Character Design Sells Games
Вставка
- Опубліковано 7 лют 2025
- DX examines the failure of Sony's Concord by comparing it to Overwatch, a game with infinitely superior character design.
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Intro/Thumbnail/Title Card art by Azuma Yasuo: / azumayasuo96 & / azumaarts
A very big thanks to RivetHead for gifting me Concord!
#overwatch #overwatch2 #concord - Ігри
The art for my intro, this video's thumbnail and title card was done by artist Azuma Yasuo. They have a Patreon as well, and you can find their links in the description!
You introduced me to AY, for which I greatly appreciate. The art they've made me are some if my favorite.
DX is back guys.😂
Hey! Want to check out my Characters, Review them in their own Video, and then Compare them to the Concord Characters?
Lol why do people keep saying Concord was trying to be Overwatch ? It doesn't actual look or play like overwatch. And Overwatch isn't the one & only hero shooter. It isn't even the first hero shooter.
I do agree with Concord having character design issues
Concords characters lack any visual storytelling and their (art) director needs to be fired. I never saw such useless and bad design. It's not simply generic but RNG generated random mush mash without thought.
Concord's character design was so bad it had defeated the Rule 34. Probably the only time a hero shotter ever did that. The game stood no chance.
You know something is ugly if even rule34 dont touch it xD
Yeah gargoyle girl from deadlock have more rule 34 than concord, the funny thing is the gargoyle girl original design isn't even s3xy to begin with.
There is sadly around 36 posts now most of them however redesign the characters
@Acacius1992 fr like, theres ton of fetishes exist out there and concord served none of them
Its battleborn all over again
@@3takoyakis it-z can be a fetish for some very weird people
It stuns me that the designers managed to make the heavy machine gun character look so goofy and non-threatening. Emari looks like a giant toddler
Her silhouette looks like the Michelin tire man or Pilsbury Doughboy
Remove armour and padding and realise Emari is about at flat as Itz. Someone obviously failed a biology and anatomy class.
Emari should have had a "Mama Bear" aesthetic
😂.I rather used him.then that creepy person
I had totally forgotten her name. I always called her Big Bertha in power armor.
TF2 devs didnt sexualize the characters and they're still very appealing and praised by people so it can be done
even though that the relationship with heavy and medic was like a professional brotherhood within an mercenary bubble, Rule 34 really took them both (or even FKING PYRO??) to all time highs. Concord really just sucks
its also a matter of different audiences, notice how the voice chats of TF2 and CS2 differ significantly from those of overwatch and valorant respectively; They clearly appeal to different kinds of people. But most importantly, they **do appeal** to someone, unlike concord
dude do you have eyes? have you seen heavy?? goddamnn
gonna beat one out to engineer just to prove you wrong
Tf2 mercs have really good character, like spy is French, soldier is an over patriotic American, medic is a mad German doctor
And same goes to other classes
I 100% thought Daw was a woman until now
Me too, and I believe this is deeply fascinating. Absolutely no assumptions you could make about this particular character are correct. I wonder if this was an intentional sociological experiment by some mischievous dev on the team.
because megamind devs made all characters in that game to look like trans or gays
that's what woke people look like in a nutshell.
Bro so did I, which furthers DX's point on readable character design.
Fupa
They didn't want sexy characters, but lacked the talent and vision to make something cool and appealing without it. I honestly have never seen an uglier/more boring character roster.
Its not like they needed to be half naked too. I mean, look at SF6. Cammy was pretty much dressed casually yet people did TONS of art of her before the character was even announced!
Yeah, you can create a modestly dressed character who still has appeal
Because they themselves doesnt know what "cool" is. Junkrat in OW is not sexy as Cassidy or Hanzo but HE'S COOL to look at.
@@sertiana2512Sexy=/half naked. If anything the sexiest characters are the ones dressed tastefully, not the ones running around with their birthday suit.
@@socriabbas454 even Roadhog and E. Honda has way more fans than whatever Concord's is. Even better, Deadlock's Ivy, who is a really ugly gargoyle girl, somehow gets the most art/rule34 made compared to the rest of Deadlock's roster.
I fail to comprehend how people see gacha games earning millions every month and think "im sure its because of the story and the gameplay"
To be fair, in recent years, games like especially, Arknights or Nikke do sell pretty well due to having a interesting story.
But yea, most gacha's money maker are cute and hot characters/skkns.
@@Borkyius i dont think nikke is a good example, i cant say anything about arknights
@@G0A7 Nikke has both the story and the asses. But western prudes tend to disregard everything else when they see big ass.
Pretty much like they did with Stellar Blade.
@@DioBrando-qr6ye What i played of nikke didnt show signs of a great history, but im glad they provided one after all
@@G0A7 Limbus Company might be a better example of such.
You know your game fucked up when the R34 artists don't want to go anywhere near your characters
@@TheDoomMaster Even they have left some standards
@@Acacius1992that’s the true surprise for me, that fricking R34 doesn’t even want to get near this pile of garbage
every single one of these characters can be improved by 1 single input with chat gpt. But no they needed 100 white liberal female devs
They did forspoken in 34
@@nicknevco215 Because at least the main character of that was still decent looking, if you ignore some unfortunate frames and angles.
Deadlock has a character that is literally supposed to be ugly because she's a gargoyle with Ivy, but Valve crafted her character to be such a cinnamon bun that gives her a great contrast between how she looks and how her personality is, that she has more fanart and rule34 than the entirety of Concord.
Valve are the masters of character design just look at any character from tf2 and you instantly know what they are about and that goes for not just the mercs but also tha Mann brother hale etc.
Deliberately ugly, strange or at least unusual characters have their audience (lewd stuff aside) . Rayman, for example. Abe, Munch and Stranger from Oddworld. More recently, Pseudo from Clash: Artifacts of Chaos-- and that guy is uncanny as all get-out. Dude looks like a sore, grumpy nail-less noseless thumb with an old man's armpit for a throat and a mandrake painted orange with traffic gridding bodypaint for a body.
