StrickenBiged

@Nexozi I should imagine that all the publishers whose games are featured in Secret Level supported the production in one way or another as its good marketing for all of them. In Sony's case I wouldn't be surprised if it was along the lines of "if you want God of War, you're also doing Concord".

Why isn't it 5 stripes?

I think even numbers of things look weird together - apparently it's bad feng shue - and it is the PS*5* after all...

@NoHope Try crashing it at minute 27. That's when you know you were having a good run!

Despite the crash, 10/10. The game is pure dopamine delivered straight to the veins. The simple gameplay belies how deep it really is, and I love putting my build together at the start of a run then seeing it become totally OP when it works out!

I had no doubt. Looking forward to it.

@OmegaStriver I don't recall any hate for Helldivers 2 before it released. If anything, Helldivers 2 wasn't really on the radar - Sony had done minimal marketing and only really through its own channels - so if anything players were overall indifferent. Then when it popped off everyone was pleasantly surprised.

With Concord the game immediately attracted derision and accusations of being derivative of OW and GotG. The vibe I got was that it was actively disliked from the first reveal.

@hi_drnick Yes, all the time. Witness the reactions to recent output from Lucas Film under Disney, or Disney's recent live-action remakes.

In books, there are plenty with vendettas against particular authors for their perceived stances, e.g. JK Rowling.

Don't get me started on music...

I just realised, with Sony issuing refunds, the game is essentially already free to play for anyone who has already bought the game. At least until Friday.

I want to see more about how FairgameDollar is different from other games on the market that I already don't play. My initial impression is that it's a Payday-style game, with an unsavoury theme, but I'm open to seeing what it can do.

TBH, the competitive heist-style gameplay sounds on paper like it should have been what Concord went for given the Freegunner Crew were all supposed to be mercenaries for hire or whatever.

Well, we only just got Vampire Survivors, so fair's fair.

@naruball I think the difference with games like BG3 and OW and other games which are woke-but-successful is that they ‘do the woke’ well.

For instance, some OW characters are LGBT, but the game only ever references it subtly. A in-game voiceline here, a moment in a cutscene there. In contrast, Concord’s use of pronouns was clumsy. The way Concord could have done inclusivity so as not to cause a backlash was to have other characters use the trans and NB characters preferred pronouns when speaking about them, and treat it like no big deal.

I’m not saying the use of preferred pronouns by the devs caused the game to fail, of course not, but I’m saying it was a) unnecessary and b) signalled that the devs were of a particular political leaning and that likely put people off more than it attracted anyone.

I don’t disagree with Sony wanting a live service game or two to keep the dollars rolling in at a steady clip. If profits from those endeavours helps fund the big AAA narrative experiences I prefer then I’m all for it.

If I were sat in the executive suites at PlayStation I’d be thinking along these lines:

1. Start the hype train sooner out from release. Gauge customer reactions and adjust.
2. Show off what differentiates the game from what’s already on the market. Helldivers 2 kicked off because we hadn’t seen that sort of Co-operative, horde-mode, extraction style game with such a strong theme before. Concord by contrast looked derivative of OW, GotG, and (once we actually got into the betas) had no game modes we hadn’t played before.
3. Give a few hints as to what single player games are in the works. PlayStation faithful are feeling like there’s nothing for them here anymore because PS is keeping its cards too close to its chest. Xbox is putting on shows that are being praised and generating hype by showing off things that won’t be released for months or years. (And I look forward to playing many of those on PS!)

Quite aside from one’s opinions on including pronouns, I think the discourse here demonstrates that putting them in character bios was a stupid thing for the developers to have done in the game. For the proportion of the gaming public that already agree with stating one’s pronouns, I doubt it generated a many extra sales that weren't already going to be made. But for the proportion of the public that think you shouldn’t/don’t need to state your pronouns (which all the polling I’ve seen is a vast majority in the US and U.K.) it signalled that this game was made by people with that opinion and likely cost them more sales.

The best call Sony could make. If we assume ~$40 equivalent per copy, and estimates are 25k copies sold across PC and PS5 (which was confirmed as “about right” by Gamesindustry.biz on their podcast, and their Chris Dring said he has seen the numbers) then refunds will cost Sony about $1m.

