Concord: A Post-Post-Mortem

Just a few hours after I wrote that Concord wasn’t dead yet, Sony killed it. I guess that’s a lesson to us all.

You can no longer buy it. Servers will be shut off tomorrow. After eight years of development, the game lasted about a fortnight. Its director said that it will be back after the development team “explore options, including those that will better reach our players”.

If you heard “free-to-play model” then you won’t be alone. And yet there’s something so modern about the idea that a game can launch and disappear in a matter of weeks that it’s hard not to start asking questions about this one. People were quick to throw everything at the wall in support of their pet theory on why Concord was struggling pre-cancellation. Maybe because it’s a GAAS, or perhaps it had no marketing. That it has been shut down is proof that some of it was true.

What can the developers do to turn things around? I mean, genuinely, are you going to put money into a game where its owners pulled unceremoniously pulled it after two weeks? It took them eight years to get to this point. Shaking up the business model isn’t enough.

On the other hand, it’s hard to imagine it quietly disappearing. If only because it seems like a waste of time and money. Concord wasn’t so bad to not exist. Most likely it just didn’t pull in enough punters. Estimates start at 25,000 players. Which, obviously, is a disaster if true.

A rebrand, a few more trailers and a relaunch, on top of countless news articles about it failing, will put it more on the radar. If they can prove that it’s “totally fun now guys”, this negative will become a positive.

Concord: Taking Off Again

It is inevitably coming back. Hopefully sooner rather than later. Nobody will care by this time next year.

What does all this say about game preservation? Because despite the fact that Concord will rise from the ashes in one form or another, it’ll be a different thing. Does it matter?

Games like Overwatch and Fortnite change every few months. And yet Concord is different. It was a product eight years in the making. It didn’t meet initial targets, so it got the boot. It’s hard to imagine that setting too big a precedent. It’s not an important enough game. Try “we’re going to try and reach more players” with an Assassin’s Creed and see what it gets you.

But it is as I said before. This is a very modern reaction to a very modern genre of game. They’re not art, they’re not finished products. They’re fluid, ethereal. Not only can the limited time content that make up these games disappear, but the entire game can go too. And with barely a moment of notice.

As GAAS become more embedded in our culture, I wonder if this will become more common. Alternatively, perhaps the whole thing becomes so streamlined and by-the-numbers that it’s not needed.

Either way, we have questions and not many answers.