With many AAA games flopping straight out of the gate and studios seemingly laying off significant amounts of staff each week, what do you think is the cause of this current trend in gaming?

Sure there’s still some great stuff being released but it’s baffling how some of these game companies can’t see the disaster awaiting them on some releases.

I know I’m talking about two topics at once but figure it would work in the same thread.


Concord

There is flopping, and there is flopping, and the release of PlayStation’s Concord, which has failed to break 700 concurrent players on Steam with maybe just a few thousand on PlayStation, is one of the worst major failures we’ve seen in the last generation or more.

Absolutely everyone saw this coming. From the moment the first real look at the game debuted just two months ago, the narrative formed that this was another hero shooter than no one actually wanted. And that has certainly been proven true now.

- Forbes
www.forbes.com/sites/paultassi/2024/08/25/the-ten-reasons-playstations-concord-has-failed-disastrously/


Suicide Squad

A new report in Bloomberg describes the development of Suicide Squad: Kill The Justice League and the issues which may have led to Rocksteady's expensive live service game flopping at launch. Staff, talking under condition of anonymity, described corporate owners who pushed for a multiplayer game from the studio known for singleplayer experiences, as well as indecisive leadership and a culture of "toxic positivity".

www.rockpapershotgun.com/suicide-squad-failed-for-all-the-reasons-you-could-have-guess-it-failed-report-says

I do think that in response to GamerGate, studios have had such a focus on over-correcting, they’re more focused on making a political statement than making a fun game.

That’s not the lone reason Concord failed, but I agree with the article that it’s part of it.

The total cost of developing Cyberpunk 2077 was $436 million. Horizon Forbidden West, $212 million. I like the way that Sega is developing games in the Yakuza series. One of the directors of the series, Masayoshi Yokoyama, pointed out how blockbuster sequels in the games industry are closer to reboots than upgrades, whereas Yakuza games are just upgrades. Players have been strolling through the same map of Kamurocho for an entire franchise. This has helped keep costs down, while delivering great games at a steady pace.

I think the industry is shooting for the moon too much. A lot of games are just too f*cking big, which by default increases the likelihood of failure. There is also some tone deaf top-down management. I am reminded of when TecMagik was developing a Steven Seagal game for the Genesis; the top producer for the game, at one point, was a former bank manager who told her team to make the game like Streets of Rage 2, which none of them actually wanted. She's an example of someone just looking at numbers and dooming a project. The game actually had some pretty neat ideas.

Edit: ... this is a smaller factor, but also something I just thought of. How does anyone discover games anymore? For me, I used to visit GameSpot.com back in the day, and then Giant Bomb once Gerstmanngate happened. Since the original crew has completely left GB, I still get my games news from Gerstmann on his Twitch channel or Nextlander on theirs. If these guys aren't talking about a certain product, I'm probably not hearing about it.

Before those websites existed, we might be talking about EGM or Game Informer magazines. I feel like games media, like media in general, is so fractionated now that it's harder for a game to reach an audience if it isn't already an established IP. The current information environment is probably hurting certain sales, in that respect.

Few things on these flops

- Suicide Squad: KTJL was a game that was destined to fail with it's gameplay being an essential relic in itself. Games that are made with years and years of delays/development end up being out of touch with the current product today. Case and point this game. The idea Rocksteady had was cashing in on the Guardians of the Galaxy phenomenon of a group of mischiefs thrown together who don't always do thinks the traditional way that most comic book character games have. To compound on this, they made the curious decision of going away from their bread & butter of their Arkham style combat that most people love and having a soulless looter shooter type of game, almost Borderlands esque but in 3rd party mode. The "In your face" mentality this game had probably did nothing as it had a very obnoxious theme about it from the over the top UI/menu options to the vulgar dialogue to how they kill each of the beloved Justice League members. Yes you can say that's the point of the Suicide Squad but that goes back to the point of why was this even created? Suicide Squad again was something prominent 4-5 years ago which goes back to Rocksteady missing the boat by a long mile on delivering something relevant to the cultural landscape.

This vs sticking to the formula and maybe doing a Batman Beyond style game which honestly if done properly, would have done super well given the Beyond series is held in high regard to diehard Batman fans and there's so many villains and characters that could have been done so well. It is criminal to have never gotten an Elder Bruce Wayne played by Kevin Conroy and I wish Rocksteady saw the light at the end of the tunnel with this concept. I know the bigger named Rocksteady guys left but it's a formula that worked 3-4 times, why would you stray from it so much from that formula is beyond me?

None of the characters from Capt Boomerand to Deadshot to Harley Quinn to King Shark even had their own personalities in combat too, they all used guns for the most part. No real identity in game excluding the cutscenes and dialogue.