In terms of personality: He's a hermit, somewhat old guy (seems middle-aged but it's hard to tell with Zenos) that has a "get out there to get stuff done" attitude. Pseudo's got his old pains, not feeling like a whole person, but he doesn't let that factor into what he can do in the moment.
He's got his moments of kindness, sass, humor, annoyance, anger, wisdom, and can even be outright menacing.
I find Pseudo cool to the point that i don't want to say his personality contrasts with his design to make him more memorable, because i feel like it would state "he's cool despite his looks".
But both his appearance and who he is elevate one another.
Warmly recommend looking up that game.
@@jurtheorc8117 Looked him up and liked his design,just uh.....unfortunate that his neck resemble something else.
the first shirtless flatchested female character in gaming. Larry Fink and Kim Belair in the board room like: "How is this possible?" with guns to their heads
@@EngieMak Hah, you're not wrong there! People have compared him to an old sausage that rolled under the couch, or an elongated nipple, or a mandrake root painted orange with a sore, grumpy nail-less noseless thumb for a head, or simply a penis man :P
He's weird, strange and uncanny, and i can see that for others Pseudo would be too strange, so i'm glad that you like his look!
He's from a prequel to the Zeno Clash series which are full of strange and interesting designs and a pretty unique world. Not many monster worlds like it. Can warmly recommend you to look into it, if it got your interest!
>cute character
>wow they're cute
>they're fun to play
>I'll get this costume for them
>cool character
>wow they're cool
>they're fun to play
>I'll get this costume for them
>Ugly character
>wow they're ugly
>Gameplay is pretty mid
>all these costumes are awful
I wonder which one gamers prefer
I pick blue archive
@@code066funkinbird3
Cute characters
Nothing is entertaining about the gameplay
Ill play for their cuteness
@@emirhanozkan32 nic3
@@emirhanozkan32 nice and their ost good too
@@code066funkinbird3 I was talking about your perspective i have enough boring games up my sleeve
the fact that people were willing to play the first descendant really speaks to how much character design means lol
And The First Descendant is terrible. It's carried by Ultimate Bunny.
@@coltonwilkie241 I don't think its that bad. It is a bog standard looter shooter, but I think people confuse "mid" with "bad" too often.
@@luckyducky7819Just another wannabe Destiny/Warframe/Division
@luckyducky7819 I don't think the game is mid though. I think it's complete dog water as a video game. It does nothing new, everything it does do is done poorly and the only saving grace for the game is the character designs.
@@coltonwilkie241 1 time use shaders and it takes days to unlock the new character but the game is made for coomers so the complaints won't be heard.
There was a time where 40 hours to unlock vader would get a company decimated, now it's a tuesday.
TF2 is a great example of perfect character designs and zero sex appeal. They don’t have to be sexy but I really believe Mercy from Overwatch is also just a great design, she is supposed to “look like an angel” of course she’s attractive.
Tf2 design is just top tier, so simple, yet so informative and iconic
Meanwhile tf2 fanbase getting ptsd attack from a Song called tick-tock by joji
zero sex appeal? have you ever been in the tf2 community
"zero sex appeal" dude didnt glance once at topless TF2 characters (pyro pyro pyro)
@@aguy3753 By DEFAULT they aren't designed for sex appeal.
It's easy to say "Concord didn't have sexy characters, therefore it failed". That is partially true, but I'm glad to see someone explaining WHY it failed beyond the obvious.
You miss a crucial one: Emari's shield. This is supposed to be a tank character, but compare her shield size to Reinhardt's shield size. Reinhardt's shield is wide enough to fit another Reinhardt on the left and the right side each. It's also a very transparent shield, perfectly enabling allies to hide behind and take shots from. Emari's shield is not only so narrow that it only fits herself, it's also not as transparent as Reinhardt's shield. It has wavy patterns and it FLASHES WHITE when it is hit. That's such a bad oversight for a simple character archetype as a tank.
I played Emari once and it was like playing the game in slow motion. Great catch on her shield. Such terrible design all around.
SHE HAS A SHIELD!?
@@LuvzToLol21 Had*
Also, Reinhardt is just more visually appealing than Emari. He's huge (the tallest character in Overwatch physically at roughly 7'4), and his armor looks tough, angular and heavy-duty, which gives a far superior presentation of power than the random lady in plastic green pads. Plus he's got a rocket hammer (literally a hammer with a rocket attached to make it faster) which allows him to rake in yet more points for Rule Of Cool.
@@atlas3556 Not to mention Reinhardt’s over-the-top bombastic personality with no indoors voice (I could hear him over the voice chat!) where he keeps yelling about GLORIOUS COMBAT and HONOR AND JUSTICE just gives him further points for presentation.
If you don't wanna make "sexy" character's atleast give them a little personality they are as lively as a loaf of bread 🍞
Or at least make them cool. You don't want the women in the game to all be bombshell strippers? Then make them cyborgs or velociraptors or some kind of eldritch abomination.
If you don't want to rely on sexiness you still need something that's immediately cool and eye catching in a character's design.
@Y_KM it not like he saying he doesn't want character being sexy and he wasn't only talking about women he saying if you want to don't make character at least make look cool
Like Junkrat. He’s an unsexy little rat but he’s incredibly fun
@@erica8952 cyborg velociraptor women sound metal as hell lol
I miss someone like that in the anime with big b00bs while just eating bread
As a graphics designer, I know that many of you might find this criticism very harsh on Concord. But in our industry - this is how people talk to each other - this is how you eventually get to have good looking things, and more importantly - things that work.
This video is basically what you would hear if you could evesdrop into a meeting between designers.
I don't know if DX is a designer himself - but if he's not - then he clearly has all the correct mindset to become one.
I'm a woman that plays games specifically geared towards women, and if you go on any social media site and look up the games I play you'll see women drooling over how attractive EVERY character is, both male and female. Everyone wants attractive characters except AAA devs.
