This morning ,we all saw the news that PlayStation’s newest live service gamble Concord had unfortunately taken the path of the Concorde and was taken out of action. After 8 years of development it joins the likes of Hyenas, Love Live SIFAS 2 and the global version of Blue Protocol as titles that barely got to exist, if at all.
Now, a lot of criticism is being directed at Concord’s long dev cycle- the game was greenlit around the peak of Overwatch’s launch popularity, and yet in the time since we’ve seen two Final Fantasy Remake games, a global pandemic, the release The Last Of Us 2, 1, 2 again and the meteoric rise of HoYoverse from being a niche Chinese game developer to literally making the games everyone else in the mobile sphere tries to copy.
But there was another game greenlit at around the same time, even sharing a publisher: this year’s smash breakout hit, Helldivers 2. While it’s certainly weathered some storms from the PlayStation account sign-in to complaints about balance changes, there’s no doubt that Helldivers 2 came out of seemingly nowhere to be one of the year’s biggest success stories. It was in the oven just as long as Concord, so what gives?
Standing Out With Concord
A lot of it just comes from Concord’s specific vision for what it wanted to be. Overwatch, but with a focus on story would have absolutely given Overwatch a run for its money back in the day- people would be drawing art of the robot from Concord as a thick anime girl and people would be throwing the terms “square erasure” and “comfort booty” while people photoshop Darren Criss’s head onto Star Child’s body if they could watch weekly story cutscenes before grinding their matches for the day.
But unfortunately that gaming landscape just doesn’t exist anymore. Now, Hero Shooters are an explosion of personality, attitude and appeal. If you can’t give people something to latch on to, it doesn’t matter how cool your ideas are in paper. It’s like going on multiple tinder dates in a row, at the end of the day the gamer is spoiled for choice and you gotta work hard to make yourself stand out against some douche with a man bun and a flattering opinion of Elon Musk.
Look, I dig the retro sci-fi vibes of Concord- but in 8 years every game that’s jumped into the hero shooter ring had perfected the art of screaming what sets it apart in your mind. It’s why I can spot an Apex Legends design from a Valorant one.
Despite having no real characters, Helldivers 2 is a game with infinite character. We all remember cheesy one-liners like “How about a nice cup of liber-TEA?!” and the propaganda about bugs and automatons. People enjoy turning into ragdolls as you call down orbital strikes, enough to remember names like Malevelon Creek in a huge list of planet names.
It’s not just the memes and lingo, either- part of Helldivers 2’s success comes from the fact that while it chases the live service trend in general, it’s not after any particular fad. If Helldivers 2 had released 4 years ago or 4 years from now it would still be just as unique and fresh- that’s just the game it is.
In contrast Concord has a much more crowded field to play against- Overwatch-but-Battle-Royale exists in Apex Legends, while Overwatch-But-Counter-Strike exists in Valorant. Heck, even Overwatch-but-robots existed in Gundam Evolution and now Overwatch-but-superheroes is set to release with Marvel Rivals.
The situation for Concord is much closer to that of mobile games- in that field, every good idea is aped ad nauseam, though with much shorter dev cycles they they have a fair shot of releasing. From Tower of Fantasy to Wuthering Waves to even the upcoming Arknights Endfield, there are people who play these games even if they’ve taken their cues from Genshin Impact- though that’s largely becuase of their ability to capitalize on both timing and gameplay gaps.
The Need For A Freshmaker
I’m not at all privy to the ideation process of these games but it becomes really obvious that a long dev cycle just isn’t compatible with trend-chasing in hindsight: Concord’s main focus on story was an ill fit for a crowd that just wants to queue for games, and the time it spent polishing the story content cost it the golden window to release.
Of course, let’s not act like the bold, new idea always pays off either- even today I mourn Destruction All-Stars, the free for all car brawler also published by PlayStation. On top of launching during a period where no one could get their hands on a PS5, it’s proof that not all wild swings are rewarded- I love that game but ultimately, “car battle royale” just didnt’ hit the mass market the way anyone had hoped.
PlayStation hasn’t said that Concord is gone for good, just being taken back for a retooling. There’s still a shot we could see a good Concord relaunch down the line- we’ve seen it with Cyberpunk 2077 and No Man’s Sky, after all, and I much prefer the reality of game developers not having their baby scrapped just because it didn’t break danbooru charts on day 1.
But it’s also a troubling sign of the current course for triple-A game development: you can either have the trend-chasing of mobile games or the bloated budget and cycles of console games, but try to get both and you’re in for a rough one.
