplay looks the same, it is very mediocre, and, as such, would not be able to compensate for bad marketing and, well, lack of anything eye-catching by the quality of the game itself. Compare that to Wukong: if the game had the same level of quality as Concord, it might have gotten a bit of a spike in interest and sales from culture war stuff and its own marketing, but would have quickly died off if the game itself wasn't interesting enough to sustain interest for its own players and have them spark the same for other potential buyers.
As for whether the sales in these two games were heavily influenced directly or indirectly by culture war stuff, idk, I'd need to see the statistics and demographics, but my gut feeling and my observations say that most of the people who did buy either of the games or saw marketing for the games but choose not to buy did not know or care about niche internet stuff that was journalists and within a niche inside of twitter.
The fact that i had never heard about anything discussed in the Culture War segment is definitely a sign i'm doing something right
good job splatoon man
honestly nobody did, this sounds like some thing terminally online people on reddit did
@@MiaWinter98so the target demographic for the game?
I really don't buy the culture war angle of this video. Sure it played a role, but more of a making sure the last possible few who would give it a chance did not. A game with no appeals released in a dying genre that is still thick with better options. The idea most people care to whine about pronouns and inclusion just is not feeling accurate to why everyone I know did not spare this game a second thought.
@@Unf0rget the culture war stuff was just the final nail. All of the other things you mentioned killed the game before release, the pronouns were the death knoll.
The presentations were trying to talk about Concord as if its universe was already widely beloved by a rabid fanbase, and they expected it to sell like hotcakes and keep whales spending on it in the thousands for years to come. It's so sad. They enter an already over-saturated segment of the market with absolutely nothing new or excitingly unique to offer and thought they were entitled to their share of the live service micro-transaction whales.
maybe they would have been better off if they tried to mimic genshin impact instead
They needed to cater to the gooner whales. They're singlehandedly bankrolling First Descendants right now.
Just heard about Wukong's controversy. Shit's funny af. At least China and gamers can agree that feminist propaganda is trash.
I feel like you missed a point Black Myth Wukong is popular because it is Chinese game. It is very popular as a celebration of chinese culture and a huge breakout PC game from China which was otherwise known more for mobile stuff. It isn't doing gangbusters in the west, just okay, but great in China.
It's also based on a historically well known IP. Can't believe knowledge glanced over that.
@@EmperorKagatoyeah, journey to the west in china is as well known as something like romeo and juliet in the west
I'm chinese indonesian, so i know about the journey to west lore, but as soon as i saw the trailer, i was captivated by the beauty of the graphic, character and the gameplay. Comparing wukong with this trash would be an insult to all chinese people in whole world
it's a Chinese game based on Chinese mythology, yes. Plus.given the fact that PRC fights its own "culture wars" with the West buying and playing Wukong was is almost considered a patriotic duty.
and it's rare to see a game with chinese culture that actually looks good
What is most odd for the Concord is that it's unclear how or why this game got these character designs.
They aren't bad in terms of character designs for "culture war"
They are just bad.
They are boring. They have nothing that would depict character abilities. They have nothing to show of their personalities. Like the robot character - he looks like a Baymax crossed with a trashcan. Very unique style, definitely. A flying character that looks like a slim person with a helmet armed with rocketlauncher from Commando. Mmmm, original design!
I am not a huge on the hero shooter, to be frank, I never played Overwatch myself, but I played Titanfall 2, Team Fortress 2 and Deadlock and I know that characters should be easily identifiable by their features - be they small, big, easy or hard to see - you need clear visuals and characters should look memorable and not boring. It feels like Concord character designer has no grasp on color theory - how colors should be separated and all that.
I never went to art school, but I've been mixing and matching armor pieces in MMOs long enough to learn how in good design colors should be done properly and not haphazardly - best designs are ones where different colours complement one another and give a nice contrast. Hell, you look at ANY good character design and you will see that.
Let's go for like 3 characters from absolutely different games:
1. Dragonslayer Ornstein from Dark Souls. You would think "Oh, this is easy, he's just gold and that's it!" but nope! His armor has lots of details, and golden metal on legs, arms and armpits is broken by brown cloth/chainmail parts and there are lots of contrasting pockets of black at the armor edges. He has red plumage on top of his helmet and his spear has almost ivory tip - all of this with mostly golden tones makes him great and not over-designed character with great detail and his slender form eludes to his speed.
2. Jesse Faden from Control - a relatively young 30-something redhead forced to become director of Federal Buerau of Control after picking up Service Weapon. You would think that her slim and not imposing look won't be memorable, but it is quite the opposite. She wears all dark colored clothes - a jacket, jeans, tank-top and boots. Everything is light to ease her movement. She's armed with a gun. She's fast but can also protect herself. Red hair well contrasts with mostly black body - it's a good, realistic character design (and she is designed to look realistic - her appearence is 100% based on her actress - Courtney Hope. But that doesn't mean she doesn't have a character design. She has and it's in her hairstyle and choice of clothes - that's so important for her as a character.