Thank you. Someone finally said it. People like looking at attractive characters that is just a fact that is how we are geared we first judge a person through their appearance afterall and that is the same with fictional characters we judge them first by their design. Also lets say we head over to the LGBTQ community most of them would probably say they like looking at attractive people. Cause that is just how humans work.
True, male characters are also sexualized. Mainly by making them have absolutely gigantic muscles and a lot of the times walking around shirtless.
And that is NOT a bad thing.
*Activists pretending as Triple A Devs.
It's like developers are trying to appeal to a very, very loud minority of people who are complaining about sexualized/attractive characters. I'd guess most of these people don't really play video games, and the few that do aren't their target audience anyway.
@@BackToTheGame.98 It is amazing how when you ask attractive people in video games they automatically assume you are just a pervert?
No i just like looking at handsome and beautiful people. Neither Panam and Judy are oversexualized but you know both of them are fairly attractive people
Concord's characters look like you pressed "random" while creating a character in WWE or Soul Calibur. The photorealistic art style also makes it very uncanny.
I like the photorealistic style quite a bit, but the characters themselves were just not eye catching at all, minus one or two
Concord:"B-But, we wanted to be inclusive! Our game had the most diverse cast!"
Overwatch has a more diverse cast and it's had that since 2016, to the point it RIVALED TF2, the cast with: A black, scotsman with a disability (Missing eye), the overweight russian, the frenchy, the doctor with a severe mental health problem, the soldier with lead poisoning, scout, a new zealand blood austrailian native sniper, a prosthetic hand having texan and pyro. Oh, and don't forget MS. PAULING who, despite her lack of actual strength against any of the mercs, IS THEIR BOSS. A woman boss in 2007, when it was still uncommon but not completely missing. Concord tried a formula that was in place for years with thousands of different ideas in it to improve, and still failed.
You can say so many things about scout, but somehow just saying "scout" seems more fitting
Lol
The fact is people who complain about inclusion are just flat out wrong about it, or at least grossly exaggerating the problem in recent years.
Valve handled inclusion way better studios these days do remember L4D and L4D 2 had balanced set of characters even though it didn't matter as real fun is just killing zombies with dual pistols and feeling like John Wick
I can’t believe a game somehow generated character designs that not only suck on their own, but just make people want to gouge their eyes out.
I totally agree with the part about the intestines on the clothes 🤢🤮
@@resolutogamer4859 I hadn't noticed them, the more I see them the uglier they get🤢
@@resolutogamer4859 They thought they're edgy🤮🤮
That thumbnail worked.....
More than concord did
@@xRIPx86 🤣
Overwatch: Makes incredibly unique looking characters with different themes and color pallets to bring in interest
Counter Strike: Cop and terrorist
Once a hero shooter the other is a point and click adventure
@@ArdaSReal point and click💀💀
Well in CS the focus is on not the characters, but the weapons' cosmetics, so the strategy still checks out
counter strike had the privilege of not having to compete with every other game on the market today, and valorant is probably closer to it than overwatch
@@windws7137 And CS's gameplay is better than concord. Who TF makes it non-respawnable in a "capture the point" type of mission? (concord did)
On top of just having a different visual appeal than hero shooters, games like Counter Strike and Call of Duty have the benefit of establishing themselves early in the gaming landscape, and thus nowadays having very recognizable branding. Try making a completely new "realistic military shooter" IP nowadays, and I'm very confident there's no way for it to succeed bar some _very_ new and inventive gameplay or something.
7:29 I think someone called this character a Monster’s Inc. scream canister.
BAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA
Now that you mention it yeah I can see it
He looks like the bomb robots from the movie The Creator
Mint flavored michellin man
Holy shit he does look like one
And you know the sad part, I think he is the best design in the entite game
It's astounding how Daw has pretty much become a poster-child for what *NOT* to do when designing characters; everyone discussing the art failures of Concord has cited Daw as the worst. Nothing about his design says "I'm a medic"; were it not for the flavor text in the bottom right corner of the UI, you would never think he's anything but just a guy in a blue jacket.
nothing about him even says "him"
almost everyone thought he was female until they saw his pronouns
I'd say he's the most immersion breaking thing in the whole game
I've had one of the games defenders straight up tune out on me (in their own fucking words by the way) because I criticized Daw as being out of place in a game like this, simply because according to their logic, "You went on a weird tirade about Saw being unrealistic but then wanting a more reptilian design for Lennox", like, first off this is the kind of stuff you'd get punched in the face in high school for. If someone's trying to have a decent respectful conversation, and they tune out like that? Tell em to fuck off.
Daw IS immersion breaking because he's out of shape fat. He's not strong fat like Roadhog, or athletic fat which exists. He's out of shape weak fat. In a game like Concord, he just looks completely ridiculous
@@angel_of_rust That too. His facial features are very soft-- so soft that a lot of people confused him for a girl.
I get that not every guy will be some super chiseled manly man, but facial features as soft as Daw's either make him look like a girl or a young kid
@@SmithOfGear92 would have been cool if they designed Daw as a veteran space war field medic, instead of... whatever that is...
He looks like a random guy I'd see in shopping mall.
You know you're cooked when even rule 34 doesn't acknowledge your existence
The character designs of Concord are so unbelievably non-sensical. They seem to be designed by a group of people who were given 3 word descriptions and were told "Design that".
I think one of the devs tweeted that the game was designed in committees, like that was a good thing
Its actually impressive how they made basically all their characters look cringe and unsettling
It's what a bunch of terminally online people thinks looks cool with their circle of people which I guess it's fine, but the problem is that the game was made to appeal to the casual demographic who just wants generally cool and flashy designs which concord lacks.
Nah, good character designers can make somethinh good with just a 3 words description.
These people are unable to make something good even with a detailed description
@@rykehuss3435 That doesn't surprise me given how one of the devs threw a hissy fit over people calling the characters ugly LOL
2:35
"Who's that Pokemon?!?!"
"IT'S PIKACHU!!!"
"It's Clefairy!"
"FUUUUU-"
Classic
"Who's that Pokemon?!?!"
"IT'S SNORLAX!!!!"
"It's Daw!"
