Thank you Surfshark for sponsoring this video. Secure your privacy with Surfshark! Enter coupon code SKILLUP for 4 months EXTRA at surfshark.com/skillup
You’re forgetting one BIG thing, people HATE WOKE..I have to admit if i hear there’s a hint of “diversity”, “inclusion” or some other WOKE sjit in a product, I will not buy it and i will tell everyone in my direct vicinity not to buy it because it is WOKE garbage..
What’s crazy is of the 600 concurrent players the majority of them were probably journalists, reviewers, paid sponsors/streamers and the devs themselves 💀
Dude you're right this game must have actually sold even WORSE than we realize since hundreds of those players had free review copies and on Steam the player count dropped from 600 to 90 now 💀
There were also a number of "hate-players" that I saw on Twitter. I.e. people who were already opposed to the game for whatever reason, but decided to play or stream it just to "prove" that the game was bad. It's wild to think that these made up a not-insignificant proportion of the total people playing this game.
@@MajerHawk its just as bad on PS5, if not worse. 3 minute matchmaking time is considered 'good' and 'fast', it can go up to 5 minutes, and even higher.
I feel like the character designs are the #1 nail in the coffin for this game. The weird systems are secondary to the core experience and can be adjusted, but a hero shooter without appealing heroes is dead in the water. People pick these games up because they see a cool character and want to play as them. No matter how good your core gameplay is, it's not going to matter if people look at your roster, see a bunch of nondescript Guardians of the Galaxy rejects, and say "meh".
In 2016 (or whenever this game started developmen) MCU-esque characters probably seemed like a good idea, as did the Hero Shooter genre. But that's the problem with excessively bloated development cycles, you can completely miss the popularity window of whatever trends you're trying to capitalize on. In this case it was art style _and_ genre.
The characters honestly don't look too badly designed. They seem kinda eccentric, similar to Deadlock, yet people hype the Valve characters for some reason.
@@DevlVergil It's Valve. They've earned that trust and hype throughout the decades. The fact that Deadlock also plays really well is a big bonus. Concord just hasn't earned that trust, hype and appeal. It's going to take a lot from Sony just to keep this afloat. Risky. Abandoning it would be the safer move, but we'll know more after the Amazon show.
@@DevlVergil character artist here, Deadlock characters have very nice silhoutte, nice unique design, distinctive style. Concord is just a bunch of Leftist americans and a trash bin.
Ive seen some people claim it "sold better on PS5" My brother in Christ, if this game sold TEN TIMES better on PS5, it would still have HALF the peak player count as Battleborn
*_CONCORD_* is supposed to be featured in an episode of Prime's *_SECRET LEVEL_* series The issue here is that this series airs in December... It is not impossible the game will be dead before it is showcased in the show... EDIT - September 3rd - Sony is already pulling and refunding the game as they "explore options" - wow.
@@WeBreakItAllDownRightHere id totally be ok with that. Problem is there wasnt a single appealing character in concord outside of the robot. I say "wasnt" cuz it literally just died
I'm honestly surprised the devs didn't try to "subtly" introduce Concord porn or something to promote their game like Battleborn. "Oh no, look at all this Concord porn that suddenly appeared! I sure do hope no one else tries to do this."
@@kira-dk2mx would it have helped? I think overwatch porn is so popular cuz the characters are attractive both in game and in rule 34. Not the case with concord. Like who the fuck would want to see Daw or that lady with the minigun naked? Im sure theres an audience for that but its probably nowhere near as large as Widowmaker's cheeks
I still don’t understand how it works where you have these story cutscenes with a bunch of characters interacting and then the gameplay is just ‘let’s go into an arena and try to kill each other’. Sounds like 2 different games to me.
It didn't work for overwatch, nobody understand why tracer and winston would work with reaper and widow after the initial trailer. Yet they tried the same thing again
The concept of selecting multiple "pirates" to be part of a crew and it seems like the excuse for repeating the characters is related to the lazy multiverse gimmick? It's kinda decent imo, at least you try to justify clones everywhere. But the devs overcomplicated the system. Marvel Rivals is just straight to the point, all the characters are variants fighting in a crazy multiversal war (caused by Dr. Doom), it's way easier to follow even if you don't watch the promotional material, MCU or read the comics. For example, in the Asgard map a Loki "projection" shows up and provoke your character... If you are playing with Loki himself, the projection mentions they should work together... That's it, problem solved right there, your Loki, the enemy Loki and the Loki who is the king of Asgard, they are all variants
The movies are supposed to let you connect to the characters so you’d invest more in them. But there lies the problem, the caste are horrible to begin with and nobody cares.
You gotta understand. Concord's numbers on steam are roughly that of Marvel's Avengers And no, not Avengers at its peak. Avengers RIGHT NOW, a game with no update in almost a year and unavailable to purchase. And Concord is doing similar numbers to a game you can't even buy anymore. Seriously, at the time of this post, Avengers has 232 people playing. Concord has 129.
I'll do you one better: Heroes of Might & Magic III - HD Edition, a fairly maligned HD upgrade to a 25-year-old game, that most fans never bought, because the modded original fares better, has a 2,078 24 hour peak. Concord is at 237. A game that was made when some of the developers of Concord wasn't even born, is outdoing Concord almost 10 times.
I've been playing this game since it came out and I saw my name five times in this video. I feel like that really speaks to how low the player counts are.
Why would you ever buy this though? Literally every sign was pointing to this game being DOA. Not hating just to be clear. I just genuinely can't wrap my head around as to why you would invest your money into this knowing all the signs and this is coming from the guy who was actually semi-interested in getting it pre-ordered until I saw the general lack of hype behind it
@@thecoomchalice5441it could have just been curiosity, maybe there is enjoyment in playing a shooter nobody has played before until now too, like they have a lot of hours in other pvp games
Honestly these buffs are minor enough in the casual modes its like who cares. I understand where Austin is coming from but its kinda ehh. They're clearly designed for the competitive mode. Still, I think they should have just removed them from the casual mode.
This is everything. Looks like those "Unreal Engine Mario" projects to me, just devoid of direction. Might get away with that in a AAA linear experience that has good set pieces but for PvP it's *all* you have to look at
@@gigitrix It's very clearly not devoid of direction, and comparing this to shitty UE5 Mario projects is frankly insulting to the devs. You can shit on this game all you want and I'm with you, but this is just not true. Yes, the artstyle is a very uh... aquired taste. But there are clearly very talented people behind this, because everything is very well made and very polished. Some people on that team just made some very questionable decisions with the designs, anc clearly people don't mesh with it.
@@FrozenDozer These art devs are an insult to the concept of art. "Very clearly talented people" i think you actually mean people happy to take big checks from Brackrock and Vanguard, and do as they are told. Obedient. No vision or integrity of their own. Utterly replaceable. And they'll be replaced by soulless robots the moment they can be, probably robots trained on stolen reams of their own garbage art. Because paying someone else to train ideology into your "art bots" is more cost effective than constantly brainwashing each new generation of gullible young humans.
It’s so bizarre that they have so much focus on the story and lore of this game and yet none of it it’s playable (just like Overwatch, but even then the lore was detached from the game itself, it was mainly on TH-cam and the comics). They had 8 years, and they didn’t think about adding a campaign, which would’ve left Overwatch 2 to shame with the cancellation of its PVE
If they had made this some kind of single-player/co-op squad-based shooter with dynamic swapping through your "crew" per mission, or even just made the space pirate thing into a more action-oriented Payday in Space with co-op PVE, it would have been a banger. As it is, though... The design choices are baffling.
I wouldve made a coop shooter, it PROBABLY would explode in popularity, but those atleast sell a decent amount most of the time, and as long as you have some friends, the game will never die
exactly. no one care about lore in a PvP game anyway. they have too much faith for a game with the worse characters design ever. who cares about this characters and their story? this game look something that came from a tumblr artist. is just a fan art at best and something a 14 years old would make in deviant art at worse.
Who knew the future would be so.......boring. like are you telling me that space pirates looking for fame and riches would wear metal scraps and the equivalent of scientist rags? Really?
@@Kaeloz93I agree they wouldn't be wearing whatever hospital rags they're wearing now, but as pirates chasing riches they probably don't have much in the moment, and even whatever they could plunder might not be enough to fully deck themselves out. Anything more mad max-esque would have been way better, or having a few characters with futuristic body armor looking like Zer0 from Borderlands or something
I think the reason Jim Ryan ran away is because he knew that he wasted company money on all these failed live services and because he is a coward he didn't want to deal with the blame.
I just looked on Steam Charts. 97 people playing a few mins ago. 97. Less than 100. This game isn't just cooked, its like someone forgot a pizza in the oven and went on holiday. And it caught fire and burnt the whole house down, and the fire took out the houses on either side too. Then it spread to the oil refinery next door which also went up in flames like drone footage from Russia and finally burning embers from the oil refinery somehow landed in a nuclear silo a mile away causing the cruise missile to launch so China thought we were nuking them on purpose, hit the button themselves and now we're all living in post-apocalyptic nuclear wasteland (with 16 times the detail).
