culture killed Concord it's that simple when you fail this spectacularly out of the gate with issues that are easy to validate with customers you know the people that pay you so that you can make games well you have a culture problem either firewalk Studios had the information they needed and they didn't bother to fix the issues in the game or they never asked either one of these situations is a problem goodbye every game has many unknowns when you start out that's why game development is so difficult because it's iter you have to make the game
while paying attention to what is going on around you because gaming evolves what players like changes this means you need a studio culture that has a healthy feedback loop clearly that didn't happen with Concord let me explain first if you haven't heard Concord shut down after 12 days it had less than 1,000 concurrent players and less than 25,000 units were sold cost-wise I've seen estimates that said $250 million plus was spent also they were in development for over 6 years and this is the first issue we'll talk about that is a long time to make
a game and the landscape of gaming evolves let's take a look at what was going on when Concord started OverWatch had just shipped and it was a spectacular success being inspired by the success of OverWatch is not a surprise everybody would want to make an OverWatch the problem is that they took several years to make the game and the market changed they needed to adjust unfortunately this is not a new story this happened to sigil games when they were working on a game called Vanguard Vanguard was a massively multiplayer game started in 2002 the company
was founded by Brad McQuade who was credited with making EverQuest one of the most successful games at the time I joined Vanguard as the Microsoft executive producer at the same time I started on Gears of War I remember when EverQuest launched because everyone at Microsoft stopped doing their jobs and started playing the game so I wasn't surprised when Microsoft signed the deal to make Vanguard they wanted the next EverQuest we were so excited about this game the only problem was that the market changed rapidly when blizzard shipped World of Warcraft in 2004 wow massively expanded
the market bringing in more casual players suddenly you didn't have to Camp a spawn for 20 hours like an EverQuest you could leave your computer you could even use the bathroom it was awesome it was a whole new world a world Gamers light unfortunately the sigil team didn't want to hear that feedback They didn't accept that the market had moved and they were designing Vanguard to be more like the original EverQuest in fact they refused to play the game which I found very confusing for context most game developers play every game that directly competes with
theirs they play to learn and for inspiration they play to make sure that when they ship that it's something players want that it's something they'll pay for you can't afford to make a massively expensive game and then hope that you're going to attract an audience you need to know that there's an audience for your game you have to build it with the players in mind from the start when we play tested Vanguard we were finding players didn't like it it was too hard there was too much grinding unfortunately sigil didn't want to hear it some
of the team were actively hostile when we tried to discuss it when you have people giving feedback and you're openly hosle of that feedback a lot of people most people will just shut down they'll just stop telling you what's wrong or what they think should change because they don't need the stress or they don't want to lose their jobs and this creates a broken feedback loop so it's not surprising that the market changed out from under the team that was making Concord the question is why didn't they adjust did they not see it or did
they play test see the issues and not make changes or maybe they had a hostile work environment where people stopped giving feedback I saw this report recently claiming that there were big problems within the firewalk studio I have no idea if this is true but if it is it's not surprising that the feedback loop for making the game better was broken here's what happens when you have a broken culture and no creative dialogue and no feedback loop all of your best people leave all the best Engineers the best designers the best artists they know that
they can find another job even in this tough job market because they're provably good they have a reputation they don't want to waste their time then you have your next group the people that are good but aren't confident or don't want want to look for a job that group simply shuts down they stop giving feedback they stop dealing with the people that are making the environment toxic they know they won't get fired for their work so they make sure they stay out of the controversy and now you just have everyone else you have inexperienced people
or people who don't feel afraid expressing their opinions and those vocal people will start driving the design and the look of the game and that isn't what you want you want everyone giving feedback and making the game better we will likely never know exactly what was going on at the studio but to me it's clear they didn't build a culture of feedback because they didn't make a game The Gamers want let's take a look at one of the other problems characters creating inspirational characters that people want to play this is really critical to the game
