Only He Can Save Concord..

thanks for joining me today who I am does not matter I've worked in industry in public relations brand management as a digital technology consultant event manager and I'm now a full-time games developer running my own studio so here's the situation I want to discuss today Concord is a video game developed by firsttime developer firewalk Studios and published by Sony you may have heard of Sony they made this Electronic Entertainment device you might have used before it's called the Walkman this is firewalk Studio very first game and it is a massive Endeavor for a development First Time Project Concord took 8 years to develop and reportedly cost Sony around $100 million to produce in this video I will not be reviewing Concord as I am not a reviewer I will not be criticizing or rage baiting content for engagement as I am not a YouTuber true I will be offering my advice as a game developer as a working professional and lastly as an adult which it seems firewalk Studios is in desperate need of I'm making this video for firewalk studios for Sony for future game developers who will be making games for us in the years to come and for my fellow Gamers to help understand what the problem is here so here's the problem Oh Boy Concord launch numbers and user numbers upon launch are quite low well below expectations customer reaction and response to the game is largely negative it is the game is entering the hero shooter genre as an online multiplayer game I don't really get I I feel like we need a PowerPoint presentation behind him in order for full immersion competing with games that are already well established the game and brand puts a heavy focus on identity politics a developer of the game has called Gamers and their target audience talentless freaks oh yes and the game and brand has no identifying yes this has happened uh if people didn't remember this uh one of the uh Developers of Concord said the people that were criticizing Concord were talentless freaks which again is something that I call people so I think that they watch one of my videos they watched one of my videos and it triggered them so bad that they decided to become me neque traits Sony the publisher and firewalk Studios the developer totally disregarded the response of Their audience and forged ahead with their Vision because they knew better than the customers that's right when the Gameplay trailer for Concord was origin shown two months ago response from Gamers was and still is largely negative according to my research players are not interested in another generic online squad-based hero shooter we already have so many of those and whether or not people actively think about it Gamers do understand the predatory focus of life service games gamers are burned out on live service games that manipulate the player into spending money on in-game purchases whether that be for alternate outfits for characters I think that players aren't even necessarily burned out I think that players are running out and they're running out of money like when you have so many games inside of an ecosystem trying to take a bite out of your wallet you're eventually going to run out of money to give so like there's a lot of games that I would spend money in like for example when I only played Hong Kai star rail I would spend money in honai Star rail more often but now that I play other gotta games would play game I like that that game exists in an ecosystem and it's like no I don't need to get the new character in Star rail it'll come back later and I'll buy it later on and so that's what H and how many of you guys are the same way is like now there's other games that are competing for your attention or money and you're not putting all of your money and attention into one game get Sparkle by the way she's back Sparkle's a [ __ ] or mechanical advantages that let them have an easier time beating other players what seems important is that concord's character design places a heavy focus on diversity equity and inclusion players have responded by expressing their dislike for the character designs and the usage of pronouns in the character selection menu yeah now diversity equity and inclusion Is Not a Bad Thing those are good things the problem is that people who are pushing those Concepts into the public space lack the maturity self-awareness and understanding of social responsibility to do it correctly and social responsibility I think you don't even need to add in the word social responsibility I think that you could add social anything social awareness social responsibility social accountability social cues social norms social anything he's right he is instead causing more damage to social progress and are actually pushing back social inclusivity further and further I think so the developers of Concord clearly lack the understanding that taking a cultural topic with negative association and making that part of your game's identity will then result in your product your game bearing the entirety of the weight of that negative association that's right so here's the important part here is my advice to firewalk Studios you need to accept that your approach was wrong and your focus on identity politics is something that Gamers and the gaming industry at large does not like and does not want I know it is difficult to hear this but it seems you do not have any adults well it seems like we have ourselves a racist it looks like this guy is a uh sexist racist homophobic white supremacist who's made another video trying to hate on women who are trying to make it in video gaming this is [ __ ] up guys I can't believe it wow working environment to tell you this and explain it to you based on your marketing it seems you have an attitude that is unappealing to your audience and damaging to your product you are very clearly capable and talented developers but with Concord instead of spending your attention and resources on creating I do think that