Chris is a product manager at Enhance and hosts the Player One podcast.
The game of 2024 that players will forget but I can't stop thinking about is Concord, the first-person arena shooter from Sony and Firewalk Studios. In a year with so many amazing games released, this is the Stealth Game of the Year. Whether we like it or not, Concord will quietly be one of the most influential games in this industry in the coming years.
It covers everything that anyone in video game development and publishing is DEATH afraid to repeat or ever be compared to. A nightmare from which you wake up in a cold sweat. Its utter failure will be studied and theorized within the industry. It will influence how games are advertised, marketed and released, all to avoid the same perceived mistakes.
On the outside, it's easy to dismiss Concord for a variety of reasons, both problematic and not. It's hard to say that any of those reasons were completely wrong. Perception is reality, after all, and this game proved it.
YouTube videos will tell you all the things that accelerated Concord's failure: blatant trend chasing, multiplayer games that are bad or not what we want from Sony, live service games, diversity and inclusion, AAA budgets and further. This game became the template and focal point for anything gamers consider anti-consumer before anyone outside of Sony/Firewalk played it.
The confluence of these things was death by a million paper cuts. Never mind that it was a full-featured paid game with free planned updates, tons of lore and weekly short stories, some great deck-building type gameplay mechanics, and a great soundtrack; I mean, for me, the list goes on and on. I loved Concord during the two weeks he was with us. It brought me back to the days when I was addicted to Halo multiplayer with friends and coworkers. I played 136 games (*COUGH* I didn't win much, but that's okay) during the two weeks the game was with us and I thoroughly enjoyed it.
Before you dismiss the positive things I just said about the game, consider for a moment what the storm around Concord's failure also says about us as players and people. About what the many videos posted on YouTube, the negative comments and the hateful tweets say, not about the game they are directed at but about the ease, speed and absolute pleasure that we, as people, have felt when playing a game, most people never played a single minute. As people, I hope and pray that we will be better in 2025 and beyond. Can we stop dog piling from vehicles? Well, probably not; yes, it is too much to wish that for humanity on the Internet. When we consume or participate in hateful dog piles like this, it becomes a challenge to find the joy that video games can also inspire.
As someone who likes underdog stories, watching the car crash in slow motion was heartbreaking. My heart still goes out to the developers at Concord who worked for years on the game to get this result. Once this game was considered (rightly or wrongly) shit, it became a damaged product. So we, as players, didn't want to be seen playing or talking about it. Our friends wouldn't try it. We wanted to denigrate anyone who had the audacity to enjoy it or suggest it might be good. There was no time for a “but it's actually fun” cycle like what happened with Guardians of the Galaxy a few years ago because it closed in an unprecedented two weeks.
So here's to Concord, the game that no one wanted, few played, and that will be on the minds of anyone who creates or releases a multiplayer first-person shooter or live service game for years to come.
…
Also, Minishoot Adventures: How come no one is talking about Minishoot Adventures for GOTY? That damn game rules.