I know because we have this exact problem on Gotham City imposters ah let's get that blindfold off you welcome to bats HQ in [ __ ] as you know we are dedicated to honoring Batman's nobility through our words and deeds for context Gotham was a first-person shooter that shipped in early 2012 it was made by the team at monolith that shipped Classics like no one lives forever and fear the idea was based off of this clip from the Batman movie don't let me find you out here again we're trying to help you I don't need
help not my diagnosis what gives you the right what's the difference between between you and me I'm not wearing hockey bands when you look at these wannabe Batman clones they are average people they are an inspiring like Batman and that's the point they're average people cosplaying Batman on the weekend and it's funny and this team leaned in to that humor at that time we were making the game for young men that like playing firstperson Shooters generally the age range for this group was around 14 to 24 the Gotham team loved firstperson Shooters and they were
good at making them at the same time they were older this team had been together for many years so they knew that they needed to validate their assumptions with real people that would be paying for the game this is how we found out that we had a problem with our characters the people that were going to pay for the game didn't feel the characters were inspiring enough it turns out that a group of adult game developers who are confident in who they are find it funny to play a fat slob or a skinny guy with
a shotgun younger players not so much and if you think about it you can see why I went through awkward stages there were many times in my life where the last person I would have wanted to play with me in a video game at first it was very difficult for some of the team to hear this feedback part of that was because the team was very small so making a new character was going to be tough also it's never easy for an artist or Creator to hear that there is a problem with their work it's
one of the hardest conversations you can have with a Creator But ultimately you have to find a way to have this conversation or you end up with a failed game you just can't make games without considering who will buy them you have to appeal to the people that are going to play and love your game and that brings us to the next problem the $40 price point if you ship something free you can't change the price later and charge more it doesn't work people anchor on that free and they never go back so maybe that's
what Sony was thinking we had a similar issue with Gotham City Impostors we didn't feel that Gotham City had enough content to charge $60 so we went out and we asked our target market what they would pay what we found was that there were basically two prize points free and everything else from a community standpoint we felt it would be better to ship Gotham as a free-to-play game because we felt more people would try the game and we'd have more players as you saw with Concord if you were a multiplayer only game and nobody is
playing it dies quickly of course these were early days of free-to-play gaming on consoles and PC many gamers didn't like the free-to-play model I was one of them I still prefer putting down money getting a disc and playing the game forever that is my preferred purchase but we weren't making the game for me we were making the game for our target audience keep in mind Xbox didn't have a free-to-play game at this point in fact they had just started experimenting with a game called Happy Wars which shipped in October of 2012 so we were stuck
and that's how we ended up in this in between stage which some people didn't like I thought this review from the cynical Brit really captured it and he was very fair with his feedback exra points for that the debate I suppose with a title like this is whether or not it should be a payto playay or free-to-play game and it's weird the Market's in this weird State at the moment where they'll willingly accept Call of Duty in its progression system as a $60 title on a yearly basis but if you have a similar progression system
in anything below $60 people say it should be free what I was reading the RPS eventually Gotham was a free-to-play game but unfortunately it never recovered it never got the interest it needed to continue the leadership that made that game left the company and WB Games abandoned the title in order to focus on their new franchise Shadow of Mordor shipping a game any game is really hard so I give firewalk Studios a lot of credit for shipping at all they should be proud of having gotten it out the door I personally am not happy to
see them fail I find the situation sad because from my perspective it could have been different I felt the same way about Vanguard when it failed sigil and I didn't see eye to eye on a lot of things and I had hoped that when they move back to Sony a culture they were familiar with they would fix the game and ship something wonderful but sadly that didn't happen much about the games industry has changed over the years but making successful games still requires building a team and a culture where feedback is heard and acted upon
every problem on a game is known by someone on the team or the customer customer and if you can Surface those issues and act upon them then you're going to make a better game it's really that simple culture matters when B when the long days got you feeling B at the rug you got to B don't feel wor STI it through the extreme open that can full of FL and green [Music] Vigor chug is not for everyone side effects may include dry mouth headache nausea vomiting diarrhea and hair loss if you are pregnant nursing a
baby or have difficulty urinating 22 lar prostate ask your doctor before drinking fer Chu If you experience increased heart rate faintness or hallucinations seek medical attention immediately [Music]
