A wise man once told me: “Don’t hate people but hate what people do.”
Over the past decade, I have gone back to this singular, solid piece of advice because when you look around you at the continual failure of media targeting the “modern audience” you notice a pattern of behavior: of people blaming anyone and everyone for the failure of a product.
If you haven’t been on the internet for the last few weeks, first of all, good on you, as it feels like the internet has devolved into extremes of one set of beliefs or another. Pitting people against one another, that at one point, were about to put aside the hatred of the past in favor of unity. Secondly, there were two “major” releases in the gaming sphere that have not only received poor reception from the moment they launched, those being the games Dustborn and more recently, Concord.
For those unaware, Concord is a 5v5 hero shooter, in the same vein of similar free 2 play games, such as Overwatch, Apex Legends, among others. This game has had a lot of problems, development which lasted 8 years, an open beta that was poorly received, required a $40 entry fee and had probably one of the most abysmal launches, and that’s just this year in the gaming sphere.
Well, just this past Friday, September 6th, 2024, Concord has been shut down, note even two weeks into its life. The announcement of which was made on the PlayStation website just last Tuesday, September 3rd, 2024 to not only pull the plug on the live service shooter, but to give anyone that bought the game a full refund.
What does it say about a game when Sony, a company known for censoring Japanese made video games at the source, pulls the plug on your game, despite the fact that it is the second most woke game of the year?
The reason I bring all of this up, because as with the recent failures of Disney’s The Acolyte, Star Wars Outlaws, Dustborn, the usual suspects are looking to blame everybody else for Concord’s failure. Which brings me to the reason I wrote this article in the first place. While I was skimming Twitter/X, I came across this post someone pulled from the Concord discussion boards:
I didn’t think this post was real, so I search the discussion boards and, by the Gods it’s real. Now, I’m gonna break this down:
“Are you happy? Are you satisfied?”
How long can you stand the heat?
Sorry for that brief interjection, had Queen on the brain with that opening line, but to the answer:
No, I’m not happy, I’m not sad either, I’m indifferent and that is because people like you made me apathetic, talked down to me and people like me and furthermore, told me that the game wasn’t for me.
And to be honest, that’s fine, unlike your lot, I don’t want every game to cater to me, I’m okay with not everything not being catered toward me. That is specifically a you and your lot problem, not mine.
“Does your day feel a little better knowing a great developer comprised of hard-working folks is likely going to be shut down over this?”
I couldn’t care less. Perhaps if some of the people working at Firewalk Studios didn’t spend their time attacking gamers skeptical of Concord, they would not be in the situation they are now. They got what they deserved and the market decided that they didn’t want this game. You’re mad at the wrong people but you don’t care about that, you’re just looking to direct your anger aimlessly at everyone who either didn’t care or weren’t interested in the game. You made the claim that the game wasn’t for us, so, we moved on to games that we actually enjoy.
“All because you can’t whack off to ‘ugly’ character designs and cry about woke games all the time.”
This is the most common go-to argument that people like this use, they build up this strawman that the average gamer is some straight, white, male coomer who is looking to get his rocks off to some pixelated tits n’ ass. And even if people like that do exist, I ask: so fucking what?
Hate to break it to this individual, but men like looking at beautiful women, myself included. WOMEN like looking at beautiful women and that’s perfectly fine.
Hell, I recently finished my fourth run of a game called Dragon’s Crown PRO with this chick, the Sorceress:
This art was done by George Kamitani, a man who not only has a history in the gaming industry but has stated how he “exaggerated proportions so characters in fantasy art would stand out”. Now, I still have two more classes to get through this game with before I get into the more difficult content and this is a game I thoroughly enjoy, even with how ridiculous some of the designs are at times.
But I’m getting off topic here, I have to ask, why the fuck do you care so much what other people enjoy? I’ll be frank, given the chance to play a muscled up dude or a hot chick, I’d choose the hot chick every time. Most people would, it’s nice to have something to look at while they’re kicking ass and taking names.
Back to the other point made. You know, if it weren’t for woke people pushing these terrible looking and poorly executed games in our faces, nobody would complain if you would just learn to live and let live. Instead we’re inundated with why we should enjoy these woke games and how we’re horrible, terrible people for not taking an interest. Now, I’m not sure about the rest of you, but I cannot abide the gaslighting these people do and have been sick of it for some time. Blah, blah, blah, don’t piss on my head and tell me its raining. Moving on.
“Get the memo: this game wasn’t made for you in the first place.”
AND THERE IT IS!
Seriously though, I think a lot of people got that memo from the press the game received before release, but it goes much deeper than that, as I’ll show here in a moment.
“Now a decent shooter with fresh ideas in a boring f2P market is going to DIE, does that make you happy?”
A hero shooter in an already oversaturated market that should have been released at least 5 years ago that is so homogenized and cookie cutter that it’s a wonder it was allowed to live as long as it did. But don’t take my word for it, check out the IGN review.
One of the biggest fuck ups of Concord was that it WASN’T free 2 play from the offset. Requiring a $40 entry fee, and I reiterate, in an already oversaturated market was the second fuck up.
I couldn’t care less that it’s dead and gone. It had horrible open beta numbers and even worse player numbers after the game launched. You said it wasn’t for me, so we didn’t play it. It isn’t my fault that the game failed.
“You are what’s wrong with this industry and because of you Sony might see this and think PC isn’t worth investing their money into for future games. Hope you’re satisfied.”