3. Kazuma Kiryu from Yakuza/Like a Dragon series. Kazuma, especially younger version of him, has striking white (or grey) suit, same colored pants and shoes, with contrasting red shirt under it. He has really neatly put back hair but also he has very complex and beautiful dragon tattoo on his back, showing his strength, his posture and his demeanor - he's intimidating for those who dare to be his enemies, but his friends know better that he is actually kind and friendly under that mencaing persona. But when needed - he will easily punch, kick or suplex whoever is trying to attack him
All these three characters have way more personality and design put into them than ANY of Concord's characters. Because their designers knew that players will have to remember these people. They will have to learn to love them. Not do what Concord devs did, lol
They are the [LGBT FREAK VOMIT] we have been getting for YEARS now, wanna make money with a live service game? Make your characters attractive, and politically disconnected [Don't address their sexuality, leave it open to fans to decide] stop hiring activists, and make your employees and voice actors sign a controct preventing them from using social media
I ain’t reading all dat
Yeah im not reading all that
i DID read all that, and you right
I read “all that” and genuinely loved the way you pointed out the features of the character designs that stood out. You really expressed it all so elegantly and concisely for each character-this sounds sort of odd, but with how well you articulate your point, I think you could make a great video essayist LOL
Dude, Wukong is just genuinely really fucking good, all the gameplay I've been seeing from it is INSANE, the developers poured a FUCKTON of passion into it, _there's full anime episodes at the end of every chapter_ that are ALL film festival award worthy, it is a genuine expression of human creativity, with no modern gaming revenue pipelines worked in.
Meanwhile you have Concord as the utter embodiment of Triple A slop, it's a face put to a problem that everyone is aware off by now, it doesn't matter that there's no battlepass, because that fact is news to everyone who has watched this video.
Wasn't wukong made by a chinese company? That probably explains why its good. Since its the literal chinese goverment funding their own games, and the source material is badass.
@@josevictorribeirolisboa7576 that fuck you China money definitely gave them a ton of leverage in making something great.
But you gotta remember, it's not like large studios don't have similar budgets to throw around for their projects, it's all about putting that cash toward developing games that are _actually good,_ hiring people who know what they're doing, etc.
@@josevictorribeirolisboa7576when a western government fund a game we got Dustborn and when a eastern government fund a game we got black myth wukong this tells the state of present western government
@@josevictorribeirolisboa7576why do ppl assume everything in China is funded or associated with the government lol. Do you have evidence that Game Science is owned by the government? Give me a break
Western audiences were interested in Wukong because it uses Chinese mythology, which hasn't really been in any major AAA game before. A lot of Western video games use Greek, Roman or Viking mythology, sometimes Ancient Egypt.
Concord is competing against a bunch of other FPS hero shooters, charging money when many of its competitors are free-to-play, while bringing no new or fresh ideas. It also has a very stupid, forgettable title.
Already canceled and studio shutdown
3:57 skip ad
Thank you 🍺
Good man
🍻
That was a terrible ad
A God among men
I think the culture war argument is severely overblown in this case, especially for Black Myth: Wukong. The Asian marketplace doesn't just take up "many" of the sales, it's the overwhelming majority. Concurrent players on steam for Wukong variate from as low as 200,000 to as high as 2 million day after day, always peaking in the early morning hours (in the west). Literally 90% of the playerbase is in the east. Journey to the West is kind of a classic over there, it's not some niche property. I promise you these players are not being swayed to buy the game due to western culture/identity politics of all things.
The situation is just kind of sad. Gameplay wise Concord seems... fine. Its greatest sin is being derivative and bland stylistically.
it's mind blowing to me that in the 2020s after Decades of massive DragonBall fandoms in the west; there are still people that ignorant. Imagine if a LoTR game went gangbusters, and a bunch of chinese dudes on Weibo videos were saying it only sold because of 'a reverse boycott', no one cares about that franchise. That's how idiotic his statement sounds to me, and I'm a white person who lives in Australia.
I don’t spend money on woke. The culture war is 100% affecting the bottom line.
The problem with Concord is it has no reason to exist and was literally made for no one. But the culture war definitely hurt it, 100% if they would have made some of the characters “hot girl” teens would have bought it. and there are definitely people not buying purely because it has political pronouns.
Then it doesn’t do anything to make people want to ignore the political aspect, it has no redeeming factor… so it was 100% hoping the “modern audience” would show up. But its just every thing is wrong, like there is nothing here for anyone
@@RusticRonnie I disagree. The continued success of the Guardians franchise shows that there's definitely a market for Space Westerns, games included. If you told me we were getting a Guardians of the Galaxy-esque Hero Shooter, I'd have been down to at least check it out. We're out of the golden age of Hero Shooters though, and they've definitely reached the point of oversaturation, that's for sure.
Like I said before, the game itself is fine. Reviewers have consistently said it's fun and well polished. The problems are mostly outside of gameplay.
- Character designs are boring, derivative and unfocused.
- Writing is flat and sanitized.
- Game costs 40$ when most competitors are free to play.
- Received a poor marketing campaign.
- Horrific reveal cinematic which turned it into the poster child for "Shareholder Approved AAA Game".