"Close enough, I understand"
Golden
I love that one
"Jigglypuff seen from above.", anyone?
Having something like "tactician/he/him" which equates sexual identity to the actual role of the character makes you roll your eyes so hard you unconsciously try to avoid such a cringe game.
I'm not even right wing or anything but why is the left so cringe wtf? This looks like ass
You got a problem with Tacticians?
@ no. I came out as a tactician recently. Parents didn’t take it too well though.
@@gajogrande Congrats on the conversion. Hope your situation becomes better.
When the characters are just hideous amorphous blobs, the pronouns kinda help ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
the lesson i personally took from all this is, _everything_ about a character design should be communicating something to you. Down to the name. Pharah's name tells you that she's egyptian, the blue and bird motifs tell you she can fly, and you're supposed to have the idea she's basically wearing a fighter jet. McCree is a cowboy, as you can tell from the earthy tones, hat, poncho, and very visible revolver.
And as compared to roka and lennox, like... Roka just looks like someone with a rocket launcher who bought the most boringly-colored unitard from a dance supply place and put a Destiny helmet over it, and Lennox's orange vest takes so much focus away from the revolvers. Also, he does not have a hat, which doesn't immediately tell you "this is the gunslinger." And their colors just... kinda _blah_, background colors at best.
I especially wanna put mention on the gunslinger part.
Some people were saying to some redesigning artists that "Lennox isn't a cowboy, he's described as a gunslinger!"
Like, do you fucking realize how little that narrows it down? Gunslinger is literally "guy with gun", what the fuck is Lennox then? A cop? A cowboy? A patrolman? A terrorist?
I swear, Lennox is such a strange case where I feel like even the developers didn't like him. He's on the face of the cover yet he's so underwhelming in so many ways (have you seen his gameplay? Those revolvers do pitiful damage)
@@ARStudios2000I know, right? four shots to kill people with a revolver?! And those shots have crazy bullet magnetism? Wack.
Also so many things about him just clash. The sharp edges on his arm, the rounded vest. Like you said, "do you fucking realize how little that narrows it down," and I'm gonna continue from that by saying he's just... full of ideas that don't work together. And also what... what is that color scheme. Orange, gray-blue, and baby-vomit green skin?
Also apparently he's "really old" (146) but nothing about him looks old. Maybe... I dunno, make his outfit look antiquated in comparison by making it look like he has a raygun gothic bodysuit under a vest or something so he looks like a young guy in old man clothes. Or just make him look old.
@@fluffywolfo3663 yeah, it's so weird that they keep reminding people that Lennox is old. He look, dressed and act nothing like an old person. Unless the people at Firewalk somehow thought obsessing over hot sauce is considered an old person trait.
@@polker8380 it was delivered as close to “as you know” as you can be without saying those exact words.
Thanks for using McCree and not Cassidy 🤝
I just wanna play characters that look cool or are sexy. Thats it, I don't want to play a character that looks like somebody you would see at a Seattle Wal-mart.
Me too I prefer to play attractive/average good-looking characters just to escape reality and have fun.
seattle wallmart XD
dude the game is already dead you don't have to kill it like that XD
having lived in Seattle and shopped at the Walmart there, the only people there were normal looking regular people. So you're telling me you don't like normal looking people and want anime UWU sex dolls in the game?
@joshua-t7w yes we don't imao we play video games to escape reality not experience it
@baalfgames5318 he said he does not want characters to look like someday to our reality do you read the comment properly
I don’t like this modern trend of video game characters being ugly. These people seem to think that a character being attractive is a bad thing but you have games like Nikke or Overwatch that have attractive characters and no one complains about it. It’s honestly just baffling to me how this mindset even came about
i love how nikkes gameplay is awful and yet it still manages to pull players in
I think it's jealousy
@@kinetik9197 For better or for worse, sex sells. Sex sold games and will continue to sell games.
And nothing exemplifies this more than the most successful gacha mobile games. They could have the worst gameplay, worst monetization, but can somehow still successful just from character designs alone.
it's not only design but the attitude
for sure, personality
People really underestimate how much other people stay playing simply because they like a character. Hell, fighting games work that way because someone might be gravitated towards a fighting style simply because they vibe with the fighter. It's not just for looking hot or cute. It's part of the personality of the game.
I've never agreed more with a comment.
I love Mortal Kombat for example. My favourite character is Reptile. In every game he's in, I automatically play him. He's just so cool and his moves and appearances are perfect for me personally.
Your comment hit the nail on the head.
Some people will even learn to get the hang of difficult characters just because of how much they like them. I used to be kinda bad with Spider-Man in UMvC3, but I’ve forced myself to get the hang of him just because I’ve been a Spider-Man fan since childhood.
Best comment
Me with Ken, ever since SF3 Third Strike(cos Daigo). Tho funny enough, I dont like his SF6 design, so I play with his classic costume.
Have you seen the amount of street fighter 6 channels that exclusively play the big thigh ladies just to add sexy mods.
HIS?? Omg lol I thought Daw was a chick.
Thats literally an ogre
my 16 years old mind was blown after OW "Dragons" cinematic trailer, i can be a cyborg ninja with big dragon katana ?
But in concord you could be an obese man with a generic gun and a pizza!
You can be a spaceranger fighting an evil monk robot now while you get healed by a peruvian sun goddes
@@ArdaSReal While a cowboy covers your approach with a six-shooter and flashbangs.
Play MGRR! It's a great game, where you are a cyborg ninja with tech-katana!
Concord failed so youtubers could thrive
What a blessing
There's been like dozens of video essays recommended to me by UA-cam on why Concord failed, out why it's character designs were bad. UA-camrs are staying busy.
I am very appreciative of a critical eye that explains why Concord is bad without saying "it's woke", you actually explain. My theory is that the Asmongold "anti woke" audience is split between people who are just biggots, and the larger group that don't have the media literacy to express *why* they don't like something so they grasp at the loudest explanation that agrees with them. This is a really genuinely good video and a breath of fresh air in the howling monkeysphere that is youtube criticism
Thanks so much!
