A little over a month ago, the world saw probably the biggest flop in video gaming ever. The game Concord had been in development for 8 years, cost an estimated 100–200 million, and launched late august. The studio behind it was Sony, creator of the PlayStation and other massive video game hits, so nothing to scoff at.
And yet, merely two weeks after launch, the game was dead.
It had only been bought some 25,000 times. Which is not nothing, of course, but for such a huge world-wide release is abysmal. They were expecting millions of sales. That would’ve been needed to make a profit too.
The highest peak of concurrent players (at least on Steam) was less than 800. Which means many people had to wait for a long time before even finding someone to play against. All of this meant the online game was nearly unplayable because there were no opponents, which made even more people walk away from it.
And thus Sony made the unprecedented decision to take the game offline. Keeping it online would cost more than whatever profit they’d made from the few players who bought it.
And the big question here is: Why?
Why did a game with such a budget and development time fail to sell anything? Why was nobody interested? Why did Sony barely market the game and almost seem eager to pull the plug? How on earth do you even fail to make a proper game with those resources?
This blog is not about video games, and I don’t know the detail of this story, so don’t expect an in-depth piece. I’m not even that much of a gamer, and certainly not one who plays shooters. I didn’t know the game was coming, would probably have never played it, and I’m only interested in this from a more instructive perspective.
Instead, I just want to talk about three general lessons one might take away. Lessons that apply to any creative endeavor or product. Something I’ve been discovering time and time again the past few years, because basically any story about a creative product that reaches the news … tells the same lesson.
Fun comes First
This is the issue I encountered with my own (older) games too. I’d get so wrapped up in the mountain of tasks for finishing a game, that I’d forget to actually, you know, make it fun.
I’d have an idea that sounded interesting, and my motivation for making that game coasted entirely on that (“hey, what a funny/interesting idea”). But interesting isn’t fun. Unique isn’t fun. Fun is fun.
As such, I’m now sitting on a mountain of work that’s basically several playable games that are large enough to be commercial releases. But because I forgot to actually put fun first, I’ll probably just release them for free and move on. Because a game is supposed to be fun, and anything else (such as “looks nice” or “great soundtrack”) is much less important.
Similarly, sending a message or teaching some moral lesson isn’t fun. With games, this is less of an issue, but it’s rampant in books and movies. The author seemingly had only one thing in mind when writing that book, and it was to let the world know their views on racism, or money, or whatever. And the end result is a ranting book that isn’t fun to read.
This is something I wanted to get out of the way quickly. Yes, Concord had a clear agenda behind it, wanting to be more inclusive or provide more diverse/different heroes. I don’t care, except to point out that this is never good and should not be your marketing/vision. People don’t play games to get a lesson in morals or learn the personal views of the development team, even if they completely agree.
Many people, for example, play games like these to feel powerful, cool, sexy, adventurous. If your heroes do not provoke that feeling, even if that’s “unique” or “realistic”, then what are you expecting? You expect people to buy a game that does nothing for them and does not make them feel good?
Yes, games should have a vision. But that vision should be based on fun: “we will make a game in direction X with ideas Y because our prototype shows it’s fun”. If your vision for the game is “in our world you’ll be playing a strong female protagonist”, you’re not making a game, you’re giving a lecture and hoping someone finds that fun. It’s only a proper vision if the word strong is literal here and you have all these cool ideas for puzzles with a superhero woman who can lift heavy stuff :p
Besides that, when a game takes 8 years to make, this is the first thing I think of.
They made the game, then discovered it wasn’t fun.
This cycle probably repeated, say, 10 times. They’d change the game, pivot the art style, try anything else, and it still wasn’t fun.
They made lots of new models, and designs, and maps, and rewrote the core code again. And it still wasn’t fun.
The issue here, of course, is that they only detected that after the fact. When, in fact, fun should come first.
- You have a new idea.
- You make the absolute barebones product that simulates the idea.
- This can be done in a day for tiny games. For a huge AAA game, sure, this can take weeks.
- Participate in 48 hour game jams to quickly cure you from the idea that you really need weeks to get a first playable prototype :p
- Or organize a playtesting session for your new game this weekend, to force yourself to keep that deadline. And no better way to instantly know if the idea has potential than to see smiling faces … or confused faces.
- It’s fun? Work on it for longer.
- It’s not fun? Drop it.
But dropping it is hard :p That’s why I have all those older games I know weren’t great, but I finished them anyway. Because I wouldn’t let this idea go to waste! And I’d already started and spent weeks/months on it, so now it shall be finished!