Honestly, if the robot character being listed with he/him pronouns was the deciding factor and not everything else listed, it's time to step out of 2017.
@@SBroproductions Man... This game is a hero shooter. Having the gameplay just be fine is not enough. Hero shooters effectively hinge themselves by their characters. And the characters are not interesting enough, i dare to say. Just look at Overwatch, it has representativity, yes, what else? The characters are interesting. If Overwatch characters had pronouns, some people would be bothered but likely still play the game anyway's. But it it's a game like Concord, having pronouns is like a contract with woke agenda. That inherently goes to a political side, and as such, anyone who doesn't like politicals view from the opposite side will naturally not play the game.
Sorry for my scatterbrained comment, but what im saying is, Concord is not a good heroshooter, aswell as it pleases to a specific political side, so its audience is immediatly cut several times with several filters "Players, who agree with pronouns, who also play heroshooters and that DO NOT play Overwatch and that are willing to play" with the game itself being not interesting. It was obvious it was going to be a flop.
I don't think the culture war was the big killer, I think it could have been part of it, but not all of it. I think it's the fact that there's like what, 4 or 5 massively successful free to play hero shooters already out there and this is the most generic looking one on the table, while also costing money. This was literally trying to sell ice to Eskimos.
Eskimo is a slur, they prefer inuit
@@GamStr-xq3vcoh god not another one...
@@GamStr-xq3vc xey prefer latinx you bigot
Yeah it would have been enough to disuade a few % of your target demo but not nearly enough to kill a game. Also the narrative the BM:W is successful because of the traditional games journalists' narrative is completely laughable and completely ingnores how soulslikes are the shit right now, especially after elden ring. It also completely underestimates how big of a market china is
@ChiefCrewin oh no we can't say slurs anymore, the woke mob made it so I can't yell the n wore anymore
That first descendant character design comparison actually proves a whole lot. No one wants to play as a character that looks like Pre-nerf Lizzo. Sorry wokies.
i am so glad i never got into the AAA games industry because i dont think i could handle spending 8 years working on a game like this lmfao
you would never have been able to work in the triple a industry with that "portfolio" you have lol
@@StickyX999 ofc he is not a low payed Romanian or Bulgarian intern slaving away in one of the AAA overseas dev offices.
@@StickyX999 who hurt you today
@@StickyX999 You don't even know anything about them lol. What's your problem?
@@StickyX999who are you?
Wukong's success isn't a suprise. People have been hyped for that game for 5 plus years, it garnered an audience in all that time and most people who bought it did so because the game looked cool not because some game journos trashed it.
Not to mention its a game based on Chinese mythology, so it could cater to people who like soulsbourne, Chinese people, mythology nerds and people who grew up with journey to the west.
"Looked cool" isn't really a good excuse imo
Lots of really, REALLY good-looking games immediately flop for lack of gameplay or quality. In fact, Wukong isn't polished either. It "looks good", and thankfully the gameplay is good, but the collision in a lot of parts around the map are funky and the camera work is still rather strange... Its not CP2077 or NMS levels of launch jank, but it isn't a 5-year hype beast; GoW Ragnarok is.
That is to say that Black Myth Wukong has a LOT of potential. Concord never had it.
it is very clear wukong is not actually selling 10 mil for any reason other then china having 1.2b people and a vested interest in the government to get it to sell and it being supported to be sold in china on a level no game is.
I only heard about it from the sexism backlash. So, yes, people did buy it because of the backlash lol
@@Keithjustkeithwastakenlol, lmao even. Truly hilarious the nonsense people completely make up for no reason
You hit the nail on the head in regards to the development cycle. Concord started development at a time where its themes and ideas were both fresher, and less inflammatory.
By the time it came out the ideas were stale, and the tone, insufferable. The landscape had changed and left it in the dust.
Right, 10 years for a game like this is way too long. Nothing to show for all those years.
You telling me the tone wasn't insufferable back then ?
it wasn't fresh or unique or palatable 8 years ago either bud
Idk the numbers don’t lie.
@@elfascisto6549 no but now people are actively putting in work to avoid these themes.
Once you realize Concord cost them 400 million, Playstation 5 pro price finally makes a lot of sense..
Watching this video the same day Concord was said to shut down: September 3rd, 2024. Mayflies live longer than this game did.
They just shut the game down. Full refunds and access revoked to every person who bought it. This is insane.
drop in the bucket compared to money wasted on development. refunding a few thousand people no big deal lol
10:14 this is such an interesting comparison because as someone who doesn't really play this genre of games, Elden Ring and Wukong look like they have the exact same appeal to me. Both are ~$60 high production value third person 3D action RPG's in a fantasy setting with a grim, souls-like looking vibe. The only outward difference to me is that Wukong's fantasy setting and characters are directly based on a well known piece of mythology/classic literature, so it has an additional appeal to people familiar with the story. I'm just as impressed/shocked at Wukong selling 10 million copies as I am that Elden Ring has sold 25 million.
Im really cynical on Wukong. Theres alot of very boring Soulslike slop from China already.