I won't be derisive and suggest anything close to hyperbole, but... That is a very elaborate analogy. Well said, sir. or ma'am. and whatever else you want to add on to your title.
That’s so stupid. I live in Kazakhstan. PS5 is being sold here, officially by the Sony Center for 560$, yet we DON’T have access to the PSN and PS Store because they refuse to create a market for this region. I bought my little brother his console last New Year and had to look for workarounds to be able to actually use the console. Sony is truly a company being led by illogical scumbags. It’s been 2 years since they banned PSN in Kazakhstan just because our country borders russia and they haven’t even addressed this issue at all. Keep in mind, all of the CIS game presentations that were hosted by Sony in Russia now being held in Almaty, Kazakhstan but you cannot access PSN without breaking their policies.
@@JakeTheSnake1337 I hate to break it to you but politically, i think you already know the answer to that question as to why they are not providing online services in Kazakhstan.
@@crimsonghoul8983 so how is it my or my country’s fault that we happen to exist near Russia? Why does a country, that strictly follow the sanctions, has a neutral position in the conflict and has a population that support peace, has to suffer with these limitations?
@@JakeTheSnake1337 It shouldn't. And it's not your country's fault. Please dont misunderstand me. But in case you haven't noticed, Sony is a pro-Western company. You wont find their consoles being sold in China or in any communist countries, as far as I am aware. Kazhakhstan was declared independent from the Soviet Union since 1991, and yet, you can admit that your country is still struggling to break from the shadow of its past. That's why Sony is able to sell it's consoles to you, but not willing to establish a server in Kazakhstan under the off-chance that it can be used for nefarious purposes either by Russia or US.
We could have a 60fps Bloodborne remaster, but Sony wants to lose hundreds of millions chasing live service. Heads must be rolling at Sony HQ over this failure.
@YISP7 Ah the mythical "modern audience". I have a friend who SWEARS he saw one of them once way up in the woods. He tried to take a photo for proof since he knew no one would believe him, but it was blurry and just looked like the shadow of a tree to me.
@@Xgil2Play came from the game lol. the character designs all pandered to these modern audiences with all that wokeness and unlimited pronouns in the game.
Yesterday the game was at 40 players on steam. Today, Sony announced it’s pulling the plug on the game in 6 of September. Idk if this is the biggest flop in gaming but it’s certainly the fastest!
That's being generous. They look hideous. Why is everyone wearing poofy vests? No understanding of color or design theory. They range from lame to unsettling.
The absolute irony of a corporate cash grab with a 40 dollar price tag like this having a story that centers around a pirate captain that releases the most valuable discovery of all time for free to all is pure poetry.
Yep, irony to the extreme. It's like the Fortnite formula, the Candy Crush formula, etc.. they are there for the taken (if you are morally corrupted to a point of preying on children and the mentally ill), you can make a lot of money... But it's not as easy as it sounds, the interesting thing about addiction is how the addict will not simply jump to the new drug, they are already hooked. Even if Concord was free to play, it would be a failure all the same
A generic-looking live service hero shooter starring Discount Guardians of the Galaxy all while the genre is basically either dying or oversaturated as it is. I mean, is anybody surprised it flopped? Nobody was asking for this.
It's even funnier when you consider Sony watched Hyenas, a very similar product, get outright cancelled from Creative Assembly not even a year ago. The genre is basically Overwatch 2, which still has the greatest market share, Valorant, and Smite, maybe? I'm not as up on it as some people, but those are the big three in the market right now, and everyone else is fighting for fourth or fifth place. I don't know why a studio would put any money into this style of game right now. If I were a studio exec, I would be looking at how Helldivers 2 did on release, not on its continued content drops, and emulate that. PVE is a really underserved market right now, because there's Helldivers 2, which is already ruining itself, Deep Rock Galactic, Warframe kind of, and...that's it. PVE shooters, I should specify, are just not as common as they should be. That's the market large studios should be after, but none of them are even thinking about it.
It's a $40 tech demo, good bones sure but there's so many better options. They need to make this unique - better maps, modes, places, locales tied to story llke skins of maps (jungle planet gets jungle version of map)
@@DarkJak337Marvel Rivals will be a pretty big game to and it's a direct competitor to Concord and it'll be free. Lol If the game launched for free and at a better time it likely would've been successful.
@therealfakeAlphabet there are lots of successful games with diverse casts. Are you sure you aren't regurgitating talking points about DEI like some kind of parrot? It's just badly-thought out art direction, not some kind of conspiracy
@@Noordledoordle both things can be true. Too focused on making hyper-realistic characters look like the average Walmart shopper, with hardly any effort paid to design elements that actually reflect what the character is supposed to be in terms of gameplay mechanics.
@therealfakeAlphabet Focusing on diversity doesn't take THAT much brainpower. Again, it's been done plenty of times successfully. Lots of artists love to try stuff off the beaten path - coloring outside the lines is FUN, not restrictive. Even the average Walmart shopper wearing a stupid Party City costume can be an engaging character design if done correctly. It just wasn't.
@@therealfakeAlphabetWhat does the average Walmart shopper mean? Dude say what you want to say? Is it the fat people, black people, old people or leftys you had an issue with? And what did you want more of, what's the opposite of Walmart shoppers? Say it with your chest.
The thing to remember is that the early access beta had a peak of 1124 players, whereas launch had 697 players, which an almost 40% drop. Which means 40% of players preordered the game, played it and then didn’t come back for launch. The betas actually hurt the sales and player retention. And if that isn’t enough, one of the devs insulted detractors by calling them “talentless freaks”. Given that there was behind the scenes drama with “The Professor”, sounds like a real stand up group they got working there.
If the last couple of years of following this channel have taught me anything, it's that the real estate for live service games in the gaming sphere is WAY smaller than anyone thought it would be. I think you're 100% right about this kind of title needing that 'special sauce' to survive. The competition is just way too fierce for anything but the best of the best to last more than a few months. Great review Austin! I'm loving how the SkillUp team is expanding :)
"The character designs are not great" is the understatement of the century. It's one of the WORST character rosters I've ever seen in any video game, yet alone in hero shooters. The character designers should never work in this industry again.
Concord died in character design and monetization. Sometimes there needs to be that one asshole on the team that tells artists that their designs are shit without a care for the feelings of the artist. If it doesnt happen you could end up with this, a career ending disaster.
Yeah I tried to justify it by it being "the higher upps" fault but I no longer think it is. I refuse to believe some exec told an artist to make the fire lady have a design that has nothing to do with red or fire. It just doesn't make sense
@@tomekk.1889 It is definitely emotionally easier to blame faceless executives than to bluntly say a developer/development team made a mistake. _(especially when it gets mucked up in real world harassment and you don't want to feel like you're contributing to or endorsing it)_ Though, I'd still put more blame for character design issues on direction, less so individual artists. The universal design issues of characters' gameplay purposes not being readable and mostly just looking like regular people wearing clothes is something a creative director should've been able to see. I also get the feeling that the characters may have originally been designed for more cartoony proportions, and it was a move to realism that made them look so terrible.
Characters have to look unique from each other so you can identify who you're looking at without thinking. I don't know what people expected them to do in this regard. Would more white dudes make yall happy?
like 99% of the roster look lame as fuck, they expect people to pay money to play this stuff :/ Hero shooters are meant to at least have cool characters - this is just a bunch of c tier deviant art designs lol.
I wanna say that if you think these characters are C tier art you have truly no idea how much bad art is out there, or how much effort and time it takes to make high quality 2d concepts / 3d models. I'm not saying I like any of them really, but from a technical perspective creating models of this level is inherently an impressive feat. It might be pretty standard in the industry, but as someone who is extensively involved in 3d modeling I want to really highlight how long it takes to model, texture, rig, and animate assets like these. They did great work, it's just a shame they didn't have a more compelling concept to work from.
Yeah, I just don’t get it. The color scheme is so boring. If you’re going to enlist the gays- why not use their trademark flair and style? Like put Rupaul in there.
You could say the same about the Twisted Sisters or Manowar, lol they are products of a trend, hence why they will be forever dated. Concord is following the MCU and woke trends, both stopped being relevant a couple of years ago. When they started development of this game, the MCU was at its apex and the woke was on its infancy, Concord arrived too late for the party, their designs looks dreadful in 2024, but it would look amazing back in 2020
Most characters in Overwatch are fairly bland. The appeal they have doesn't go beyond their attractive traits. Which is ok ig, but Concord characters are just strangely quirky with no appeal at all. There isn't much to appreciate in them
Its simply the Character Design its just bad. Every time I see Concord there isn't a single character that looks interesting or dynamic, or edgy , or cool its all just various grades of dull
For me, the characters just look way too boring, ugly, weird and lame. NONE of these designs feel cool and like something that resonates with me. NOTHING has any style! Everything looks like a blank-slate amorphous blob, and that was probably their intention
We're witnessing the absolute implosion of big budget, generic cookie cutter entertainment media. First the Borderlands movie and now this. These publishers CANNOT just deliver an acceptable "good enough" product anymore. There must be a creative, enticing hook. Give the projects back to the artists. The consumer is speaking louder than ever before. "We are smarter and poorer than last time. Why should I buy?"
