Thanks for the overwhelming support everyone, including those who were emotional enough to post, and yet not finish the video! We feel this is one of our best yet, and the reception matches that. We hope you enjoyed our unique take on Concord. We hope you also enjoyed the time we took to analyze the game, analyze the narratives surrounding it, and those who analyzed it. And to any other brave DEI warriors, feel free to brave the Discord.gg/nerdslayer to really make your "arguments" heard properly...if you don't...you lose. Checkmate. Welcome to the internet!
No leadership for developing Concord, huh. Sort of reminds me of that line from the Jerky Boys movie: "Thank you for calling 1600 Pennsylvannia Avenue." "WHO THE FUCK'S IN CHARGE OVER THERE?"
I really appreciate how you basically KO'd both parties of the culture war surrounding the game. Both believe they have the definite answer but the truth lies in the middle as always. Great job🎉
I absolutely love your videos, but your rant about SBI and DEI was very off the mark and missed a LOT of details in regards to this game's development team and their mindset when making it. I would personally prefer that such rants are simply removed from future videos entirely if you wish to remain completely neutral, because a good amount of people could counter many of the points you made and cause others to question your research.
They named him Star Child, so generic... I prefer something more imaginatively embarrassing such as Galaxy Juvenile or Cosmos Litter. Or even more epic like Sweet Baby.
@@Rhomcom oh 100%, there is so much wrong with it like… boring and unappetizing characters and lore,being another hero shooter in a genre absolutely flood with em, the representation being rather poor representation feels like they went “let’s make a gay character and the fact that they’re gay is their whole personality” and not “let’s make a engaging character who is also gay” etc etc, plus add a 40$ price tag and a little culture war seasoning and you have a game people will be discussing about for a long time after it dies. (not for the reasons they intend but still)
Less than being sexy or attractive, a good character design has to have Appeal and that's one of the 12 principles of animation (which all games fall into despite some AAA devs wanting to ignore that). A character can be even be considered ugly, gross or scary but still have charisma, presence and personality and be appealing.
Very true, it also relies heavily on setting. But getting less conventionally attractive cast of characters on your supposedly AAA, next big hit, 200 million dolar hero shooter, im sorry to say it like this, but people want to see some sexy characters, both sides. As said in the video, sex sells, and you can go without it but not on this setting, and not on the scale this game wanted to reach. Its just how it is.
@@phantomfenrir4976 The genre chosen was: Hero shooter where you rely on people being attached/hooked to at least one character and 70s sci-fi which not sure younger audiences care much for and relies on exciting/over the top/distinct visuals like Star Wars or Moebius Art or something cheesier but it's so watered down in appeal to seemingly not offend anyone it ends up lacking any charm unless you just care about the gameplay.
This comment immediately made me think of Yzma from The Emperor’s New Groove. A character designed to be ugly and gross, yet who on Earth doesn’t love Yzma as a villain?
@@ew275x the grand irony is that in all trailers and press materials released by Firewalk studios never referred to the game as a Hero shooter. It's everyone else referring to it as one. Turn out being the Guardians of the Milquetoast attempting to break into a saturated game space isn't a financially viable one.
In a hero shooter, the characters have to either be cool, sexy, or both. You're right that every game doesn't need sexy characters, but hero shooters need to either give you a power fantasy, or a different kind of fantasy, ideally both. Genji is incredibly cool. I wish to be Genji. There are ZERO Concord characters I want to play as, and even less characters that are hot.
For one that costs that much money to make. It’s right up there with The Culling 2. A game in which it reached a major maximum of simultaneous players of …. 20. It died soon after it reached 2 maximum players in just a few days later.
It's gonna be tough beating the record of Immortals Muv-Luv Alternative, which shut down after 6 HOURS of going live. Reason? Not for a lack of popularity, but for a bug that was instantly exploited to permanently cripple the game economy.
@@akaimizu1 if i remember correctly the culling 2 was only actually playable for 12 hrs as after that it never had enough players online on pc to start the match and they lost community trust by shutting down culling 1 to sell culling 2 to force players on there
A big issue with the character designs is that they're very stylized designs being rendered in a realistic style, and that causes a big clash that makes them look like they're cosplaying as themselves.
it didn't cost 400 million to make, people need to stop being so gullible , the person who started that rumor had nothing to even back up such a ridiculous claim
@@bbsugarsmurf19 we don't know how much it cost because Sony won't ever admit it but we can know more or less for certain that it was a commercial failure considering the mass refunds.
@@bbsugarsmurf19 stop huffing that copium and just accept that your god sony isnt infallible. 200 million for 5+ years of development and another 200 million to fix that mess from expensive outsourcing to outside studios isnt unrealistic.
Live Service as a phrase already is plagued and cursed, i wonder why they keep doing this. Though it is refreshing seeing that single player games on the other hand get incredible support in comparison and that fills me with hope for future games again. Perhaps the whole "Online" thing will dim to obscurity cause it honestly is getting tired.
@@onlywithbuts1781 because live service generates infinite money for considerably less effort lol You can either try to make one very good single player game that lasts a long time with great replayability that takes a lot of effort or make a bare bones game with minimal content that you can think of later and could possibly generates money faster (which is the main goal of investors, the companies main concern) for a lot less effort Or better yet put a lot of effort and money into the wrong areas and resulting in a terrible game like concord 😂
@@Ubeenblind Did you not watch the video showcasing the portuguese eurogamer article openly criticizing the game at 17:31, which you can still find and read if you google it?
43:57 "Nearly no marketing" is exaggerated imo. They dedicated a third of a Playstation direct to it and made a whole episode for secret levels about it. Not enough might be more accurate.
@@AlexanTheManI mean dustborn is nothing compared to concord. People will still be talking about concord’s failure 5 years later, no one will even remember dustborn in 2 months.
Sega was smart and just scrapped Hyenas, thus the loss they took was nothing compared to what Sony did with Concord. More studios and publishers need this level of awareness, cause without it will just lead to more failure and loss.
@@goufr3540Sony were not the ones who developed it. They just bought the company and gave them money to develop their project. Sony let them have full creative control and it was the developers at fire walk that chose to ignore feedback and chose to push ahead. It had nothing to do with Sony. That's why the game director stepped down. He knows he fucked the game up by ignoring any feedback that was given.
Recent information shows there was a culture of toxic positivity in the company where there was a strong aversion to criticism, sounds like alot of group think and not wanting to offend your co-workers.
@@smergthedargon8974 the main evidence we have right now is from a few articles (and a youtube interview) talking about the internal work culture of the game
@@smergthedargon8974Colin Moriarty was the original journalistic source. He used to work at ign specialising in playstation back when ign was decent. He has many sources within the industry and particularly Sony.
@@smergthedargon8974 A lot of game news articles are coming out with this story. (Obviously the sources will remain anonymous as they should be). But I think it's fair to say that it's not complete BS. And frankly, looking at the end product... It's obvious that this is what happened. If almost the entire gaming community saw just how bad those character designs and ideas were, then surely developers among Firewalk would have noticed it too but were ignored or shut down. Anyone with two braincells would see why this game would fail from the start, but they never changed course to adapt. So toxic positivity culture is very likely.
Literally Starlin's government, be positive or else i'll make it your problem, it's why socialist governments always end up covering up problems than actually fixing htem
The reason game critics handle games with a soft touch is because they need to maintain access! If they are too critical, they are afraid they will no longer be allowed to have access to previews. And when most of the sites cannot make money, they compromise on their reviews!
I don't know if I fully agree with this. Maybe there's a little bit of truth to this, but if you consider that giving a couple dozen copies to random companies is essentially cheap marketing, these organisations won't go away. If I recall, Alannah Pierce had said in some video from many years ago (from her experience writing for IGN) that the worry of whether they get a review copy was never a concern (though it's been a long time so I'm not 100% certain on that). Plus, we've seen people be extremely critical of PlayStation specifically and still get free goodies afterwards (in particular I think of Caddicarus who was unkind to the PlayStation Classic in 2018 and was still sent a free PS5 at launch in 2020). I think people are just reading the numbers differently. Consumers gave this a 1.8/10 while critics gave it a 6.2/10. Consumers seemingly like to stick to either 1/10 or a 10/10. Critics tend to stay in the 6/10-10/10 range. I like to think of it as a Fareignheight (don't care to spell that correctly) vs Celsius. 32 degrees means something completely different depending on which measurement you use. Similarly with games, these scores mean different things, but they both show the same feelings; the game was not good. I know the articles he read said really positive things but, let's be real. A 6/10 average among critics is an abysmal score. I would also point to the different situations people are in when their job is gaming vs literally anything else. Critics have the time to play and are not paying for the game. As much as they might say it doesn't factor into their opinion, I don't think anyone can truly shake away that bias. As a person who doesn't work in that field, I can't afford to buy a middling game. With the spare time I can give to this hobby, I want my money to be well spent. Can a critic truly evaluate any game without those factors affecting them? Maybe that's why they tend to trend more positive. If I buy Callisto Protocol for $70 (and I did, let's not talk about it) I'd be pissed at how much money I wasted. I'm likely to be a lot more emotionally impacted than the person who got it for free. I would likely give a more critical score than someone who wasn't financially impacted. Again, when the lowest score critics tend to give is a 6/10, that just means their 6 is our 1, adjust accordingly.
It just screams of incompetence from devs, then. If you're afraid your game is gonna get bad reviews on X game website, maybe it's time to make good games? It's like those devs who cried that Larian ruined it for other devs because Baldur's Gate 3 was a good game. Now, they have to work to make good games too! The AUDACITY of Larian!!
provided you're talking about yourself, i really hope this doesn't discourage you from making videogames (or any other form of art), i'm sure you've got a lot of talent that was just used on the wrong thing. I look forward to seeing whatever you work on next !!
Went down like: 'Hey lets use AI to make all our assets and allow our activist team members influence that AI. Cannot go wrong. Everyone will LOVE the end result no matter what!'
@@SoullessAIMusic I think you misunderstood me, I am saying that failure is always an option, to fail is to learn if you are willing to take the lesson. The video said no one deserves failure, and I disagree. Or have I misunderstood you?
Sure but who decides what's a bad idea? Overwatch is super gay and so are all the ships and it was called woke even when it came out...and it was fine. Better game than this, but sometimes shit just gets crushed for no real reason (not this, this actually sucked lol)
@@whydidyoutubeaddthis Exactly, the market, ie customer, decides what sinks or floats, and said gay chars were reasonably well done and not in your face. Also, unpopular opinion, but I think OW wouldent have been as big as it is without the rule34 art, it's pretty generic frankly. But again the market wants what it wants.
The reason people focus on how the characters look so much is because their core business model is selling skins for these characters. When your whole business model is selling visual dlc you dont get to complain about people focusing on characters' looks...
Plus, this was a HERO shooter. Character design is EVERYTHING when it comes to a hero shooter because the goal should be to make you imprint upon the characters you can select. Overwatch and TF2 have such loyal followings because the characters are interesting and make people feel attracted towards playing them. Concord doesn't even have R34 art of any characters, which tells you a LOT on the internet.