I suppose the same was true for Concord. Sony decided to move on the project, announced it, made all the hirings and infrastructure. And they did all that before they had a playable prototype that was really fun and provided a strong core to build on. Judging from the final game, they had the models, and the marketing, and everything else ready before they actually had fun gameplay. (Which will be my next lesson in the next section …)
And sure, there are some people who bought the game and liked the game. Good for them! But they say stuff like “It wasn’t that bad” or “I quite liked my time with it” or “It’s more fun than people think”.
Firstly, not exactly glowing praise. (But I can’t verify it, because I can’t play the game, because it’s completely gone!)
But secondly, yes, you can make any game “not that bad” if you have 8 years and a million dollars. Given enough time, you can polish a turd until it becomes something better to a group of people.
This is exactly why so many creatives don’t learn from this mistake. They only learn that if they work 3 years on that mediocre idea, it will end up being fine. Instead of learning that they should’ve ditched it for the better idea, the one that was actually fun from day 1, which they would’ve turned into a great game within 6 months.
If a game is fun, it does not take 8 years or millions of dollars to make. Not in any world. If fun comes first, you can create a polished experience that people will buy and enjoy, within 6 months. Let’s make it a year, if you want a really big game.
But if fun doesn’t come first, you will waste time polishing a turd, or having to “actually find the fun” when you’re already 2 years deep into a project. And at that point, the sunk cost fallacy in our brains will not let us actually drop the project.
A Reddit comment I read some time ago, by an avid gamer and pretty successful game developer, probably summed this up best. I’m paraphrasing, because I only saved my scribbled note about it and not the original comment, but this is the gist of it:
“I look at all these new Steam releases. Years in the making, beautiful art, update after update, full of content, 700 devlogs, talented developers. But the game sucks and is boring as hell, always has been. And all I can think is: Did nobody think to check if their game was even fun?”
Don’t put the cart before the horse
I already hinted at this in the previous section, but I thought it deserved its own section. Because this is, again, a mistake I made soooo much in the past. (And still do! It’s a hard one to shake.)
We, humans, have two problems.
- We have the ability to look into the future and think ahead.
- We live in an extremely commercial, performance-driven, status-driven society.
As such, when we start on a new project, we think ahead. We think about all the things that must be done. We already start writing some marketing blurb, or creating a sketch for a logo, before we even have a moving player in-game. Sometimes I had a cover for a book I hadn’t even written yet, or the lyrics to a melody that wasn’t done.
All because our heads are somewhat able to think about the future, plan ahead, and imagine our future successes. All the smiling faces when people play our amazing game. But for that to happen, we need to do these 1000 tasks first, ranging from making the actual game to marketing to contacting publishers and so forth.
This is exacerbated by the fact that everyone reminds us of this. From the day we’re born, we’re told that everything we do has to “make money” or “be good” or “be successful”, otherwise it’s not even worth trying, is it?
When I was (very) young, I played a lot of guitar and wrote some books. Obviously, by doing stuff a lot, you get better at it. This was noticed. My parents, teachers, even friends started saying I should “do something with it” or “make money from it”. The result? I started hating the thing I loved and did voluntarily, and I stopped doing it for a while. (Which ironically dampens your progress and makes you lose that edge you had that would allow you to make money off of it.)
And so we get back to Concord. When a big studio … starts on a big project … they’re extremely likely to put the cart before the horse.
- Before even a first prototype is made, or anyone even knows what you will do in the game …
- There are already divisions working on art, marketing, promotion, the title, the perfect release date, a manager, a manager’s manager, …
When I look at Concord, I don’t see a very pretty game, but it looks fine. Most of it is polished and professional. It’s clear that they had a lot of people working a long time on all these other aspects of the game, besides the basic core loop and the basic code to make it happen.
And this is the result.
- When your game is just a prototype, rules/code can be changed on the fly and it’s no big deal.
- When there’s already other stuff in place, this becomes far more costly. Development takes longer and becomes way more expensive. At the same time, the entire team becomes more risk-averse.
- Until you’re at the point where you’ve invested 20 million and a year already, and only now the first playable version of the game has arrived. And it’s not fun; it’s not great. But you’ve invested so much. You have the cart! A pretty shiny cart! Unfortunately, you’re still looking for the horse …
I, like most people, can completely understand a game releasing while some parts are not done yet. Missing visuals, not that many sound effects, etcetera. We play games for fun; everything else just supports that.
What most people will not accept, is the clear evidence that you spent your time on superficial things but not on the actual core gameplay. This reeks of “we need pretty images to sell more of this turd”. This is the wrong mentality and will generally lead to worse games. Bad games with great marketing copy and trailers.
