Highguard - Concord 2.0?

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It's alive.

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Pimozide said:
Everyone forgets another of CliffyB's other flops, the failed-to-launch battle royale game Radical Heights. It died, after a brief, disastrous playtest, in obscurity.
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I was going to put Radical Heights on the list, and The Culling 2, but they were such pathetically obvious cash grabs I'm not sure they even count as games.

Plus I don't think either ever officially left alpha/early access.
The Doom Slayer said:
It's alive.
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They're doing a showcase on the same day the game releases? I'm only a spectator of these debacles, is this normal behaviour for a live service? Because this seems insane to me.
 
Oliver Onions said:
They're doing a showcase on the same day the game releases? I'm only a spectator of these debacles, is this normal behaviour for a live service? Because this seems insane to me.
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no, companies that matter will do a showcase 1-2 weeks out, and teasers months before, mind you we found out about this game just recently and its already coming out and we've got basically zilch.
 
Professor Donger said:
The only exception was Apex Legends and they kept shit tight to their chest until they announced the game and then released it on the same day
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It’s worth noting, Highguard is made by the apex legends team.

A common theory going around is that after the trailer landed like a wet turd, they’re trying to pivot to the same shadowdrop strategy. Of course, to most people who aren’t really aware of apex legend’s marketing, it just looks like a loss in faith, and even if you know about the old strategy you have to wonder why they broke it with the game awards to begin with.

Forgotten Beast said:
This is pretty much spot-on. I would only change the part about marketing on point 1. Concord-likes enjoy every luxury an AAA game could ask for (massive budgets, extremely long dev cycles, big-name studios) except for marketing. In fact a very telling sign of a game being a potential Concord-like is a (perceived) lack of proper marketing relative to budget.
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Remember, the original concord had animated cutscenes planned for every week post release, and the Secret Level episode that came out months after it was unreleased.

Let’s generalise point 1 to “It must be a game which the corporation(s) behind it believe is going to be a smash hit, and give it a large amount of resources as a result.”
 
Disc said:
Remember, the original concord had animated cutscenes planned for every week post release, and the Secret Level episode that came out months after it was unreleased.
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Fair enough, that's true. What I meant to say is that games that fall into this category usually pull the brakes on the marketing department as soon as it becomes clear the game is gonna crash and burn, resulting in very little press discussion and advertising (or in the case of Highguard, none at all) at the period of time projects of this size usually go bananas with the shilling. Considering they must have spent a small fortune producing and pre-producing those shorts and the episode (and God knows what else), the fact that they stopped marketing the game (the habitual way, at least) at the most crucial moment is even more baffling.
I wonder if that's because they had already given up on the product at that point, they thought that silence would work as a kind of damage control, or they were actually marketing the thing wrong and didn't reach anybody. Same with Highguard.
The only Concord-like I can remember having a regular marketing cycle and press coverage was Marvel's Avengers, and they practically gave up on it as soon as the game released.
Disc said:
Let’s generalise point 1 to “It must be a game which the corporation(s) behind it believe is going to be a smash hit, and give it a large amount of resources as a result.”
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Perfect.
 
Disc said:
A common theory going around is that after the trailer landed like a wet turd, they’re trying to pivot to the same shadowdrop strategy. Of course, to most people who aren’t really aware of apex legend’s marketing, it just looks like a loss in faith, and even if you know about the old strategy you have to wonder why they broke it with the game awards to begin with.
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I know this is probably stupid, but I'm at least going to try the game out when it releases. It's free, so there's no point not trying it. The Apex team know how to make shooting feel fun but i doubt the game will really go anywhere.
 
Oliver Onions said:
How are we classifying this, just dead live service games? Because if so I can give you
  • Anthem
  • Marvel's Avengers
  • Babylon's Fall
  • The Crew
  • Evolve
  • X Defiant
  • Lawbreakers
  • Multiversus
  • Gundam Evolution
  • Battleborn
These are still technically playable but may as well be dead
  • Redfall
  • Bleeding Edge
  • Suicide Squad
  • Foamstars
This is not an exhaustive list, just what I could think of off the top of my head. I'm sure I'll think of half a dozen more as soon as I post this.
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Would Artifact also fit into this definition? The reveal for it at the DOTA 2 International was heavily panned, people were trying to defend it shortly before the game came out, the game's player count dropped like a rock (from 60k to nothing), Valve stayed silent for a while, then released a "beta" of an Artifact rework, but that also flopped and they gave up on the game entirely. Valve didn't shut down Artifact's servers though, yet.

DOTA Underlords would also fit too.
 