@@uhagi6720even less popular hero shooters like Paladins knows how to do this. I can look at a picture of some of the original heroes and immediately know who they are. Hero shooters live and breathe on how attached a person gets on a character, I would’ve never liked OW as much as I do if it wasn’t for Zenyatta looking the way he does.
And the stark contrast of the Astrobot being so beloved really shows people are kinda tired of the online only games. Feels like everyone got a nice fill of them and it is time to go back to what really makes everyone happy, i do not doubt that online games will always find a place but not the way they are approaching it lately.
Gaming is ok, its arguably even better than ever before. There are so many games in each genre, that you are no longer forced to play the one that are not in your taste and still be satisfied with different ones. We should stop pretending its 1980s again where 90% of games were unplayable shovelwares.
@@onlywithbuts1781 A lot of online games rely on constant player engagement and like we've seen before, once someone finds a game, it's harder to pull them away from that one onto another. They're unknowingly carving up the market into smaller sections until it reaches the point where it's shortening the life spans of all the games and it's unsustainable for most of them.
What really gets me is that people pretend that Bungie was a good company, it's not there was like three guys there That made it happen and they're long gone
The people that started it 100% not woke either with the jokes they pulled in their game back then that pushed censorship even back then to its limits.
The actual death of Concord happened about 20 seconds after the reveal trailer when the spokesman said "Concord will be a 5v5 hero shooter", every streamer at that exact moment went "oh, yeah no this will fail"
Not even Overwatch has managed to survive unscathed in that market, idk why every two-bit developer thinks they're gonna suddenly make a billion dollars on the same idea.
The character designs have the same problem Hyenas had last year, They entirely based them on what they are, not who they are. And there's absolutely nothing wrong with making characters attractive. This is a commercial medium, it's not what you want, it's what makes the customers give you the most money.
@@smugshrug Well there's Blueberry, thrashcan and... that one soldier in football gear. Few aliens. And that one asian chick who's kinda pretty, which is why she ended up in every youtube thumbnail ever.
The what isn't the issue, it's the missing who. As BG3 and other diverse games have shown, having diverse what's aren't the issue -- it's the missing depth. If they were random white guys, they'd still be bad do to the missing "who"/still missing depth. T Disappointed in both @larry and NerdSlayerStudios for liking the comment. Welp, two less channels to watch for me.
@@hefoxed thats what i try to tell people. when you design around gender/sexuality/race you get a flat character because no real person is that shallow.
As you said, the reason so many gamers have a particular distaste for DEI and the likes is because, generally speaking, it tends to result in those aspects being over-emphasized _to the point where the quality of the rest of the game suffers,_ often in story and mechanics. Add in the fact that SBI and some studios like this have a nasty tendency to attack fans online (see "talentless hacks") and it results in the alienation of the fanbase. And, as you said, a major issue with their characters is that they fail to make their characters _actual characters,_ often resulting in them feeling flat at best.
The problem with DEI is that it will ALWAYS lead to that kind of problem. DEI *requires* focusing on group traits, instead of individualism. That's baked into DEI. DEI is also based on the Equity Fallacy. "Equity" itself is based on the idea that unequal outcomes among groups unequivocally proves unequal opportunity among those same groups... Or that it proves discrimination... What exactly it proves sometimes changes, depending on who you ask. This is a fallacy. The reality is that unequal outcomes among groups proves absolutely nothing at all. Correlation does not equal causation. Individuals within a group, when given freedom, will ALWAYS have different outcomes, even when given the exact same opportunities. Equity is a LIE. It is NOT rooted in reality, and in fact, reality proves it wrong. The only way to even attempt to make equal outcomes happen is by taking away ALL freedom from individuals. It doesn't work, and makes everyone miserable. A focus on the group, over the individual will always, always suck, in any context (games, other artistic mediums, and even politics). It's corrosive and is an idea that needs to be resigned to the dustbin of history. Now, sure, it's possible that games/art/whatever can overcome the negatives of DEI, but DEI will *always* be a negative. Also, of course, the problems with DEI can be made worse with incompetent developers... And obviously games can have be bad outside of DEI.
Concord should be a lesson not to let your ego blind you that you would block any criticism and "negativity". Most people think the designs look awful and the fact that nobody listens to the feedback is just straight up delusional.
@@i_like_lemonsI’ve heard the same information. The toxic positivity and refusal to take criticism. I think the lead character artist called the playerbase “talentless freaks.”
@tenshi9397 its because dei hires get preferential treatment, nobody wants to call them out because it can negatively impact their careers. Some developers have even publicly said if your critize their work that your ist or a bigot.. if they are confident enough to say that publicly what do you think they are saying In private to co-workers? They probably have the same mindset..dei is a real issue even if people dont want to admit how big it really is..
@@Samsonfsthat is a nod for concept artists that more often than not are very awesome. Too bad game arts books are usually more expensive than the games they inspire, I would love to buy tons of them.
I saw that i wondered what happened with the development of the game. The original design looks much better and cooler, which makes me think some happen to change the direction to make the character more.... this..i can't think of word for their design.
@@onlywithbuts1781 I'm sure I'm not the first or last person to say that the modern pathological positivity trend is the thing I absolutely _hate_ most about modern society.
I'm sure it wasn't the DEI hiring practices. You know I'm sure hiring people who aren't the most qualified for the job wasn't the actual problem, as everyone likes to pretend systemic racism against white people (DEI) doesn't exist.
Hopefully it does. Fails like this deserve the spotlight. These insecure people will continue to try corrupting culture and ideals which they could not achieve until there is either a boiling point or nothing left. Postmodern thought is inherently deconstructive, but you can only break down so much until you’re left with nothing but rubble.
Yes. They won't learn from what they fucked up. Unfortunately anyone that calls a game woke was gonna always search for something to complain about lol
I DO think you can have a round/fat character look right in a shooter. I don't think they did it successfully, but The Heavy from TF2 doesn't feel out of place on the battlefield. Like, the issue isn't with characters round and fat, I just don't think they executed it very well in Concord. The Heavy is built like a powerlifter, he's fat but he also strong, he looks *tough*, and it makes perfect sense that a dude like that would have a lot of health, move slowly, and be lugging a big heavy machine gun around.
Gridlock in siege fits pretty well in game. She is far from the most attractive operator in siege but she wasn't intended to be, she's a big brute. My only gripe with her is that she has a run of the mill assault rifle and a magfed saw. I think she could've used a punchier, slow fire rate, big lmg similar to tachanka's.
Concord failed to see the reason how and why people relate to characters like themselves. Everyone has issues, some a major issue more than others like being lonely/antisocial, overweight, stoner or alcoholic (addict), that a player seeing a badass character with their issue and overcoming it, it's appealing af. An overweight person wants to be seen as Roadhog, not Concord's version. I could do the same with other examples, but hell I don't know what Concord's versions are 🤣. Point is, people wanna relate. It says a lot when a game makes such bland characters when really trying to force relatability.
Kung Jin (from mkx) is a perfect example of how to write a gay character. It doesn't become his entire personality, but it gives his character some depth and uniqueness to him
yeah I've meet non binary people at college as a board game club president it took multiple meetings for me to find out, only because i forgot their name and used the wrong pronoun. they are just normal people. same for the other LGBT+ individuals i met at club. If you can sit down for multiple hours and play board games without finding out, games can represent them subtly and be fine.
@HolyApplebutter sadly market teams forget that they need to advertise gameplay. if I wanted a narrative or story expirence (the only time a character's personalityout weighs gameplay) I'd read a book which I often do.
The characters really struggle to tell you about their playstyle at a glance. Compare them to dirty bomb, because it's reasonably similar, phoenix and stoker at a glance you can tell who's the medic and who's the fire bomber. Concord none of the medics look like medics, and the fire character uses marbles and a crossbow, with nothing in her design indicating anything to do with fire...
The only thing the fire mage type character had that indicated that she bends fire are the really out of place, bright yellow retro sneakers! Everywhere else on her design is a purple-ish, pink, and grey, but the yellow sticks out like a sore thumb.
@@jamesbyrd3740 true, the number gets higher every week lol. Still believe the 100-200m number first announced tho, that seems much more reasonable considering
Most devs working on something are aware about how the game is going. But as just a dev you don't really have a choice. What would you do as a programmer? Its not like you can do something about it. Also at some point its too late to change the game. You just finish it to get it out in the hopes it makes money somehow.
Zenless zone zero & helldivers 2 proved that “over saturated market” is totally a BS take and a shit excuse. There is always room for a new game if it is fun.
Tbf, ZZZ is from the same company that made Genshin Impact and Honkai Star Rail; Helldivers 2 is, well, the *sequel* of a known game so I don't think this applies on this case, at least not 100%.
@MarcsXA helldivers 2 does. There is a good chunk of that player base that didn't come in from the original. That game drew people in because it looks fantastic and fun.
Too bad Concord have nothing to stand out compared to the it peer except, ironically, its ugly ass art style but that doesnt make anyone want to play, the gameplay isn't anything to write home was the final nail.
My question is why did the trailer tease a completely different game from what was actually presented, gameplay-wise? The trailer prompts one to think of a heist or extraction game, not a hero shooter. Plus the promise of a weekly story cutscene isn’t really a good draw, nor is it particularly connected to the gameplay. Hero shooters in general are kinda not great from a game/story perspective since the characters have to exist in a narrative stasis, not really being able to develop, change allegiances, perma-die, become disabled, all because they need to remain in a state where they’re ready to fight cyclical battle number 77545667633389075. And the next million after that. It’s why overwatch having a PVE mode was a thing people were hyped about; a chance to see the cast in a variety of situations that weren’t another multiplayer match. And yeah, some will say they don’t need a story, or that the story is the multiplayer matches, but i feel that to be a cop-out, an excuse for laziness in writing. A character without an arc is not much of a character at all, and this is a genre dependent on characters. They need a reason to be doing what they’re doing.
>People saying not celebrate a game failing Fuck that noise lmao. This game looked like garbage from the get go, and this shit deserved every lost dollar lol
Yeah just because you created something doesn't mean that suddenly im supposed to respect it.. i took a crap this morning am i supposed to get a standing ovation for it? And its not like they were doing it for just art or passion they were getting paid for it, they get benefits and its whole purpose was to make money.. im sick of treating some developers as special little babies, most people that mess up get fired and we never weep for those people but its different because they make games? Give me a break..
The biggest takeaway here is just the absolute failure of modern gaming "journalism." Next to no one was honest about this game when it was set to come out. They all did their jobs as advertisers for Sony and ignored the apparent issues with Concord. This is why people aren't turning to these sites anymore. You can't trust them. And this game failed for a multitude of reasons. It just didn't do anything special versus it's competition. And honestly the designs were terrible and told you nothing about the characters. Sony thought this would be a blockbuster, but it only ended up being a huge loss.
I have to be real, whichever individual was responsible for greenlighting the char designs in design docs needs to be evaluated carefully going forward with any authoritative role. It is genuinely exceptional how bad it is.
Hopefully this is a strong a message we can send as gamers that we are just done with these uninspired, design-by-comittee, live service titles that just serve to build a portfolio instead of actually, you know, making a fun game.
I mean I hope the big companies actually learn the right lessons from concord’s failure but I have a creeping feeling that they probably will only take the wrong advice from it..