Looooove this reply. This whole Anti-Woke nonsense going around easily hides the real and actual criticisms that can be taken against this game.
Character designs certainly sold Overwatch! Just look at all of the fan art for Tracer and Widowmaker even if its of the lewd variety!
the gooners always win in the end
As is the case for Nikke and Stellar Blade, if you know what I mean...
Overwatch at this point is immortal in a way, even if the game fails there will still be people making art of the characters.
The R34 artists were out here setting world records for how fast they got the Juno artwork out after the first trailer 😂
I mean, sexappeal has been shown to work a billion times in the past. From Street Fighter to Tomb Raider. Not to mention the movie and music industry.
Daw's shirt and pants are nearly the exact same shade as cigarette packs are in Canada (and several other countries like Australia, i think), a shade that was deliberately chosen to be as unappealing as possible lmfao
Every time you cut to Daw on screen I burst out laughing 💀
I just see a less hungry roadhog
As Fleekazoid said "Sex sales and budget cuts bankrupt" make attractive character and the players will go to you
Do I see another Pimperor?
Fleekazoid would make our fuhër proud
literally how snowbreak saves themselves from bankruptcy
@@Living-pretzel ja,he could out meth him and he would be impressed
@@Living-pretzelIt's "Führer"
Masahiro Sakurai holding a small lecture on his UA-cam channel about character silhouettes a month prior to Concord bombing is a hilarious coincidence, almost for Sony to show "This is how *NOT* to do it."
Sakurai: “No… This is not how you’re supposed to play the game!”
He made games for good boys and girls after all
@@vivelespatat2670yup
It looks like a game that was specifically designed to be as inoffensive as possible.
At best this results in vanilla and at worst it becomes disgusting flavorless paste
Concord's designs were so bad that I couldn't even guess their genders correctly, let alone their roles.
I guess that's their intenton behind the design and they nailed it perfectly seeing how your reaction is.
Took a while to dig down. Every one except the mushroom xenomorph Lark is male. They run like sissies yet bone structure is teen boy size adjusted.
lmaoo
My brother, that was their intention.
That’s why they have the pronouns in character info
4:17 Wait a second... that's a MALE character?! No wonder the designs don't work... I legit thought that was an overweight woman.
Me too !!
Same….
thats spiderman's best friend
Welcome to California
"that's a MALE character?! [...] I legit thought that was an overweight woman."
Not every man or woman looks the same.
Widowmaker in thumbnail = new subscriber
Daw even makes Heavy from TF2 look fit and healthy.
Now that's just unfair comparison. Heavy might look fat but he is still an athlete
@@JeanneHamada He's literally called "fat" in some localizations.
@@JeanneHamadaall the other characters in TF2 bully heavy for being fat lol
@@JeanneHamadahe is slow and eats a lot. Even engineer, with his 11 PHDs called him fat.
@@zuhdibeyblade9 Engineer is a nerd with 11 Ph.D
Concord seemed so hellbent on avoiding objectifying and sexualising characters that it didn't realise that a sexualised character is not inherently objectified.
A sexualised and objectified character has no personality or motives other than to be something the viewer ogles at. Think of the sterotypical damsel in distress that never contributes to the story, just exists to be seen and rescued. They are quite literally just an objective to achieve.
A sexualised but non-objectified character is one who expresses agency in the story and influences the world around them directly. Think of a character like Bayonetta or Ada Wong, who drive the story forward and have their own motives and personality. Even when Ada becomes a "damsel in distress" in RE4, that doesn't retroactively remove the impact her actions had on the events of RE4.
Your characters can be damn near nude for all I care as long as they are actually interesting characters.
for the last point, Conan the Barbarian!
@floofzykitty5072
True, even if there's nothing bad if a female character just wanted to look sexy without being a "strong woman" or having "manipulative behaviours". Objectifying happens when sexualization isn't justified from the character's point of view and interests.
Btw even objectifying isn't that outrageous, as long as it doesn't become prevalent in the industry. Guys sometimes just want to look at sexy girls without any deeper meaning hehe.
Quiet from mgs5
Good point about Bayonnetta
She's sexualized to the cahoots, but you never think she's helpless or a mere background character. She's a bitch ass boss that's beloved by women and men alike.
And even when she's damn near nude, her silhouette, face, and personality are still the highlights of her design
Correct. The answer to objectifying sexualization of girls in video games is not full-on puritanism: make them strong, intelligent and proud of themselves. Also, balance them with equally hot guys.
3:13 is this the fortnite render of the xeno 💀
im gonna be honest, i deadass thought daw was a woman at first
I thought the same too
Same here.
Same here as well. I thought that until I heard Daw's voice 💀
Not every man or woman looks the same.
Same
"Cosmetic microtransactions don't affect gameplay so they are ok to have." I'd love to hear these people come back and say something now because sure it didn't affect gameplay.... but they affected gaming as a whole.
show them a game from the 6th console gen where cosmetics and characters are simply unlockable by playing the game or entering cheat codes and they will disintegrate in real time
@@angel_of_rust they can't imagine having to actually play a game to unlock stuff.
All true, even if cosmetic can also affect gameplay in multiplayer, since it can make more difficult to recognize characters on the fly due to the mess of available skins.
Because they could not see how vile they would be with it.
@@phaolo6 yeah there's a chance that can happen in competitive games.
11:24 “general inexperience” dude they had 8 full years of experience
The character design in concord is basically corporate executives thinking that throwing random bright colors one word looking outfits is enough to be interesting. There’s no rhyme or reason to any of it and some of them don’t even look like they belong in the game itself
The designs fe3l AI generated
You know what. I'm honna have to disagree. The designs I've gotten from AI are leagues better than anything in concord. AI is more creative than the empty vessels on the character design team.@@flamestoyershadowkill
They feel like corporate art if it was rendered realistically 3D
Oh no there is definitely a method to the madness here. It's basically 'guardians of the galaxy but sex appeal is banned and we need to tick checkboxes'
I like that your explanations go far beyond the “diverse designs bad” of other people. Good video!