Smarter and poorer is a good description, lol the internet at the palm of our hands for better or worse, $70 games, $10 movie tickets (if not more) and you still assume people are going to consume the next product like a bunch of locusts?
No offense but this game was in hands of artists too. It just so happens the artists are really bad at designing characters. No one wanted to pick this game up because it manages to look both ugly and unremarkable. If it didn't have those flaws, it PROBABLY could have done fine for a while despite how generic the gameplay is.
The thing i hate most about these Live Services is that amazing worlds and stories are watered down and never fully realised. I like the idea and vibes they're going for, but no one can appreciate it in the few minutes between rounds. A substantial single player story would be amazing to get people to buy into the world and characters, learn the systems in a safe environment and give us something to keep when the servers inevitably go down.
Right? I don’t know how this idea got approved. I mean, we’ve moved to streaming platforms for a reason, so we can binge watch entire seasons without having to wait every week for a new episode. They’ve taken an archaic media retention strategy and applied it to a modern media consumption technique.
Why would anyone bother? Who's going to care enough to want to watch the cutscenes in the first place? People acting like this is some established IP that's getting important worldbuilding stuff in a single bad entry. This isn't the kingdom hearts browser game or the phone game from like 2008, no one cares about this.
Reminder, Concord is going to get an episode for the upcoming Amazon Prime show "Secret Level" from Blur studios. Will the game even still be alive when the episode airs in December? Why did Sony pay so much for the weekly cutscenes AND a whole exclusive episode? Reminds me of Battleborn characters being all over the Ready Player One movie.
Let me put this into perspective ; an ULTIMA ONLINE free shard, Outlands, has 3-4k daily player count - that's a 25 year old game, running off donations, is doing better than Sonys biggest AAA release. That's tragically hilarious. This can't be good for gaming, I imagine.
It can be. Knock some sense into these people that not every game can be a live service game, and don't try to enter into an already massively crowded FTP space with uninspired garbage that you're charging up front for.
Meh, AAA failing is perfectly fine for gaming. Big publishers need to start learning they need to make games people want again. Until then, having them crash and burn may hurt some people's jobs... but the games industry as a whole will be just fine. Indie and AA titles have been more than pulling their weight these days.
The game is an absolute disaster. Some of the design choices are so baffling, that it seems like the studio is purposely trying to tank this game, and the 100 million investment from Sony.
You ever watch a game announcement and think to yourself: "Oh this one is gonna fail hard"? And somehow you are right most of the time? How is it that these disasters are always so... predictable?
what the hell do you mean not interesting. Despite everything, these guys actually look unique. Well. SOme of them. Aside from generic human with gun xD
@@rajabuta Unique =/= interesting or appealing. Matter of fact is, popular consensus points to people not liking how they look, hence, not wanting to try to play them.
@@rajabutaUnique? My friend… just urg… Hahahaha sorry, but we know Firewalk studios are paying you to say that, because there is absolutely nothing unique about these characters which were clearly copied from GOTG.
considering how rarely valve makes games, its not really a surprise. This game was booed from first announcement. No one wanted this. Also, deadlock is actually a fresh take on a stale genre.
@@cappinjocj9316 Deadlock seems like its going to be a sweatstrum. I have no doubt it will be popular but it doesn't look enjoyable to me. Looks stressful lol
The blueberry, lol so pathetic. And being fat is not a excuse, fighting games are presenting cool fat characters since forever. Roadhog from Overwatch is not the most likeable character imaginable, but he at least has a personality, his thumbs up pose is charismatic, etc.. Hog is a character, the blueberry is a piece of nothing that looks hideous
@@brootalbap Not sure what that means but if what you're saying is that obtuse using terms no normal person would, maybe you're being political too. Just different politics
Overwatch was so abominable, it tarnished the whole genre. Instead of associating hero shooter to the Team Fortress formula, nope, most people think about Overwatch. A cutscene or a stupid PvE mode is considered "content"
It's not really "cut" when it's designed to be drip fed through a live service model. Not that I'm defending the game. Clearly there is plenty wrong with it.
I'm glad you didn't just forget that this game is actually pretty well made. It's got problems but I remember having a bit of fun with the characters during the beta. The problem is that absolutely ridiculous price point for it, I would love to understand how they thought this should cost 40 bucks because even as someone who enjoyed it during the beta there's no way in hell I'm paying that much for it.
8 years and millions and millions of dollars spent making this game and it probably won't even make a million dollars in return. I'd be surprised if it sells 10,000 copies. They could have put that money towards a new kill zone, resistance, socom, twisted metal or even MAG lol. 🤦♂️
And this is why we have endless remasters of games, recycling the same crap over and over. No, with that time and money, all they had to do was come up with something GOOD. THey failed.
When the dust settles I genuinely believe this will be the worst financial flop of any media ever, when the budget and estimated vs. actual revenue is taken into account. Rather than fall into obscurity, I think it will be studied for decades as the textbook example of the hubris that gave rise to a huge, unsustainable bubble in the gaming industry.
It's not surprising considering the collective sigh that people had when they announced it was a 5v5 shooter. And then the character design......they were definitely a choice
How could Sony think this was going to work? They made a hero shooter that does nothing new. Why would players leave Overwatch, TF2, or Val to play this $40 game with less content? Not to mention Rivals comes out later this year and that game will be released with more content and free to play... Same with Deadlock! Really baffles me they thought this would be a good idea
8 years, well over 100 million dollars, and a buyout from PlayStaion - yet all they have to show is a lacklustre entry into a genre that was all the buzz 8 years ago (what a coincidence).
I knew this game was not gonna be successful, but even most of the worst games of all time get at least 1000 players Less than 700 players?….MY GOD!!!!!
We all knew it wasn't going to be a hit, but its kind of surreal the worst selling triple A game ever is a game that committed the crime of being bland and mid. There have been literally unplayable, broken, buggy, unfinished games that have sold 10x better than this.
Hero shooters live and die by their character designs. Overwatch and Valorant both nailed it in that regard. Concord's characters are hella rough by comparison.
How could Skill up possibly recommend this game even if it was free to play. By his own admission he said the characters are bland and uninteresting. The maps are uninspired, The game modes aren't interesting. There's plenty of annoying complexed mechanics that are also not conducive to team play. The cosmetics are ugly and terrible with no reason for progression. The game has no ultimates. I fell to see what this game does right period.
I feel like the only conversation about this game has been Steam numbers and nothing else, so appreciate a proper review actually talking about the game itself even if it sounds like its not particularly great. Thanks Austin!
He's talking about how amazing the gameplay actually feels and what could be improved to make it better but people are only copy pasting memes about the game, I am so confused by this release, it feels like it became a "TikTok trend" to shit on this game. I truly believe that so many people are not buying it because of the internet trolling on this game.
Remember Brink in 2011? You can't convince me we're not living in the Matrix and the Architect is just fucking with us at this point I mean it even has the same blue cover art!!
Can't wait for them to pull a Randy and use their official accounts to "warn" everyone that there's a Concord R34 subreddit suspiciously close to it being made.
With such a low player number, I bet most of those players are journalists and reviewers covering the game and once they are done doing so, the number is going way down and fast.
I just can't get over the vile character designs. Its like someone took overwatch and replaced all the models with stuff from the Outer Worlds that didn't make the cut for the final game. Who is meant to look at these designs and think "oh yeah thats my guy, love it" and not "did you tell someone they had 5 minutes in a portland thrift store to put together an outfit for a sci-fi themed party"? just completely soulless focus testing slop.
Or even if you don't think the design is cool they can at least be a fun character to look at. I personally think roadhog from overwatch looks cool, but admit he's also a big aggressive pig man with a chain hook and a minigun-shotgun, AND really fuckin good self heals. It can be fun or even funny to play as him, and it's definitely funny to see him in game waddling after you.
@@PoyoPancakes The game is fun in its current state. The cosmetics are uninteresting, but I don't really care much for cosmetics in general - guess I'm from an era where that wasn't a big part of gaming, not in the same way at least. The future of the game is certainly looking bleak, both from outside looking in, but also a bit worrying from the inside. I'm on PC, which of course is the smaller platform, but now that we're past the launch weekend, queues usually take 2-3 minutes, and with matches lasting 5 minutes tops, that'll quickly become a factor that might keep me away from the game. The crew bonus system is weird. I like that it incentivizes swapping characters, as it forces me to try characters that I'll end up liking, but at the same time, it's hard to get coordinated play going when everyone is swapping all the time, and if you refrain from swapping, you lose out on worthwhile bonuses. That system needed some more time in the oven, sadly. I'm having fun with the game, and I was okay with the fact that it wasn't gonna last forever. I've played many a live service game that's died (Nosgoth, Battleborn, Gigantic... the list goes on), so I was conscient of that going into it.
To me the game just looks ugly AF. Ugly characters, ugly UI, ugly effects, it just looks like an eyesore and why would I pay $40 for something that just looks bad on my eyes?