“Sony these days lacking in the shooter realm” Me looking at my copy of RESISTANCE Fall of Man on my shelf: “Aye you were gone too soon for us, but at least you didn’t live to see yourself turned into this.”
All Sony has to do is remaster the Resistance and Killzone games and put them on PC too. But no, chasing a trend with live service games is way better according to Sony logic.
@@MarioWendorf The point was how it died so quick, since Nerdslayer does this little show "Death of a Game." Please mate, keep up, else you sound like one of those "It was DEI!" chuds who lack any sort of critical thought process.
My take on Concord is that instead of a 5v5 Hero shooter i would've loved if it was a Character action Single player action FPS where you switch characters from your Crew Build in real time and use them correctly depending on the situation like facing an specific enemy akin Doom Eternal or unlock new areas ala Metroidvania.
@@harpsdesire4200 me neither but like i said this is just my take of what could've been more unique and attractive to players that might have a fatigue yk
One thing I disagree about the sweet baby inc bit where you said they've been part of really successful video games, is that their part in these roles contribute nothing for the success of those games. Spiderman 2 feeling good to swing in was not thanks to sbi, it was the bad story, writing, and dialogue you can thank them for. Their presence adds nothing positive for the majority of players. As for all major companies incorporating lgbt themes and dei stuff for your counteragrument as to them still being successful, these companies are doing it from a position where they're too big to fail. Companies like microsoft and disney burn money away making content for such a niche audience in an already extremely small demographic. Don't get me wrong, if you're a company or creator, make what you want but don't go changing the core and essence of a game to accommodate a different audience that hates the series and alienating the original audience, just look at the saints row reboot. But these companies know that the majority of players don't play their games for the politically correct content so they have to inject it into pre existing ip, because making a new ip with these elements baked in results in what you see with concord.
@judgedrekk2981 nearly nobody cares about your culture war. Most people just want good entertainment and art, and most people just want to see themselves in there entertainment. A more diverse cast makes ot easier to get more people attached, and expands the kinds of stories you can tell, and in an era of reued plots new is interesting. I have yet to see a game people clamed was killed from "woke" that wasn't fundamentally poorly made, and using it as a crutch or deflection from its quality.
@@judgedrekk2981 The only culture war here is the one in your head. You seem to think "Everything I don't like is woke." The only people who even use that word are batshit right wingers who get angry that gay people have the audacity to exist.
Costing $400 million and only making $1 million in sales that they refunded has to be the biggest flop in media history. No movie or game comes close to that level of failure
This game needs to be immortalized forever in all forms of knowledge from digital to paper. "Those who do not learn from their history are doomed to repeat it."
The problem that i have seen people talk about regarding wokeness and the characters designs is that they all look like the Hollywood lgbt character they always do on movies, games and series, ugly, flamboyant and with 0 style and it's sad because not only people outside of the collective can see how horrendous they are, people inside the community ALSO HATE THESE CHARACTERS, because it's a caricature of what they represent with "be yourself" and so on, it's so tiring
To give you an idea of how much money 400 million dollars is, you could operate a full-fledged F1 team for 3 full seasons for that kind of money. I'm talking about EVERYTHING in a 1000-plus personnel operation. R&D, wind tunnel hours, advanced CFD models, build costs for both cars and spare parts, associated travel costs for cargo, equipment and team members, and the salaries and benefits of every single employee of the team except for the drivers and maybe the team principal. What I'm saying is, Sony could realistically run the Red Bull F1 team for a good while for that sort of cash. But instead, we got this...
People don't realize that a character's name and design help gamers show what abilities that character has. This is why character design is important for a hero shooter.
One of the few good things that came out of the Concord debacle is that all the videos on character design helped more people realize that, despite all its flaws as a game, Overwatch has outstanding character design.
important is an understatement. its one of the main hooks of the game. hero shooters just like fighting games live and die on their cast. its night and day when you play a game with a character that you gel with. your more connected to the action.
@@thejunkmanlives This. It's a HERO!!!!! shooter, you should care about Heroes. They should be likeable, charismatic and attractive to some degree, its important to make the players want to be attached to them.
"Game journos getting figuratively hit with a metaphorical lead pipe" is one of my favourite video genres. Also why does everything looks inflatable?, I thought the green guy's jacket was an outlier but many characters have inflatable tubes in some part of their outfit. Makes them look like Michelin creatures.
CriticalArt, a self-professed bean counter "finance guy", made better designs then the entire art team for this game. The art team has no excuse. When a failure happens 400 million times (assuming a dollar per hour) then that's not incompetence
I will probably be called all kinds of names and nerdSlayer would probably call me anti-DEI or whatever but I have to write few things. It's ok most people won't even read this because no one reads long comments anyway. Oh, also I wouldn't be surprised to be labeled as far right even though I have nothing to do with USA politics as I am from a Balkan country in Europe and politics here function very different. Concord did fail mostly because of the characters, DEI and the way the developers addressed their public. You keep repeating that marketing was the problem but then you give an example of Deadlock and in the past dota, league etc, games that had no marketing and yet look at the player base of Deadlock. Without any clear vision they could have had marketing all over the place, just like Homefront did back in the days and it would still bust. Then you say sex sells but again Deadlock has the same type of characters, most of them are robots, buttoned up, not sexual at all and yet people play them. And yes, most people that play know that there is LGBTQ character, its Pocket. If people are so dedicated to characters they play most of them will read the lore. Difference is its not pushed as a main thing, it doesn't shame any other group its not a whole identity of a champion. 90% of people who say go woke go broke or DEI game don't have anything against gay, lesbian or whatever. They have a problem how it is implemented in games and that it is forced into already established franchises and already established characters are changed to fit the modern narrative. People are tired of so many games, shows, films being about who is gay who is using what pronounces. They just want to enjoy a good and quality story. We had LGBTQ in video games long time ago and no one cared. Because if it was introduced it was done either subtly through some dialogue or it was done where it had impact on the story, with good reason. Just like most people, I don't go out to the store to buy some milk and stop 20 times telling random people if I prefer vagina or penis or do I identify as a demon. Concord did just that, it was a game that didn't stand out in any other way then trying to cater "modern" audience. They called people who offered genuine help talentless freaks. Over and over we hear if you don't like it don't play it. So people finally started to do just that. Majority of players are just normal guys and girls. That is a reason why DEI likes way more to take over already established franchise that audience cares about then to make something from ground up. Because when they do something from ground up it ends up being filled with anger and hate and ugly characters without any meaningful story that resonates with most people and people don't play it. Concord and Dustborn are perfect examples. And I mean in your video you said that pretty much yourself. And yes there are idiots on both sides that scream loudly. Difference is that one side is accepted by media while other side as soon as you point out legit criticism or problems you are labeled as far right or something worse. No one has a problem with a women giving a game review like you did a little jab. Most of women don't like shit games either (shocking I know). They also don't like poor stories where one female is for no reason just more powerful, smart and kicks ass of 10x bigger dudes without proper explanation, character exploration, when she revels in humiliating others etc. And that is what today is seen as a "powerful" woman by media. Not how smart she is, not her story, not how much she cares about something or someone, feminine traits are even seen as a negative things in a female characters. In short when someone says DEI characters or story most of the time they mean how forceful and shallow it is made or that it is destroying already established lore, not that anyone has problems with a gay robot.
You've just put my thoughts into words. Yeah, there are going to be bigots unfortunately. But with the way DEI has been implemented these last few years, I just don't think it's a viable option to immediately dismiss legitimate criticism regarding this topic. Hell, there are left-leaning people out there who actually hate how DEI is implemented but some of them wouldn't be able to voice their opinions on it or else they'll be seen as a "category traitor". It certainly doesn't help that the people behind the force implementation of DEI will hide behind it as a shield from well-founded criticism and just angrily bark at them.
I found some of his points a little dismissive too, but tbh I think he's just tired of the bad faith culture warriors who always try to take over these discussions to push their particular side's political activism. It's unfortunate that genuine people sometimes get caught in the crossfire but the fault ultimately lies with those perpetuating the culture war (I don't need to name them, but certain youtubers are at the top of that list).
@@nikenit Lol yeah I read it. I find it funny that he doesn't think companies receive money in exchange for DEI when the information is out in the open. Doesn't matter if Sony is under USA or Japan. It is a company that will use funds that they can. Tik Tok is Chinese and the launched a trash app on the west while their version is strictly educational and promotes country values etc. Same with how games and films will be all in pride logos and put "diversity" in their products but they don't want to stand behind those convictions when launching products into China, gay characters are not gay anymore and logo is no longer rainbow colour. Thats why I assumed I will also be labeled as a hater or far right or whatever the term is today. But hey, in the end the market shows what it shows.
@@tarnetskygge I mean we all are tbh. I also just want to enjoy cool games with good mechanics, good stories etc. Thing is we will get more and more people "rebelling" because of dismissive stance towards most gamers for the last 20 years. I have nothing against games made specifically for LGBTQ community. But it is obvious that those loudest for those games don't even play games. Because those projects keep failing. I only have a problem when they take things like Star Wars, Star Trek and start changing everything to suit DEI content. Same with games. If they actually made an effort to make interesting characters and stories ... not just a token things. People are just tired of being called nazi, privileged, cis whatever and all other stuff because for example they don't want to listen about who is what sexuality ALL the time.
Unappealing character designs, uninteresting characters and lore, another live service shooter in 2024, plus a little culture war seasoning ultimately resulted in concord. Classic death by a thousand cuts kinda deal with this game.
i would argue that it wasn't really the characters being ugly but the intention behind the characters being ugly. deadlock having 100x the players concord ever could, proves that. characters can be ugly and still work when it's stylized that way. when your style is realistic and you purposely choose to make every character look like a homeless person who happened to find a gun on the ground in order to push a politically correct agenda, it shouldn't be a surprise to anyone that the game failed. it was obvious to everyone what they were doing.
@@aheahe7943corcord character design made me want to gouge my eyes. In games like palworld we can customize our characters to look like abomination but theres something to concord that made me feel repulsive.
I like to think that this video came out so soon after Concord released (and died) was because NerdSlayer saw the announcement trailer and went “this looks like something I am going to cover, better get started now”
29:56 You mentioned Deadlock being a "personal favorite" of yours and then bring it up immediately after and that game doesn't really have any "sexy" characters. I don't really think the lack of sex appeal was the issue with Concord.
@@nerdSlayerstudioss I'm not sure what you're saying isn't true. Deadlock's characters aren't really sexualized at all and its been extremely successful in a short amount of time. This is literally true.
kinda disappointed, i started watching DoaG for well-researched stories of how a game was developed behind the scenes, not just your opinions about the opinions of other reviewers
the failure of concord is not just damning evidence of the atrocious state of the video games industry, but also an indictment against all the out-of-touch games "journalists"...
Concord didnt have a chance... Destiny is somewhat forgotten... Titanfall was misunderstood... Overwatch is being keep alive by the p*rn... But TF2... TF2 Is forever.
