Flops of the decade? Concord/Dustborn

[Mr Croft]

This is mostly a thread about concord honestly; but I have some opinions about dustborn and am curious to see what others think.
I'm sure by now everyone has heard or read that concord (Sony huge live service shooter) is going to be shut down in about a week. The game only lasted 14 days from release to closure. This has to be one of the fastest AAA game disconnects I've seen in my entire life (outside of the day before which is another can of worms itself). What do you all think about sony quickly abandoning a game they clearly sunk over 150m into?

personally I'm glad this is happening to them as messed up as it sounds. This entire notion of "making games for the modern audience" is absolute poison now (which leads into dustborn). People are obviously still buying games (wukong selling millions); but its clear people dont wanna play games like this. The game had awful character design and generic play in an already competitive hero shooter space. I will say the shooting itself was fairly good but everything was just plain awful.And that $40 price tag was the icing on the cake. Then you add in the one dev attacking people online over negative opinions about the game just adding fuel to the fire. Am I wrong to be this happy that this game folded like a lawn chair?

in regardless to dustborn I find it concerning that goverments gave grants using tax payer money to help fund this game. Why are my tax dollars going help a game like this? I refuse to believe that game just isn't some giant joke made by Norwegians to make fun of Americans now.

[Random Encounter]

There is something to be said about designing a game around sales trends and focus groups that forgets to be fun or even remotely soulful in the process. It's really funny when your game's lifespan can be measured in the lifespan of a head of lettuce. Or ~1.36 Scaramuccis.

[Selbaek]

Concord is just 1 Games-as-a-Service endeavor Sony wants to put out there. They bought Bungie as part of a bigger plan for a decade's worth of GaaS endeavors. I don't know how easily plans can pivot, but it was pretty clear just a year into that announcement that GaaS were overstaying their welcome and not really an enticing style of game to a lot of people. I hope Sony isn't taking Concord down to reskin it and try to pump it back out, as it would really show that they've missed the entire point.

I am really glad that Concord did poorly. Instead of buying into last minute hype marketing, the user base actually spoke with their wallets and didn't support the endeavor with a purchase. I sincerely hope that this happens more often, and people vote with their wallet instead of that weird mentality that "you can't have an opinion if you didn't play it" - money is the only way these companies are going to get back on the right track with how the fans made them so successful in the first place.

I don't doubt that it could lead to the death of a few franchises I love, but honestly those devs will probably be fired or laid off and they'll start a new indie company making successor games to those franchises. I would rather "business trends" lead to quality games than easy cash grabs that don't really satisfy the player base.

[Mr Croft]

Concord is just 1 Games-as-a-Service endeavor Sony wants to put out there. They bought Bungie as part of a bigger plan for a decade's worth of GaaS endeavors. I don't know how easily plans can pivot, but it was pretty clear just a year into that announcement that GaaS were overstaying their welcome and not really an enticing style of game to a lot of people. I hope Sony isn't taking Concord down to reskin it and try to pump it back out, as it would really show that they've missed the entire point.

I am really glad that Concord did poorly. Instead of buying into last minute hype marketing, the user base actually spoke with their wallets and didn't support the endeavor with a purchase. I sincerely hope that this happens more often, and people vote with their wallet instead of that weird mentality that "you can't have an opinion if you didn't play it" - money is the only way these companies are going to get back on the right track with how the fans made them so successful in the first place.

I don't doubt that it could lead to the death of a few franchises I love, but honestly those devs will probably be fired or laid off and they'll start a new indie company making successor games to those franchises. I would rather "business trends" lead to quality games than easy cash grabs that don't really satisfy the player base.

Sony as another live action shooter coming out soon called Fairgame$. So maybe they haven't learned anything yet. I'll never understand why they thought this would work. They have conditioned that entire fan base that interactive movie based game are the only thing that matters on Playstation.

A game like black myth wukong is so refreshing to me. Just a simple game with no microtransactions, no forced paid dlc that is annouced before the game is even released, and no pandering social messages embedded into the game. Just a clear labor of love.

Also how does this make you all question gaming journalism now? It was very clear people were making disingenous reviews on concord.

[Selbaek]

Also how does this make you all question gaming journalism now? It was very clear people were making disingenous reviews on concord.

Gaming "journalism" has been dead for at least a decade and a half. When sites found a way to make clickbait a revenue generator, it was all over as these poor saps were told to pump out anything they could at alarming rates just to get people to visit their sites. Making articles that favor a game because they were paid to give a game a positive outlook has been a thing since even the 80s and 90s. That will never change as there are plenty of people willing to take money to write shit they don't actually believe.

I personally don't visit any websites to read impressions or reviews about games anymore for this reason. It's really not fair to the few people out there really doing great work in the field, but it's an unfortunate environment in which they will struggle for the sake of their integrity. Not everyone can make it like Jason Schrier as there really aren't many publications out there worth putting your name on.

[Althena]

I would love to feature some thoughtful reviews/articles on the Valiant Gamers main page! If anyone wants to contribute, please let one of us admins know!

[Mr Croft]

I would love to feature some thoughtful reviews/articles on the Valiant Gamers main page! If anyone wants to contribute, please let one of us admins know!

I can make an attempt at this. But someone would have to proof read my work cause sentence structure is not my strong suit lol

[Skunkworks]

I'm a huge fan of Stu Horvath of Vintage RPG Fame. He also runs a small monthly gaming (and pop culture) magazine (https://unwinnable.com/) that is modeled differently than traditional gaming sites in that it's subscription based rather than ad based. It's probably not the industry focused magazine you're looking for, but it does has human written, thoughtful, non-click bait articles.

[Althena]

I'm a huge fan of Stu Horvath of Vintage RPG Fame. He also runs a small monthly gaming (and pop culture) magazine (https://unwinnable.com/) that is modeled differently than traditional gaming sites in that it's subscription based rather than ad based. It's probably not the industry focused magazine you're looking for, but it does has human written, thoughtful, non-click bait articles.

I love this site! I would love to see the front page be full like this- I'd ask them to collaborate but at this point, we don't have much to offer...

[The Grimace]

Games as a Service largely suffer the same troubles as gacha mobile games. There are plenty of them out there that look great to me and have my curiosity, but I do not have the time, the energy, and especially not the money to contribute to these kinds of titles. Like, when they're good, they're great! And having a steady influx of new content is wonderful, if it's free- but that doesn't really feel sustainable in the long term, and that's when companies begin trying to grift in various ways.

Did any of you try Foamstars? I downloaded it since I got it as a PS+ freebie and I deleted it within three hours. The gameplay was interesting as a Splatoon-like, but everything else about the game fell completely flat- especially the added fees for a game that was already intended to be sold at $50+ MSRP.

Triple A Games are expensive to make nowadays, but companies NEED to lower their expectations on development costs and player retention. Not every live service game is going to have success, but these devs and publishers expect to release titles with hundreds of Day One paid add-ons and somehow expect players to spend out the nose on day one without providing an enjoyably curated experience in the first place.