Concord looks barely diverse
I was looking at the lineup on the time
It felt so generic like generic models
The Concord characters are so "diverse" that they look like npc:s from a low budget game made in early 2000:s
its not only about sexy women, look at genji, this mf got me into OW1 about 6 years ago because I thought he was cool looking.
yeah and ofc ashe too... she is damn hot ngl.
but yeah, cool looking characters are important and for some reason Concord never did it, look at mortal kombat, pretty much everyone knows scorpion this guy was so fking cool he became an icon.
There's one fascinating thing about character to design. We are constantly told not to judge a book by its cover to not stereotype anyone.
But in good character design, this is basically what you do. Making sure that a character's look is meant to explain who that character is. Exceptions being the subversions of expectations
Well I think the difference is that with a book, you only see the title at the beginning. It has little/no impact during the reading experience. A character, on the other hand, DOES impact the playing experience, so it's acceptable to judge them before playing.
Concord's designs are based on spite. They were far more concerned about sending whatever message they wanted against whom they considered "toxic male straight heyero gamers" blah blah blah, they thought that by DEFAULT their designs would be some sort of groundbreaking statement.
This is the results; a bunch of characters who have proved to everyone they haven't played games from the last 4 decades if they think ANY of the ideas presented are 'firsts'.
I'd argue the core mission for most of the activists in game development and media is spite against the actual players.
They did everything in their power to make a game for people that don't actually play the games, yet spend all their time trying to change them.
Well said 😂 Given how current western media are so fixated on making female and diverse characters ugly and with terrible personality, can we be blamed for not buying their stuff? Still confuses me as a Nigerian.
nonsensical straw-manning
@@Reverse_Hoodhow exactly?
Marvel rivals: i'll show you how to do it the right way
I think a better comparison is Steven Universe.
SU's characters have a wide range of body types, not just "sexy waifu". Like, Amethyst. The Rubies. Rose. Sadie. Jasper. Steven. Greg. All of them have beautiful design, complementary themes and color schemes. All of them look good. All of them are almost immediately recognizable from their silhouette.
Agreed, SU would have been a much better angle. "it's like a Steven Universe hero shooter" and everything that implies. lack of male gaze, and all.
Steven universe are also gems like in houseki no kuni but magic i guess
I had literally never even heard of concord until it came out and people started ragging on it for failing.
$300 million game and not a single ad was able to reach me, a mid 20's male who loves shooter games, the prime demographic they should have been trying to get to.
It amazes me that nobody has made a hero shooter where all the characters are just hot chicks with bikini premium cosmetics, while having a fun gameplay loop and fairly passive monetization. Whoever does this first will be literally printing money.
I don't think we are too far away from what you describe.
That is NIKKE, and each character cost up to three times the price of Concord.
no because you gotta make the work (or pay) for the bikini , if you give them the bikini too quickly they'll snap out of the trance and realize they can just watch porn instead
@@lumirairazbyte9697 really? pretty sure you still get decent amount of premium character even being casual f2p player.
@@srt7248 You don’t have the ability to chose the character you want. In the worst case, you have the character after 200 pulls.
When I saw the green girl “itsy” I actually could figure out what her powers were because she’s clearly supposed to be nightcrawler from X-Men
The silhouette is recognizable because it’s basically stolen
Other than that, she looks like one of those Navi from avatar
Definitely the most interesting design
I will admit, though the trashcan is OK he would be a good “Objective Npc” like the push bot
he looks like something you would give an item to, and then he would fight for you or like a living tower from a moba shooter
Lol
Anybody gonna talk about how insanely long and unnecessary that pause was here lmfao 1:23
Hey, someone finally caught that. It was done to get the video above the 18 minute mark. Lol.
@@DXFromYT Glad you're honest about that.
I asked my computer what he thought about char design and it answered with "80085"
Hard agree tbh
I waited until this video to finally see what Concord actually looked like and my god, there is almost nothing salvageable with most of these character designs.
I think its also interesting to note that overwatch characters always play around with stereotypes (e.g.: the rash, loud german knight, the seductive french sniper, the american Cowboys) i feel like this overexaggeration helped a lot with building readable, cohesive characters
yeah, definitely
cassidy's cowboy aesthetic makes his "stand-off" ultimate and quick-draw abilities very predictable and his personality matches that
the australian mad max character with burnt hair (junkrat) makes it obvious he'll probably be blowing stuff up and his personality matches that
the edgy all black clothes character (reaper) is predictably back-stabby and his personality matches that again
the sexy french woman is all seductive in her personality and doesn't like to get her hands dirty in-game, predictable again
there's a lot of clues in overwatch's character design that points to their personalities. concord's daw could really be anything and anyone, I have no idea from looking at him what he does in-game, if he's supposed to be fun and goofy, or serious and professional, etc. and this is a hero shooter, there is no opportunity for character development or plot twists.
believe it or not, concord's roka, the astronaut looking woman with the spacesuit helmet, is supposed to be like pharah in OW, flying around and raining down rockets. yet nothing in her design except maybe her helment tells you she flies around, no part of her design gives way to that. she has a TINY hoverpack type thing on her back that's the same color as the rest of her suit and is completely invisible from the front, which is just really bad design for a game like this. if you ask me, the helmet being so big makes her look more like a d.va type character, piloting some mechsuit which would make the helmet look proportional to the mech. the helmet being opaque would also lend itself to implying there's some sort of screen on the inside which could relay her information about the mech. but none of that is true, she just flies around as is and shoots rockets like pharah. hell even the hoverpack is so small that you would think it was a place for her to plug into the mech, kinda like the neural links in cyberpunk.
Kiriko really is a money maker in OW2. I have a friend who will outright tell me how they didn't like a skin for her despite buying it and then perform some mental gymnastics when I asked why they got it in the first place since you didn't need to buy it to see how it looked with all the YT channels out there that showcase them.