@@metalllich3493 dude, go back to playing valorant or league of legends if you think like that. There are NO bots, I repeat: NO BOTS in TF2 by the time being. Furthermore: valve keeps banning cheaters and bots from the game, thanks to #FixTF2 Go find some friends to play this free game with, I guess... "Dead Game" actually means this: when the steam charts are saying "0 players online", or "1 player(s) - last hour peak"
@@metalllich3493only about half of them are idle bots. If 20,000 concurrent players equals "dead game" to you, you need to get your eyes checked. Also, what games do you play, if tf2 "plays like shit"?
The complaints people have about DEI go hand in hand with your segment on "don't make being [trait] your primary personality trait." The masses don't care what trait they have, they just want good characters. Instead, companies make one dimensional characters and then preemptively say "You just hate this because it's got this trait in it, therefore you're istaphobic!" and discourage potential paying customers from buying it.
The silliest part is that Lennox's sole personality trait wasn't even some DEI stuff, they just managed to make "hot sauce enjoyer" an entire personality and also the face of the game 💀
Where were the modern audience to save the game? I mean Concord was made from the ground up for them without hijacking a standing IP. Are you telling me they don't exist? Mild shock
at this point we need more massive disasters like this in media if things are going to get better(it looks like more are coming). we need to get back to creativity, innovation and most importantly passion. and yes, the robot having gender pronouns, the ugly "inclusive" designs did a lot of damage(unappealing characters in a hero shooter isnt going to get you far).
@@SandwichGamesHeavy the problem ist hat people like NS will immediately deflect with a canned response instead of looking in the mirror. when sexuality/race/gender is the focal point of the character it wont be relatable because nobody is that shallow. and this is before you factor in the lecturing that normally comes with this stuff so of course people will avoid it just look at overwatch. doomfist and wrecking ball are my 2 favorite characters(def in my top 10 all time favorites) and i am neither Nigerian or a hamster.
You know there are old animated films from the former Eastern Block that critiqued old soviet style of architecture by creating truly interesting and imaginative building, then slowly chipping away all soul and character out of it, by passing the blueprints trough different departments, till the final product is just boring rectangle with windows and doors, and serving its purpose but nothing more (a metaphor how the state viewed the individual, also) this is what modern AAA games are like, they are technically games with their core elements there, but no soul, no character, no spark behind it.
I hate pandering. It ruins movies, games, stories in general. That's Dustborn's problem. From what I hear, most people didn't like Concord because the character designs were super unappealing in general and the game itself was fine but didn't do anything different than more popular, free titles. DEI was just a good scapegoat. Older badass ladies are so easy to get right. And everyone loves a good friend-shaped boi. Also gumbo IS great.
Pandering to people that never are customers are the problem legit pandering to woke drug addicts that spend all their money on drugs they not got time for games.
>Constantly insists that DEI wasn't the reason why the game failed`, and insults people who argue that it is >Third of the video is arguing that DEI was the sole reason the game failed What did he mean by this?
Was about to comment that, when you read some of the discourse around the game ( by the developers btw) as a white man I DID feel alienated. Now what is the majority demographic of pc games again?( People often use phone gamers to water down statistics)
NS is acting like "go woke, go broke" isnt a thing as if there arent plenty of examples of things failing or getting canceled because of it. nobody wants to be lectured especially in media thats supposed to be a form of escapism. i dont need a character to look like me to like them, but the character has to be likable/relatable for me to make that connection.
Ye, really feels like NS is living in some different timeline, because "alienating their paying audience" is exactly what gaming, movie and comics industries been doing for the last 10-15 years. And by this point we have almost infinite supply of examples of all those products failing time and time again, yet people like NS list the decisions that lead to the failure, but pretend they know no reason why any of those decisions was made, because it will break the narrative of "woke doesn't exist".
@@thejunkmanlivesYeah, I would love to see someone do a proper deep dive into "go woke, go broke" it's so much more complex than most people that use the phrase think it is, and idk why some people refuse to see that it's at least a factor in a product success. Personally I think the real problem with it is the culture it generates inside the organization, hard to make a good product when raising certain types of criticism will cost you promotions (on a good day) and your job (on bad days). So most employees just see what's wrong, stay silent and hope it's no big deal at the end.
I think you severely overestimate what portion of the population is actually LGBT, not that I blame you considering how hard every major corporation and media outlet pushes it. Pandering to LGBT people at the expense of everyone else doesn't make business sense and isn't being done for the purpose of making money, at least not in a legitimate sense.
This game's failure is legitimately one for the history books. I don't think there has ever been a bigger flop in gaming history. Not even E.T. comes close to this. If games were still sold on physical media there wouldn't be big enough dessert to bury this one lmfao
the reason almost all major corporations have those performative lgbtq signs up is because of the major kickbacks they get from investors like blackrock its not because it makes money its because it makes nearly free money at the cost of public perception
Thanks for the overwhelming support everyone, including those who were emotional enough to post, and yet not finish the video! We feel this is one of our best yet, and the reception matches that. We hope you enjoyed our unique take on Concord. We hope you also enjoyed the time we took to analyze the game, analyze the narratives surrounding it, and those who analyzed it.
And to any other brave DEI warriors, feel free to brave the Discord.gg/nerdslayer to really make your "arguments" heard properly...if you don't...you lose. Checkmate. Welcome to the internet!
Link appears to be broken
The credits of the game are longer than this video 💀
No leadership for developing Concord, huh. Sort of reminds me of that line from the Jerky Boys movie:
"Thank you for calling 1600 Pennsylvannia Avenue."
"WHO THE FUCK'S IN CHARGE OVER THERE?"
I really appreciate how you basically KO'd both parties of the culture war surrounding the game. Both believe they have the definite answer but the truth lies in the middle as always.
Great job🎉
I absolutely love your videos, but your rant about SBI and DEI was very off the mark and missed a LOT of details in regards to this game's development team and their mindset when making it. I would personally prefer that such rants are simply removed from future videos entirely if you wish to remain completely neutral, because a good amount of people could counter many of the points you made and cause others to question your research.
They've got a big, gorilla-looking dude who shields people by turning his skin to glittery, gem-like stone and they DIDN'T name him Diamondback.
fair point
They named him Star Child, so generic...
I prefer something more imaginatively embarrassing such as Galaxy Juvenile or Cosmos Litter. Or even more epic like Sweet Baby.
Big guy with a blocking ability and a punch
Close enough. Welcome back, Doomfist
@@amalekedomite You ok buddy?
This is kinda of "R-word"..
I desperately want this game’s failure to be in a textbook someday.
Possibly as a reference of what not to do in a business textbook.
Even if it doesn't get into the books, this is absolutely going to become a case study for business and game dev students.
Given the speed it failed with, i bet someone has already done that.
It's most likely going to be used in classes for game developers about how NOT to make a game.
@@Rhomcom oh 100%, there is so much wrong with it like… boring and unappetizing characters and lore,being another hero shooter in a genre absolutely flood with em, the representation being rather poor representation feels like they went “let’s make a gay character and the fact that they’re gay is their whole personality” and not “let’s make a engaging character who is also gay” etc etc, plus add a 40$ price tag and a little culture war seasoning and you have a game people will be discussing about for a long time after it dies. (not for the reasons they intend but still)
"Colorful characters" .... makes every character desaturated pastels.
Less than being sexy or attractive, a good character design has to have Appeal and that's one of the 12 principles of animation (which all games fall into despite some AAA devs wanting to ignore that). A character can be even be considered ugly, gross or scary but still have charisma, presence and personality and be appealing.
Very true, it also relies heavily on setting.
But getting less conventionally attractive cast of characters on your supposedly AAA, next big hit, 200 million dolar hero shooter, im sorry to say it like this, but people want to see some sexy characters, both sides.
As said in the video, sex sells, and you can go without it but not on this setting, and not on the scale this game wanted to reach. Its just how it is.
@@phantomfenrir4976 The genre chosen was: Hero shooter where you rely on people being attached/hooked to at least one character and 70s sci-fi which not sure younger audiences care much for and relies on exciting/over the top/distinct visuals like Star Wars or Moebius Art or something cheesier but it's so watered down in appeal to seemingly not offend anyone it ends up lacking any charm unless you just care about the gameplay.
This comment immediately made me think of Yzma from The Emperor’s New Groove. A character designed to be ugly and gross, yet who on Earth doesn’t love Yzma as a villain?
@@ew275x the grand irony is that in all trailers and press materials released by Firewalk studios never referred to the game as a Hero shooter. It's everyone else referring to it as one.
Turn out being the Guardians of the Milquetoast attempting to break into a saturated game space isn't a financially viable one.
In a hero shooter, the characters have to either be cool, sexy, or both. You're right that every game doesn't need sexy characters, but hero shooters need to either give you a power fantasy, or a different kind of fantasy, ideally both.
Genji is incredibly cool. I wish to be Genji. There are ZERO Concord characters I want to play as, and even less characters that are hot.
This game must have set the record for how fast a video game can flop. No surprise it turned up on Death of a Game so fast
For one that costs that much money to make. It’s right up there with The Culling 2. A game in which it reached a major maximum of simultaneous players of …. 20. It died soon after it reached 2 maximum players in just a few days later.
It's gonna be tough beating the record of Immortals Muv-Luv Alternative, which shut down after 6 HOURS of going live. Reason? Not for a lack of popularity, but for a bug that was instantly exploited to permanently cripple the game economy.
It 100% did.
@@akaimizu1 if i remember correctly the culling 2 was only actually playable for 12 hrs as after that it never had enough players online on pc to start the match and they lost community trust by shutting down culling 1 to sell culling 2 to force players on there
@@nilpyc307 that was an indi dev. This is literally SONY. Its hilarious
A big issue with the character designs is that they're very stylized designs being rendered in a realistic style, and that causes a big clash that makes them look like they're cosplaying as themselves.
didnt realize that but yea that exactly. how am i supposed to take it seriously when it looks liek the game itself cant take itself seriously.
"realistic" 🤭
Kudos to concord, the first dead service game ever
"it cost 400,000,000 dollars to support this game... for 12 days."
-heavy tf2
14 days I thought
Just money laundering tbh
it didn't cost 400 million to make, people need to stop being so gullible , the person who started that rumor had nothing to even back up such a ridiculous claim
@@bbsugarsmurf19 we don't know how much it cost because Sony won't ever admit it but we can know more or less for certain that it was a commercial failure considering the mass refunds.
@@bbsugarsmurf19 stop huffing that copium and just accept that your god sony isnt infallible. 200 million for 5+ years of development and another 200 million to fix that mess from expensive outsourcing to outside studios isnt unrealistic.
>if you dont like it, dont play it
>okay
>WHY DID OUR GAME DIE?!
Eric andre logic😂😂
Then proceeds to blame the players
This decade is really giving us live service games that are dead on arrival.
This game makes Anthem look like a soaring success story.
unalive service games
Live Service as a phrase already is plagued and cursed, i wonder why they keep doing this. Though it is refreshing seeing that single player games on the other hand get incredible support in comparison and that fills me with hope for future games again. Perhaps the whole "Online" thing will dim to obscurity cause it honestly is getting tired.