@@bruuuuuuuuhhhh OP doesn't think they're ugly because of them being "ugly". Someone said the game is woke. So OP now cannot appreciate anything about it
I wouldn't say they're ugly. They're absolutely Boring. Yeah, they're well made with good tech (mocap etc.), but from bad concepts. Credit where credit is due, yet the characters have no visual interest and don't telegraph how each character plays so they don't serve the most important thing when it comes to games; gameplay. Lots of fails in this game, the character designs being one of them, but I can't really call them ugly.
@@mechanicalmonk2020 So you think the fat dude, the cat lady, female gangstalicious, the hiroshima mushroom, generic cod white man and ginormous red rocket look good? There's not a single attractive or good looking character. As if the pronouns in the selection screen wasn't clear enough that the goal was making the characters diverse, not cool looking. Overwatch is a hit (even though the game is woke) because the focus was creating cool looking ass characters, sexy ones, masculine ones, etc.
The positive about this game is that I'm extremely glad that people actually learned that you shouldn't support a bad product. I saw multiple games now who are objectively bad didn't have much support from players and I'm extremely glad for that.
@@beng6149 it's no different from No Man Sky and CDPR. Did you forget how much they lost? A lot. CDPR's reputation from being the best studio due to Witcher 3 to absolute garbage. The difference is that these two are willing to fix their product despite knowingly that they will be on the loss for a few months and years. That's what happened to No Man Sky and CDPR. They can give up at anytime but they are not. Now we just need see if Sony willing to fund them for another 5 years to make significant improvement and changes or not but I doubts they will even support this game at all any time soon with extremely low amount of players.
@@MordecaiSPM Sony are not going to invest in fixing Concord because no one cares about the game in the first place. In contrast to Cyberpunk and No Man's Sky, no one will even be aware of the improvements to tell people that Concord is being improved.
Honestly concord’s world and character building seems to have such a big potential in terms of a single player experience which Sony is honestly known better for than Microsoft. Felt like they should’ve stuck to that when designing this.
@@jasongrundy1717 tbh I’m really bored now and I’ll gladly play it if it was free in September because I’m waiting on metaphor refantazio. I’m currently in a dry spell and idk what backlogs games to play either as my mood is not feeling most games. Concord feels like a good turn off ur brain shooter
@@jasongrundy1717 yes, we all have better things to do than play a video game just like we all have better things to do than scroll the comment section of a youtube video. that doesnt mean we dont still do those things though
Thank you Surfshark for sponsoring this video. Secure your privacy with Surfshark! Enter coupon code SKILLUP for 4 months EXTRA at surfshark.com/skillup
Fuck surfshark lol 😂 remember lads you don’t need it.
It already did 😂😂😂 watch your back SkillUp the devs are onto ya 😂
You’re forgetting one BIG thing, people HATE WOKE..I have to admit if i hear there’s a hint of “diversity”, “inclusion” or some other WOKE sjit in a product, I will not buy it and i will tell everyone in my direct vicinity not to buy it because it is WOKE garbage..
Make video on hunt shwdown 1896
where's black myth wukong review ?
Congratulations Austin on being in the top 1000 concord players worldwide!
😅😅😅
Boot up the game and get 1 kill and you’d be in the top 100 lmao
1000 out of 1000
Top 500 on Steam alone.
raises the question - how many of those 1000 are just people who play the game for creating reviews?🤔
What’s crazy is of the 600 concurrent players the majority of them were probably journalists, reviewers, paid sponsors/streamers and the devs themselves 💀
Dude you're right this game must have actually sold even WORSE than we realize since hundreds of those players had free review copies and on Steam the player count dropped from 600 to 90 now 💀
Yesterday was the third day after launch and the game peaked at 276 players, a more than 50% drop in less than half a week, you’re likely correct
@@DeepStone-6 I would not doubt it if they had sold around 100 copies on pc. The game is doa on PC. PS5 is yet to be seen
There were also a number of "hate-players" that I saw on Twitter. I.e. people who were already opposed to the game for whatever reason, but decided to play or stream it just to "prove" that the game was bad. It's wild to think that these made up a not-insignificant proportion of the total people playing this game.
@@MajerHawk its just as bad on PS5, if not worse. 3 minute matchmaking time is considered 'good' and 'fast', it can go up to 5 minutes, and even higher.
I feel like the character designs are the #1 nail in the coffin for this game. The weird systems are secondary to the core experience and can be adjusted, but a hero shooter without appealing heroes is dead in the water. People pick these games up because they see a cool character and want to play as them. No matter how good your core gameplay is, it's not going to matter if people look at your roster, see a bunch of nondescript Guardians of the Galaxy rejects, and say "meh".
In 2016 (or whenever this game started developmen) MCU-esque characters probably seemed like a good idea, as did the Hero Shooter genre. But that's the problem with excessively bloated development cycles, you can completely miss the popularity window of whatever trends you're trying to capitalize on. In this case it was art style _and_ genre.
The characters honestly don't look too badly designed. They seem kinda eccentric, similar to Deadlock, yet people hype the Valve characters for some reason.
@@DevlVergil It's Valve. They've earned that trust and hype throughout the decades. The fact that Deadlock also plays really well is a big bonus. Concord just hasn't earned that trust, hype and appeal. It's going to take a lot from Sony just to keep this afloat. Risky. Abandoning it would be the safer move, but we'll know more after the Amazon show.
@@DevlVergildunno man, at least deadlock had a distinct artstyle, these designs just kinda look like awkward cosplays an ai would conjure up
@@DevlVergil character artist here, Deadlock characters have very nice silhoutte, nice unique design, distinctive style. Concord is just a bunch of Leftist americans and a trash bin.
Ive seen some people claim it "sold better on PS5"
My brother in Christ, if this game sold TEN TIMES better on PS5, it would still have HALF the peak player count as Battleborn
Battleborn, that's a name I haven't heard in a long time. I guess OW keeps killing games even to this day.
It's not even on the playstation trending or top 10 lists
Damn that's brutal.
It peaked at like #42 best seller on PSN, so it's not selling well there either
@@Dohnjoe5940 Concord killed itself.
In fact, it didn't even begin to live before killing itself.
Free to play in a month, cancelled in 3 months
3? That generous?
with only like 200 players, 3 months is very generous. none of these people are buying MTXs to fund this crap.
Layoffs at the studio in 6 months.
@@PursuedByAMemory this studio wont last 2 months let alone 6
@@selectionn How many of those players are real players and not just reviewers?
the real playerbase is probably 0.
“Dwindling player numbers” my brother in Christ there’s nobody to dwindle
Fleekazoid?
This review will most likely have more views then Concord will have all time players.
Already does!
It already does
More than double in less than 5 minutes.
Already does. Lol
@@rawrdino7046 most games don't reach players' numbers as TH-cam video views, but likes on the other hand....
*_CONCORD_* is supposed to be featured in an episode of Prime's *_SECRET LEVEL_* series
The issue here is that this series airs in December...
It is not impossible the game will be dead before it is showcased in the show...
EDIT - September 3rd - Sony is already pulling and refunding the game as they "explore options" - wow.
Sony really thought Concord would take off like that I wonder what upper management saw in this game 💀
I think it'd do better as a show.
It's already dead. By December, no one will even remember it.
More people will watch the episode than will play the game.
Le reddit post
Imagine choosing between playing as an elderly German in a badass robot suit wielding a huge rocket hammer or a fat dude in a blue parka
Now imagine the game forcing you to play as both
@@WeBreakItAllDownRightHere id totally be ok with that. Problem is there wasnt a single appealing character in concord outside of the robot. I say "wasnt" cuz it literally just died
I'm honestly surprised the devs didn't try to "subtly" introduce Concord porn or something to promote their game like Battleborn. "Oh no, look at all this Concord porn that suddenly appeared! I sure do hope no one else tries to do this."
@@kira-dk2mx would it have helped? I think overwatch porn is so popular cuz the characters are attractive both in game and in rule 34. Not the case with concord. Like who the fuck would want to see Daw or that lady with the minigun naked? Im sure theres an audience for that but its probably nowhere near as large as Widowmaker's cheeks
I still don’t understand how it works where you have these story cutscenes with a bunch of characters interacting and then the gameplay is just ‘let’s go into an arena and try to kill each other’.
Sounds like 2 different games to me.
It didn't work for overwatch, nobody understand why tracer and winston would work with reaper and widow after the initial trailer. Yet they tried the same thing again
The concept of selecting multiple "pirates" to be part of a crew and it seems like the excuse for repeating the characters is related to the lazy multiverse gimmick? It's kinda decent imo, at least you try to justify clones everywhere. But the devs overcomplicated the system. Marvel Rivals is just straight to the point, all the characters are variants fighting in a crazy multiversal war (caused by Dr. Doom), it's way easier to follow even if you don't watch the promotional material, MCU or read the comics. For example, in the Asgard map a Loki "projection" shows up and provoke your character... If you are playing with Loki himself, the projection mentions they should work together... That's it, problem solved right there, your Loki, the enemy Loki and the Loki who is the king of Asgard, they are all variants
The movies are supposed to let you connect to the characters so you’d invest more in them. But there lies the problem, the caste are horrible to begin with and nobody cares.
I wouldn't be surprised if the very original plan was for this game to be single player story-driven
@@zilliq-qz5uwthe only timed it worked was in tf2 but the characters in that game are all mercs.