If ignoring bad games headed by studios who lash out at me for not wanting to play a game based on appearances, gameplay and buzz surrounding it (there was little to no buzz for this game) is wrong, then I don’t want to be right. I enjoy playing video games and I refuse to give money to people that hate me and if that makes you angry well, that’s strictly a you problem. In the words of a good friend: you can hate me for free.
I also find your point about Sony not investing their money into PC is absolutely laughable for a few reasons:
The first being that ports of God of War, Spider-man have very positive ratings on Steam right now. They were well received after a period of PS5 exclusivity.
Now, there is another side to this and it largely comes from the moves Sony themselves have made, not the consumer.
There are a few ports of PlayStation games that require of PSN account to access some of the features. Those games being God of War Ragnarok, Ghost of Tsushima and Helldivers II. Why you would require a PSN account on a Steam port is beyond me. And before you say: “Well Sig, there are other games that require a third party login to play” and while that is true, these are also first party exclusives there is no excuse for this type of thing to exist in a port.
Don’t even get me started on the Helldivers II fiasco, a former GOTY contender that, in my opinion, wasn’t that interesting to me suffered a lot of Sony’s bullshit. About a month or so after the game released, Sony and Arrowhead decided to make login with a PSN account a requirement in order to continue to play and because of this, a lot of the player base dropped off until it was changed. It then came out that PSN was blocked in 121 countries, which further exacerbated player retention problems. I’m not saying Helldivers II got what it deserved in that regard, but it got what it deserved because that was a significant hit for them and Arrowhead Studios.
Now, while I don’t think Sony is going to give up on the PC market, I do believe that their missteps will get them to rethink their strategy. Maybe that’s wishful thinking on my part, but I like to try and keep positive where I can.
Am I satisfied that Concord failed? Once again, no, I’m apathetic and if you don’t believe me, I’ll pull up my bank statements and show you all the invisible fucks I give.
Now, this next part was an edit, no doubt added in after Sony’s announcement that Concord’s service was shutting down.
“Well congratulations, the game is shutting down completely. Hope you miserable gamers are happy.”
And nothing of value was lost.
Also, OP here seems to believe that I am miserable because a game they probably didn’t play was shut down. Quite the opposite actually, but I’ll save that rant for later.
One more thing I wanted to show off was something that the character designer for Concord said in some conversation pull off Twitter. I don’t know the context and I never will but here you go:
Oh, there will be plenty of games to buy, but it won’t be anything with you involved Miss Riefer. And the best part of all of this, like the people who started GamerGate II:
YOU MADE THIS HAPPEN.
You and your entire ilk seem to be of this belief that you know better than the average gamer and that you can try and force behaviors on people through prejudice, peer pressure and paranoid propaganda a la probably your favorite BlackRock CEO: Larry Fink.
I know that you think that you’re above us and try to tell us what we should and shouldn’t like and if we don’t think like you that we’re somehow horrible people upholding some undefined status quo that you and your lot have yet to explain for over a decade now.
People like you, Sweet Baby Inc., Kotaku and all of the woke gaming urinalists lie, slander, libel us when we notice what you’re trying to do and instead of trying to have a conversation, you flee like cowards to your echo chambers while plotting new ways to spew your vitriol in increasingly less subtle ways.
I know you hate people like me for not buying into what you’re selling and continuing to enjoy my hobby outside of your influence. And I am okay with it, you can live with that hatred in your heart, but you won’t see a dime from me.
Its obvious what you and your ilk are trying to hide what you’re doing, rebranding DEI thinking that no one will notice. And the moment that the light is shone upon your activities, you scurry back into your holes like cockroaches, fleeing to your safe spaces and echo chambers, protecting your Twitter and social media accounts. Unfortunately for you however, archives exist and everything posted on the internet is forever.
Quite frankly, I am tired of it all.
I am tired of being blamed for the failure of media that I’m told isn’t for me because the people in these entertainment mediums, continuing to produce this slop refuse to take accountability for their dumb choices.
I know this meme is eventually going to get old, but it hasn’t yet.
In closing, I leave you all with this:
What these people don’t seem to realize is that we are not here to serve them, they are here to serve us and that the market will ultimately decide whether or not they will succeed or fail. Gamers don’t serve these studios, it’s them that need us. They know that but pretend otherwise.
They want us to live in a world where “gamers need to accept the fact that they don’t own their games”. Well, Mr. Ubisoft CEO, I hate to break it to you, but other options exist. And until those options are taken away, I intend to play what I want, when I want. Before you get into it, yes, I am aware of Steam’s EULA, which is why I am on a mission to finish those games in my library.
These people are also looking to take all other options away until we have no choice to consume the slop they feed us, but with their failing studios and project, I don’t foresee that happening at least for a long time.
I’ve got a backlog of games that can keep me entertained for a lifetime and then some. not just video games, but TTRPGs, board games, card games, books, music, I’m pretty much set for life. I only buy video games if they interest me anymore and honestly, outside of a few exceptions, I’m all but done with newer video games.
In a world of remakes, remasters, rehashs and recycled concepts with cut content because Gods forbid anyone be offended in this world, I choose to go my own way.
I am tired of being gaslit and blamed for shit that isn’t my fault and I’m not going to accept it anymore.
While I like to remain positive on here and try to talk about things I love, some thoughts are just too important not to share.
To those that would continue to blame me for the failings of people I have nothing to do with:
The bird is flying and it’s always gonna be up.
It’s always going to be fuck you.
Hate me for free!