Artifact is too much of a weird anomaly to count IMO. It was more ambitious than your average hero-shooter clone, but they fucked up with one of the most pants-on-head retarded monetization schemes imaginable. I don't think audiences reacted negatively to the gameplay, which was fine if a bit too esoteric for its own good, but to the fact that the monetization model was outright hostile, especially by Valve's standards. By the time they released the rework, the damage was already done, and the fact that they refused to do anything with it afterwards didn't help matters. They could have easily turned things around with 2.0 (or Foundry), but they didn't even try.
Underlords was kind of the opposite situation, since it was more of a straight clone of a flavor-of-the-month thing that was lukewarmly received with a half-baked cosmetics-based monetization scheme (I'm not sure but I don't think you could ever spend a single dollar if you wanted to on Underlords at any point), but they forgot it existed at the point it needed support the most, and the patches when they still cared were almost schizophrenic in direction.
Both are examples of the problems with modern Valve's particular ADHD approach to game development, which is an entirely different beast from the problems of Concord-likes. Both failed more from a lack of interest from the developers rather than the audience, which is unusual to say the least. Neither was more than a side project at best for Valve, so I don't think the damage done was enough to consider them as much of a disaster as Concord or Suicide Squad or whatever. Both are still playable in some form if you hate yourself enough, so that also disqualifies them in my book.
 
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Forgotten Beast said:
Artifact is too much of a weird anomaly to count IMO. It was more ambitious than your average hero-shooter clone, but they fucked up with one of the most pants-on-head retarded monetization schemes imaginable. I don't think audiences reacted negatively to the gameplay, which was fine if a bit too esoteric for its own good, but to the fact that the monetization model was outright hostile, especially by Valve's standards. By the time they released the rework, the damage was already done, and the fact that they refused to do anything with it afterwards didn't help matters. They could have easily turned things around with 2.0 (or Foundry), but they didn't even try.
Underlords was kind of the opposite situation, since it was more of a straight clone of a flavor-of-the-month thing that was lukewarmly received with a half-baked cosmetics-based monetization scheme (I'm not sure but I don't think you could ever spend a single dollar if you wanted to on Underlords at any point), but they forgot it existed at the point it needed support the most, and the patches when they still cared were almost schizophrenic in direction.
Both are examples of the problems with modern Valve's particular ADHD approach to game development, which is an entirely different beast from the problems of Concord-likes. Both failed more from a lack of interest from the developers rather than the audience, which is unusual to say the least. Neither was more than a side project at best for Valve, so I don't think the damage done was enough to consider them as much of a disaster as Concord or Suicide Squad or whatever. Both are still playable in some form if you hate yourself enough, so that also disqualifies them in my book.
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Valve trying to cash in on trends with Artifact and Underlords reminds me of how Hi-Rez does the same with their games. And they have made a lot of bad decisions throughout their history as a company, and only recently did those consequences catch up to them as they had to go all-in on hoping SMITE 2 doesn't flop, and it already had a bad start since the alpha/beta was released in way too barebones of a state. Hi-Rez also attempted to get into the card game trend with Smite Tactics/Hand of the Gods, but that also flopped, and the servers were actually shutdown in 2020, compared to how Valve is still keeping Artifact's servers up, for now.

And Artifact's gameplay gave players the feeling of having little to no control over the game, even while the Stans insisted that "playing around the RNG" was a crucial part of the gameplay.
 
Can we talk about the everythingification problem?

By which I mean the tendency of developers to just cram fucking everything into a game instead of having a concise and cohesive design and scope.

I know it's been a gradual creep when it comes to gameplay and that's its own can of worms, devs trying to integrate what works/is popular, but I'm talking purely in terms of visual design and aesthetics. Why the fuck does every character look like they stepped out of an entirely different intellectual property? This shit looks like Wreck It Ralph. It looks like Super Smash Brothers. It looks like a costume party or the floor of Comic Con. It looks like The Ultimate Showdown of Ultimate Destiny.

I used to make fun of The Dark Tower for being an ADHD mess of all the different things Stephen King wanted to dress up as for halloween as a kid, but that's just become the go-to aesthetic now. Ninjas and pirates and robots and cowboys and monkeys and dinosaurs and spacemen all inexplicably standing shoulder to shoulder. Where did this start? It predates Overwatch. Was it League of Legends? Does it go all the way back to Final Fantasy? Or is it just the natural consequence of fighting games like Street Fighter and Mortal Kombat getting rolled into the amalgamation of all genres that is modern gaming? Is it the effects of short form content giving everyone ADHD, the FOMO-driven anxiety of committing to any one thing for fear of having less than everything? Is it the pendulum swinging too far away from the grim and gritty grey and brown realism of the 2000s? Or is it just the echoes of Unity turning everything into Bennet Foddy b-game plunderphonics-style mashups of unrelated prebuilt assets? How did this become the default?

It's just so fucking ugly and obnoxious.
 
Professor Donger said:
The only exception was Apex Legends and they kept shit tight to their chest until they announced the game and then released it on the same day
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Didn't Apex also flop at launch and only gain popularity after a soft relaunch, or am I getting confused with another live service?
Disc said:
It’s worth noting, Highguard is made by the apex legends team.
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It's only a couple former Respawn devs, afaik, which could mean anything from actual creative directors to juniors who spent 6 months putting shaders on crates.