@@flaregamer64damn you're kinda right I can still boot up Anthem and play it right now 💀
@@onlywithbuts1781 because live service generates infinite money for considerably less effort lol
You can either try to make one very good single player game that lasts a long time with great replayability that takes a lot of effort
or make a bare bones game with minimal content that you can think of later and could possibly generates money faster (which is the main goal of investors, the companies main concern) for a lot less effort
Or better yet put a lot of effort and money into the wrong areas and resulting in a terrible game like concord 😂
The spanish version of eurogamer hyped the game, gave it amazing reviews, but then they erased all the articles and videos that they posted .
😂
EU 😂
@@Ubeenblind Did you not watch the video showcasing the portuguese eurogamer article openly criticizing the game at 17:31, which you can still find and read if you google it?
@@Ubeenblind ?
Sony's cheques cleared 😆
43:57 "Nearly no marketing" is exaggerated imo. They dedicated a third of a Playstation direct to it and made a whole episode for secret levels about it.
Not enough might be more accurate.
Also the ridiculous amount of European culture foundations funding the project
I saw tons of Facebook ads for it
"Death" of a game implies it ever had life to begin with
Stillborn game lmao
We'd call it stillborn but that title belongs to Dustborn, a game that was released close to Concord and unworthy of a Death of a Game video.
@@AlexanTheMan to be fair, Death of a Game covers multiplayer games. afaik Dustborn is singleplayer
@@qunas101 I gotcha
@@AlexanTheManI mean dustborn is nothing compared to concord. People will still be talking about concord’s failure 5 years later, no one will even remember dustborn in 2 months.
This game’s death overshadows even Hyenas, and that was never released to begin with. At least SEGA saw the writing on the wall with that game.
Sega was smart and just scrapped Hyenas, thus the loss they took was nothing compared to what Sony did with Concord. More studios and publishers need this level of awareness, cause without it will just lead to more failure and loss.
Don't forget Amazon's Crucible.
@@billbillson6779I’ve actually never heard of Crucible. I will check that game’s development out later
@@goufr3540Sony were not the ones who developed it. They just bought the company and gave them money to develop their project. Sony let them have full creative control and it was the developers at fire walk that chose to ignore feedback and chose to push ahead. It had nothing to do with Sony. That's why the game director stepped down. He knows he fucked the game up by ignoring any feedback that was given.
Sega realized they went woke and they narrowly avoided going broke
Recent information shows there was a culture of toxic positivity in the company where there was a strong aversion to criticism, sounds like alot of group think and not wanting to offend your co-workers.
Got any evidence of that? I don't find it unbelievable, I'd just like to see proper proof.
@@smergthedargon8974 the main evidence we have right now is from a few articles (and a youtube interview) talking about the internal work culture of the game
@@smergthedargon8974Colin Moriarty was the original journalistic source. He used to work at ign specialising in playstation back when ign was decent. He has many sources within the industry and particularly Sony.
@@smergthedargon8974 A lot of game news articles are coming out with this story. (Obviously the sources will remain anonymous as they should be). But I think it's fair to say that it's not complete BS.
And frankly, looking at the end product... It's obvious that this is what happened.
If almost the entire gaming community saw just how bad those character designs and ideas were, then surely developers among Firewalk would have noticed it too but were ignored or shut down.
Anyone with two braincells would see why this game would fail from the start, but they never changed course to adapt.
So toxic positivity culture is very likely.
Literally Starlin's government, be positive or else i'll make it your problem, it's why socialist governments always end up covering up problems than actually fixing htem
The reason game critics handle games with a soft touch is because they need to maintain access! If they are too critical, they are afraid they will no longer be allowed to have access to previews. And when most of the sites cannot make money, they compromise on their reviews!
Sacrificing customer goodwill upon the Alter of Money, eventually you run out of both.
I don't know if I fully agree with this. Maybe there's a little bit of truth to this, but if you consider that giving a couple dozen copies to random companies is essentially cheap marketing, these organisations won't go away. If I recall, Alannah Pierce had said in some video from many years ago (from her experience writing for IGN) that the worry of whether they get a review copy was never a concern (though it's been a long time so I'm not 100% certain on that). Plus, we've seen people be extremely critical of PlayStation specifically and still get free goodies afterwards (in particular I think of Caddicarus who was unkind to the PlayStation Classic in 2018 and was still sent a free PS5 at launch in 2020).
I think people are just reading the numbers differently. Consumers gave this a 1.8/10 while critics gave it a 6.2/10. Consumers seemingly like to stick to either 1/10 or a 10/10. Critics tend to stay in the 6/10-10/10 range. I like to think of it as a Fareignheight (don't care to spell that correctly) vs Celsius. 32 degrees means something completely different depending on which measurement you use. Similarly with games, these scores mean different things, but they both show the same feelings; the game was not good. I know the articles he read said really positive things but, let's be real. A 6/10 average among critics is an abysmal score.
I would also point to the different situations people are in when their job is gaming vs literally anything else. Critics have the time to play and are not paying for the game. As much as they might say it doesn't factor into their opinion, I don't think anyone can truly shake away that bias. As a person who doesn't work in that field, I can't afford to buy a middling game. With the spare time I can give to this hobby, I want my money to be well spent. Can a critic truly evaluate any game without those factors affecting them? Maybe that's why they tend to trend more positive. If I buy Callisto Protocol for $70 (and I did, let's not talk about it) I'd be pissed at how much money I wasted. I'm likely to be a lot more emotionally impacted than the person who got it for free. I would likely give a more critical score than someone who wasn't financially impacted. Again, when the lowest score critics tend to give is a 6/10, that just means their 6 is our 1, adjust accordingly.
Exactly! They're all corrupt and should not be trusted.
It's what we all have known for a long time, they lower their heads to don't bite the hands that feeds them.
It just screams of incompetence from devs, then. If you're afraid your game is gonna get bad reviews on X game website, maybe it's time to make good games?
It's like those devs who cried that Larian ruined it for other devs because Baldur's Gate 3 was a good game. Now, they have to work to make good games too! The AUDACITY of Larian!!
Make your first video game: 😀
You end up on nerdSlayer Studios, 4 weeks later: 😦
provided you're talking about yourself, i really hope this doesn't discourage you from making videogames (or any other form of art), i'm sure you've got a lot of talent that was just used on the wrong thing. I look forward to seeing whatever you work on next !!
@enbydeadly I'm not working on anything, it was a joke lol
@@IronVigilance It was dead before I even heard of it :O
UPDATE: Sony decided to shut down Firewalk Studios due of Concord's biggest major flop that shattered Firewalk Studios' reputation.
God bless
To me Concord characters look like if you actually 3D modeled the "Corporate art style."
Like handicapped space or bathroom door iconography handed to an AI prompt with the request "Make these in to 3-D video game characters."
They just made some guy as the game's director he was probably a nightmare to work with
Went down like: 'Hey lets use AI to make all our assets and allow our activist team members influence that AI. Cannot go wrong. Everyone will LOVE the end result no matter what!'
Overwatch put through a machine wash with way too much bleach.
Hey AI, make me a video game. Make sure it looks like it was made by college educated developers with little to no real life experience.
I think this is a "Death of a game", where the corpse of the victim is still so warm, you could still interrogate them to ask who or what killed them.
Disco Elysium moment
@@SaSPonchICo "Communism"
@@So-4007 Bad.😊
"Nobody deserves failure." I disagree, a bad idea deserves ridicule, otherwise you wont learn.
@@SoullessAIMusic I think you misunderstood me, I am saying that failure is always an option, to fail is to learn if you are willing to take the lesson. The video said no one deserves failure, and I disagree. Or have I misunderstood you?
The issue comes with those who don't or won't learn from failure.
Sure but who decides what's a bad idea? Overwatch is super gay and so are all the ships and it was called woke even when it came out...and it was fine. Better game than this, but sometimes shit just gets crushed for no real reason (not this, this actually sucked lol)
@@Dr.LightMarker5613 I think they're agreeing with you
@@whydidyoutubeaddthis Exactly, the market, ie customer, decides what sinks or floats, and said gay chars were reasonably well done and not in your face. Also, unpopular opinion, but I think OW wouldent have been as big as it is without the rule34 art, it's pretty generic frankly. But again the market wants what it wants.
The reason people focus on how the characters look so much is because their core business model is selling skins for these characters. When your whole business model is selling visual dlc you dont get to complain about people focusing on characters' looks...
Plus, this was a HERO shooter. Character design is EVERYTHING when it comes to a hero shooter because the goal should be to make you imprint upon the characters you can select. Overwatch and TF2 have such loyal followings because the characters are interesting and make people feel attracted towards playing them. Concord doesn't even have R34 art of any characters, which tells you a LOT on the internet.
@@uhagi6720even less popular hero shooters like Paladins knows how to do this. I can look at a picture of some of the original heroes and immediately know who they are.
Hero shooters live and breathe on how attached a person gets on a character, I would’ve never liked OW as much as I do if it wasn’t for Zenyatta looking the way he does.
I won't play or watch anything with Characters that I hate looking at or I find annoying
Damn, I must be getting old. I play shooters for the gameplay. Couldn't care less about how my character(s) look.
Exactly! Like it or not looks ARE important on characters people play as constantly
This video came out not even a month after the games release. This is the sad state of gaming today.
And the stark contrast of the Astrobot being so beloved really shows people are kinda tired of the online only games. Feels like everyone got a nice fill of them and it is time to go back to what really makes everyone happy, i do not doubt that online games will always find a place but not the way they are approaching it lately.
get woke, go broke, its not just saying, its point of life
alienate the customers, you get burn
Gaming is ok, its arguably even better than ever before.
There are so many games in each genre, that you are no longer forced to play the one that are not in your taste and still be satisfied with different ones.
We should stop pretending its 1980s again where 90% of games were unplayable shovelwares.
@@onlywithbuts1781 A lot of online games rely on constant player engagement and like we've seen before, once someone finds a game, it's harder to pull them away from that one onto another. They're unknowingly carving up the market into smaller sections until it reaches the point where it's shortening the life spans of all the games and it's unsustainable for most of them.
@@kyotheman69 "woke is when make game no one wants."
What really gets me is that people pretend that Bungie was a good company, it's not there was like three guys there That made it happen and they're long gone
The people that started it 100% not woke either with the jokes they pulled in their game back then that pushed censorship even back then to its limits.
The actual death of Concord happened about 20 seconds after the reveal trailer when the spokesman said "Concord will be a 5v5 hero shooter", every streamer at that exact moment went "oh, yeah no this will fail"
Not even Overwatch has managed to survive unscathed in that market, idk why every two-bit developer thinks they're gonna suddenly make a billion dollars on the same idea.
I had that exact response, I was hoping it was some kind of RPG or something.
Paladins still survives!
what about marvel rivals ?
@@Bert439 The literal last developers working on it have left by now. The game is basically on life support.
The character designs have the same problem Hyenas had last year, They entirely based them on what they are, not who they are.
And there's absolutely nothing wrong with making characters attractive. This is a commercial medium, it's not what you want, it's what makes the customers give you the most money.
Well said.. I couldn't tell you a single thing about any characters from Concord. Entirely forgettable from first glance.
@@smugshrug Well there's Blueberry, thrashcan and... that one soldier in football gear. Few aliens. And that one asian chick who's kinda pretty, which is why she ended up in every youtube thumbnail ever.
The game is beautiful if you think vomit is beautiful. Why is everything olive and orange? Seriously.