@@eightcoins4401yeah nobody could have predicted the success of Wukong during development. Thanks to the culture they hit the goldmine
I don't really get Wukong either, but I'm still having a good time with Elden Ring so take that as you will.
China is huge, censorship means a slimmer selection of games to choose from, and they love their myths and history. KnowledgeHusk is severely underestimating how many of the people playing this are in China.
@@eightcoins4401eh why cynical
The main selling of Wukong in East Asia and South East Asia are not the gameplay but the story
One could argue that Black Myth if not based on Wukong wouldnt not hit 10 million sales
Personally I don't think the culture war had anything to do with any of this. Concord's gameplay was not only basic, but *glacial* by hero shooter standards and even general standards. It's like they made a hero shooter with the controls of a walking sim. So yeah, bad gameplay claims another victim.
You need to buy and play a game to know that. The problem is, nobody cared to buy it in the first place.
@@danilaalpatov1374 I didn’t play it, but I watched someone else who did, and word of mouth can make, break, or brutalize games.
People will take absolutely any chance they can get to blame black people or gay people or women for everything bad that happens. This game sucks ass, obviously that means that somehow minorities are behind it. The alt-right Great Replacement psuedo-holocausty conspiracies about "the undesirables" being the secret force behind the decay of the World is what you're witnessing.
I disagree. Just look at those terrible gacha games that have pay2win gameplay. It still has more players than concord just because of generic anime girl
@@schneejacques3502 That’s not culture war stuff, that’s lonely gamblers.
Valve's game Deadlock as you said "Isn't publicly available right now" has 128,045 players as of writing this comment and an all time peak of 171,490.
The only way to play it is to get invited by a friend.
A closed alpha game with invite only and placeholder assets has 2460 times the playerbase.
This video came out 2 days too early - Sep 3rd, "Concord is going offline beginning September 6th." not even a month of life for this one.
Dustborn devs are probably feeling so relieved right now.
Frankly i think Dustborn its an even bigger fail than Concord.
@@S3rp3nteeh they had a much lower budget and some of it was government subsidies.
@@temtem9255
The fact that garbage like these get subsidized should worry you about what values our societies elite want to promote.
On Dustborn wasn't wasted 150 millions dollars and 8 years for development thougeverlbeit
@@S3rp3nte At least Dustborn is funny
6:42 "I would be astonished if it was still around this time next year" bro it wasn't even around this time next WEEK 🤣😂🤣
You are vastly underestimating how big China's gaming market is. Almost no one in China has any idea about Americans arguing about pronouns, but they want to buy the biggest game their country has ever created based on one of the four most important pieces of classical Chinese literature.
Look at map!! China is very big!!
Geshin is an example of that too
every Asian country has geshin in their phones or computer
@@heliumpai7627also has a billion people and a growing middle class. The govenrment has also begun rolling back some of their policies to restrict video games
@@sleefy2343I heard Genshin had a sizeable Indian player-base and I’ve heard of players from even the “stan” countries. Big in both the West and East
说得好
Not gonna lie, the character designs all look like the most annoying people you know on the internet and IRL.
Yea these people put themselves into the games and the get mad when people don’t want to play them. No one wants to look at you in real life why would anyone want to freely associate with you in a game either
Right? People want to play as badass heroes. Look at the reception of Space Marines 2 or Helldivers 2.
People want to escape from reality and go on a power trip in their video games. Not enter a quasi shortbus reality.
@@jalontf2 well, the characters in concord seems worse than what i saw IRL...like come on.
Why not play Concord? We have:
-Your coworker who got way too into airsoft
-Your annoying overweight 13 year old nephew who got way too into airsoft
-"I'm glad the Green Goblin's HRT is going well!"
-DALL-E trying to come up with a Disco outfit
-"Who gave the trashcan a gun?"
-Your HOA chairwoman aunt one week after COVID hit
@@DennyGunawan89idk about that... 😂 pretty familiar looking to me.
IMO, Wukong doing this well is because it’s like the only game of its caliber made by a Chinese company for a Chinese audience. For some reason the chinese game industry doesnt really make single player games.
The Culture War aspect did certainly help it get coverage in the west though
No it didn't. People were hyped for Wukong since the first reveal. I guarantee you the only people who knew there was any culture war bullshit associated were the terminally online basement dwellers stirring it up in the first place.
Whats the point on wearing something protective when it doesn’t even look like it protects your vital organs.
I think the culture war is far too termnially online of a take, I truely believe Concord failed purely because It had NOTHING unqiue.
People joking about pronouns isn't something that sinks games. It's that Concord failed by the same rule acceptionally pure water is harder to freeze than tap water. It looked generic, played generic, had middling writing, it released into a genera that is saturated. There is nothing a fanbase can crystallize around.