I have made games that are still unreleased (because there are bugs and missing code/features) … that already have all their marketing assets. I decided to “start working on those other things” way too early. Perhaps because I was stuck with the code or wanted some variation. And before you know it, the runway you had (in terms of time, energy, funds) has evaporated. But not to make the actual game, no, but to make the stuff around it. The stuff nobody will ever see and that will not do anything, because there isn’t an actual game running the show yet.
But, well, once you’ve already made loads of visuals, and a soundtrack, and a marketing trailer—you’re unlikely to drop that unfun project at this point, are you? So you either release a bad game and pretend nothing’s wrong, or you release nothing and have to live with wasting countless time and assets that were never used.
I am certain they could’ve made Concord in 1 year and 1% of the budget.
Simply start with the horse. Make it run, make it run fast, make it fun to ride that horse. Once you’re certain of that, start adding the cart and polishing that to be nice and shiny.
So yes, in practice, I’d recommend …
- Don’t think about the future :p Or, rather, don’t think too much or too far into the future.
- Make the game first. Only once the game is nearing completion, start on the stuff around it that you need to sell it or increase its success.
- The only “thinking ahead” you should do while making the game, is making sure that it has a lasting fun factor. Make sure the core idea can last, because it is marketable, and fun, and has variation/replayability.
- Don’t let yourself get distracted by the superficial tasks. Yes, they must be done at some point. But not before that point.
- Always keep your game in a playable state. Don’t work on systems in isolation, for maybe months or years, so that game that will only be playable once everything is done. Instead, cut your game into tiny pieces so you have a playable build every weekend (for example).
- No, not everything needs to sell well, be a success, or even be commercialized. Be fine with making a game just for yourself, writing that book just to enjoy the process, stop focusing on some mythical end goal of capitalist success (which most people, by design, will not reach).
- If you adopt that mindset, you’re also more fine with dropping something that just isn’t working or isn’t giving you fun anymore. Instead of clinging on to the sunk cost or “not losing face”.
There’s more stuff than humans (and there always will be)
This is another big argument I’ve seen people provide for the game’s failure.
There are other games with the same mechanics, in the same genre. Most are free/cheaper or objectively better in many regards. So why would anyone buy this game?
And that’s perfectly valid. I agree with that. It harkens back to what I said in the previous section: there’s this idea in our world to just make more more more.
But the stuff we make generally lasts longer than humans. We can produce more stuff, and more copies, far faster than we can produce humans to consume them :p
There is already more stuff than people who want or need it. Even with the immense complexity and difficulty of making video games, there are far more video games than actual gamers. Well-designed, pretty, well-marketed games fail because their players are just busy playing something else. One of the many other games in the same genre.
There are loads of gamers who would’ve loved Concord and would’ve bought it. But they were still busy playing another game, and they had just spent their monthly allowance on that other shooter. There’s just too much stuff and only a few humans, with limited time, money and energy.
Not everything fails because it is bad. Not everything succeeds because it is good.
There’s some luck involved here. Just the right people find your creative product, you launch it at just the right time (before competition closes in), some huge streamer helps you out with an offhand comment about it.
There’s also strategy involved here. You increase your chance of getting noticed severely if you don’t pick a crowded space. Just like you increase your chance by simply shouting louder and being in more places.
I follow a lot of game developers and game news. I didn’t know about this game at all until I read about its shutting down. And I even know about vague upcoming projects that won’t be done for years by obscure developers! This is a clear sign that the game wasn’t actually marketed, or positioned anywhere in a space where people can find it. And all the existing spaces to talk about hero shooters were already filled with the existing games taking all the buzz.
It seems to me—but all of this is conjecture, of course—that Sony knew it was terrible. They launched the game in some token effort, or maybe hoping for a miracle. Maybe it was better for the tax writeoffs, or maybe everyone just wanted to be done with this project.
But they were already ready to pull the plug as they launched it. That’s how swiftly and decisively they removed all traces of the game just two weeks later. That’s how little it was marketed or supported in any way.
I just don’t see how they could not support this game in a big way, after spending so long and so much money on it. I just don’t see how it would be a surprise that not many people knew or liked the game, or how they could’ve made the decision to cancel it so quickly. It should’ve taken way longer.
All I hope, is that investors and big companies/publishers will stop pretending this means much. For streaming services to stop canceling shows because they didn’t have a huge amount of viewers in the 3 days after release. For people to stop branding developers or games completely dead just because they aren’t hugely hyped in the week after release.