The what isn't the issue, it's the missing who. As BG3 and other diverse games have shown, having diverse what's aren't the issue -- it's the missing depth.
If they were random white guys, they'd still be bad do to the missing "who"/still missing depth. T
Disappointed in both @larry and NerdSlayerStudios for liking the comment. Welp, two less channels to watch for me.
@@hefoxed thats what i try to tell people. when you design around gender/sexuality/race you get a flat character because no real person is that shallow.
As you said, the reason so many gamers have a particular distaste for DEI and the likes is because, generally speaking, it tends to result in those aspects being over-emphasized _to the point where the quality of the rest of the game suffers,_ often in story and mechanics.
Add in the fact that SBI and some studios like this have a nasty tendency to attack fans online (see "talentless hacks") and it results in the alienation of the fanbase.
And, as you said, a major issue with their characters is that they fail to make their characters _actual characters,_ often resulting in them feeling flat at best.
The problem with DEI is that it will ALWAYS lead to that kind of problem. DEI *requires* focusing on group traits, instead of individualism. That's baked into DEI.
DEI is also based on the Equity Fallacy. "Equity" itself is based on the idea that unequal outcomes among groups unequivocally proves unequal opportunity among those same groups... Or that it proves discrimination... What exactly it proves sometimes changes, depending on who you ask. This is a fallacy. The reality is that unequal outcomes among groups proves absolutely nothing at all. Correlation does not equal causation. Individuals within a group, when given freedom, will ALWAYS have different outcomes, even when given the exact same opportunities. Equity is a LIE. It is NOT rooted in reality, and in fact, reality proves it wrong. The only way to even attempt to make equal outcomes happen is by taking away ALL freedom from individuals. It doesn't work, and makes everyone miserable. A focus on the group, over the individual will always, always suck, in any context (games, other artistic mediums, and even politics). It's corrosive and is an idea that needs to be resigned to the dustbin of history.
Now, sure, it's possible that games/art/whatever can overcome the negatives of DEI, but DEI will *always* be a negative. Also, of course, the problems with DEI can be made worse with incompetent developers... And obviously games can have be bad outside of DEI.
Concord should be a lesson not to let your ego blind you that you would block any criticism and "negativity". Most people think the designs look awful and the fact that nobody listens to the feedback is just straight up delusional.
It really just looks like American football great.. -_-
these clowns never learn, why Hollywood in the shitter so is comic book industry, stop hiring activists
@@i_like_lemonsI’ve heard the same information. The toxic positivity and refusal to take criticism. I think the lead character artist called the playerbase “talentless freaks.”
@tenshi9397 its because dei hires get preferential treatment, nobody wants to call them out because it can negatively impact their careers. Some developers have even publicly said if your critize their work that your ist or a bigot.. if they are confident enough to say that publicly what do you think they are saying In private to co-workers? They probably have the same mindset..dei is a real issue even if people dont want to admit how big it really is..
@@Muizemullard414 take off your tinfoil hat and go outside
The concept art looks better than the end result.
To be fair that's usually the case imo
Fantasy almost always feels better than reality.
People likes cake it's soft and fluffy and easy to eat,
@@Samsonfsthat is a nod for concept artists that more often than not are very awesome.
Too bad game arts books are usually more expensive than the games they inspire, I would love to buy tons of them.
I saw that i wondered what happened with the development of the game. The original design looks much better and cooler, which makes me think some happen to change the direction to make the character more.... this..i can't think of word for their design.
As of the time of this writing, Firewalk studios has been shut down by Sony after the failure of Concord.
“Why don't they like it? We spent 400 million dollars on this!!!”
Without a joke this is how they see the world, given the toxic positivity i absolutely believe it went down exactly this way.
normal players and fans aren't their "modern audience" that's why, make something we don't' like we up right reject it.
@@onlywithbuts1781 I'm sure I'm not the first or last person to say that the modern pathological positivity trend is the thing I absolutely _hate_ most about modern society.
@@kyotheman69watch the video first before commenting dude that's the least of their problems.
@@amalekedomite Notice the word "pathological".
Toxic positivity and using "trolls" as a broad shield from any criticism will just lead to more and more fails like this
I'm sure it wasn't the DEI hiring practices. You know I'm sure hiring people who aren't the most qualified for the job wasn't the actual problem, as everyone likes to pretend systemic racism against white people (DEI) doesn't exist.
Hopefully it does. Fails like this deserve the spotlight. These insecure people will continue to try corrupting culture and ideals which they could not achieve until there is either a boiling point or nothing left. Postmodern thought is inherently deconstructive, but you can only break down so much until you’re left with nothing but rubble.
Disney Star Wars in a nutshell :P
Yes. They won't learn from what they fucked up. Unfortunately anyone that calls a game woke was gonna always search for something to complain about lol
It´s so sad that the same tactic is being used by political parties where I live and around the world.
Hope we don´t end up like Concord.
"Started by ex-Bungie devs and affiliates."
I see. That explains a lot.
Not the Grizzled Ancients back when it was a real company
Good old "Bungie Magic"
bet it's the same guys who made curse of osiris
Are those ex bungie devs from the halo days? Or destiny days is what I want to know lol
@@alexsynthesis I don't think any of the Halo devs would have willingly worked on this trainwreck, so by process of elimination...
I DO think you can have a round/fat character look right in a shooter. I don't think they did it successfully, but The Heavy from TF2 doesn't feel out of place on the battlefield.
Like, the issue isn't with characters round and fat, I just don't think they executed it very well in Concord. The Heavy is built like a powerlifter, he's fat but he also strong, he looks *tough*, and it makes perfect sense that a dude like that would have a lot of health, move slowly, and be lugging a big heavy machine gun around.
Gridlock in siege fits pretty well in game. She is far from the most attractive operator in siege but she wasn't intended to be, she's a big brute. My only gripe with her is that she has a run of the mill assault rifle and a magfed saw. I think she could've used a punchier, slow fire rate, big lmg similar to tachanka's.
Roadhog as well, the character is designed as a big chunky powerhouse that can take hits and the character design very obviously reflects this.
honestly Daw's design was so generic i thought they made a fat version of the protag from Star Wars Outlaws when i first saw it
Not a shooter, but Guilty Gear Strive is a fighting game that introduces a fat guy who looks badass and has a cool attitude: Goldlewis Dickinson.
Concord failed to see the reason how and why people relate to characters like themselves. Everyone has issues, some a major issue more than others like being lonely/antisocial, overweight, stoner or alcoholic (addict), that a player seeing a badass character with their issue and overcoming it, it's appealing af. An overweight person wants to be seen as Roadhog, not Concord's version. I could do the same with other examples, but hell I don't know what Concord's versions are 🤣. Point is, people wanna relate. It says a lot when a game makes such bland characters when really trying to force relatability.
As a gay man a character who you dont know is gay unless its told to you is better than stereotypes
Kung Jin (from mkx) is a perfect example of how to write a gay character. It doesn't become his entire personality, but it gives his character some depth and uniqueness to him
yeah I've meet non binary people at college as a board game club president
it took multiple meetings for me to find out, only because i forgot their name and used the wrong pronoun. they are just normal people.
same for the other LGBT+ individuals i met at club. If you can sit down for multiple hours and play board games without finding out, games can represent them subtly and be fine.
Almost always, but it's also fine to show like one person being obviously gay since thats just how life is
But how are we to easily market our game as having gay characters if it's hard to tell they're gay?
@HolyApplebutter sadly market teams forget that they need to advertise gameplay. if I wanted a narrative or story expirence (the only time a character's personalityout weighs gameplay) I'd read a book which I often do.
TF2 characters are hotter
Always have been.
tick tock
heavy like a brinks truck
Lol
Must be talking about the pyro.
Yeah
The characters really struggle to tell you about their playstyle at a glance. Compare them to dirty bomb, because it's reasonably similar, phoenix and stoker at a glance you can tell who's the medic and who's the fire bomber. Concord none of the medics look like medics, and the fire character uses marbles and a crossbow, with nothing in her design indicating anything to do with fire...
The only thing the fire mage type character had that indicated that she bends fire are the really out of place, bright yellow retro sneakers!
Everywhere else on her design is a purple-ish, pink, and grey, but the yellow sticks out like a sore thumb.
holy shit, you are right, you show me this horrid lineup and i couldnt tell whos the medic at a glance, WHAT THE FUCK!?
@joseaca1010 jabali looks more like a marksman than a healer. daw is even worst!
@@bronzetrophy2171 daw with his giantic hitbox, looks more like a tank
Gotta disagree on that, look at old Paladins, many of their chars dont look like their class
But the design is interesting and nice to look at
You forgot the strange toxic positivity in the workspace, No one was allowed to say anything negative about the game.
That's super cringe
He does mention it here
Allegedly this game costed 400$ million to make, definitely smells like a case of bad pre development.
Anthem writ larger.
I thought you were gonna say money laundering
Do you actually believe that? The source is literally "trust me bro".
@@jamesbyrd3740 true, the number gets higher every week lol. Still believe the 100-200m number first announced tho, that seems much more reasonable considering
@@jamesbyrd3740 It's on Sony's ball to disprove that budget. Though they still lost hundreds of millions of dollars despite that.
Everyone but the developers saw this plane crashing from a mile away. "Talentless hacks" indeed.
Most devs working on something are aware about how the game is going. But as just a dev you don't really have a choice. What would you do as a programmer? Its not like you can do something about it. Also at some point its too late to change the game. You just finish it to get it out in the hopes it makes money somehow.
Concorde Airlines
Costa Concordia
Concord the video game
Notice a pattern?
Zenless zone zero & helldivers 2 proved that “over saturated market” is totally a BS take and a shit excuse. There is always room for a new game if it is fun.
Tbf, ZZZ is from the same company that made Genshin Impact and Honkai Star Rail; Helldivers 2 is, well, the *sequel* of a known game so I don't think this applies on this case, at least not 100%.
@MarcsXA helldivers 2 does. There is a good chunk of that player base that didn't come in from the original. That game drew people in because it looks fantastic and fun.
@@joshuabonesteel2303 And that's why I said "at least not 100%".
Too bad Concord have nothing to stand out compared to the it peer except, ironically, its ugly ass art style but that doesnt make anyone want to play, the gameplay isn't anything to write home was the final nail.
This video had more views in an hour already then the peak player count of concord
Naming it with a product that crashed and burn is totally hilarious lol
than*
83 😭🙏
First half of video was great, second half was arrogant and dismissive.
it wasn't
My question is why did the trailer tease a completely different game from what was actually presented, gameplay-wise? The trailer prompts one to think of a heist or extraction game, not a hero shooter. Plus the promise of a weekly story cutscene isn’t really a good draw, nor is it particularly connected to the gameplay.
Hero shooters in general are kinda not great from a game/story perspective since the characters have to exist in a narrative stasis, not really being able to develop, change allegiances, perma-die, become disabled, all because they need to remain in a state where they’re ready to fight cyclical battle number 77545667633389075. And the next million after that. It’s why overwatch having a PVE mode was a thing people were hyped about; a chance to see the cast in a variety of situations that weren’t another multiplayer match.
