Firewalk Studios was apparently a part of a video game incubation company. They claim to have worked on Concord for 8+ years, with Sony stepping in 3 years ago (partnership in 2021, fully acquired in 2023).
Because they were incubating this idea until 2021, it's difficult to imagine what a 2021 beta test would look like. They *might've* had a better chance back then, but I think they would've seen the same results as the beta that happened recently. Compared to Deadlock, Concord's convolutions did not look fun to trudge through.
It might also be a cultural thing, and so the actual mechanics of what they do/did might not have mattered. I feel like for a game to be this unappealing to players, the team had to ignore feedback from challenging voices both internally and externally already, and so even if they had done larger scale tests earlier on, I wonder if they had the team culture necessary to be able to listen to the feedback and learn the lessons needed to change course.
It seems to be a trend now in terms of games looking for funding that they throw around their Discord and Reddit numbers, but then when you scratch the surface, they aren't doing anything meaningful with all that feedback, which to me would be a much more interesting thing to demonstrate as an early stage games company.
Hi Ryan, Great read, I noticed you included a Link near the end of your email about "Brand Value", but the link does not work, would you mind re-sharing it?
Great article about concord and deadlock on the different approaches both had to getting market signal on a project. For concord it was way more expensive to learn it was a dud.
Game like Concord need early community build up. Concord suffer 1st impression just like Deadlock during leak, but damn Deadlock already ramping up community build playtest, so people who play Deadlock can defense from people who attack Deadlock from early impression.
Firewalk Studios was apparently a part of a video game incubation company. They claim to have worked on Concord for 8+ years, with Sony stepping in 3 years ago (partnership in 2021, fully acquired in 2023).
Because they were incubating this idea until 2021, it's difficult to imagine what a 2021 beta test would look like. They *might've* had a better chance back then, but I think they would've seen the same results as the beta that happened recently. Compared to Deadlock, Concord's convolutions did not look fun to trudge through.
It might also be a cultural thing, and so the actual mechanics of what they do/did might not have mattered. I feel like for a game to be this unappealing to players, the team had to ignore feedback from challenging voices both internally and externally already, and so even if they had done larger scale tests earlier on, I wonder if they had the team culture necessary to be able to listen to the feedback and learn the lessons needed to change course.
It seems to be a trend now in terms of games looking for funding that they throw around their Discord and Reddit numbers, but then when you scratch the surface, they aren't doing anything meaningful with all that feedback, which to me would be a much more interesting thing to demonstrate as an early stage games company.
You're essential reading dude
I can clearly see the philosophy in getting market signals as early as possible from the recent Odyssey Interactive update!
Hi Ryan, Great read, I noticed you included a Link near the end of your email about "Brand Value", but the link does not work, would you mind re-sharing it?
Updated on the post! My bad
Great read, thanks, Ryan
RIP Artifact. It was too complex and unintuitive.
Underlords was okay but autobattler metas get stale very quickly. Riot vastly outexecuted on TFT live-service.
Great article about concord and deadlock on the different approaches both had to getting market signal on a project. For concord it was way more expensive to learn it was a dud.
Game like Concord need early community build up. Concord suffer 1st impression just like Deadlock during leak, but damn Deadlock already ramping up community build playtest, so people who play Deadlock can defense from people who attack Deadlock from early impression.