You gotta understand. Concord's numbers on steam are roughly that of Marvel's Avengers
And no, not Avengers at its peak. Avengers RIGHT NOW, a game with no update in almost a year and unavailable to purchase.
And Concord is doing similar numbers to a game you can't even buy anymore. Seriously, at the time of this post, Avengers has 232 people playing. Concord has 129.
I thought you meant you could reach that player count by having only the actual Avengers characters play it
I'll do you one better: Heroes of Might & Magic III - HD Edition, a fairly maligned HD upgrade to a 25-year-old game, that most fans never bought, because the modded original fares better, has a 2,078 24 hour peak. Concord is at 237. A game that was made when some of the developers of Concord wasn't even born, is outdoing Concord almost 10 times.
Western gaming in a nutshell. A huge pile of shit lol
You can't buy Avengers anymore?!
I've been playing this game since it came out and I saw my name five times in this video. I feel like that really speaks to how low the player counts are.
Why would you ever buy this though? Literally every sign was pointing to this game being DOA. Not hating just to be clear. I just genuinely can't wrap my head around as to why you would invest your money into this knowing all the signs and this is coming from the guy who was actually semi-interested in getting it pre-ordered until I saw the general lack of hype behind it
@@thecoomchalice5441it could have just been curiosity, maybe there is enjoyment in playing a shooter nobody has played before until now too, like they have a lot of hours in other pvp games
@@thecoomchalice5441it's his money he can do what ever he wants, only activists lines to tell people what to do
@@thecoomchalice5441 joke's on us. they got to play it basically for free and we didn't (and probably never will lol)
Forcing you to constantly having to swap heros to gain passive buffs in a hero shooter sounds terrible
get gud
@@beng6149 Buyer's remorse detected
Honestly these buffs are minor enough in the casual modes its like who cares. I understand where Austin is coming from but its kinda ehh. They're clearly designed for the competitive mode. Still, I think they should have just removed them from the casual mode.
@@beng6149loll
@@beng6149 get shut down kek
My problem is that I can't stand the art direction. It's hard to put $40 down on a game that I don't want to look at.
This is everything. Looks like those "Unreal Engine Mario" projects to me, just devoid of direction. Might get away with that in a AAA linear experience that has good set pieces but for PvP it's *all* you have to look at
@@gigitrix It's very clearly not devoid of direction, and comparing this to shitty UE5 Mario projects is frankly insulting to the devs. You can shit on this game all you want and I'm with you, but this is just not true. Yes, the artstyle is a very uh... aquired taste. But there are clearly very talented people behind this, because everything is very well made and very polished. Some people on that team just made some very questionable decisions with the designs, anc clearly people don't mesh with it.
@@FrozenDozer These art devs are an insult to the concept of art. "Very clearly talented people" i think you actually mean people happy to take big checks from Brackrock and Vanguard, and do as they are told. Obedient. No vision or integrity of their own. Utterly replaceable. And they'll be replaced by soulless robots the moment they can be, probably robots trained on stolen reams of their own garbage art. Because paying someone else to train ideology into your "art bots" is more cost effective than constantly brainwashing each new generation of gullible young humans.
@@714acedeck lol go take your pills
@@714acedeck You are so stupid it's actually crazy lmao
Watching this video and reading the comments after they announced the cancellation of the game after only a week is hillarious
It’s so bizarre that they have so much focus on the story and lore of this game and yet none of it it’s playable (just like Overwatch, but even then the lore was detached from the game itself, it was mainly on TH-cam and the comics).
They had 8 years, and they didn’t think about adding a campaign, which would’ve left Overwatch 2 to shame with the cancellation of its PVE
That was my thought, why even have a story in a hero PvP? Put that energy into gameplay.
If they had made this some kind of single-player/co-op squad-based shooter with dynamic swapping through your "crew" per mission, or even just made the space pirate thing into a more action-oriented Payday in Space with co-op PVE, it would have been a banger. As it is, though... The design choices are baffling.
they probably went for remaking destiny but their own way, and then switched to just pvp when that was too much to pull off
I wouldve made a coop shooter, it PROBABLY would explode in popularity, but those atleast sell a decent amount most of the time, and as long as you have some friends, the game will never die
exactly. no one care about lore in a PvP game anyway.
they have too much faith for a game with the worse characters design ever. who cares about this characters and their story?
this game look something that came from a tumblr artist. is just a fan art at best and something a 14 years old would make in deviant art at worse.
the character's choice of clothing reminded of stuff I wear in MMOs just because of its stats
Who knew the future would be so.......boring. like are you telling me that space pirates looking for fame and riches would wear metal scraps and the equivalent of scientist rags? Really?
green armor in destiny type energy
@@Kaeloz93I agree they wouldn't be wearing whatever hospital rags they're wearing now, but as pirates chasing riches they probably don't have much in the moment, and even whatever they could plunder might not be enough to fully deck themselves out. Anything more mad max-esque would have been way better, or having a few characters with futuristic body armor looking like Zer0 from Borderlands or something
And somehow those MMO outfits looked better.
I think the reason Jim Ryan ran away is because he knew that he wasted company money on all these failed live services and because he is a coward he didn't want to deal with the blame.
I just looked on Steam Charts. 97 people playing a few mins ago. 97. Less than 100. This game isn't just cooked, its like someone forgot a pizza in the oven and went on holiday. And it caught fire and burnt the whole house down, and the fire took out the houses on either side too. Then it spread to the oil refinery next door which also went up in flames like drone footage from Russia and finally burning embers from the oil refinery somehow landed in a nuclear silo a mile away causing the cruise missile to launch so China thought we were nuking them on purpose, hit the button themselves and now we're all living in post-apocalyptic nuclear wasteland (with 16 times the detail).
underrated comment, better writing than Concord too
Man, talk about a chain reaction :D.
It just works!
I won't be derisive and suggest anything close to hyperbole, but...
That is a very elaborate analogy.
Well said, sir. or ma'am. and whatever else you want to add on to your title.
This comment was a wild ride.
Y'all forgetting that game is blocked for purchase in 175 countries on Steam, that's not how you do live service.
That’s so stupid. I live in Kazakhstan. PS5 is being sold here, officially by the Sony Center for 560$, yet we DON’T have access to the PSN and PS Store because they refuse to create a market for this region. I bought my little brother his console last New Year and had to look for workarounds to be able to actually use the console. Sony is truly a company being led by illogical scumbags. It’s been 2 years since they banned PSN in Kazakhstan just because our country borders russia and they haven’t even addressed this issue at all.
Keep in mind, all of the CIS game presentations that were hosted by Sony in Russia now being held in Almaty, Kazakhstan but you cannot access PSN without breaking their policies.
@@JakeTheSnake1337Classic Sony moment. Great English, by the way.
@@JakeTheSnake1337 I hate to break it to you but politically, i think you already know the answer to that question as to why they are not providing online services in Kazakhstan.
@@crimsonghoul8983 so how is it my or my country’s fault that we happen to exist near Russia? Why does a country, that strictly follow the sanctions, has a neutral position in the conflict and has a population that support peace, has to suffer with these limitations?
@@JakeTheSnake1337 It shouldn't. And it's not your country's fault. Please dont misunderstand me. But in case you haven't noticed, Sony is a pro-Western company. You wont find their consoles being sold in China or in any communist countries, as far as I am aware.
Kazhakhstan was declared independent from the Soviet Union since 1991, and yet, you can admit that your country is still struggling to break from the shadow of its past.
That's why Sony is able to sell it's consoles to you, but not willing to establish a server in Kazakhstan under the off-chance that it can be used for nefarious purposes either by Russia or US.
The developer calling reviewers "talentless freaks" is the chefs kiss moment for this game.
We could have a 60fps Bloodborne remaster, but Sony wants to lose hundreds of millions chasing live service. Heads must be rolling at Sony HQ over this failure.
Nah nah nah. They’re gonna axe the devs, not the people that made the choices! :D
Maybe this will push them to make that remaster, you know, to recoup losses.
This game has been in development since 2016, I think head's already have rolled, namely Jim Ryan's.
Not enough heads were rolling to be honest.
Rather, the company heads will meet and say "How could such a thing happen? The statistics promised results! The developers must be incompetent!"
They made a hero shooter without any likable heroes, what did they expect?
@YISP7 its so funny that they really thought there are people who will like this. Iam so glad this game failed this hard, honestly awsome.
@YISP7 Ah the mythical "modern audience". I have a friend who SWEARS he saw one of them once way up in the woods. He tried to take a photo for proof since he knew no one would believe him, but it was blurry and just looked like the shadow of a tree to me.
@YISP7 Where did this "modern audience" comment come from?
@@Xgil2Play came from the game lol. the character designs all pandered to these modern audiences with all that wokeness and unlimited pronouns in the game.
I really hate that term 'modern audience', so are the rest of us prehistoric cavemen or something? lol
Yesterday the game was at 40 players on steam. Today, Sony announced it’s pulling the plug on the game in 6 of September. Idk if this is the biggest flop in gaming but it’s certainly the fastest!
The game is rumored to have cost $400 million to make.