I was thinking the same. Horizon as another example has been on the receiving end of the "culture war" for its design, and so was The Last of Us 2, but those games still did very well. Similarly GTA surely got boosted by its media coverage but I do not think it would have continued its immense popularity if it wasn't also regularly one of the most extensive open worlds ever made. I haven't seen anything in Concord to generate good will.
its more the thing that truly killed and made sure it was never coming back
@@thelegendaryhunter0 The culture war thing? Hard disagree, the only uptick in interest in Concord came AFTER the horrible launch and anything past that is post-mortem.
the game is repulsive to look at and like you said, offers nothing that isn't done better literally anywhere else
@@kueller917 because horizon and last of us were established franchises. Last of us was an insane hit for sony. It could have been joel on a toilet for 5 hours straight and still would have sold millions of copies.
This game was DOA as soon as they decided to charge $40 for it.
_Maybe_ if they’d cranked it out when they had the idea for it while GOTG hype was still at its peak and the market wasn’t flooded with online shooters like this, it could have charged that much and had a chance but now? Absolutely not.
Not only is the brand of humour they’re trying to appeal to, nevermind the specific character archetypes, long out of fashion but the market is so overcrowded with *free to play* shooters that a game like this never had a chance.
What sucks is I can see passion and interest from the devs, and I know the game could have found an audience if it was FTP, but an outrageous asking price for a very mid, not at all unique experience when Overwatch is right there?
No amount of cutscenes can justify that.
TBH I don't think the money matters that much, it's even said so in the video. People have no problems paying even more than $60 for a game - IF IT'S GOOD.
For me the main reason is the woke shit (yes haha very lame reason but it's true) and being so safe. People don't want safe, pussy games, they want the real deal.
@@MadafakinRio Also the first trailer really tanked any hype this game had. It already had to deal with being an overwatch clone, then the trailer forced it to be an MCU clone, in a time when the MCU is getting tired and lame.
@@MadafakinRioagreed. Just like he alluded to in the video, no body had ANY problem with spending $40 for Helldivers 2 because it was GOOD.
No, I think Dead or Alive 6 sold more
@@nbewarwelol. Why get GoTG at home when you can get the real deal in Marvel Rivals.
To quote Gabe Newell,
“Welcome to Team Fortress 2. After 9 years of development, we hope that it will have been worth the wait. Thanks, and have fun.”
And then TF2 became one of the longest running successful multiplayer and single player game.
Concord was made after 8 years. Think one more year would have saved this game?
Probably not since team fortress 2 was made before the market was oversaturated
@@GreenGirondist
Remember when Overwatch first came out and people criticized it for ripping off TF2?
@@sirbillius@Doodlydigital I think you are both right but team fortress 2 was just a great concept from the start that would have worked anyway because it was perfectly executed. The marketing was great with the meet the team. the characters we're cool and charming. The gameplay was tight and the art style was unique and eye catching. I think it would have worked regardless because they did everything right and my evidence is that despite all these years and the complete lack of support a crazy amount of people still play it despite the insane competition
@@sirbilliusYeah, though in retrospect it honestly didn't. It's just that at the time, people kept pushing it to be a TF2 killer, when it was never actually meant to compete with TF2.
It’s disingenuous to pin all of Concords flaws and Wukong’s success on “woke culture war”. Wukongs just a good game, and concord is just…bad, its designs and characters are bad beyond corporate representation and it feels very shallow to think a culture war is the root of the issue.
which it is, Culture war is root of the issue they made a game only the investors would play not the gamers
So basically what you're saying is that Uncharted would have been much, much better if it had started development in 1999.
It took me a moment to process this but I love the way you think
NATHAN DRAKE RACING YEAAAAA
someone remember the Duke nukem flop?
why is escape from Boykisser topping the charts for steam 3 to 1 @ 1:03
Why wouldn't it be?
@@kroganshepard6594 topping the charts I get but 3 to 1 is crazy. Why are so many people trying to escape the boykisser
@@kroganshepard6594Because why would you *want* to escape from Boykisser?
@@kroganshepard6594 Boykisser spotted
Everyone has to escape from boykisser atleast once
2:14 And I still consider Hot Wheels Unleashed as a sleeper hit. Way more fun than it has any right to be.
It's very sad that people spent 8 years of work on a game thats dead on arrival.
Black Wukong just looks fun and has insane graphics... 90% of gamers couldn't care less what journalists are saying... That jump you made there is far from reality
i think ur right about common folk not caring about what rich assholes in media company's are saying. But its interesting to notice they've hyped up several turds, and try to crap on some stuff people will obviously love. "Journalist" seem to be a good indicator of what not to do
@@doctordoubledakka3939 Journalism is not a job based on writing quality. Its a job based on amount of clicks you get on an article.
Its why they instantly go for anything that could cause outrage. They want people to rage-read it and generate
Also they have to hype up turds, they have been paid by AAA companies since inception.
I dont't think Desu or his fans ag Agree with you
@@CristianSimiScarpim no clue who Desu or his fans are bro
I think you are part of the chronically online here
Next to all the given legit reasons, I think its also just a saturated market. There are too many "big" games, you have to offer something interesting and to hype about, for gamers to stop what they are already playing.