if the game play was actually good you would see more people playing Concord because deadlock has a lot of the same type of like identity politics in it in a way if you look at him right here no I don't think so I I feel like so if you have a character right you you have like obviously like you have like a Native American character right there uh this is like a a black person another black person this person is like just blue right no indicator of skin color there's like your generic uh you know torman giant Bane Irish guy uh there's like the weird older woman uh this is some like weird I guess like lady there's Elvis uh this is Reaper basically uh you know cool hair Asian guy uh what else do we have here like girl boss uh you know basically McCree and then we have uh you know Kaiser wilheim and then we have basically what Widowmaker but it's a black chick and then we have this this seems like such a weird character model but it's like clearly an Asian female right there what I'm saying is that there's a tremendous amount of like representation inside of Deadlock's character design it is a tremendous amount but it's done in a way that's not annoying and the game is good the gargoyle is Latino of course he is it doesn't feel forced yeah yumato looks like one of those old racist World War II Comics yeah that's what I was thinking too I was surprised you would go with a design like that but I don't know yeah we take character unique game with a focus on providing the best possible experience for the end user you seem to have focused on identity politics and shoving your personal biases upon your customers this is a message for the entire game industry identity politics does not make a good game diversity does not make a good game and pronouns do not make a good game y diversity can make a good game better but diversity will make a bad game worse do the games industry stop producing the same said the exact same thing he's totally right generic AAA slot I think also like it it it poisons the well for people because as soon as they see that people are like this is like a huge issue that like the internet has and it's like as soon as people get a first impression it's really hard to break that first impression so what ends up happening is that as soon as that first impression is defined then you see everybody else is like okay well now that this is the case well we're all going to talk down to you right and like this is just how it is so you see a a game that comes out and people start calling at all this bad stuff everybody that's going to read the comments is going to think the game is bad they're going to be like wow this game looks like [ __ ] everybody's saying it looks like [ __ ] I don't want to play it there's a massive confirmation bias that happens copying someone else's homework and doing what was successful last year mhm Gamers don't know what they will want next year and it's not their job it is your job to create something new and interesting offer that to the player and see if that is something they want and like this is also a huge problem that I think a lot of game developers have is that they think that they have a entitlement to people's attention because they put a lot of work into something and I think that when you sell a product and you put a product out there into a market you are not entitled to people consuming that product unless they're getting value out of the product and a big issue that I think a lot of artists have and whenever I say artist I'm using this word broadly because it's people that are emotionally invested into what they're crafting and making in a very extreme way and I think a big issue that these people have is that they get so emotionally invested into it that they can't take a step back and perceive it inside of a spectrum of other people so they can't think about it from any other perspective besides themselves they're like well I put so much work into this everybody has to love this because they're so personally invested into it and they're so personally invested into the process of it and to everything about it right and so they can't step back and actually evaluate what this feedback is and if it's good or not I think streamers have this problem I mean everybody so and this is always the issue right is that it's about how to take feedback like Jeff Kaplan said once that you can't rely on your players to give you Solutions but you can sure as hell rely on them to tell you if there's a problem and I think that if people don't like certain content that doesn't necessarily mean that you should do what they want but it means that what they're getting isn't what they want so when you get emotionally invested into what you're doing and then you can't shift or change what that is and you take it personally that's when you lose when you're selling a product like anything creative yeah it's like well I just want to do my own thing well that's fine if you want to do your own thing that's okay but you can do your own thing and you can you can get mad about sales but you can't do both you can't get mad about sales and get mad about low numbers if you're doing your own thing and you're not trying to meet your audience in the middle that's the issue and and I think this is what happens right is that you have people that are so creatively minded and I think the other issue is that with the people that are creatively minded a lot of them have I'll be honest it seems like a lot of them have a very strong sense of like I don't think the word is entitlement it's like a a sense of superiority around other people it's like oh well we're better than you like we're going to talk down to you for whatever reason right they think that they're like it it's like they're doing Superior like an ego to this and so when people are rejecting what they want they talk about like media literacy and these things like this when a lot of these people don't really even understand the