Jim Ryan's legacy playing out in real time
0:19 Here's one of the problems right here. The character designs look like NPC's from other hero shooters.
That's being generous. They look hideous. Why is everyone wearing poofy vests? No understanding of color or design theory. They range from lame to unsettling.
@@MacSmithVideoyeah it feels like their thought process was “if we give them each a random colour palette then they’ll feel different and unique”
@@MacSmithVideo First thought when I saw them was rejected Guardians of the Galaxy extras.
They're like if someone hit randomize on a fallout character creator
These character "designs" don't look like they were designed. they look like someone hit random on a character creator screen.
Well this aged... extremely well actually, the predictions just came true much quicker than anyone thought.
"A new cutscene every week." So..... 2 cutscenes?
@@DarkKingHades 🤣🤣🤣
The absolute irony of a corporate cash grab with a 40 dollar price tag like this having a story that centers around a pirate captain that releases the most valuable discovery of all time for free to all is pure poetry.
Yep, irony to the extreme. It's like the Fortnite formula, the Candy Crush formula, etc.. they are there for the taken (if you are morally corrupted to a point of preying on children and the mentally ill), you can make a lot of money... But it's not as easy as it sounds, the interesting thing about addiction is how the addict will not simply jump to the new drug, they are already hooked. Even if Concord was free to play, it would be a failure all the same
One piece in space
A generic-looking live service hero shooter starring Discount Guardians of the Galaxy all while the genre is basically either dying or oversaturated as it is. I mean, is anybody surprised it flopped? Nobody was asking for this.
It's even funnier when you consider Sony watched Hyenas, a very similar product, get outright cancelled from Creative Assembly not even a year ago. The genre is basically Overwatch 2, which still has the greatest market share, Valorant, and Smite, maybe? I'm not as up on it as some people, but those are the big three in the market right now, and everyone else is fighting for fourth or fifth place. I don't know why a studio would put any money into this style of game right now. If I were a studio exec, I would be looking at how Helldivers 2 did on release, not on its continued content drops, and emulate that. PVE is a really underserved market right now, because there's Helldivers 2, which is already ruining itself, Deep Rock Galactic, Warframe kind of, and...that's it. PVE shooters, I should specify, are just not as common as they should be. That's the market large studios should be after, but none of them are even thinking about it.
Discount guardians of the galaxy lol
It's a $40 tech demo, good bones sure but there's so many better options. They need to make this unique - better maps, modes, places, locales tied to story llke skins of maps (jungle planet gets jungle version of map)
@@DarkJak337Marvel Rivals will be a pretty big game to and it's a direct competitor to Concord and it'll be free. Lol
If the game launched for free and at a better time it likely would've been successful.
You forgot that it's paid and infected to the brim with DEI garbage when the competition is F2P.
The hero characters look like what you'd find in a walmart at midnight in Portland. Truly unsettling.
This was a game designed by a DEI committee
@therealfakeAlphabet there are lots of successful games with diverse casts. Are you sure you aren't regurgitating talking points about DEI like some kind of parrot? It's just badly-thought out art direction, not some kind of conspiracy
@@Noordledoordle both things can be true. Too focused on making hyper-realistic characters look like the average Walmart shopper, with hardly any effort paid to design elements that actually reflect what the character is supposed to be in terms of gameplay mechanics.
@therealfakeAlphabet Focusing on diversity doesn't take THAT much brainpower. Again, it's been done plenty of times successfully. Lots of artists love to try stuff off the beaten path - coloring outside the lines is FUN, not restrictive. Even the average Walmart shopper wearing a stupid Party City costume can be an engaging character design if done correctly. It just wasn't.
@@therealfakeAlphabetWhat does the average Walmart shopper mean? Dude say what you want to say? Is it the fat people, black people, old people or leftys you had an issue with? And what did you want more of, what's the opposite of Walmart shoppers? Say it with your chest.
the Temu Guardians of the Galaxy roster signed an early death for this game. The giant trash robot is the best one.
The thing to remember is that the early access beta had a peak of 1124 players, whereas launch had 697 players, which an almost 40% drop. Which means 40% of players preordered the game, played it and then didn’t come back for launch. The betas actually hurt the sales and player retention.
And if that isn’t enough, one of the devs insulted detractors by calling them “talentless freaks”. Given that there was behind the scenes drama with “The Professor”, sounds like a real stand up group they got working there.
That beta actually gave anyone who pre ordered 4 codes for friends to play the beta too fyi so a lot didn’t actually own it for launch
If the last couple of years of following this channel have taught me anything, it's that the real estate for live service games in the gaming sphere is WAY smaller than anyone thought it would be. I think you're 100% right about this kind of title needing that 'special sauce' to survive. The competition is just way too fierce for anything but the best of the best to last more than a few months.
Great review Austin! I'm loving how the SkillUp team is expanding :)
"The character designs are not great" is the understatement of the century. It's one of the WORST character rosters I've ever seen in any video game, yet alone in hero shooters. The character designers should never work in this industry again.
the character design and terrrible, terrible main trailers ruined any chance the good looking gameplay had
it was so bad that there was no r34 artwork for any of the characters
Concord died in character design and monetization. Sometimes there needs to be that one asshole on the team that tells artists that their designs are shit without a care for the feelings of the artist. If it doesnt happen you could end up with this, a career ending disaster.
Yeah I tried to justify it by it being "the higher upps" fault but I no longer think it is. I refuse to believe some exec told an artist to make the fire lady have a design that has nothing to do with red or fire. It just doesn't make sense
Actually the character designs SCREAMS of execs meddling making it as safe and sterilized as possible
@@chicolopes1928They’re not sterilised though they just fucking suck. This is 100% on the artists for once in my opinion.
@@tomekk.1889 It is definitely emotionally easier to blame faceless executives than to bluntly say a developer/development team made a mistake. _(especially when it gets mucked up in real world harassment and you don't want to feel like you're contributing to or endorsing it)_
Though, I'd still put more blame for character design issues on direction, less so individual artists. The universal design issues of characters' gameplay purposes not being readable and mostly just looking like regular people wearing clothes is something a creative director should've been able to see.
I also get the feeling that the characters may have originally been designed for more cartoony proportions, and it was a move to realism that made them look so terrible.
Characters have to look unique from each other so you can identify who you're looking at without thinking. I don't know what people expected them to do in this regard. Would more white dudes make yall happy?
like 99% of the roster look lame as fuck, they expect people to pay money to play this stuff :/ Hero shooters are meant to at least have cool characters - this is just a bunch of c tier deviant art designs lol.
Yeah, if they had characters like Overwatch they'd already have a decent playerbase.
@@Wizardi1111 tell that to Battleborn's developers lmao
Exactly that! It literally denies Rule 34.
No one is ever fantasizing about any of these characters.🥹
The trash robot tho @@PaulusAlone
I wanna say that if you think these characters are C tier art you have truly no idea how much bad art is out there, or how much effort and time it takes to make high quality 2d concepts / 3d models.
I'm not saying I like any of them really, but from a technical perspective creating models of this level is inherently an impressive feat.
It might be pretty standard in the industry, but as someone who is extensively involved in 3d modeling I want to really highlight how long it takes to model, texture, rig, and animate assets like these.
They did great work, it's just a shame they didn't have a more compelling concept to work from.
Concord has some of the worst character designs I've ever seen. They're so bad it should be studied.
Agreed I'm myself thinking a lot recently about how they managed to to make them a 100 times worse than overwatch
Yeah, I just don’t get it. The color scheme is so boring. If you’re going to enlist the gays- why not use their trademark flair and style? Like put Rupaul in there.
You could say the same about the Twisted Sisters or Manowar, lol they are products of a trend, hence why they will be forever dated. Concord is following the MCU and woke trends, both stopped being relevant a couple of years ago. When they started development of this game, the MCU was at its apex and the woke was on its infancy, Concord arrived too late for the party, their designs looks dreadful in 2024, but it would look amazing back in 2020
Most characters in Overwatch are fairly bland. The appeal they have doesn't go beyond their attractive traits. Which is ok ig, but Concord characters are just strangely quirky with no appeal at all. There isn't much to appreciate in them
@@zilliq-qz5uw come on the Asian girl is hawt thi
Its simply the Character Design its just bad. Every time I see Concord there isn't a single character that looks interesting or dynamic, or edgy , or cool its all just various grades of dull
I’m gonna be honest chief, could’ve just let Concord do its thing and not even done this review. Game was sub 100 players on Steam like 4 hours ago.
I didn't even know Concord existed, and then it's famous for being canceled. This is a history channel
For me, the characters just look way too boring, ugly, weird and lame. NONE of these designs feel cool and like something that resonates with me. NOTHING has any style! Everything looks like a blank-slate amorphous blob, and that was probably their intention
that's because the target audience is a blank-slate amorphous blob
We're witnessing the absolute implosion of big budget, generic cookie cutter entertainment media. First the Borderlands movie and now this. These publishers CANNOT just deliver an acceptable "good enough" product anymore. There must be a creative, enticing hook. Give the projects back to the artists.
The consumer is speaking louder than ever before. "We are smarter and poorer than last time. Why should I buy?"