I think this game compared next to deadlock's rise it's really interesting, even though they are quite different
Too many multiplayer games as well. Two console gens ago almost every game came with a multiplayer mode with online play. Most people never played them and stuck with CoD, Halo, Gears, and Battlefield. The only difference now is that a lot of games don't come with MP anymore so the devs can focus on SP and making an online only, multiplayer only live service game is a hit or miss
5:03 Important correction: Deadlock is a MOBA, not a hero shooter. It plays nothing like Overwatch and co. So, Concord isn't competing with it directly.
Isn't deadlock both a moba and TPS hero shooter. Also concord can't compete with anything anyway haha
Deadlock competes with LoL, DotA, Smite 1 and 2, and Paragon clones. The time to kill in deadlock is waaaaaay higher than any FPS out there.
@@lemonsquishy197 It's not a hero shooter. The TTK is insanely high and the game is very much focused on farming, roaming, and ganking.
I suppose it depends on how strictly you define "hero shooter," but anyone who likes Overwatch and dislikes Dota is going to hate Deadlock.
Deadlock is a MOBA with Shooter elements. Though a MOBA already is a 'Hero' game. Calling it a Hero Shooter is redundant, although it technically could be considered one.
I don’t even think it’s that deep , I think Black Myth Wukong is à passion project made to be played and enjoyed it’s a video game , from attention to detail to the art style and game polish, you can tell the game is worth every penny even just by the posters it self (kinda like ghost of Tsushima when it came out).
On the other hand u got concord , it looks like a corporate pruduct designed to sell. With no soul. It’s bland uninspired the art style is generic the character design is generic. Nothing makes u go ohh wow.
I think that’s what the games failure is.
Not necessarily the “woke” culture behind it. I’m convinced we can get a woke game that’s absolutely incredible, it all depends on how the ppl making the game feel if it’s for it to be a great game or just another generic product
I guess it just didn’t strike a concord with gamers.
Nice try
Yes officer, that man!
This is hilarious and needs to be pinned
Death
I mean they haven’t exactly concord the charts.
16:57 Agreed 👍👍 KillZone 4 or new MotorStorm, inFamous, Resistance, Uncharted
Demon souls and Bloodborne for Pc and they would swin on money😊
I think they officially ended inFAMOUS after Second Son which is a shame because the new abilities were awesome. I'm fine leaving Uncharted behind since Nathan's story is finished. Motorstorm would be awesome
Oh mate at this point ill even take an infamous remake
Concord doing bad and BMW doing well has more to do with Concord being overpriced and looking generic and BMW having easy access to the Chinese market, than Concord having overweight POC and BMW being “the game journalists don’t want you to play.” I think most normal people don’t care that much that characters have pronouns in their bios.
mildly irritated by them, but most people would ignore it if the product was worth while. The real problem is that, that particular type of politics has always been a shield/sales tactics for garbage products, and many many people have noticed the trend. People will eat at a shady looking hole-in-the-wall restaurant, but the food has got to be good. Concord looking kinda like slop
Well journalists always has been biased against video games that if they start saying don't play a specific game it does make me wanna check out the game more, but if they start praising a game for reasons that doesn't even matter, like diversity, etc, then it automatically turns me off it. Not because I don't like diversity but because if it's all they talk about then it means the game doesn't have anything else good going for it. Things that actually matter.
@@user-yuri665 Game Journalist is a job based solely around ad revenue from clicks and sponsoring. They will run politically charged articles like DONT PLAY WUKONG BLACK MYTH because they KNOW rageclicks will bring in ad revenue.
Any time they praise trivial aspects of a game its because the studio literally paid them.
Not a new phenomenon either. Back in 1991 Action 52 got amazing scores in NES magazines.
@@eightcoins4401 Sometimes i really wonder "Does the ad revenue really pay that much to be worth it?"
Bmw? I thought u meant the car💀
The shutdown of japan studio meant no more patapon. A fact that still keeps me up at night
I don't think the culture war element of it has nearly as much impact as you claim. The main issue in my opinion is simply that this game does not stack well to it's competitors. It being paid for is a factor but the lack of character, the lack of an interesting hook is it's main detriment
"the culture war element" is indicative of those things. Its a warning label for slop the general public has figured out. "culture war" products usually don't stack well to their competitors, lack character and an interesting hook. You have correctly identified the problems, others have found a shorthand. If it smells real bad, it usually tastes real bad. Very few were surprised about how Concord tasted, it smelled like shit
it definitely isnt the "culture war," its just hero shooter burnout and corperate greed. after all, they are selling art. when you make art, you either make it for the sake of creativity, or you make it for money - whatever you base your art on will determine the soul that you give it.
Black Myth Wukong has that many players because of China, not because of the drama.
Sun Wukong is like their superman
And to western playesrs its feels fresh.
People maybe have heard about journey to the west or know a few snippets about it.
But this game just looks badass in terms of design and gameplay.
Sure most of the numbers are from China but the game just looks good and fun and really sticks out from a lot of other games.
@@Zulfrak I think the real reason concord failed is because there wasn’t so much marketing to it and it probably had a troubled production history. If it took 8 years to make and came this generic looking, it definitely had a trouble production. Sony probably had little faith in it because of that and put little effort into marketing. The only people who heard of it before it came out were the ones making fun of it.