The common example, of course, is Among Us. A game that existed for a long time, almost completely unnoticed. Then people suddenly found it and it became a huge success. What if Among Us had shut down within two weeks after launching because it wasn’t a HUGE SUCCESS then?
Accept that there will always be more stuff than humans. Accept there will always be more projects than yours vying for attention, and that attention is every fleeting anyway.
All of this is not a sprint—or at least, it shouldn’t be—but a marathon.
- Design your creative projects to be cheap to maintain. Allow them to stay online, stay available, for a very long time, even if not a success.
- Don’t put all your hopes, dreams, income, whatever on that first week of launching something new. The long tail matters. People can rediscover games. Products can see huge success later.
- In fact, many of the “classics” of today were completely unnoticed in their lifetime. Most of them died poor and starving; now they’re revered.
- All of this is less stressful for you. All of this allows the actual good works to bubble to the surface over time. All of this is better for the planet, as we maintain the simple things we already have, instead of making everything abandonware and generating more stuff.
- This is why my websites are so minimalist, why I provide all my board games as print-n-play with a special option for “ink friendly”, why I have many of my stories online for free. This is why I plan yearly updates to my websites and older projects instead of abandoning them once launched.
- I’ve had many great game nights by just printing 3 pieces of paper and cutting them, so I could play(test) my own board game. Why do we need 80 euro board games full of plastic miniatures? Why do we call those a success if the Kickstarter makes loads of money, and otherwise definitely a failure? While most people only play their expensive board games 1 or 2 times, before moving on to the next shiny thing?
Time is like a sieve of quality.
When all is said and done, only the creative works that truly inspired people and had them engaged will survive. All that extra stuff will be lost to time, and in the modern age, lost to time might unfortunately be “2 weeks later”.
I still play Rollercoaster Tycoon 1. Because what was once a good game, will always be a good game. In fact, it’s one of the only games I ever purchased. Why do I need more games when I have this great little game already?
Don’t make more stuff. Make better stuff and then maintain it. And don’t judge its quality by success (in popularity, or money, or whatever), because that means shit.
I believe the quality of something can only be really judged once 20+ years have passed. So make stuff that stays available for that period of time, even if not many are interested all the while.
As such, I believe Sony should’ve just …
- Made Concord absolutely as cheap as possible to maintain. (By being clever with your infrastructure and choices; not by making it a broken mess.)
- So they could’ve kept the game online for a long time without effort. (They clearly have the funds to take a hit on that if needed.)
- Which looks far better on them than canceling outright, allows more players to discover the game, maybe gives them enough time and space to “find the fun” for real.
- Even if it’s not the huge success they hoped for, because that means nothing and can’t be judged within a few weeks. Let time pass and let time judge if this game is worth preserving, not the company or some knee-jerk reaction by higher-ups.
Which brings me to my conclusion, which is what actually sparked this article.
Conclusion
I would be devastated if I’d worked on this creative project for 8 years, and within two weeks of launching, it would just be destroyed. Maybe to never return. I don’t think I’d ever touch game development again. I’d be writing articles like these to cuss all the people making that decision to throw away 8 years of my work.
It is ridiculous. My heart goes out to all the developers who worked on Concord. My heart goes out to any developer or creative who has to see their hard work destroyed, shelved, manipulated, or otherwise returned to dust as if it never existed. It’s so pointless. It’s so unnecessary. It’s a waste of pretty much everything.
It’s like … asking someone to build a house, only to demolish it when it’s finally done because you couldn’t find a buyer for it within the last 3 days.
It’s like … asking someone to cook a 5-star meal just for your birthday, then throwing it all in the trash because you bit your tongue on the first bite.
And as I stated, the decision to cancel games or scrap huge chunks of work is often not even a smart one from any perspective.
You just need to stop doing the work before you’re sure it will be in the game. You need to stop making the 3D models before your core loop is established and fun. You need to stop trying to make games bigger and add content to polish a turd, but instead focus on maintainability and minimalism.
I hope all those developers and artists are doing well and find a way to put this trauma behind them. I hope their work finds some place or some meaning, somewhere.
I hope to see Concord return, not because I’m interested or will ever play it, but because it’s the right thing to do. I hope this is a big lesson for Sony or any (big) game publishers. Fun first, horse before the cart, not everything can be a huge hit, let time be the judge. But I fear the only lesson they will learn is “gamers are stupid and we should stop taking risks”, as well as “see, we didn’t put enough time, money and sexy ladies in it”.
Okay, this article became way too long again. And really doesn’t have much to do with Concord anymore. But that’s the way things go when I start writing with just a jumble of feelings and thoughts.
Until the next time,
Tiamo