Let’s not forget The Suicide Squad video game blunder from WB! What a year….
@@DjiryDoucoure Even Star Wars Outlaws is looking like another blunder...
That's what happens all these games are made by they thems with mental illness
Smarter and poorer is a good description, lol the internet at the palm of our hands for better or worse, $70 games, $10 movie tickets (if not more) and you still assume people are going to consume the next product like a bunch of locusts?
No offense but this game was in hands of artists too. It just so happens the artists are really bad at designing characters.
No one wanted to pick this game up because it manages to look both ugly and unremarkable. If it didn't have those flaws, it PROBABLY could have done fine for a while despite how generic the gameplay is.
The thing i hate most about these Live Services is that amazing worlds and stories are watered down and never fully realised. I like the idea and vibes they're going for, but no one can appreciate it in the few minutes between rounds.
A substantial single player story would be amazing to get people to buy into the world and characters, learn the systems in a safe environment and give us something to keep when the servers inevitably go down.
"Weekly cutscenes" People are just going to watch a TH-cam compilation when they are all done.
What kind of person buys a video game for the cutscenes? How out of touch are these people?
On week three it will be 75% static cartoons like in 'Suicide Squad'
Bold of you to assume anyone is going to bother recording them
Right? I don’t know how this idea got approved. I mean, we’ve moved to streaming platforms for a reason, so we can binge watch entire seasons without having to wait every week for a new episode. They’ve taken an archaic media retention strategy and applied it to a modern media consumption technique.
Why would anyone bother? Who's going to care enough to want to watch the cutscenes in the first place? People acting like this is some established IP that's getting important worldbuilding stuff in a single bad entry. This isn't the kingdom hearts browser game or the phone game from like 2008, no one cares about this.
This plane crashed without taking off...
And fortunately without any passengers 😂
@@DjiryDoucoure the passengers are the developers unfortunately
@zilliq-qz5uw nah, the dev is the pilot that doesn't care about talentless passengers
@@DjiryDoucoure too bad the developers weren't in the plane
@@recusantvesselyou're sick.
There isnt a single video uploaded talking about Concord with less views on it than Concord has players
Reminder, Concord is going to get an episode for the upcoming Amazon Prime show "Secret Level" from Blur studios. Will the game even still be alive when the episode airs in December? Why did Sony pay so much for the weekly cutscenes AND a whole exclusive episode? Reminds me of Battleborn characters being all over the Ready Player One movie.
A show? A funeral is more likely.
I feel like "Review" is a bit too optimistic wording. "Autopsy" would be more fitting.
We need sequel to this video called ,"Austin can't (literally) recommend Concord" to cover news of it's lightening fast EoS.
Let me put this into perspective ; an ULTIMA ONLINE free shard, Outlands, has 3-4k daily player count - that's a 25 year old game, running off donations, is doing better than Sonys biggest AAA release.
That's tragically hilarious.
This can't be good for gaming, I imagine.
It can be. Knock some sense into these people that not every game can be a live service game, and don't try to enter into an already massively crowded FTP space with uninspired garbage that you're charging up front for.
Meh, AAA failing is perfectly fine for gaming. Big publishers need to start learning they need to make games people want again. Until then, having them crash and burn may hurt some people's jobs... but the games industry as a whole will be just fine. Indie and AA titles have been more than pulling their weight these days.
dont u dare comparing peak to woke garbage 😂
Sony biggest aaa game is God of War.
@@clintonchico9547 Prob spiderman 2 costwise
With how small the player base is i wonder if Austin met the best concord player to ever exist, CondordDefender.
I don't think ConcordDefender played on the australian servers from his florida home
@@zilliq-qz5uw Who is CondordDefender ?
@@TheLegoJungle The big moist, moistcritikal, the moby huge.
@@TheLegoJungle what kinda question even is that? Most people are their user names. Lmao
ps + within a month, 70% sale or free to play within 3 months, Shut down within 12 months
The game is an absolute disaster. Some of the design choices are so baffling, that it seems like the studio is purposely trying to tank this game, and the 100 million investment from Sony.
200-300 millions investment from Sony.
Killing Sony from the inside? I can get behind that.
You ever watch a game announcement and think to yourself: "Oh this one is gonna fail hard"? And somehow you are right most of the time?
How is it that these disasters are always so... predictable?
Don’t make me say it….
@@Chopzi11a then don't say it. You already know it's not the reason
Consistent track record?
@@Disasterpeach ??
if you get triggered by pronouns there are languages that don't use them...
You need a Business degree to not see this flop
Not enough talk about how rotten the entire aesthetic, character design, and tone are.
Should have stuck with grapes.
Just goes to show how important Character Design is. Even if the gameplay is fun, players don't want to play characters that don't look interesting
It's not just that. Why would anyone pay to play a game that resembles several free to play games?
what the hell do you mean not interesting. Despite everything, these guys actually look unique.
Well. SOme of them. Aside from generic human with gun xD
@@rajabuta Unique =/= interesting or appealing. Matter of fact is, popular consensus points to people not liking how they look, hence, not wanting to try to play them.
@@rajabutaUnique? My friend… just urg… Hahahaha sorry, but we know Firewalk studios are paying you to say that, because there is absolutely nothing unique about these characters which were clearly copied from GOTG.
@@rajabuta yeah uniquely ugly
This is so sad, imagine being a dev for this game. 8 years of life devoted to something this bad on launch.
A early acess game from valve with invite acess only is 50 concords higher in the steam charts
To be fair, it's from Valve (who almost never make games), it's on Steam (who have much higher numbers compared to PlayStation), and it was free.
considering how rarely valve makes games, its not really a surprise. This game was booed from first announcement. No one wanted this. Also, deadlock is actually a fresh take on a stale genre.
Tbf though, Deadlock actually looks good.
@@cappinjocj9316 Deadlock seems like its going to be a sweatstrum. I have no doubt it will be popular but it doesn't look enjoyable to me. Looks stressful lol
@@razvanzamfir1545 Concord beta was free on steam / PS5 ..and noone played that :D.
15:28: When pressing “randomize character” too many times, you end up with this design
The blueberry, lol so pathetic. And being fat is not a excuse, fighting games are presenting cool fat characters since forever. Roadhog from Overwatch is not the most likeable character imaginable, but he at least has a personality, his thumbs up pose is charismatic, etc.. Hog is a character, the blueberry is a piece of nothing that looks hideous
Bro....fat ass hit box
They should’ve added “randomize pronounce” too.
@@MarcoVeraccio Guess what....you're hired 155k a year dei couch for EA congratulations son you made. Absolutely though lol
@@MarcoVeraccioDid you mean pronouns? 🙄 Maybe you shouldn't complain about something you can't even spell.
Austin cannot play: Concord (it's dead lmao)
Poor Austin being one of literal hundreds of people to try and enjoy this
Well Skill Up generally supports DEI games for political reasons, but when the player count is that low, they have to cover their behind as well.
@@brootalbap Not sure what that means but if what you're saying is that obtuse using terms no normal person would, maybe you're being political too. Just different politics
Probably 300 of them people will be youtubers 😂
@@brootalbap Motherfucker complains about DEI while having Jake the Dog as a profile picture is hilariously ironic
@@Drothen- Watch someone else then?
you know we are screwd when " delivering cut scenes" is considered content
Overwatch was so abominable, it tarnished the whole genre. Instead of associating hero shooter to the Team Fortress formula, nope, most people think about Overwatch. A cutscene or a stupid PvE mode is considered "content"
It's not really "cut" when it's designed to be drip fed through a live service model.
Not that I'm defending the game. Clearly there is plenty wrong with it.
"Enjoy it while it lasts"
That was fucking FAST
I'm glad you didn't just forget that this game is actually pretty well made. It's got problems but I remember having a bit of fun with the characters during the beta. The problem is that absolutely ridiculous price point for it, I would love to understand how they thought this should cost 40 bucks because even as someone who enjoyed it during the beta there's no way in hell I'm paying that much for it.
8 years and millions and millions of dollars spent making this game and it probably won't even make a million dollars in return. I'd be surprised if it sells 10,000 copies. They could have put that money towards a new kill zone, resistance, socom, twisted metal or even MAG lol. 🤦♂️
For the love of god a next gen MAG 😮
MAG 2 would be legit
I miss Resistance , Socom was awesome ... KZ peaked at 2...1 was a disaster 3 & 4 were meh..
So they could fuck those games up too 😢
And this is why we have endless remasters of games, recycling the same crap over and over. No, with that time and money, all they had to do was come up with something GOOD. THey failed.
how did it take them 8 years to make this.
When the dust settles I genuinely believe this will be the worst financial flop of any media ever, when the budget and estimated vs. actual revenue is taken into account. Rather than fall into obscurity, I think it will be studied for decades as the textbook example of the hubris that gave rise to a huge, unsustainable bubble in the gaming industry.
It's not surprising considering the collective sigh that people had when they announced it was a 5v5 shooter. And then the character design......they were definitely a choice
All aesthetic complaints asode, the designs fail on the basic level of "how does this character probably play". That should not be possible
@@aethertag1530agree 100%, with so much running around how can anyone be fat on the roster is one of the biggest mysteries in the universe.
