I've been thinking alot about Concord lately.

If you're even the type of person to be on a website like this, I'm sure you've already heard of it. I'm typically not the kinda guy who can enjoy shitting on a bad game for longer than 20-30 minutes, but I can't help but click on a new video dunking on Concord whenever I see one. There's very very little I can say about this spectacular trainwreck that hasn't been said a thousand times by a thousand different people.

"EIGHT YEARS! ONE HUNDRED MILLION DOLLARS! SEVEN HUNDRED PLAYERS! WOKE! CRINGE!"

But I haven't heard anyone bring up this point: The blog post announcing that Concord would be going offline didn't say they were taking it down for good, and we both know they're not flushing all that work and money down the lost media toilet juuuuust yet. They're gonna re-release somehow, but I seriously doubt it'll be free to play. How do F2P games monetize? Cosmetics. So the seemingly obvious solution is to get a bunch of sick customization in there for us to waste our money on, right? Well, thanks to those ultra-realistic PS5 graphics they're so proud of, that would be an absolutley MASSIVE undertaking! Making new skins is much harder when you need to render every fucking PORE in the casts skin. Would creating the skins cost more money than they earn from them? Possibly. It certainly doesn't help that the art direction is an absolute clusterfuck. Now that I think about it, a lot of the character designs seem like they'd be better skins than default outfits, don't they? Freegunners like Dutchess, Lennox, Lark, and Jabali come to mind.

On one hand, you really hate to see it. I could tell from the moment I saw gameplay that it wasn't just some cynical cash grab, the gunplay was just too polished. Remember 2019, when we were so sick of all these free to play shitters trying to suck our wallets dry, when we were yearning for a game where the only thing you had to pay for was the game itself? Putting a price tag on a multiplayer only game in 2024 is so bold!(or suicidal depending on how you look at it) Why the fuck did it have to be this game?! Sony is surely going to intentionally misinterpret this as "well, I guess the people really DO want microtransactions!" I honestly believe that this game would've done much better for itself had it come out four years ago. Than again, it doesn't take much to get a peak player count higher than seven hundred... On the other hand, as much as I wish it didn't turn out this way, I can't deny Concords corperate nature, nor can I deny that this is exactly what Sony deserves. Consoles have just complETLY shat the bed this generation, and it's not hard to see why. No games. The fact that Concords getting an episode in Secret Level goes to show how confident they were in this product, because that's really all it is is a product. Pretty crazy how fast a company can go from knowing what their customers want to being completely out of touch. It looks to me that Firewalk Studios never really knew what they wanted this game to be. Four years of pre-production + four years of development - clear vision = Concord. Most people call it a poor mans Gaurdians of the Galaxy because it takes tons of inspiration but has no actual identity of its own. Concord is cemented in gaming history as the embodiment of failure, and it'll be fascinating for me and many other people to see how they try and dig themselves out of this deep deep hole they've fallen into. Far more interesting than the actual game itself.

It's pretty sad to see the state consoles are in this generation, but honestly I think this was inevitable and I doubt it's gonna get much better. In fact, I think this is the beggining of the end for consoles as we know them. For one, consoles don't even have fucking exclusives anymore, they just kind of nonchalantly changed the definition of exclusive from "Only on this platform" to "not on Xbox or Switch". (to be fair, the switch is a given...)They've already surrendered they're greatest strength to the computers. Remember when a PS4 exclusive coming to PC was a huge deal? It's the standard now, because no ones dumb enough to exile their game to the baron wasteland that is the PS5 library.
My gaming laptop, the Lenovo Ideapad 3, is strong enough to run Halo Infinite at 60fps with great resolution for about $750. That's not great, but how much longer until we can get it for $650? and then $550? and than $450? Better and better gaming PCs are getting cheaper and cheaper, meanwhile consoles are getting shittier and pricier. Consoles are highly controlled ecosystems, PCs are true freedom! At the rate were going, I seriously doubt we'll ever see a Playstation 7. I hope to GOD Gabe Newell picks a worthy successor, because Steam is about to have a monopoly on the gaming industry.

Written 9/17/2024
song is Beat laments the world by Nujabes