I already now she will get a new Halloween skin and theyre going to make 500 trillion bucks lol
@@ArdaSReal Yup. Just throw out a recolored Witch Kiriko and there you go lol
the designs look like they don't know if they're cartoony or realistic. why have (realistic) impratical outfits if all their movements are still and lifeless? they end up looking like they're cosplaying themselves. seriously. I don't personally mind "ugly" characters but if there isn't even a personality behind a mediocre design, what is there to enjoy at all??
5:06 he I thougt its a Girl???
Welcome to 2024, its awful here
Same 😆😆
Whenever I see Daw, I just think "Homeless Mei".
TF2's initial design principle focused on the silhouette rule, making every class be distinguishable by their silhouette. Plus the color choices makes it instinctively clear who the enemy is and who is a teammate . I feel like with Overwatch, I'm shooting at the chaos, hoping I hit the enemy. But that's just me.
Nah I feel ya on that
While Overwatch doesn't focus on colorcoding the enemies and teammates, the silhouettes still play a big part in gameplay. If I'm on an elevation and about to start sniping the enemy team, if I see a big fat man with a gasmask and a hook round the corner, I know I'm not looking at someone like Soldier 76 or Lifeweaver, I'm looking at Roadhog, the tank with the hook who can grab me from all the way down there and bring me to him.
Games like COD is where the "hero shooter" esque design philosophy falls through, because you see the hot woman in skintight suit or furry outfit and you can't tell if that's the enemy or a teammate, because both teams have characters with that overall design or skin. Same with the billionth edgy black skin with skulls, flames or a hood over their head(sometimes even all three, in the case of Ghost).
Definitely the part about homing spores made me think of my experiences with OW
Ah yes. When you make a game with an agenda behind it of pushing the "message" forward, everything suffers
@hehe-x7zexactly, Conservatives will try to tie everything to their own politics and then will complain about the other side doing it
This is very simple, the first thing you notice of someone that grab your attention is the physical appearance, isnt their feelings. Back in the arcade era we choose on which machine we insert the quarter for the first time based on the characters design first later the gameplay came in to hook you up inserting more quartes. Characters design is the presentation card, thats the most basic thing for every media. It can be realistic or cartoonish, as long it is atractive or have personality you already have one side cover. Once the design is cover focus on game play and replay value. Is very simple, the problem today is that the message is above everything else.
Great point. I remember in the early days of gaming, all the art on the arcade machines and on the game boxes was super crazy or had hot characters. Then the games had nothing to do with the cool art that drew you in 😂 and it 100% worked to get people playing.
It's crazy that a company can spend millions to make a game and forget such a simple rule that was figured out 40 years ago.
They weren't even pushing the message! They were just trying not to get run over by it. Which is still crazy, like who cares if a bunch of people who won't ever play your game don't like it?
'Character Design' and that picture of Widowmaker is saying more than words here.
1:44 bro built like a ninja turtle 💀
I feel like whoever designed the concord characters wanted to avoid stereotyping, which not only ruins them but also ruins the confuses the player has if you expect you think but get another it’s very jarring
Well for trying to avoid stereotypes, they sure as hell made several themselves especially for the black characters.
Bazz looks like freaking Thugnificent crossed with a disco wizard. Jabali and Bazz both wear the Morpheus shades, Jabali and Vale both do the braid things (despite wearing hats that would make those braids uncomfortable and ruin them especially in Vales case)
The fact there is no rule 34 nsfw content for Concord tells you everything you need to know. The fact that not even the most hardcore online degenerates wanna touch their game with a ten foot pole, shows how hard it failed to resonate with almost anyone.
I appreciate you making a pointed criticism of these designs without going all "Woke bad." This isn't a left/right issue, this is about management at publishers being completely indifferent to games as an art form.
Exactly, people forget that game devs are really not at all interested or concerned about politics. They had no interest in making a good game to begin with, and just happened to try to go for a realistic art style.
The worst character design was, I think, Lennox. That lizard man Yondu rip with a human face looking... thing. The very human face is off-putting enough against the green scaly skin with quills but then we get to his... hair? Quills? That odd looking Mohawk on top of his head which was accentuated by a tiny little man-bun at the back. That man-bun alone made my eyelids twitch with rage and fury.
it bothers me how many people have said the issue is that it had a price tag, dude that doesn't matter. when people played early access no one was going "guys you gotta try this" none of the characters are appealing so no hype was drawn, its a game made by people marketing to an imaginary audience then being shocked when the actual audience of normal people weren't interested in it
2b. That is all.
A man of culture i see
Nothing can top 2b 🗿🍷
man i dont even know where she came from but i see that girl EVERYWHERE lol, so much cosplayers and modded skins
@@HotDogGodorno See, I was jerking off to 2B long before I knew she was a character from Nier Automata. I don't even play games like that - a japanese chick with huge swords walking around and slashing robots. So imagine my surprise when I actually tried it and realized it was unironically a goddamn masterpiece. Up there with The Witcher 3 or Red Dead Redemption 2. As for 2B, she's clearly meant to be uberattractive; love it or hate it, but the point is that's a design that works. Something you cannot unsee. Which is why, thanks to r34, Square Enix got my $25 - or whatever it cost me. (Seriously, don't sleep on Nier Automata)
I miss her too
Games are meant to be an escape by transcending reality and depicting our fantasies. I don’t think Concord was successful in representing either.
You nailed it.
I actually disagree. We should not pigeonhole Video Games as a medium to be escapism. I think video games can serve more than just being fun things we do. That being said, I think Concord failed at being realistic.
@@jsmoothd654while video games can be much more as its a fantastic story teller, i think most people play games just to forget their lives for a moments and have fun
nice to see someone understand why concord failed rather than saying the characters are too gay or something
That’s also why
@@Keeki549 did you not watch the video? these characters are being compared to OW characters half the roster are gay overwatch
@LifeIsStrange225 typical LIS fan
@@Keeki549people won't stop thirsting over bg3 characters and as far as I can tell they're all bisexual
@@FROEZOENoh no, someone having a point that doesn’t make them attack LGBT+ people opportunistically! Typical LIS fan right?