Black myth has actually been fairly well known for a few years now. I doubt some of the negative coverage form journalists played a large role in its success outside of China. This game was actually hyped since it was first announced, the trailers outside of China were getting millions of views
Okay? The numbers are still nothing to sneeze at. And it's still the number 1 selling/played across the globe because it looks fun to play, and feels like a breath of fresh air.
@@TheDarkAngel969 I agree it looks pretty interesting and I’ll get it once there’s a discount
Imagine being Sony and bying a big, famous studio known for highly acclaimed games like Halo and Destiny with great graphics, gameplay and STORY... and forcing them to make a copy Overwatch for them. What were they thinking?
"I would be astonished if this is still around next year"
*Narrator's voice:* The game was not around next week.
Arrested development?
To be fair, a lot of games for a decade or so has been generic. People acting like Concord is the first. it's not. Concord is just a lot of consumers being tired of it. We all got used to slop and people acting like we haven't been eating the slop for years.
I haven't, but I haven't bought a new AAA game in 5-7 years and I did so very rarely after 2013 when the industry was better
quality since covid has been in freefall. Theres a lot of games that are just barely alive because nothing in the past 5 years has been made to outcompete them, even though these games are absolute garbage compared to where they used to be. FPS pvp is the epitome of this
@@badabing3391 It was in freefall since 2016 at least
@@SkylineFTW97do you consider nintendo AAA?
@@Robbie-pc1dl They are, but I haven't bought anything From Ninteno since Fire Emblem Fates
Honestly, this failure can Best be summend up by bad marketing. I had genuenly never Heard of this game, Never saw it on the steam front page saying "coming soon". Never Heard any reviewers talk about it. It had no news articles, none that i saw anyway. Nothing. From the little clips you show this genuenly doesnt seem that bad, but the price along whit it's new reputation as a flop, im Just not interested
I feel like I saw this game a while back, but immediately forgot about it because nothing stood out. It's hard to market something so generic looking.
marketing would have been a waste of millions of dollars, they decided to cut their loses, prolly a smart move. Its just 10lbs of slop, in a 5lb rainbow bag
Wukong is actually a good game, nothing to do with the culture war
On today's episode, Knowledge Husk forgets that China is really really really really really really big
China's government is also anti video games and MOST of China is full of poor people who can't afford gaming. Most of them don't live in Beijing and China's going through an economic/housing crisis right now, while the rest of the world sanctions them due to their threats to Taiwan.
For this game to still sell well, despite all of that, is still a success.
Sure, but Wukong is still a better game and would still have more players than Concord, even if China player base was removed.
@Web720 it would definitely have more players than Concord, but that's an extremely low bar. It would have nowhere near the olayer count it does now. It probably would have no more than 50,000
just like ur mom
Remove Wukong's chinese players (NOT dissing the game, it's amazing) and you still get more than ten times Concord's peak, right now, at any point of the day
The culture war part is so incredibly off base that I have to urge you to log off Twitter for a while. It's not the real world.
Concord failed because it's boring, unoriginal and unappealing, and it's all of those things because it's a corporate mandated product stuck in development hell for way too long and released into a market that moved past it years ago.
Wukong is succeeding because it's a competently made, easily digestible game and it's a huge cultural event in its home country, with said country having a playerbase in the hundreds of millions.
It's not rocket science, and it most certainly isn't the culture war. The fact that you have so many people in the comments telling you they had no idea about that whole thing should give you a clue.
Very entertaining video as always tho. Keep up the good work.
The politics is an indictor of boring, unoriginal and unappealing. Its how soulless corporations sell their slop to idiots, and shield themselves from genuine criticism. Wukong was definitely successful because of a sizable Chinese market, but it also avoided the stink of politics.
46% of Americans voted for Donald Trump in 2016. To sit here with the audacity to pretend that nobody cares about it is absolutely farcical.
I've learned that a good metric to measure how well a game is going to do is to look at the amount of fan-art that is created before launch and after as well. If a community is invested in a product, a lot of art will be created, if not, well you can look at Concord and see a desert of content.
You mean pr0n, don't you?
Most art made for Concord was probably made for thumbnails, which if so. Concord failed pretty badly.
Concord failed because it wasn't COOL. The one single most important factor in a video game's success is whether it's COOL or not. GTA was cool,. DOOM was cool. This one is lame. The whole woke thing is lame. It doesn't even matter whether they are right or wrong. They're simply not cool.
This video brings up an interesting point: Long development cycles leading to dated trends being rehashed. Instead of copying popular IPs, business models and politics at the time, devs should focus on making something timeless and new. If they need close to a decade to release something, any idea they started out with is going to look dated and aged like milk.
that entails taking risks though, and shareholders, execs, and ceos hate risking on new gaming thing, something nostalgic to remake or follow trends is much more palatable when greenlighting project, even when those trends will be long dead by time of release, or if not due to extreme crunch or rushing, than the natural problems those two things cause rear their ugly heads with broken and sparse game
The problem with that idea is that it's very difficult to be timeless until time has passed, and it's hard to predict. And being new and original is a very, very big risk. That kind of thing kills studios. Heck, many popular indie games are just iterations on other popular games and genres (EG Hollow Knight, Shovel Knight, Vampire Survivors, Cuphead, etc.).
