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Kotaku: Firewalk Studios and Concord heads had a 'too good to fail mentality'

Draugoth

Gold Member
concord-character-art.jpg

Kotaku cannot verify the $400m claim whomever:

I can corroborate the part about toxic positivity. Some sources I've spoken with blamed a head in the sand mentality carried over from the studio's Bungie roots.
A sense the game would come together because the team was too good to fail. I'll have more next week.

Source



 

Saber

Gold Member
Head in the sand? More like head in their own asses.
If anyone wonders why I feel like those people shouldn't be absorbed, thats the reason. Nothing good will come out of projects with people like that.
Also holy cheese, this Hermen might be the worst thing about Sony nowadays.
 
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StueyDuck

Member
concord-character-art.jpg

Kotaku cannot verify the $400m claim whomever:




Source




weren't all the mainstream journos at places like kotaku, blaming the evil bad bigotted gamers for the games failure?

they don't get the right to write articles now about the actual fuckups at the studio, you can't play defense weenies and then now that it's ok to dislike concord, go and actually do journalism.
 

Woopah

Member
We've been doing some psychology safety campaigns at my work, and it sounds like exactly what Firewalk needed.
 

Nydius

Member
Concord can’t fail because it’s got that BioWare Firewalk magic!

At least BioWare had earned the right to believe in their own “magic” ego after highly successful games like KOTOR, Jade Empire, Mass Effect 1-3. Firewalk put the cart before the horse.
 
weren't all the mainstream journos at places like kotaku, blaming the evil bad bigotted gamers for the games failure?

they don't get the right to write articles now about the actual fuckups at the studio, you can't play defense weenies and then now that it's ok to dislike concord, go and actually do journalism.
Journalism at its peak. Blame everything and everyone.
 

Rentahamster

Rodent Whores
A sense the game would come together because the team was too good to fail. I'll have more next week.

That sounds familiar . . . the trend tragically continues.


Within the studio, there’s a term called “BioWare magic.” It’s a belief that no matter how rough a game’s production might be, things will always come together in the final months. The game will always coalesce. It happened on the Mass Effect trilogy, on Dragon Age: Origins, and on Inquisition. Veteran BioWare developers like to refer to production as a hockey stick—it’s flat for a while, and then it suddenly jolts upward. Even when a project feels like a complete disaster, there’s a belief that with enough hard work—and enough difficult crunch—it’ll all come together.

One thing’s for certain: On Anthem, BioWare’s magic ran out.
 

ProtoByte

Weeb Underling
How big were they? I find the $400m hard to believe.
It must be including the purchase of the studio.

If that's the number Moriarty's heard because it's what's being thrown around internally, the studio will get shut down, and someone's job at PlayStation leadership is forfeit.
 

Quantum253

Gold Member
How big were they? I find the $400m hard to believe.
In the video, it's stated the game was in development before Sony got involved, and when they did, they injected 200M as an initial investment.
When the studio was acquired, Sony injected another 200M (outsourcing work) to get the title where it should be and in the launch window
 
Black Myth was $70m

Stellar Blade was 30-$50m

Phantom Blade isnt released.
I thought they were around 90-100.
Haven't played any of them but they all look spectacular. Planning on buying PS5 just for those and Astrobot.

Still trying to understand how on earth this Concord thing looking as ugly as it looked had a budget over 200m... (Now seems it's over 400...)
 

Draugoth

Gold Member
I thought they were around 90-100.
Haven't played any of them but they all look spectacular. Planning on buying PS5 just for those and Astrobot.

Still trying to understand how on earth this Concord thing looking as ugly as it looked had a budget over 200m... (Now seems it's over 400...)

Wukong is a really good action game, amazing if you are Vietnamise or Chinese.

Haven't tried Stellar blade.
 

chakadave

Member
That "mentality" isn't a thing. It is called delusional.

The statment "too big to fail" is when a government props up a business so much that it can take down whole nation or global economies.

I didn't even know this game existed and what I did see of it looked lifeless and sterile. Most people don't even understand what makes a game good anymore. That is why the indsutry is so risk adverse.

I need some back story on why this transformer keeps showing up on every concord thread
This is the type of persont that thinks they can design, program and write for video games games and that games are bad because of straight white males who make them and play them. They rely heavily on game engine technology. Don't understand hardware limitations and can't problem solve.

Also this person went to college and didn't learn anything. Meanwhile the best develeopers of video games were probably self taugh in the 90s on their parents computers.
 
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Hookshot

Member
They pushed ahead even after Sega cancelled a game that was going to go the same way. Seems their arrogance overrode their stupidity. Couple it with the usual game industry secrecy and it was too far along to really stop after we all finally saw and hated it.
 

Jakk

Member
$400 million seems like bullshit to me, but what do I know. The toxic positivity mindset is very believable, though.
 
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ap_puff

Member
They pushed ahead even after Sega cancelled a game that was going to go the same way. Seems their arrogance overrode their stupidity. Couple it with the usual game industry secrecy and it was too far along to really stop after we all finally saw and hated it.
If only they had shown game footage earlier on in the process and taken public feedback... I fear Sony is in for some big stumbles due to how they're not showing games early now. Maybe it puts less stress on the dev team so they don't have to prepare a vertical slice, but what's worse: having to do a bit of overtime, or losing your job and having your professional career forever stained because your project leads were being delulu?
 
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tkscz

Member
Is this technically the same topic as the other thread?

They REALLY thought this game was going to be the end all be all but the fact that they refused to take any form of criticism, even internally, could only lead to failure. You had a free beta that only reached 2500 people and of those 2500, only 700 returned the buy the game, a problem was clearly there.
 

hemo memo

You can't die before your death
Seriously, how is this possible? I'm so confused. Didn't any of the higher-ups take a look at those awful character designs and say something? Not even one?
 

simpatico

Member
Why didn't The Professor teach them how to be successful developers?

Seriously, how is this possible? I'm so confused. Didn't any of the higher-ups take a look at those awful character designs and say something? Not even one?
You're literally not allowed. If you tell them you don't like a character they're going to ask why. How do you answer that and keep your job?
 
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