The bit with retroactive lessons is interesting. It's always frustrating to see all these armchair analysts breaking down why a game succeeded and they just list its features. "Halo succeeded because it was a first person shooter. Make more first person shooters" and in the next video "Fez succeeded because it's not a first person shooter, make more platformers". This is how developers seem to think, too.
Well, I took the "make more astro bots" not as doing astro bot clones but middle market games that have a reasonable turn around and development cycle.
One thing about the budget of Concord that I didn't see mentioned (and to be fair, it would be weird/hard to mention there) is that there was a big emphasis on doing weekly story vignettes that would "take advantage of Sony's infrastructure for character models and motion capture", which could reasonably inflate the budget of the game. To what extent, I wouldn't try to guess.
Besides that, I do think that Concord going pay to play in a genre completely strangled by free to play games did a lot to hurt the game's discoverability. They had a few beta tests coming up to the release, but they didn't light the world on fire, either, so maybe people's mind were already made up by then.
Lastly, I don't think Sony was expecting a GOW: Ragnarok level success, but I do think they thought that they had a hit in Concord at some point, they had a 10+ minutes feature in one of the State of Play streams, much bigger than you would think if it was going to be just a "modest success".
Gotta disagree with the sentiment of Reinhardt not being immediately understood as a Concept. When i first heard of Overwatch through Totalbuiscuit and how its a near future FPS with blizzard Characters and then saw Reinhardt my first reaction was: Yep that looks like WoW Tank in the future. Power Armor Veteran to fight against robots. Check. If you see one screenshot with his shield and hammer or couple seconds of his gameplay you have an immediate understanding of his function in the game and thats what makes all the original Overwatch characters so great. Its that sort of "Best of the last 20 years of FPS". They stole from everyone as long as its fun. Theres so much quake and unreal tournament in this game.
Emari looks like some sort of Security Guard? Its my best guess after 40 hours of gameplay. Even with my somewhat limited knowledge of Concords World i couldnt tell you exactly where she hails from. Its funny to me that its never well communicated just how big Emaris ingame model is from any of her screenshots. Shes huge, like almost twice the height of some of the faster characters.
I dont know if all the round shapes of her armor kinda trick me into thinking shes way smaller.
I was comparing the two pieces of art apart from any greater context. In at least 2 videos I've seen people use that exact picture of him, which doesn't include his weapons and doesn't communicate much about him.
I do agree that Emari's size is not communicated well. It's hard to find any official character lineup art that has her next to other characters, and unofficial character lineups often scale the characters down to fit in same-sized boxes so she ends up looking smaller than the rest.
The character select screen doesn't do a good job either - in that screen all the characters look approximately the same size. (I guess to make the screen look nice)
The bit with retroactive lessons is interesting. It's always frustrating to see all these armchair analysts breaking down why a game succeeded and they just list its features. "Halo succeeded because it was a first person shooter. Make more first person shooters" and in the next video "Fez succeeded because it's not a first person shooter, make more platformers". This is how developers seem to think, too.
Great article.
Well, I took the "make more astro bots" not as doing astro bot clones but middle market games that have a reasonable turn around and development cycle.
One thing about the budget of Concord that I didn't see mentioned (and to be fair, it would be weird/hard to mention there) is that there was a big emphasis on doing weekly story vignettes that would "take advantage of Sony's infrastructure for character models and motion capture", which could reasonably inflate the budget of the game. To what extent, I wouldn't try to guess.
Besides that, I do think that Concord going pay to play in a genre completely strangled by free to play games did a lot to hurt the game's discoverability. They had a few beta tests coming up to the release, but they didn't light the world on fire, either, so maybe people's mind were already made up by then.
Lastly, I don't think Sony was expecting a GOW: Ragnarok level success, but I do think they thought that they had a hit in Concord at some point, they had a 10+ minutes feature in one of the State of Play streams, much bigger than you would think if it was going to be just a "modest success".
Well thought out and written. I don't like complimenting you, is that weird?
appreciate this perspective and post :)
There's no better way to admit you're terminally online than referencing bean dad...
I listened to a podcast that would reference him regularly before he became Bean Dad, so it sticks in my memory since I was already aware of him.
That's my excuse anyway
Gotta disagree with the sentiment of Reinhardt not being immediately understood as a Concept. When i first heard of Overwatch through Totalbuiscuit and how its a near future FPS with blizzard Characters and then saw Reinhardt my first reaction was: Yep that looks like WoW Tank in the future. Power Armor Veteran to fight against robots. Check. If you see one screenshot with his shield and hammer or couple seconds of his gameplay you have an immediate understanding of his function in the game and thats what makes all the original Overwatch characters so great. Its that sort of "Best of the last 20 years of FPS". They stole from everyone as long as its fun. Theres so much quake and unreal tournament in this game.
Emari looks like some sort of Security Guard? Its my best guess after 40 hours of gameplay. Even with my somewhat limited knowledge of Concords World i couldnt tell you exactly where she hails from. Its funny to me that its never well communicated just how big Emaris ingame model is from any of her screenshots. Shes huge, like almost twice the height of some of the faster characters.
I dont know if all the round shapes of her armor kinda trick me into thinking shes way smaller.
I was comparing the two pieces of art apart from any greater context. In at least 2 videos I've seen people use that exact picture of him, which doesn't include his weapons and doesn't communicate much about him.
I do agree that Emari's size is not communicated well. It's hard to find any official character lineup art that has her next to other characters, and unofficial character lineups often scale the characters down to fit in same-sized boxes so she ends up looking smaller than the rest.
The character select screen doesn't do a good job either - in that screen all the characters look approximately the same size. (I guess to make the screen look nice)