And yeah, some will say they don’t need a story, or that the story is the multiplayer matches, but i feel that to be a cop-out, an excuse for laziness in writing. A character without an arc is not much of a character at all, and this is a genre dependent on characters. They need a reason to be doing what they’re doing.
>People saying not celebrate a game failing
Fuck that noise lmao. This game looked like garbage from the get go, and this shit deserved every lost dollar lol
Let the industry know we don't want this.
Yeah just because you created something doesn't mean that suddenly im supposed to respect it.. i took a crap this morning am i supposed to get a standing ovation for it? And its not like they were doing it for just art or passion they were getting paid for it, they get benefits and its whole purpose was to make money.. im sick of treating some developers as special little babies, most people that mess up get fired and we never weep for those people but its different because they make games? Give me a break..
@sharpester7277 DBE still hurts my soul
to the people saying this... cry about it
@@Jecoopsterhonesty is important in a relationship 😆
The biggest takeaway here is just the absolute failure of modern gaming "journalism." Next to no one was honest about this game when it was set to come out. They all did their jobs as advertisers for Sony and ignored the apparent issues with Concord. This is why people aren't turning to these sites anymore. You can't trust them.
And this game failed for a multitude of reasons. It just didn't do anything special versus it's competition. And honestly the designs were terrible and told you nothing about the characters. Sony thought this would be a blockbuster, but it only ended up being a huge loss.
Thanks for focusing on the gaming jornalist side of things, concord was the perfect example for showing the problems of this part of the industry!
If GamerGate didn't wake people up to the corruption of journolism nothing will.
I have to be real, whichever individual was responsible for greenlighting the char designs in design docs needs to be evaluated carefully going forward with any authoritative role. It is genuinely exceptional how bad it is.
Hopefully this is a strong a message we can send as gamers that we are just done with these uninspired, design-by-comittee, live service titles that just serve to build a portfolio instead of actually, you know, making a fun game.
I mean I hope the big companies actually learn the right lessons from concord’s failure but I have a creeping feeling that they probably will only take the wrong advice from it..
@@PumpkinWarlockhow much do you want to bet that they’ll disregard all criticism as “hate” from a small group of “bigots”?
This flop is so epically bad, our grandchildren will hear of it.
No joke, reports suggest this a flop on the scale of cruise ship sinking on its maiden voyage in terms of lost money.
@@NotAGoodUsername360
Costa Concordia (cruise ship)
Concorde (airplane)
Concord (video game)
There's a pattern here, somewhere.
The funniest thing about Concord is the neigh-universal delight from the gaming community to see it end up such a colossal, unprecedented failure.
A game that lasted 2 weeks and getting a almost 50min DOAG vid is crazy 💀💀💀
He was probably already working on this video when the first teaser released 😂
"Budget of 150m"
I'm sure the team wished it were that small given the results
You can't spell ignorance without IGN
“Sony these days lacking in the shooter realm”
Me looking at my copy of RESISTANCE Fall of Man on my shelf: “Aye you were gone too soon for us, but at least you didn’t live to see yourself turned into this.”
All Sony has to do is remaster the Resistance and Killzone games and put them on PC too. But no, chasing a trend with live service games is way better according to Sony logic.
Me looking at my MAG Box ;(
@@richardfan7157 it's a crime how many games Sony sits on and ignores.
@@PhoenicopterusR "BuT wE DOn'T hAvE IPs!!!" - Sony
Yet.
It’s like this game was made just for you
lmao
@@nerdSlayerstudioss it's free UA-cam content
@@InciniumVGC 😂😂😂😂😂💀💀💀
@@nerdSlayerstudioss: "It's me! I'm MODERN AUDIENCES!"
@@MarioWendorf The point was how it died so quick, since Nerdslayer does this little show "Death of a Game." Please mate, keep up, else you sound like one of those "It was DEI!" chuds who lack any sort of critical thought process.
So afraid to offend anyone they ended up offending everyone. Even the ones that don't admit it since their livelihood is on the line.
My take on Concord is that instead of a 5v5 Hero shooter i would've loved if it was a Character action Single player action FPS where you switch characters from your Crew Build in real time and use them correctly depending on the situation like facing an specific enemy akin Doom Eternal or unlock new areas ala Metroidvania.
I am the only one who DOESN'T hate pvp games? Like did everyone just collectively decide that pvp games are automatically garbage?
Hey can you check out Wild Bastards real quick? If you don't mind
You mean if it was literally anything else other than what it is? Yes I agree, that would be way better.
Sounds like a new Agents of Mayhem, which would have been sick.
@@harpsdesire4200 me neither but like i said this is just my take of what could've been more unique and attractive to players that might have a fatigue yk
One thing I disagree about the sweet baby inc bit where you said they've been part of really successful video games, is that their part in these roles contribute nothing for the success of those games. Spiderman 2 feeling good to swing in was not thanks to sbi, it was the bad story, writing, and dialogue you can thank them for. Their presence adds nothing positive for the majority of players.
As for all major companies incorporating lgbt themes and dei stuff for your counteragrument as to them still being successful, these companies are doing it from a position where they're too big to fail. Companies like microsoft and disney burn money away making content for such a niche audience in an already extremely small demographic.
Don't get me wrong, if you're a company or creator, make what you want but don't go changing the core and essence of a game to accommodate a different audience that hates the series and alienating the original audience, just look at the saints row reboot. But these companies know that the majority of players don't play their games for the politically correct content so they have to inject it into pre existing ip, because making a new ip with these elements baked in results in what you see with concord.
Do you have an actual point in that rambling drivel
@@OrgaNik_Music ye did u not read it
To quote John Hammond "we spared no expense" Unfortunately i am not sure where though
When you wonder where the money went it's time to check for laundering and embezzlement.
"Pretty much guaranteed that it wasn't going to launch on the Xbox"
Xbox: Whew! Dodged!
lol
@@judgedrekk2981 This "woke" narrative says more about you than about those games.
@judgedrekk2981 nearly nobody cares about your culture war. Most people just want good entertainment and art, and most people just want to see themselves in there entertainment. A more diverse cast makes ot easier to get more people attached, and expands the kinds of stories you can tell, and in an era of reued plots new is interesting.
I have yet to see a game people clamed was killed from "woke" that wasn't fundamentally poorly made, and using it as a crutch or deflection from its quality.
@@judgedrekk2981 "Our culture"? The world isn't America. You can all just bugger off with that shit.
@@judgedrekk2981 The only culture war here is the one in your head. You seem to think "Everything I don't like is woke." The only people who even use that word are batshit right wingers who get angry that gay people have the audacity to exist.
Costing $400 million and only making $1 million in sales that they refunded has to be the biggest flop in media history. No movie or game comes close to that level of failure
Did you hear about the first quadruple A game skull and bones yet?
This game needs to be immortalized forever in all forms of knowledge from digital to paper.
"Those who do not learn from their history are doomed to repeat it."
Not their money wasted they do not care all proud of the garbage they should not have been paid at all that would hit them where they care.
When rule34 artists draw your characters with even more clothes, you made some uggos.
The problem that i have seen people talk about regarding wokeness and the characters designs is that they all look like the Hollywood lgbt character they always do on movies, games and series, ugly, flamboyant and with 0 style and it's sad because not only people outside of the collective can see how horrendous they are, people inside the community ALSO HATE THESE CHARACTERS, because it's a caricature of what they represent with "be yourself" and so on, it's so tiring
To give you an idea of how much money 400 million dollars is, you could operate a full-fledged F1 team for 3 full seasons for that kind of money. I'm talking about EVERYTHING in a 1000-plus personnel operation. R&D, wind tunnel hours, advanced CFD models, build costs for both cars and spare parts, associated travel costs for cargo, equipment and team members, and the salaries and benefits of every single employee of the team except for the drivers and maybe the team principal.
What I'm saying is, Sony could realistically run the Red Bull F1 team for a good while for that sort of cash. But instead, we got this...
Even most blockbusters don't have such budget.
To put it into perspective, 400 million dollars is also half of what it cost to hire Robert Downey Jr. to play Doctor Doom.
holy shit, they could have spent that money with their other IPs but instead they made a gamble with a shitty copy of overwatch
I could have bought 150.000 liters of milk for that kind of money.
Given they got Gran Turismo IP, Sony could unironically do it.
People don't realize that a character's name and design help gamers show what abilities that character has.
This is why character design is important for a hero shooter.
One of the few good things that came out of the Concord debacle is that all the videos on character design helped more people realize that, despite all its flaws as a game, Overwatch has outstanding character design.
@@jack90054 it definitely does.
important is an understatement. its one of the main hooks of the game. hero shooters just like fighting games live and die on their cast. its night and day when you play a game with a character that you gel with. your more connected to the action.
@@thejunkmanlives indeed.
@@thejunkmanlives This. It's a HERO!!!!! shooter, you should care about Heroes. They should be likeable, charismatic and attractive to some degree, its important to make the players want to be attached to them.
“Gaming” journalists are not gamers. The sooner you realize this the better off youll be.
"Game journos getting figuratively hit with a metaphorical lead pipe" is one of my favourite video genres.
Also why does everything looks inflatable?, I thought the green guy's jacket was an outlier but many characters have inflatable tubes in some part of their outfit. Makes them look like Michelin creatures.
CriticalArt, a self-professed bean counter "finance guy", made better designs then the entire art team for this game. The art team has no excuse. When a failure happens 400 million times (assuming a dollar per hour) then that's not incompetence
Also, that Lennox guy is part dragon? I honestly thought from the design he was some sort of alien cactus creature!
Nah thats just you
How funny is it that UA-camrs probably made more money off this game than the devs
More people watched the video than bought concord.
And the studio is gone as well.
This must be a new record for a game becoming DOA shovelware.
Hyenas cheated with that speedrun and somehow died -1 days after launch (the game was only available to play as beta)
I will probably be called all kinds of names and nerdSlayer would probably call me anti-DEI or whatever but I have to write few things. It's ok most people won't even read this because no one reads long comments anyway. Oh, also I wouldn't be surprised to be labeled as far right even though I have nothing to do with USA politics as I am from a Balkan country in Europe and politics here function very different.
Concord did fail mostly because of the characters, DEI and the way the developers addressed their public. You keep repeating that marketing was the problem but then you give an example of Deadlock and in the past dota, league etc, games that had no marketing and yet look at the player base of Deadlock. Without any clear vision they could have had marketing all over the place, just like Homefront did back in the days and it would still bust.
Then you say sex sells but again Deadlock has the same type of characters, most of them are robots, buttoned up, not sexual at all and yet people play them. And yes, most people that play know that there is LGBTQ character, its Pocket. If people are so dedicated to characters they play most of them will read the lore. Difference is its not pushed as a main thing, it doesn't shame any other group its not a whole identity of a champion.
90% of people who say go woke go broke or DEI game don't have anything against gay, lesbian or whatever. They have a problem how it is implemented in games and that it is forced into already established franchises and already established characters are changed to fit the modern narrative. People are tired of so many games, shows, films being about who is gay who is using what pronounces. They just want to enjoy a good and quality story. We had LGBTQ in video games long time ago and no one cared. Because if it was introduced it was done either subtly through some dialogue or it was done where it had impact on the story, with good reason. Just like most people, I don't go out to the store to buy some milk and stop 20 times telling random people if I prefer vagina or penis or do I identify as a demon.