F2P would have required additional investment in retooling the progression and gameplay modes to suit that business model, and cheesed off early adopters, while every indication from the betas was that it wouldn’t improve anything in terms of player interest.

If I were Firewalk, I’d strip the game back to a grey-box, remove all the art assets, and focus my attention there. A total art overhaul and rebrand is required IMO.

But I suspect they’ll mothball it instead and take the tax write off.

I'll probably pick up the remake, as I really enjoyed the original, but I'm waiting to see what has actually been added.

I don't think we know the terms of Ballistic Moon's deal with Sony. For all we know they are working on the Remake for a fixed price with no ongoing royalties. Reads to me like they weren't able to secure their next project or that next project isn't going to give them sufficient cashflow to remain at the same size.

There's got to be a fair rate that can be paid to VAs based on how much of their voice is used which would allow them to licence their voice to studios for use in a GenAI and for specific projects. I'd imagine it is less than the amount they would be paid for actually having to go into a booth, but more than nothing.
Games, film projects, audiobooks, etc, will one day advertise "recorded with real voice over" to distinguish themselves once the technology becomes overused/abused.

F2P won’t save it. It was already a flop when it was free to try out at the beta weekends, and now all anyone knows is that it’s a flop.

If Sony only cared about the money, I’d pull it from sale, give everyone a refund, and cancel the whole thing for the tax write off at this point.

Lost a point for not having a vampire? 🧛🏻‍♂️

It’s pure crack, I love it.

I ask again, why does anyone expect going F2P will help at this point? The game was just as unpopular when free public betas were available.

It’s beyond saving if you ask me.

I used to spend a lot on games, and have a library of hundreds of PS4 titles. But I’ve saved a tonne of money with my gaming hobby in recent years. I changed things by applying a few easy rules.

1. Do not fall for sales. Only buy a game when you actually want to/will be able to play it. Even if it’s still at full price when you come to it, you probably saved money by not adding 10 games to your backlog that you’re never going to get to just because PSN put them on sale.
2. Try to finish all your games. Sure, you’ll fall off some here or there, but the time it takes to see them through will stop you jumping on the hype for the next game and spending more money.
3. Wait for reviews. Half the time you’ll read them and think “eh, I can wait for a sale on this one” or “I’ll skip this entirely”.
4. Never pre-order.

With these changes to the way I buy and play games, the hobby is surprisingly affordable.

@riceNpea 41 in the base game for VS (as it says in the article). PSq said "collection of trophies for a single game".
Not sure how many of the Train Sim games' trophies are attached to DLC. It looks like TSW2 only had one piece of DLC on PSN, so I can't imagine that all the DLC-trophies in the 411 total that it has are locked behind that extra pay-wall.

If you wanna talk trophies-per-£ then I'm sure VS takes the top spot, (excluding F2P games, where the buy-in is potentially £0).

In terms of points, VS is 4th in how many points it awards. It's 3rd in the total number of trophies: Train Sim World 4 has 251 and Train Sim World 2 has 411. ESO rewards more trophy-points, but has fewer, higher-tiered trophies.

And yeah, I'm going to be gunning for all 221 on PS5. Really looking forward to playing it this evening, I'm going to go charge up my PS Portal right now.

@Pusher2021 "These are not bad devs, it is not Gollom standard by any means!"

No, Gollum had more players (on Steam)!

Joking aside, you're right, the devs are clearly very talented. The animations are exquisite and the gunplay is reportedly among the best. (I played the beta and didn't like it personally, but I'm not experienced enough with FPS games to judge really).

The problem was that these very talented devs were working to a very ill-judged brief. They made a game that no one wants, but they made it very well.

Why does anyone think making the game F2P will save it? It might make it slightly less of a disaster for a little while, but we saw the interest (at least in the Steam numbers) when there was an open beta and they were miserable, certainly not enough to sustain the game long term. There are just 63 Steam players playing the game right now, on day 7 following launch, not even enough for seven full matches on their own!

It's gotten to the point where people who literally flog dead horses are going to start using the idiom "don't pump for Concord", as that task seems even more futile.

