It’s not often that a gaming adjacent story truly stuns me and leaves me in shock. Big reveals happen all the time. Big layoff news is all too common. Even stories of toxic workplaces aren’t anything new or shocking.
So believe me when I say that Sony shutting down Concord and refunding all purchases had my jaw on the fucking floor. I truly cannot recall anything like this happening, especially with such a major company.
Of course, this sad news for the developers couldn’t be a standalone story. Just about everyone had an opinion on how this news tied into their own personal narratives about how video games should be. Nuance be damned.
Live Service Can NEVER Succeed… Except When it Does
One of the biggest points after the Concord announcement came was that this proves that live service games are a bad move from Sony, and all of their resources should be going into various single-player IPs that have been dormant over the years.
And look, I’m sympathetic to this take. I personally have very little interest in most “live service” games. With most of these games, I will get into them for a few weeks at most and then generally back away. Almost any game that wants you to stick around for years or even months is not for me. I am too free spirited when it comes to video games to be held down by one for very long. There’s always other stuff to play.
But also, many of these critiques of live service games conveniently forget that Helldivers 2 exists and was incredibly profitable for Sony. That game released THIS YEAR and was Playstation’s fastest selling game ever. Helldivers 2 combined unique elements and excellent design, which led to tremendous word of mouth that sent it into the stratosphere. Not only did Helldivers 2 sell tons of copies, but it has almost assuredly kept a steady stream of revenue coming since release day with its various microtransactions. This is the kind of post launch revenue that a single player game can only bring in with a big DLC expansion, which usually takes years to do.
The reality is that every game is a bet. Even those single-player IPs that many people like myself love are risky in their own ways. To put it into way too simple gambling terms, a single-player game is probably something like a +150 bet at best (this means if you bet $100 on something, you profit $150 if you win). They are a risk, but it’s lower. With that lower risk, though, often comes less profit potential. We have seen dozens and dozens of single-player studios either lay off people or close down entirely in the past year. We are kidding ourselves if we think this route is an automatic success for Sony. While Sony is great at these types of games, they have had failure here as well.
Meanwhile, live service games are closer to a +600 bet (this means if you bet $100 on it, you profit $600 if you win). Those kinds of bets are undoubtedly riskier. There are a lot of live service games with devoted fanbases, and its hard to peel those people away from their “home” game. But if you hit just one of those bets, it can make up for several other failures. While some of Helldivers 2 momentum has slowed as the year has gone on, I imagine that landing a Helldivers 2 is well worth a Concord. And Concord is obviously the worst-case scenario that is possible for any live service video game. Getting one Helldivers 2 is most likely easily worth 2-3 mediocre live service launches. Also, Concord will likely re-launch as a free to play game down the road anyway and might at least recoup some of those losses. We can question Sony’s strategy all that we want, but ignoring the existence of Helldivers 2 to make the point that the strategy is a mistake is a nuance sin that I simply can not forgive.
Yo, Where The Titties At
The other narrative that has popped up is, of course, that Concord failed because it is “woke”. Or as woke as any game that involves shooting people can be, I suppose. Concord is apparently woke because the characters had pronouns in their profiles, there was some level of diversity, and no female characters had giant bouncing titties.
The reality is that the anti-woke mobs have no real consistency with any of these narratives that they attach to any game. Almost every modern Western RPG has “woke” elements. Specifically, they let you have gay romances. The Spider-Man games have been very open about their support for the Black Lives Matter movement. The modern God of War turns a protagonist who was once famous for having a sex mini-game into a sad and introspective father. Those games still sold incredibly well. Clearly, “go woke, go broke” isn’t actually a thing. Quality still wins out the vast majority of the time.
Meanwhile, the anti-woke mob also gets upset at the games they support at even the most minor indication that even one stray boob may have been covered up. There were uproars about Stellar Blade and Final Fantasy 7: Rebirth that were both incredibly bizarre. These games have PLENTY of boobs and ass for anyone who is really into that from their video games. Despite the supposed censorship, both games can be kind of embarrassing to play in spots if a significant other walks in at the wrong moment. Yet still, the mob’s anger persisted.
My point here is that the people claiming that Concord failed because it’s woke are wrong and not worth a lot of time. Most of these people barely like video games and appear to be far more entertained by getting mad on the internet. That is something I have found to be increasingly counterproductive the older I get. Hopefully, some of these people figure that out one of these days.
Nuance Is Cool
In the end, I imagine anyone reading a small-time WordPress blog is a passionate gamer. Most of us love video games more than anything else we do as a hobby. And our hobbies define us in so many ways. They can give us our identities. They can be our main conversation driver with friends. We fucking care about this shit!
And because of that, we all have our own preferences about the direction our hobby goes. So when something happens that seems to fit our own narratives about what gaming should be, it is very easy to pounce and declare that things need to be the way we want them. But it’s worth remembering that not everything is so simple, and not everyone is like us. There are some people who crave nothing more than these live service games. I know several people who really adored Concord, and it should make us all sad to see a game some people loved taken away so quickly.
And, of course, there are people behind every game that is made. In most situations, the people who made a game likely put long hours and their hearts and souls into that creation. It can be a little disappointing if a blog post that I put a few hours into only gets a few viewers. I can’t imagine pouring years of my life into something, and then seeing it crumble immediately right in front of me.
It’s OK to have a little grace. It’s OK to have a little sympathy, and it’s OK to recognize that not everything is about us.
And more than anything, if you view a story and think to yourself afterward that all of your own opinions and thoughts are 100% vindicated, perhaps a little introspection is in order. As much as I love video games, absolutely no one spending time discussing them for hours on social media is as smart as they think they are. If we recognize this, gaming discourse will become significantly better.
Easy enough, right? Boom. I’m glad I solved everything. I am so damn smart.
Big Nerd Gaming 
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