Concord
Sony recently reiterated its commitment to live service games with a big hit last year (Helldivers 2), a big cancellation (The Last of Us Factions) and a big flop (Concord). It’s not much of a surprise that it continues down this path, given the way the industry is trending and the limited lifespan of popular single-player games. But it immediately made me think of a game Sony is reportedly releasing that I have to believe is destined to fail, Fairgame$.
If you don’t know what Fairgame$ is, I wouldn’t blame you, but it’s made by Jade Raymond’s Haven studio, announced 18 months ago with very little information since then. It’s in the heist genre, but between this title and the initial trailers, the vibes are just… bad. It feels like a game with almost zero chance of success, and I’ve lost track of how many times it’s been very, very easy to see this coming over the past few years, even though it seems like it’s catching on with publishers (Sony, for example, thought the Concord became a huge new franchise for them).
Before we go any further with this, I need to separate this from the whole “culture war” aspect, as many of these games will be considered “woke”, usually because of character designs or something, but it’s a bigger issue than that. . And of course there are exceptions to the rules here, and games that don’t look great are hits, and games that look good can disappoint. But in recent years?
Concord – We might as well start from here. Ever since a full trailer, both cinematic and gameplay, was released, Concord was criticized as what appeared to be a rip-off of Guardians of the Galaxy, but with a worse aesthetic. It was then revealed to be a hero shooter, and at that moment any chance of success was gone.
I know this may sound like voodoo to some, but there really is something to be said for YouTube’s likes and dislikes when it comes to predicting a game’s failure. This is more than just an “anti-awakening” downvote, it reflects larger, looming issues that usually go unaddressed. These numbers, now only seen through third-party extensions, aren’t perfect, but as someone with my own channel, they’re pretty close. And in this case, the Concord movie trailer was very underwhelming with 7.6K likes to 41K dislikes. The gameplay one, 8.5K to 85K. Disaster was predicted and disaster followed. So what else can we do this with?
Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League – A $200 million loss for WB where no one asked for a looter shooter with this group, unlike another single player superhero game from Rocksteady. This is an interesting case, as many of the initial trailers were very positive, but as the game got more exposure and people realized how much of a live shooter looter this was, fan support evaporated. 7.7k likes to 25k dislikes on a game trailer from State of Play. Official Game Launch Trailer 2.3K to 3K.
Redfall – One of the worst AAA games I’ve ever played, personally, though some may disagree. Again, the initial trailers showing the basic concept looked okay. But upon release, the official launch trailer was split 4.8K by 4.8K. It eventually stopped future development and had to issue refunds for DLC.
XDefiant – The shooter had to capture the magic of Call of Duty from years ago. It ended up hemorrhaging players until it was announced that it would close next year. Its reveal trailer? 16K to 35K.
I’m going to stop here to do the opposite and show that this isn’t just a co-op, live service where people automatically hate these games. Examples:
Helldivers 2 – No one predicted it would be the success it was, but there were always signs that this was going to do well. 19K to 368 in the announcement trailer, ending at 49K to 820 in the launch trailer. Great proportions, huge punch.
Marvel Rivals – Another hero shooter that is an extremely literal rip-off of Overwatch? Never mind, it looked cool from the jump. 104K to 12K in the announcement trailer. 39K to 585 in the launch trailer. It currently racks up several hundred thousand players a night on Steam.
The future? If we want to be predictive, we can use Sony’s two upcoming multiplayer games that are quite separate:
Fairgame$ – The reveal trailer has a Concord-level ratio of 4.1K to 51K. I’m not kidding when I say this kind of reception should be enough to scrap the entire game rather than go through another such awful launch. And the vibes here are beyond bad.
Marathon – The Bungie export’s upcoming shooter had a killer announcement trailer and an incredibly cool aesthetic. While it remains to be seen if it can be a hit in a crowded multiplayer market, the vibes for the game (though perhaps not Bungie itself lately) are generally good. With 21 million views on the trailer, that’s 95,000 likes to 4,800 dislikes.
I argue that this is predictable, in many cases. This may be some level of cherry picking, but I feel like you can tell what is headed for disaster and what has a good chance for success. While this may seem obvious, when you have situations like Sony banking on Concord or Rocksteady thinking Suicide Squad was a good idea, you can see how developers and publishers see a lot of this going with some way and have a real disconnect with fans and often the market in general. I guess we’ll try it with Fairgame$ and Marathon next.
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