I might give the Quidditch game a go. I enjoyed Rocket League at launch at this is giving me similar vibes.
Astro and Space Marine 2 are the highlights of this month though.

Looking forward to this one.

I have experience from the open Beta. While it may be well executed, the game is derivative and badly designed.
Identity -

• Contrast with OW. It had 2 modes, and the maps were specific to one or the other. You always knew what the intended experience was and there was a relentless focus on those modes. In Concord, it’s hard to tell which mode the devs think is the intended experience.
• Its general design is clearly ripped from what was popular 8 years ago. People have been comparing it to GotG since its reveal, and they’re not wrong. It’s tiresome at this point.
  Characters -
• they’re not ugly exactly, but they are boring beyond belief. Going for realism has hamstrung their potential. Barring the robot and the guy with the baboon’s arse for a face, they all just look like the characters i get in an RPG if I hit the randomise button a few times.
• Again, contrast OW. There they have a truly diverse roster and no one calls it ‘woke’ because they’re all well executed, it’s not made a big deal, and they all stand out, with distinct silhouettes which allow you to tell at a glance what you’re dealing with in-game.
  Meta -
• the meta game either doesn’t work or requires too much coordination. So I’m building a crew of variants to unlock stacking buffs. Fine. So then I want to put my favourite characters last in my roster so that I can pick them once I’ve accrued all the other buffs from the rest of my crew. But then I might never get to play as that character of my team does well and I don’t cycle through the crew. And if my team does badly, then getting to my fully buffed favourite character might not make a blind bit of difference. And that’s not to mention that someone on my team could block me from picking my main when I do get to them if they’ve picked the same character at that point in the match. So coordinating all these buffs requires stupid levels of communication and planning with a dedicated party and is counter intuitive in the first place and honestly after thinking about how this system works for more than 2 seconds I just want to say “screw it” and move on.
  Gameplay -
• everyone bar the cat alien feels like they’re running through treacle with lead shoes.

I don’t think the above are fixable without a significant re-work of the game that wouldn’t be worth the candle. Sony should just give it up, take the L, and figure out how to make sure the same thing doesn’t happen to Marathon and FairgameDollarsign.

These movies are a guilty pleasure. The kind of movie I stick on during a flight, but wouldn't admit to anyone I know that I enjoyed very much.

@Shigurui It scrapes the data of people who sign up, but they also have the PSN rarity for trophies (i.e. all players), hence my trying to do something with the ratio of PSNProfiles v Actual rarity with the easiest trophy in the game. My estimate would necessarily exclude people who have bought the game and not booted it yet - whether on PSNProfiles or not PSN would not have generated a trophy list associated with their accounts - so would have to be the low end of the estimate.

@MeatyVeg Not great or an all-timer, but good & some fun nonetheless

Why should I waste my time on a game that isn’t great when there are so many absolute bangers available to buy or already in my backlog? It’s an honest question - I play a lot of games, usually 2 hours or so a day once the Mrs has gone to bed - and there are tonnes of great games that I haven’t touched, some of which I’ve already paid for.

“Perhaps there’s an element of product placement at play here, and Sony is paying for Concord’s inclusion.”

Perhaps? My operating assumption was that all of the episodes were paid for by the respective publishers.

@Shigurui oh really? Ouch.

Hrmm. How about this to estimate the total number of PSN sales. On PSN profiles, 97.58% of players have the easiest trophy (for getting 1 kill). The trophy has 89.9% PSN rarity. So that’s a ratio of 1.085. PSN profiles is tracking 908 game owners. 908*1.085=985. So barring people who have purchased and are yet to get a single kill, there are conservatively only ~985 PSN owners in total.

Does that work?

Nice review. The game isn’t for me but I do think it’s incredibly sad that it is doing so badly as it’d have been nice to see something with such a fair business model being rewarded.

I think the world they’ve built here looks interesting and I’d quite like to play a single player campaign in this setting. Maybe that’s what a new IP like this needed: a baller campaign to make people care, then with an excellent MP suite on the side for those that want to hang around afterwards.

@Markatron84 when I checked yesterday there were 7.4K reviews on PSN. You need to own the game to leave a star rating on PSN, so there were at least that many purchasers.