The studio doesn't have a Wikipedia page despite being founded in 2021, but Highguard does, and it has a single citation about Wildlight Entertainment, which links to a Polygon article that names Dusty Welch as CEO and Chad Grenier as Game Director. I don't have LinkedIn but if anyone does you can check their employment history to see what their pedigree actually is.

This does at least explain why they're trying to launch the same way Apex did, but the GaaS landscape has changed significantly since 2019 and in a post-Concord world I don't think this was the right move, even if the game is great.
 
Forgotten Beast said:
Artifact is too much of a weird anomaly to count IMO. It was more ambitious than your average hero-shooter clone, but they fucked up with one of the most pants-on-head retarded monetization schemes imaginable. I don't think audiences reacted negatively to the gameplay, which was fine if a bit too esoteric for its own good, but to the fact that the monetization model was outright hostile, especially by Valve's standards. By the time they released the rework, the damage was already done, and the fact that they refused to do anything with it afterwards didn't help matters. They could have easily turned things around with 2.0 (or Foundry), but they didn't even try.
Underlords was kind of the opposite situation, since it was more of a straight clone of a flavor-of-the-month thing that was lukewarmly received with a half-baked cosmetics-based monetization scheme (I'm not sure but I don't think you could ever spend a single dollar if you wanted on Underlords at any point), but they forgot it existed at the point it needed support the most, and the patches when they still cared were almost schizophrenical in direction.
Both are examples of the problems with modern Valve's particular ADHD approach to game development, which is an entirely different beast from the problems of Concord-likes. Both failed more from a lack of interest from the developers rather than the audience, which is unusual to say the least. Neither was more than a side project at best for Valve, so I don't think the damage done was enough to consider them as much of a disaster as Concord or Suicide Squad or whatever. Both are still playable in some form if you hate yourself enough, so that also disqualifies them in my book.
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For something I would consider being a concordlike by my definition, Dragon Age: The Veilguard definitely qualifies, in all it's ugly purple polycule glory. Fails condition 3 I think? But that's probably the least important one.

Really, an interesting thing about the conditions is that there's not much about quality in the sense of being unfinished or untested. A game doesn't have to be buggy to be a concordlike, Concord itself was perfectly functional. It just wasn't especially fun or interesting. In fact I'd almost be tempted to say that games being buggy PoS's almost has negative association with concordlikes, because they usually get the resources to actually clean up their bugs, for all the good it does them.
 
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Disc said:
In fact I'd almost be tempted to say that games being buggy PoS's almost has negative association with concordlikes
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I agree. What made Concord so special wasn't that it was yet another live service failure, but that it failed so hard and so fast despite having the backing/funding of Sony, and they were so confident in it they even bought the studio.

Anyone can shit out an asset flip that flops, but to become one of the most expensive failures in industry history within 2 weeks of release despite having everything stacked in your favour is truly remarkable.

My criteria would be:
  • Backed by significant industry players
  • Staffed by at least one developer of note, or from a studio known for quality work
  • Blank check budget
  • Targets lucrative genre
  • Released game is functionally acceptable, if unremarkable
 
I don't think EA had much confidence in Veilguard at any point during development. A name change (from Dreadwolf), a radical pivot on design philosophy mid-development, restarting development two times; it all indicates a lack of faith and balls-to-the-wall attitude usually present in Corcordlikes. Compared to the hubris of Anthem, the "Bob Dylan of videogames", a true Concord from Bioware, Veilguard had humbler aspirations (and then it failed spectacularly to meet them).
Although it fails condition 3, at some point during development Veilguard was a live service game. That probably influenced the final game, even after they decided to go single-player, so it partially qualifies.
I don't know, Veilguard falls into a grey area for me. Concordlite?

Disc said:
A game doesn't have to be buggy to be a concordlike, Concord itself was perfectly functional.
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Hell, for what I saw, Concord was remarkably polished and smooth for a launch game.
 
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Oliver Onions said:
Didn't Apex also flop at launch and only gain popularity after a soft relaunch, or am I getting confused with another live service?
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You're confusing it with another live service game. So many people tried to play Apex at launch that it broke the servers. It had over 2.4 million players on launch.

From wikipedia

Eight hours after its launch, Apex Legends surpassed one million unique players, and reached 2.5 million unique players within 24 hours. In one week it achieved a total of 25 million players, with over 2 million peak concurrent, and by the end of its first month it reached 50 million players in total.
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Zenos Yae Viator said:
the random Anime soulslike Code Vein 2 will outsell/out perform Highguard (if its F2P, more concurrent) betting it now folks!
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oh no doubt, the only way I can see Highguard doing well is if the showcase manages to actually convince people and if enough streamers play it and realise "oh shit this isn't bad" which i doubt
 
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