Get out of here.
Of course it sells games. That's one of the reasons Nintendo put special interest in Ocarina of Time's character designs. Not just Nintendo, that's why Sega kept redesigning Sonic to make him more appealing.
I'm a woman and one of my favorites games is the first Witcher . I never thought of need for my playable character to look like me, I had best time running around as white hair male , fighting monsters and collecting pretty art cards :) Concord characters look like their backstory is : Susan is 43 and after doing the school run, she enjoys energy drink and scrolling through instagram for rest of her day . That's it . they are boring . Remember Max Payne ? Grumpy, moody dark, great main theme music , still sends chills when someone use it in a video . Painkiller - just pure rage madness , lots of fun . I remember playing Blood Rayne and having best time of my life as her most awesome move was jumping on someone's shoulders and taking him out , playing as Dark elf mystic in Lineage 2, watching her b0obs defying gravity in most funniest way or running as undead priest in World Of Warcraft , with her bones sticking out of robe and farming of that stupid horse mount that I didn't get . Still had great time .
I wouldn't play the Concord, it doesn't appeal to me , but even if I did , this game wouldn't spark any memories like that.
Oh and I did play as Mercy . So yes, points on that . Mainly because she was cute , a healer and I love wings.
"Mercy's design is incredible."
Incredibly hot.
As an artist who specializes in character design specifically (mostly from commissions) I whole heartedly agree. Look at our famous cartoon characters like Mickey Mouse or Spongebob, these characters are recognizable not because they are popular but because they visually look good to look at. Even if you take away the details and the colors and just leave the character in a silhouette you can still easily recognize them because of their simple figure. Im not saying you should follow the design choices but it should be the standard when you're creating a character and you want that character to be recognizable. You can shit on OW for being a shitty game but you cant deny how good their character design is. Another thing to consider is that if you are designing character there's two things you can go with, either you want to approach it in a practical way or the visual way. Concord didnt do either, all of their character design is neither practical.. or visually good.
The best way to remember a character is to highlight their characteristics. Sometimes it's a physical feature, sometimes it's a weapon, sometimes it's just a simple shape. Being easily recognizable is the basis.
Doesn't help that 9 of the 16 characters have a similar body type amd size. Anything larger becomes a priority target.
Ur thumbnail sold this video
Randomly recommended your channel, but I remember I used to watch your "I f*cking hate" series back in the day. Powerful thumbnail
ooooh, so that WAS him, i thought i was triping here
@@driguesbarcellosgood times...oh the SAO video....yah Kiritos foundation got a lit from those videos😂.
Lol, I know him exactly from that series. Good times!
False, Deadlock has some fugly ass characters but is still wildly popular. Concord fucked up in more ways than just one.
Yea concord isnt fun or visually appealing. At least they tried
Deadlock has style.
"Sex Sells", The amount of R34 a game has is proportional to is success.
Disagree with a few central points:
1. "Games with better gameplay will lose to inferior games with better income"
-> There is not enough money in the world to keep companies happy. Greedy ones will always fail in the end. The only thing that matters is that your costs are lower than your income. Good gameplay tends to be cheaper than graphics or TripleAy design. See: Ubisoft.
2. "Single player games can't compete"
-> Single player games have no costs beyond distribution. No servers. No multiplayer.
The issue is lack of capital for these kinds of "boring" companies and approaches. That will change in the coming years and decades as boomers start dying off.
Sex sells, budget cuts bankrupt.
I'm just now realizing that after Lawbreakers, this is the SECOND time a PlayStation hero shooter flatlined shortly after release because it was a less attractive and less interesting version of Overwatch.
I'm a woman and since I was a kid, I dreaded the idea of being sexualized and objectified
BUT as a gamer, I want to play cool and/or attractive characters
Why would I be drawn to a character I barely want to look at?
Characters have to look cool and unique, not necessarily sexy
@@ArdaSReal that's what a lot of these companies don't understand
Not every female character in Overwatch is sexy but they all have appeal
There were ways to make the Concord characters look appealing but they didn't know how to achieve their "desexualization" mission while still having good character design
@@Meatdudeit makes sense
@@Meatdude what is bizarre about it
So basically what cause concord to fail, is their lack of understanding (or inability due to ego) to understand the importance of the most basic rule of advertising/sales. That first impression is EVERYTHING.
The concord characters look like someone’s first oc they made in middle school
The name Concord only for me being British of a certain age reminded me of the airliner and as the name of a game seems from my point of view an odd choice for a hero shooter. The points you made are very valid and well-thought-out regardless, and 2 weeks has to be a record for a game live service to be shut down. If I had not seen your video on it and someone mentioned this game to me would be thinking about how on earth is it named after an airliner that was caught in a serious tragedy and taken away from the world.
Still back on track well thought out and your right Blizzard has always understood good character design. Obviously, Sony missed that memo...
Concord's failure was really hard to pinpoint. Character design was definitely one of many reasons why.
Game was also poorly Marketed, alot of top comments are people only just hearing about it.
I think the game only had one major trailer and the beta wasn't really advertised.
- Horrible character design
- Started development when hero shooters were a novelty, released when there's simply no more room for more games of the genre
- $40 when the giants of the hero-shooter genre (Overwatch 2, Valorant, etc) are free to play
- Overall just a mid game according to most critics
- EDIT: tons of money sunk in boring story trailers that no one cares about. No one plays hero-shooters for the story.
@D4C_LoveTrain1 Something just click when you mention the trailer. The very first reveal of Overwatch shows the obvious villains and hero , and the player can play as either while the trailers' clips of Concord didn't show that. Just the freerunners. So, for some players that do care about a little bit of the world, they didn't got their attention. 🤔
@@CidGuerreiro1234 adding to the fact that the story trailers didn't really have a story that developed
i think there were many game killers lined up to kill Concord, but i really do think it was the character design that got them first and with such an extreme level of failure.
"because that's like saying no one in real life, can be attractive" 10:01
That is hardest bar I have ever heard in game design discussions.
This is such a good video.