Ideally, a big studio would have a mix of original indie games, and then more safe, reliable games. In this case, it looks like (smaller, cheaper, more quickly-developed) Astro Bot might be more popular for Sony than Concord.
I think for the first couple of years, Rainbow 6: Siege did exactly that. The base game and first few DLCs are timeless, they aren't trendy, they don't have pop culture references, it's just counter-terrorist forces and strategy.
You probably also think the Shakespeare blanket anti catholic sub tones and pro Tudor messaging was also timeless?
@@SpottedHares Buddy didn't pass highschool english because he doesn't know what made Shakespeare's writing timeless.
I think easily the worst part of the game (from a sales point) is the realistic art style of the cast. They look so oddly unappealing l when you compare it to the pixar-esque appeal of overwatch, tf2, and even fortnite.
Agreed. Though I'd focus more on their skins instead of the cast itself. Cast looks borderline ok (and like 1 or 2 are quite good), but the skins look like ass. What the fuck is that yellow jacket??!! What the fuck is that thick plate of armor? It looks like the armor from Doom, but without any added details/textures.
The robot character looks like a damn barrel.
@@TheAwkwardGuy The sad part is, that yellow barrel robot stands out the most because he look so unique compared with everyone else!
If they leaned into the 80's-ness of the logo and straight up use an 80's aesthetics, even if they kept the characters silhouette the same, it would have probably be more eye catching and people wouldn't dismiss it that quickly. Or give everything cel-shading and change the effects to cartoons for that 80's Saturday morning TMNT, GI Joe vibe!
It also makes it more difficult to have unique character designs, Overwatch has a hamster in a wrecking ball, and a robot centaur, Paladins has a dragon with a jetpack
All of concord designs are very humanoid and boring
Ironic, they couldve spent a fraction of the budget on a cartoony artstyle, wouldve given them more freedom with the designs and the designs wouldve aged better
This is clearly one of those decisions taken early on that had catastrophic repercusions during development
@@ArchOfWinter Man all these sound like great ideas. Too bad this is what came out lmao
From what I can gather the game had a more styled cell shaded look earlier in development that did the character design more of a favor. They look like comic book characters and they look best in that style
Even though most gamers don't give a crap about culture war?
Not to mention even gaming outlets gave Wukong positive reviews, and that comparing it to GTA is just ungodly asinine.
They may not care about the culture war but the stuff culture warriors complain about (the designs) was also bad for attracting a general audience.
Gamers dont care about the culture war, but the culture war cares about gamers.
Gamers hate ugly character designs, and left doctrine/views in the culture war incentivise ugly designs. Thus, gamers are indirectly, naturally opposed to stuff that's overly culture-war left.
@@HaartieeTRUE "The left doctrine" found the culture warrior
@@mothman7786lmao cope and go play concord
Many don't care, but those that do care usually aren't on the side of woke. Besides, what wokeness does to games and movies is just bad in general. You don't have to be a far right culture warrior to not want to play a game that unappealing.
I own a copy of ET for the Atari 2600 simply since it’s known as such a disaster. Looking at its plastic case I’m realizing history is repeating itself
"I'll be astonished if the game is around next year..."
Didn't make a month
On a correction for the secret level show, god of war isn’t getting its own dedicated episode, it’s part of the PlayStation episode with multiple IP’s of PlayStation.
The only 2 PlayStation ip’s to get their own episode are concord and sifu.
Idk why they choose concord out of so many of their games..
Concord alone + those Asian mobile games, makes this show more like an glorified advertisement, waiting to chase that Edgerunners/Arcane popularity.
@@lumirairazbyte9697It has a Megaman episode, and that IP has no new game to sell
Sony confirming that the game failed only 4 days after this video was uploaded is hilarious.
Damn Anthem is so obscure it doesn't even get an honorable mention
0:38 you forgot to account for the amount of refunds lol
Wu-Kong did so well because of China and being a story so dear to their culture, not because of the culture war. Most steam sales are in China, not the United States or the West.
👍
I like how he literally said that most the players were in China and then said it was because of the culture war lol
it got popular on the west part because of the culture wars
I don't think the culture war has much to do with its failure. Yeah the character designs are a bit ugly but it mostly comes down to people getting tired of hero shooters and live service games.
Honestly most people I know didn't realize the game is woke and they're the type to dislike them. They were 99% on how generic, boring, and bad the characters design is. And we mostly poke fun at corporations being out of touch.
@@Pandaxtor You could say that Hades has "woke" character designs but people don't mind it because the gameplay is good.
@@vianabdullah2837 I think the woke don't realized they have more enemies than just right wing. Other political group including left wings don't like them either but tend to be a bit more open with progressive ideas. They probably be the main customers of Hades. Probably me as well but I'm not found of roguelite games.