media that they're trying to caricature right they don't even understand the media they're trying to talk to like recently the uh the the developers of Fallout said that Fallout wasn't a critique on capitalism and it was in fact a critique on the fact that humans have an innate propensity to create war and you have these people that are like you know political science majors at a uh you know Community College that are telling these guys that have made a 20year successful franchise that they don't know what they made war war never changes yeah exactly and so you and this is the pretentiousness that I'm talking about and I I think this is really what happens with a lot of cases and this is why I think that these artists are having these problems and these like you know effectively like reality checks is because they're in a group of other people that only think like they do they're in like an echo chamber and then when they come out of that Echo chamber and they approach the public with a product the public just totally [ __ ] rejects it because it's been distilled down to its most unappealing state that's why a lot of manga artists also do hentai because uh contracts because the artist audience no longer uh not only demands it but it also sells insanely well well I've used this example before but I think the best example of that is this is one of the most famous Japanese paintings this guy didn't just do paintings of oceans and waves and and that was hundreds of years ago and what players and Gamers do know is what they don't want yeah what they don't want is Concord to Sony I strongly advise you start treating your audience your customers as human beings and as equals and you start listening to them I I really like that word is the as equals I think that's really a strong word because I don't think that really it's not about being treated like human being but it's like being talked down to like I don't want to be talked down to you made a mistake of con by letting it turn out this way I would advise rebuilding your team of consultants and marketing managers with professionals who have a stronger understanding of modern expectations of your customers and awareness of The Wider cultural landscape yeah to my fellow Gamers there are a lot of negative videos and posts about Concord online right now that's from me as an adult I cannot condone that kind of behavior but I can as a gamer and a professional I urge you please continue to let your voice be heard and let others hear your thoughts if you really really dislike something for a genuine reason it is vital to the games industry that you let it be known creating rage bait content and being negative for the sake of being negative will destroy the industry especially that's the goal well that's the goal um the goal is to make it to where creating it it's to create an environment where games like this are not able to exist yeah that's the whole point are small and [ __ ] on the floor basically yes developers but in this situation you absolutely have to let the industry know you do not want more games like Concord you have to let developers and Publishers know you do not care about identity politics you care about good games you want the best games that the AAA industry can provide do not settle for slop and if it is within your power you create games you make something great for your fellow Gamers because you will be the future of the games industry thank you for watching and if you're wondering no I didn't play Concord as an adult I have very limited time so I can't afford to waste my time playing garbage where do you get them sunglasses oh my God that was such a good video I'm going to link you guys the video that was amazing holy [ __ ] kind of funny ending no no the thing is like the guy was right I mean he was um yeah that that's it he's he's definitely [ __ ] right about this more professional way to shut out the game yeah this is what's going to happen right is that you're going to see games like Concord come out and people aren't going to buy them and then eventually games like Concord will cease to exist like this is just what happens and you're like obviously these companies care about this this like identity politics stuff or whatever uh this guy's only got 5,000 Subs make sure to give him a uh uh give him a sub this is this is really really good yeah yeah this is this is great man and uh it's it's so Random how good this video was yeah this is amazing the phrase is going out exactly imagine setting $100 million on fire Concord has 200 players right now on Steam yeah I guess it must have went up yeah it must have gone up because before it was even lower than that could you explain the wave painting I lack knowledge oh uh the guy did uh the guy that did the painting for the the mouse pad that I had uh used to also uh so basically back in like fudal I don't know if feudal Japan uh but like in old old times in Japan they had like books that like basically would teach people like different sex positions and they were often given to like couples uh in marriage and he actually uh like did illustrations for books like that uh I don't remember uh Kamas Sutra that's one of them but I isn't that a a version of it isn't there another term for it I I don't know I I I don't remember exactly like what the the other terms were but yeah uh Kamas suas India yeah I I'm not sure it's an amazing wedding gift yeah yeah no it was uh it's it's a lot different back then right uh but yeah uh it's very very uh it's not very well known but like back then it was very very popular and so yeah I I feel like in general he's right and uh people might not want to hear it but I think that a lot of the people that try to uh get into art I think that it's about not talking down to players and I think that's what happens with a lot of games like this where people are being talked down to and when somebody gets talked down to they react negatively that's the main problem