The failure of Concord and why trend-chasing is bad

The recent situation with Concord and its cancellation lays out one of the biggest issues in the gaming sphere currently: the obsession with chasing trends. Concord was in development for around eight years by Firewalk Studios and in April 2023, the studio was acquired by Sony Interactive Entertainment as part of the company’s push into live-service games.

Games shifting into the live-service space is often seen as a cynical one due to the heavily monetised aspect of these titles. Since games like Fortnite made it big and ushered in a world of battle and season passes, repeatedly earning money from a game, beyond the initial launch, has become appealing.

Take a look at Concord below

It seems like practically every game nowadays comes with some sort of pass that gives the player more content, whether that’s through expansions, new missions, or simple cosmetics. They aren’t an inherently bad thing for games, after all, if it keeps talented developers making the things they love, then it should be considered a win. For consumers, we get more out of the games we adore, possibly extending the natural lifespan of a game by untold amounts.

However, we saw with the release of Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League that a pivot towards something that either the public doesn’t want, or doesn’t suit the developers is a death knell. While the superhero co-op adventure lasted much longer than Concord, both games seemingly failed because they couldn’t read the wider audience and both were somewhat chasing trends, capitalising on an unneeded model, like Suicide Squad, or arriving too late for Concord.

On the latter, hero shooters simply aren’t the trend now, while eight years ago, hell even four years ago it could have seen much more success. Now, I can’t say what goes on behind closed doors at Firewalk Studios or Sony, perhaps both companies had invested so much money in the game that they had to release something, but with the gaming public moving on from this genre of shooter, the writing had to be on the wall.

This is reminiscent of the battle royale trend of a few years ago. While the genre is still popular with players, there is a hierarchy of winners in that genre and the top spot hasn’t changed. Fortnite is still king, despite how much Call of Duty: Warzone and Apex Legends bite at its heels.

During the wave that followed the monumental success of Fortnite, suddenly battle royales were appearing everywhere and many of them saw a very short-lived launch followed by a shutdown not long after. We had games such as; The Culling 2, Hyperscape, Realm Royale, Radical Heights, Rumbleverse, and there was even that weird Final Fantasy one.

We’re now seeing that trend switch to extraction shooters while everyone chases the crown of Escape from Tarkov - something that, to this hardcore fan of the genre, seems impossible. Call of Duty tried it with DMZ and soon canned it in favour of a Zombies extraction mode, which has also been dropped. We’ve got Gray Zone Warfare, Arena Breakout: Infinite, Delta Force, Hawked, Dark and Darker, and of course, a game that feels doomed, Marathon by Bungie.

I’m all for competition, it only makes games better. For example, if it wasn’t for Apex Legends, Fortnite would have been much later to reboot vans, a respawn mechanic that thrilled players of Apex Legends. But Marathon is going to arrive much too late to the genre and it’s a genre already dominated by a game that does it better than anything else out there, Escape from Tarkov.

So much of this trend-chasing seems to come down from the top. It is executives sitting in board rooms looking at spreadsheets and PowerPoint presentations on KPIs and industry buzzwords. Games take a long time to make, especially very good games. By the time a trend is a thing, time is already marching on towards the next one. For all we know, live-service as it currently exists could be well out of favour in the next year or two, especially as the cost of living increases, our spare time decreases, and players decide to curb their spending or stick to one particular game service. It’s partly why Fortnite does so well, it’s a game well-loved by millions of people who play it constantly, and it’s a game they keep coming back to.

Who was going to keep coming back to Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League? Certainly, not enough players to keep buying passes for new cosmetics, that’s for sure. Do fans of Overwatch and, to a lesser extent, League of Legends, really want to jump over to Concord despite having invested hundreds of hours and their hard-earned money into their favourite game? Unless you’re bringing something radically different, or attaching a recognised IP to an existing genre (see Marvel Rivals), players are likely going to stick to what they know.

Nobody wants to see a game fail. Even the diehard gamers don’t want to see people out of a job, or a game shut down its servers after investing a lot of money into production but trend-chasing is dominating the industry.

Of course, there will always be failures to launch, like in every area of entertainment, sometimes things just don’t find an audience. Companies follow the money, not reading what the audience is actually feeling.

I guess this is a plea that will fall on deaf ears to stop looking at what’s hot because you’re going to miss the boat. I don’t think it’s a radical statement to say we just want to play great games, not everything needs to last forever or be in direct competition with games of other genres just because they make a lot of money.