@AdamNovice I dunno about ugly, but there seems to be a lack of artistic style to them. The devs have gone for realism, and I think they’ve landed in the uncanny valley. Compare to OW, which love or hate the game, at least all the characters look cool and are immediately readable in-game. Maybe it’d take more time with Concord but when I tried the beta it was quite hard to tell many of the humanoid characters apart at a distance.

I grew up in countries around the Arabian Gulf. It'll be great to see what they can put out.

It's going to be everything, in time. The logic of releasing any one game multi-platform applies equally to all of their 'exclusives'. You've got to imagine that if they released Halo: MCC on PS5 they'd sell 10m copies in the first week easily. Same for the original Gears trilogy. That's money they won't want to leave on the table forever.

I'd wager that they just don't want to blow their load and announce that all at once because of the effect it would have on brand image. Plus their games would be competing with themselves on PlayStation if they ported them all at once.

I don't think I can put off Inscryption any longer at that price.

I had a massive 2TB HDD with a 250GB SSD layer for recently accessed data in my PS4, and that felt necessary.

With the PS5 though I've been more than happy with the standard storage. I delete games once I'm done with them and the option to delete and download games via the PS App on my phone means that I can set things in motion during the day if I fancy playing something in particular that evening. The generally far smaller file sizes on PS5 mean that I've never felt that the eight-hundred and whatever it is GB they give you as standard has never felt too small to me.

I'm the type of player that likes to finish a game and move on though. If you flit between games and want everything available all the time I can see how it might not work for you.

Objectively, I went with good, as there’s a decent variety of things shown off. But very little for me personally. I might take a closer look at Civ 7, I haven’t played a Civ game since Civ 4.

Don't sleep on Pentiment, it's cracking. It's very story-heavy and gameplay-lite, but boy what a good story it was.

Sounds fun. Finally doing a 100% run by saving all the survivors was the work of a week or so during a hot summer when I was a teenager, and remains one of my prouder Xbox Achievements. I'll be glad to grab the replacement trophy in due course.

The game is rated 18 by PEGI and M by the ESRB. Let adults make their own decisions, I say. This is a work of fiction/fantasy/whatever.

I suppose the change is minor - presumably you can still take the naughty pictures you just wont be rewarded with PP, right? - so it doesn't make that much of a difference. On that basis, I voted "don't really care".

All I read about is how the community is toxic, yet every time I play the game I am matched up with people that just get on with the mission, don't give a monkeys what you're diving in with or what's meta, communicate (even if just using pings), and work together to extract with the samples.

I think the opinions of a few vocal people are being blown out of all proportion, personally.

And don't necessarily look at the number of concurrent players for an idea of how popular the game is. Daily active users may have become weekly or monthly active users. How many people are playing at any one time is potentially misleading. And I bet Arrowhead and Sony are delighted with the number of players the game has retained. If you'd asked them on the eve of launch how many units they hoped to sell and how big they expected the player base to end up, I'd wager that it's a hell of a lot smaller than where the game has landed.

Moving further and further from what I want out of DA (which is essentially that they go back to DA:O). Oh well, there's plenty to play.

@TedLassoNikes Yep, bought it from Sony directly instead. My guess is Currys sold out.

@GLightning98 Yeah, I've been on to their customer service. You having the same "Please select a delivery time that suits you" but it's not actually displaying any delivery options issue that isn't letting you progress through the checkout?

The customer service person says he has raised it and just to wait. Might get bored and pay the extra £10 to nab one elsewhere at this rate.

Great news. I'm in.

"how locked in the community the community remains"

Whoopsie daisy yourself editor!

These live service games are like playing at a high stakes table. You put down a big bet, and most likely it's gone.

I think the problem is that when all these projects were greenlit, executives didn't appreciate how hard it would be to peel people away from the live service games they were already playing and enjoying. In the interim, those games have also re-invested in themselves, broadening their appeal, and players have become invested (closets full of Fortnite skins, and whatever else they buy, etc).

That and some of the ideas we've seen for live services have been god awful. Should've done better market research.

Halfling needs to be more popular, especially if you're playing a stealthy build. Advantage on stealth checks is OP when I'm getting into position to snipe mobs and bosses.