- Concord came way too late too and was Jim Ryan's final blow of a kiss before he departed Sony leaving some dud decisions for Herman Holst to inherit, case in point Concord is one of them. In a video game room full of hero shooters, led by Overwatch with imitators like Valorant or Apex Legends or the soon to be released FREE(get back to this point) Marvel's Rivals, why would anyone want to try their shot at Concord? Because they have some Destiny veterans behind it? Especially when you have to pay $40 dollars for the price of admission no less when again there's free competitors. Destruction All Stars and now Foamstars had this model and both ended up being permanent free to play games, the former was another Sony first party bomb. People don't want these type of games from Sony, they want creative single player games. Not even just big budget cinematic masterpieces either but just games that bite off the Sony identity going all the way back to the PS1. Concord also seems lifeless from the characters to the gameplay being a pseudo Overwatch ripoff(One of the characters legit is McCre.....Cassidy) which makes you think "Why play an imitation when the real deal is free to play right now?"

Microsoft had 2 big bombs that failed last year and this year in Redfall and Hellblade 2....

- Redfall was a buggy mess that had so much good promise leading into it of being a co op vampire slaying game. I was semi hyped for this if this ended up being some cool Buffy the Vampire Slayer/The Strain sort of game but this ended up being a lifeless open world game which was blatantly rushed between the 30 FPS(Can't do this for a first person shooter) to lackluster one shot cutscenes to again enemies being glitched and repetitive gameplay. I played this for 90 minutes and dropped Redfall mostly due to the aforementioned, there was no real meaning when playing this game. Credit to Arkane Austin in finishing fixing this game but the damage was too much and they were one of the studios closed down earlier this year.

- Hellblade 2 was another overhyped game that I actually thought was OKAY....but that's the problem. It was just okay. It was the sequel to a very thoughtful game about psycosis and a character dealing with trauma with at the time beautiful graphics and award winning acting/sound effects. The sequel had something to build upon and then some as gamers expected a lot from this and Ninja Theory took their sweet time, almost 5+ years in development(IIRC) and the end result was an even more linear experience with little to no real room to be creative with the combat and a very short 6-7 hour experience. It was a 7.5/10 type of game for me which isn't bad but with how much Microsoft boasted about the Ninja Theory acquisition and how long this game was in development for(Game was being advertised in the Series X 1st ever conference a few E3s ago). The visuals were dope and again the voice acting/sound effects were again great but we knew that about the 1st game so again what was done to really up the ante so to speak? Nothing really.

I had no idea this game existed until people were talking about how low the player base is.

I actually keep seeing ads for that on Instagram. Is this Dontnod? If so, it's probably because I've liked some Life Is Strange posts and the algo fed it to me. This looks sort of interesting ... but also feels like "wait for a price drop" game.

Nah DONTNOD doesn't deserve to have their names ruined with this shit:

x.com/kabrutusrambo/status/1826214929579557201

Dustborn is one of those "So bad it's good" type of games, this is up there for worst game of 2024 type of spectacle the way a lot of people are describing it. I would actually hateplay it in the same vein I did with The Quiet Man like 2-3 years ago but it's $40...so NOPE. Give it a year or two and if the price significantly drops, I might check this out just to see how bad this game is. 

The Quiet Man was at least hilariously bad, Dustborn IDK if it has even that going for it. 

It's got mixed reviews on metacritic from critics, but it's getting review bombed by users. It looks like the typical autoimmune reaction to DEI ... and it is possible the game did receive some kind of DEI funding. I remember coming across a tweet from an industry dev stating that some of these games just don't get made without that money.

Life Is Strange kind of went this route once Deck Nine took over, which started focusing on gay themes and then inserted a minority protagonist for True Colors. I enjoyed Before the Storm and watched a playthrough of True Colors ... also enjoyed it. There is a there "there" with DEI sometimes, but sometimes it is also just overblown bullsh*t, like the way people have reacted to Assassin's Creed introducing a black samurai. 🤣

IDK why the tweet is talking about fascism, the band in the clip seems to be addressing xenophobia ... which exists lol.

Edit: There is a part of me that wonders if FF7 were being made for the first time today, if rightist gamers would attack it as "DEI" for including Barret among its main cast; conversely, I also wonder if their antipode on the left would do the same because Cloud cross dresses at one point, even though he is not a real cross dresser, which they might call "transphobic" ...

blog.playstation.com/2024/09/03/an-important-update-on-concord/

However, while many qualities of the experience resonated with players, we also recognize that other aspects of the game and our initial launch didn’t land the way we’d intended. Therefore, at this time, we have decided to take the game offline beginning September 6, 2024, and explore options, including those that will better reach our players.

While we determine the best path ahead, Concord sales will cease immediately and we will begin to offer a full refund for all gamers who have purchased the game for PS5 or PC. If you purchased the game for PlayStation 5 from the PlayStation Store or PlayStation Direct, a refund will be issued back to your original payment method.

Customers who purchased from other digital storefronts will also be refunded. More information about refunds from Steam and Epic can be found below:

Holy shit. Holy shit. Instant refund 1 week in. This will be a free to play game very soon, that's the next step honestly. 

Physical copies are already on eBay above retail, the next ET or NES World championship?