They started developing this in 2016, when Overwatch was the hot new thing. This is why companies chasing trends fail every time.
Devs: "Our characters have pronouns!"
Everybody: NOPE!
i mean yea, they certainly are characters :/
How could Sony think this was going to work? They made a hero shooter that does nothing new. Why would players leave Overwatch, TF2, or Val to play this $40 game with less content? Not to mention Rivals comes out later this year and that game will be released with more content and free to play... Same with Deadlock! Really baffles me they thought this would be a good idea
At least Austin can play Janthir Wilds now 😂😂😂
I’m sure we all aren’t watching these reviews because we’re considering buying the game 😂
The sad part is the gunplay actually looks decent, and some of the maps are genuinely really pretty. But the character designs are so bland
8 years, well over 100 million dollars, and a buyout from PlayStaion - yet all they have to show is a lacklustre entry into a genre that was all the buzz 8 years ago (what a coincidence).
I knew this game was not gonna be successful, but even most of the worst games of all time get at least 1000 players
Less than 700 players?….MY GOD!!!!!
We all knew it wasn't going to be a hit, but its kind of surreal the worst selling triple A game ever is a game that committed the crime of being bland and mid. There have been literally unplayable, broken, buggy, unfinished games that have sold 10x better than this.
@@Richard-qx2zx get woke go ... Fire the professor?
92 players rn
@@dancingdante Jesus Christ!
This game has a lower peak player count than Immortals of Aveum. That's just sad.
Hero shooters live and die by their character designs. Overwatch and Valorant both nailed it in that regard. Concord's characters are hella rough by comparison.
I love how when this game was originally announced all interest immediately just died
@@Azem_of_Earth As soon as this game was announced as a hero shooter the whole internet let out a collective sigh.
The worst designed heroes I’ve ever seen. Not gameplay but pure art direction. It’s a fucking mess.
How could Skill up possibly recommend this game even if it was free to play.
By his own admission he said the characters are bland and uninteresting. The maps are uninspired, The game modes aren't interesting. There's plenty of annoying complexed mechanics that are also not conducive to team play.
The cosmetics are ugly and terrible with no reason for progression. The game has no ultimates.
I fell to see what this game does right period.
dawg the title of the video says "i do not recommend"
I feel like the only conversation about this game has been Steam numbers and nothing else, so appreciate a proper review actually talking about the game itself even if it sounds like its not particularly great. Thanks Austin!
He's talking about how amazing the gameplay actually feels and what could be improved to make it better but people are only copy pasting memes about the game, I am so confused by this release, it feels like it became a "TikTok trend" to shit on this game. I truly believe that so many people are not buying it because of the internet trolling on this game.
Remember Brink in 2011?
You can't convince me we're not living in the Matrix and the Architect is just fucking with us at this point I mean it even has the same blue cover art!!
Crazy to think no other game has had blue cover art between Brink and now
Brink was amazing and underrated game, so fun to play.
I purchased brink :(
Dude! I was just thinking about that! This game reminded me so much of Brink and how nobody played that.
Dang I haven't heard that name in years
Good news, you don't have to recommend it now, you can no longer buy Concord 😂
As someone pointed out on Twitter: there is no R34 for this game. That shows how lame the charadcter designs are.
lol
Can't wait for them to pull a Randy and use their official accounts to "warn" everyone that there's a Concord R34 subreddit suspiciously close to it being made.
They did it
They finally beat r34
That’s a hilarious yet accurate indicator
There's 12 results bro come on stop lying, clearly there's a market for it!
/s
Poor Austin has to play Concord all while imagining that he could have been playing Guild Wars 2 instead
With such a low player number, I bet most of those players are journalists and reviewers covering the game and once they are done doing so, the number is going way down and fast.
Who could have forseen a not recommend status
forseen forsenE
I just can't get over the vile character designs. Its like someone took overwatch and replaced all the models with stuff from the Outer Worlds that didn't make the cut for the final game. Who is meant to look at these designs and think "oh yeah thats my guy, love it" and not "did you tell someone they had 5 minutes in a portland thrift store to put together an outfit for a sci-fi themed party"? just completely soulless focus testing slop.
Or even if you don't think the design is cool they can at least be a fun character to look at. I personally think roadhog from overwatch looks cool, but admit he's also a big aggressive pig man with a chain hook and a minigun-shotgun, AND really fuckin good self heals. It can be fun or even funny to play as him, and it's definitely funny to see him in game waddling after you.
At least Sony gave everyone a refund...
James May: Bad news. The video game Concord, it's been shut down.
Jeremy Clarkson: Oh no. Anyway...
All 150 people still playing the game are gonna be heated over this one...
97*
I'm playing it, and no, I agree with everything he said 100% :)
@@Ahlgreenz must be nice to have disposable income.
@@Ahlgreenzso what are your thoughts about the current state of the game? And about the future of it?
@@PoyoPancakes The game is fun in its current state. The cosmetics are uninteresting, but I don't really care much for cosmetics in general - guess I'm from an era where that wasn't a big part of gaming, not in the same way at least.
The future of the game is certainly looking bleak, both from outside looking in, but also a bit worrying from the inside. I'm on PC, which of course is the smaller platform, but now that we're past the launch weekend, queues usually take 2-3 minutes, and with matches lasting 5 minutes tops, that'll quickly become a factor that might keep me away from the game.
The crew bonus system is weird. I like that it incentivizes swapping characters, as it forces me to try characters that I'll end up liking, but at the same time, it's hard to get coordinated play going when everyone is swapping all the time, and if you refrain from swapping, you lose out on worthwhile bonuses. That system needed some more time in the oven, sadly.
I'm having fun with the game, and I was okay with the fact that it wasn't gonna last forever. I've played many a live service game that's died (Nosgoth, Battleborn, Gigantic... the list goes on), so I was conscient of that going into it.
To me the game just looks ugly AF. Ugly characters, ugly UI, ugly effects, it just looks like an eyesore and why would I pay $40 for something that just looks bad on my eyes?
I have never seen a game with such an incredibly ugly cast of characters
They look so much better in the anime style certain trailers on the store have
@@bruuuuuuuuhhhh OP doesn't think they're ugly because of them being "ugly". Someone said the game is woke. So OP now cannot appreciate anything about it
I wouldn't say they're ugly. They're absolutely Boring.
Yeah, they're well made with good tech (mocap etc.), but from bad concepts. Credit where credit is due, yet the characters have no visual interest and don't telegraph how each character plays so they don't serve the most important thing when it comes to games; gameplay.
Lots of fails in this game, the character designs being one of them, but I can't really call them ugly.
@@mechanicalmonk2020 So you think the fat dude, the cat lady, female gangstalicious, the hiroshima mushroom, generic cod white man and ginormous red rocket look good? There's not a single attractive or good looking character. As if the pronouns in the selection screen wasn't clear enough that the goal was making the characters diverse, not cool looking. Overwatch is a hit (even though the game is woke) because the focus was creating cool looking ass characters, sexy ones, masculine ones, etc.
That’s perfect representation of they them ppl 😭
The positive about this game is that I'm extremely glad that people actually learned that you shouldn't support a bad product.
I saw multiple games now who are objectively bad didn't have much support from players and I'm extremely glad for that.
Yeah and now look at No Man's Sky. Laughing at you.
@@beng6149 it's no different from No Man Sky and CDPR.
Did you forget how much they lost? A lot.
CDPR's reputation from being the best studio due to Witcher 3 to absolute garbage.
The difference is that these two are willing to fix their product despite knowingly that they will be on the loss for a few months and years.
That's what happened to No Man Sky and CDPR.
They can give up at anytime but they are not.
Now we just need see if Sony willing to fund them for another 5 years to make significant improvement and changes or not but I doubts they will even support this game at all any time soon with extremely low amount of players.
@@MordecaiSPM Sony are not going to invest in fixing Concord because no one cares about the game in the first place. In contrast to Cyberpunk and No Man's Sky, no one will even be aware of the improvements to tell people that Concord is being improved.
Exactly my feelings. That convoluted roster system is wild.
"Live Service" and "Triple A" definitely have become Marks of Shame
Thank you for your sacrifice, Austin.
Honestly concord’s world and character building seems to have such a big potential in terms of a single player experience which Sony is honestly known better for than Microsoft. Felt like they should’ve stuck to that when designing this.
If this game was free, I’d gladly give it a shot. $50 is really not worth investing as I’m not a big fan of Shooters
You say that, but I'm sure you have better things to do and wouldn't have actually played it, lol.
@@jasongrundy1717 tbh I’m really bored now and I’ll gladly play it if it was free in September because I’m waiting on metaphor refantazio. I’m currently in a dry spell and idk what backlogs games to play either as my mood is not feeling most games. Concord feels like a good turn off ur brain shooter
@@jasongrundy1717 yes, we all have better things to do than play a video game just like we all have better things to do than scroll the comment section of a youtube video. that doesnt mean we dont still do those things though
I would never play it because the characters look like ass
Would not play it if I would get paid to play it.
13:58 functional? thats where the standard is nowadays? 💀
Of course Austin can’t recommend Concord, it doesn’t exist!