Concord did just that, it was a game that didn't stand out in any other way then trying to cater "modern" audience. They called people who offered genuine help talentless freaks. Over and over we hear if you don't like it don't play it. So people finally started to do just that. Majority of players are just normal guys and girls. That is a reason why DEI likes way more to take over already established franchise that audience cares about then to make something from ground up. Because when they do something from ground up it ends up being filled with anger and hate and ugly characters without any meaningful story that resonates with most people and people don't play it. Concord and Dustborn are perfect examples.
And I mean in your video you said that pretty much yourself. And yes there are idiots on both sides that scream loudly. Difference is that one side is accepted by media while other side as soon as you point out legit criticism or problems you are labeled as far right or something worse. No one has a problem with a women giving a game review like you did a little jab. Most of women don't like shit games either (shocking I know). They also don't like poor stories where one female is for no reason just more powerful, smart and kicks ass of 10x bigger dudes without proper explanation, character exploration, when she revels in humiliating others etc. And that is what today is seen as a "powerful" woman by media. Not how smart she is, not her story, not how much she cares about something or someone, feminine traits are even seen as a negative things in a female characters.
In short when someone says DEI characters or story most of the time they mean how forceful and shallow it is made or that it is destroying already established lore, not that anyone has problems with a gay robot.
You've just put my thoughts into words. Yeah, there are going to be bigots unfortunately. But with the way DEI has been implemented these last few years, I just don't think it's a viable option to immediately dismiss legitimate criticism regarding this topic. Hell, there are left-leaning people out there who actually hate how DEI is implemented but some of them wouldn't be able to voice their opinions on it or else they'll be seen as a "category traitor".
It certainly doesn't help that the people behind the force implementation of DEI will hide behind it as a shield from well-founded criticism and just angrily bark at them.
I found some of his points a little dismissive too, but tbh I think he's just tired of the bad faith culture warriors who always try to take over these discussions to push their particular side's political activism. It's unfortunate that genuine people sometimes get caught in the crossfire but the fault ultimately lies with those perpetuating the culture war (I don't need to name them, but certain youtubers are at the top of that list).
@@nikenit Lol yeah I read it. I find it funny that he doesn't think companies receive money in exchange for DEI when the information is out in the open. Doesn't matter if Sony is under USA or Japan. It is a company that will use funds that they can. Tik Tok is Chinese and the launched a trash app on the west while their version is strictly educational and promotes country values etc. Same with how games and films will be all in pride logos and put "diversity" in their products but they don't want to stand behind those convictions when launching products into China, gay characters are not gay anymore and logo is no longer rainbow colour. Thats why I assumed I will also be labeled as a hater or far right or whatever the term is today. But hey, in the end the market shows what it shows.
@@tarnetskygge I mean we all are tbh. I also just want to enjoy cool games with good mechanics, good stories etc. Thing is we will get more and more people "rebelling" because of dismissive stance towards most gamers for the last 20 years. I have nothing against games made specifically for LGBTQ community. But it is obvious that those loudest for those games don't even play games. Because those projects keep failing. I only have a problem when they take things like Star Wars, Star Trek and start changing everything to suit DEI content. Same with games. If they actually made an effort to make interesting characters and stories ... not just a token things. People are just tired of being called nazi, privileged, cis whatever and all other stuff because for example they don't want to listen about who is what sexuality ALL the time.
"Noticing things is outlawed"
The ugly characters did affect this game.
Oh, it did. It really did.
Unappealing character designs, uninteresting characters and lore, another live service shooter in 2024, plus a little culture war seasoning ultimately resulted in concord.
Classic death by a thousand cuts kinda deal with this game.
i would argue that it wasn't really the characters being ugly but the intention behind the characters being ugly.
deadlock having 100x the players concord ever could, proves that. characters can be ugly and still work when it's stylized that way. when your style is realistic and you purposely choose to make every character look like a homeless person who happened to find a gun on the ground in order to push a politically correct agenda, it shouldn't be a surprise to anyone that the game failed. it was obvious to everyone what they were doing.
@@aheahe7943corcord character design made me want to gouge my eyes. In games like palworld we can customize our characters to look like abomination but theres something to concord that made me feel repulsive.
@@aheahe7943 it wasn't the only reason or the main reason but it didn't help.
I like to think that this video came out so soon after Concord released (and died) was because NerdSlayer saw the announcement trailer and went “this looks like something I am going to cover, better get started now”
29:56 You mentioned Deadlock being a "personal favorite" of yours and then bring it up immediately after and that game doesn't really have any "sexy" characters. I don't really think the lack of sex appeal was the issue with Concord.
Not true, and these responses are strange to me.
@@nerdSlayerstudioss I'm not sure what you're saying isn't true. Deadlock's characters aren't really sexualized at all and its been extremely successful in a short amount of time. This is literally true.
More people have talked about the death of Concord than people who played Concord. 💀
The character designs seems so odd.
The faces are in a realistic style, yet the bodies have the proportions of characters from Gotham City Imposters.
kinda disappointed, i started watching DoaG for well-researched stories of how a game was developed behind the scenes, not just your opinions about the opinions of other reviewers
the failure of concord is not just damning evidence of the atrocious state of the video games industry, but also an indictment against all the out-of-touch games "journalists"...
Concord didnt have a chance...
Destiny is somewhat forgotten...
Titanfall was misunderstood...
Overwatch is being keep alive by the p*rn...
But TF2... TF2 Is forever.
"WE ARE GOING TO LIVE FOREVER!" - Soldier TF2
@@metalllich3493 no, dude, what? It has more than 40,000 players playing it right now
@@metalllich3493 dude, go back to playing valorant or league of legends if you think like that. There are NO bots, I repeat: NO BOTS in TF2 by the time being. Furthermore: valve keeps banning cheaters and bots from the game, thanks to #FixTF2
Go find some friends to play this free game with, I guess...
"Dead Game" actually means this: when the steam charts are saying "0 players online", or "1 player(s) - last hour peak"
@@metalllich3493only about half of them are idle bots. If 20,000 concurrent players equals "dead game" to you, you need to get your eyes checked. Also, what games do you play, if tf2 "plays like shit"?
The complaints people have about DEI go hand in hand with your segment on "don't make being [trait] your primary personality trait." The masses don't care what trait they have, they just want good characters. Instead, companies make one dimensional characters and then preemptively say "You just hate this because it's got this trait in it, therefore you're istaphobic!" and discourage potential paying customers from buying it.
The silliest part is that Lennox's sole personality trait wasn't even some DEI stuff, they just managed to make "hot sauce enjoyer" an entire personality and also the face of the game 💀
Concord out here making every youtuber do overtime time
Damn you typos!!!!
Where were the modern audience to save the game? I mean Concord was made from the ground up for them without hijacking a standing IP. Are you telling me they don't exist? Mild shock
8 years and no one saw these problems until actual smart people pointed them out!?
My ass is an 8 year progress.
at this point we need more massive disasters like this in media if things are going to get better(it looks like more are coming). we need to get back to creativity, innovation and most importantly passion. and yes, the robot having gender pronouns, the ugly "inclusive" designs did a lot of damage(unappealing characters in a hero shooter isnt going to get you far).
@@Peasham its an example of the whole package and how dumb it really is. i mean wtf is the point of even listing pronouns?
Indeed
@@SandwichGamesHeavy the problem ist hat people like NS will immediately deflect with a canned response instead of looking in the mirror. when sexuality/race/gender is the focal point of the character it wont be relatable because nobody is that shallow. and this is before you factor in the lecturing that normally comes with this stuff so of course people will avoid it just look at overwatch. doomfist and wrecking ball are my 2 favorite characters(def in my top 10 all time favorites) and i am neither Nigerian or a hamster.
You know there are old animated films from the former Eastern Block that critiqued old soviet style of architecture by creating truly interesting and imaginative building, then slowly chipping away all soul and character out of it, by passing the blueprints trough different departments, till the final product is just boring rectangle with windows and doors, and serving its purpose but nothing more (a metaphor how the state viewed the individual, also) this is what modern AAA games are like, they are technically games with their core elements there, but no soul, no character, no spark behind it.
Concord sure did bring people together… just not in the way the devs wanted…
I hate pandering. It ruins movies, games, stories in general. That's Dustborn's problem. From what I hear, most people didn't like Concord because the character designs were super unappealing in general and the game itself was fine but didn't do anything different than more popular, free titles. DEI was just a good scapegoat. Older badass ladies are so easy to get right. And everyone loves a good friend-shaped boi.
Also gumbo IS great.
Pandering to people that never are customers are the problem legit pandering to woke drug addicts that spend all their money on drugs they not got time for games.
This failure needs to be well documented and never memory holed
>Constantly insists that DEI wasn't the reason why the game failed`, and insults people who argue that it is
>Third of the video is arguing that DEI was the sole reason the game failed
What did he mean by this?
Means he stole everything else in the video from other people after the first part of the video.
"not stupid enough to fully alienate paying audiences" - You've been doing this long enough to see a trend in the past decade
Was about to comment that, when you read some of the discourse around the game ( by the developers btw) as a white man I DID feel alienated. Now what is the majority demographic of pc games again?( People often use phone gamers to water down statistics)
NS is acting like "go woke, go broke" isnt a thing as if there arent plenty of examples of things failing or getting canceled because of it. nobody wants to be lectured especially in media thats supposed to be a form of escapism. i dont need a character to look like me to like them, but the character has to be likable/relatable for me to make that connection.
@@ndchunter5516 Another unfortunate victim of gamer oppression. When will the injustice end?! /s
Ye, really feels like NS is living in some different timeline, because "alienating their paying audience" is exactly what gaming, movie and comics industries been doing for the last 10-15 years. And by this point we have almost infinite supply of examples of all those products failing time and time again, yet people like NS list the decisions that lead to the failure, but pretend they know no reason why any of those decisions was made, because it will break the narrative of "woke doesn't exist".
@@thejunkmanlivesYeah, I would love to see someone do a proper deep dive into "go woke, go broke" it's so much more complex than most people that use the phrase think it is, and idk why some people refuse to see that it's at least a factor in a product success.
Personally I think the real problem with it is the culture it generates inside the organization, hard to make a good product when raising certain types of criticism will cost you promotions (on a good day) and your job (on bad days). So most employees just see what's wrong, stay silent and hope it's no big deal at the end.
Every time I've heard anyone say firewalk during all this, my brain has just gone twin peaks, lol.
I think you severely overestimate what portion of the population is actually LGBT, not that I blame you considering how hard every major corporation and media outlet pushes it. Pandering to LGBT people at the expense of everyone else doesn't make business sense and isn't being done for the purpose of making money, at least not in a legitimate sense.
This game's failure is legitimately one for the history books. I don't think there has ever been a bigger flop in gaming history. Not even E.T. comes close to this. If games were still sold on physical media there wouldn't be big enough dessert to bury this one lmfao
the reason almost all major corporations have those performative lgbtq signs up is because of the major kickbacks they get from investors like blackrock its not because it makes money its because it makes nearly free money at the cost of public perception