My friend, this has always been the case and IT WILL ALWAYS be the case.

You can repeat it as many times as you like.  Remains just as irrelevant.  Sounds like paranoid delusion to not acknowledge the point about them not being needed if they don't seriously influence things.  Can't have it both ways.  Either they make a difference which can potentially hurt things, or they don't.  Also good to know you're one of those weirdos who attacks fans over community managers lol.  Oh wait I'm sure the "death threats" excuse is next.

Fact is if it was received better it would have sold faster.  Guess we can say they were useless on those successful games and could only detract from quality if they really didn't influence anything.  You're caught in a logical fallacy here and can only spew about out childish insults and made up stuff in all caps.  Keep seething, gather your senses, and take a deep breath.  I believe that you can be level headed about this but it's clear your personal feelings and vendetta have clouded your judgement.

I think it's harmful to indict an entire industry based on what works.  Because an indictment on gaming is an indictment on the people playing games themselves.  A decade ago I might agree with you; as it is now there are more than enough examples of the market deciding that games directly promoting and featuring progressive ideologies aren't in.  

If you think games need naught all but fun factor to be okay enough to play, we might as well go back to just playing Pong.

Presentation is important, though. A good chunk of the reason Overwatch became big so fast even before gameplay came out was because the designs were appealing. Many new IPs rely solely on their visual appeal to garner the public's initial attention, and we've all bought games because they had great visuals or great character designs, it's something natural. And the generral public more or less agrees that Concord's designs range from boringly mediocre to outright ugly.

People say "don't judge a book by its cover", but if someone does not take the time and effort into crafting a decent presentation, it bodes ill for the rest of the project.

Since I haven't played Concord and won't do so it's maybe a bit unfair to them, but I actually appreciate some of the latest GaaS titles are just bombing.

Unless a publisher or studio really has a 90+ MC/OC rated GaaS title in their pipes, I just despise the whole commercial intention behind this game design.

It's a money hatting, low effort strategy in game design. Aber most of the time flanked by flashy graphics and what not, while focussing on sheer tyranny of will to grind through hours and hours of collecting XP.

I feel sorry for the devs and their talents, but not for GaaS failing.

Typically good character design tells you a lot about them by looking at them. I have no idea WTF I'm looking at with Concord's cast. One of them is wearing a tan wetsuit with a motorcycle helmet on. So no expression or face. WTF am I supposed to get out of that? TBH I find this similar style of Western games like Fortnite. A bunch of Western cartoony look games ugly as sin. That said Overwatch it tells you something about them and I never played OW. I will give Concord this. Its cast is just bland nothing where Battleborne was offensively ugly. Look up Montana lol. Tiny feet. Hulk body. Pinhead. Fucking awful but all of them were.

Many things in videogame development do not seriously influence the critic score or sales of a videogame. You've been unable to explain to me how a ~16 employee consultancy agency who give advice on how best to implement things such as black characters in a respectful way has an influence on the gameplay, graphics, technical aspect, content and features of a videogame.

I'm not sure if you understand how jobs work or how companies work but yes, some people are more important than others, some people have more influence than others, that's not me having it both ways, that's explain to you the basic structure of our workplace society and my opinion is that companies like SBI don't influence a videogames sales or critics in a major way in either direction; good or bad.

SBI's role is to give advice to developers on how to implement PoC/Minorities in respectful ways, just like if a developer in America was working on a Japanese setting they could do market research for Japan and Japanese people, learn the culture, seek advice from Japanese consultancy agencies on how to implement them with respect, but for people like you, that's only an issue when it's about black people and women.

"Also good to know you're one of those weirdos who attacks fans over community managers lol. Oh wait I'm sure the "death threats" excuse is next."

Lmfao. Are you upset that I'm not attacking community managers? Or that I'm pointing out the stupidity in attacking community managers? You know what's weird, spending your whole day on Twitter attacking community media managers who have barely any influence on the larger direction of the company or videogame from people who have no clue about videogame development.

Here is what I said: "You sound like one of those Twitter warriors who scream at social media managers to "focus on the games instead of tweeting" Lol."

Do you disagree with the assessment that social media managers are not developers and don't actually physically work on the videogames themselves and so angrily tweeting at them to "focus on the games instead of tweeting" is a completely stupid comment to make because social media managers cannot focus on the videogame, it is not that area of expertise, it is not what they were hired for, they were hired to market on Twitter.

Alan Wake 1 was a very well received game and it took 5 years to sell 4.5m copies, to suggest Alan Wake wasn't very well received would be revisionist history, some titles are just more niche and slower selling than others even if they're great. Alan Wake 2 likewise was very well received by both critics and fans and you have been unable to refute that aside from "it would have sold even better!"

Alan Wake 2 is still Remedy's fastest selling title (even faster selling than Alan Wake 1 despite Alan Wake 2 being SBI influenced) and it would have sold even more had it not been Epic Store exclusive (another fact that you conveniently ignore). You ignore that Epic covered 100% of the costs of development and Remedy is only entitled to profits once Epic receives 100% of their costs back, as per their publishing agreement.

Can only spew about out childish insults and made up stuff in all caps. 

Post

This was your first post in the thread, crying about consultants being the reason these games failed, nothing made up.

Btw you're still ignoring God of War Ragnarök and Spider-Man 2...You are only able to attribute the bad to them but straight up ignore the good, you focus on Alan Wake 2 because it has "yet to turn a profit" but ignore it was well received by the community and will almost certainly turn a profit eventually. You can't take the stance that SBI is only responsible for the bad stuff just because it suits your arguments, if they influence the bad then they also influence the good, or you can take the stance that I have which is that they don't have a major impact either way.

This reminds me of your previous arguments on these forums, that "words led to violence" but then when your argument needed to change to suit your needs, it changed to that "words don't lead to violence". You turn yourself into a pretzel to justify your arguments. You can't stick to one stance. You can't make an argument but only use it halfway (like you're doing here, by only contributing the bad stuff to SBI). 

You can use the "I'm not mad, you're mad bro" all you want, it won't work on me, I'm not the one spending my days crying about DEI/Woke. I mean sure, I will admit that I don't particularly like you, but my arguments have nothing to do with personal feelings, I just call out bullshit when I see it and you talk a lot of bullshit on these forums, I'm just more blunt than the other Mods.

But ultimately, this is all irrelevant isn't it? Because I'll say once again, SBI had nothing to do with Concord and you have no evidence that Firewalk was involved with any other consultancy agency but it didn't stop your paranoid delusions in your first post in here complaining about these consultancy agencies that you can't even name, you just want to blame WOKE/DEI for the reason a game failed because why? What about Concord makes you think it has these consultancy agencies?

Alan Wake 2 didn't flop because it was "woke" or something like that, that's bullshit. I'll just copy and past what I said in another thread:

-It's a sequel that came out 10 years after the first game, which wasn't even that successful
-No physical release on consoles (it's coming now but I'm wondering if it's too late)
-It's exclusive to the Epic Store on PC, and I'm not sure if it's ever coming to Steam, considering Epic funded and published the game
-It released very close to Spiderman 2 on PS5 (It came out a week later)
-It's a survival horror game and if you're not called Resident Evil that's a tough genre to sell

With all of that said, did Concord really flop because it's woke? It seems one of these cases where something flopped for a number of reasons and a certain group just says it's a woke game because... reasons? What's so woke about Concord to make it fail that hard?

It's just a unappealing product in a very crowded market where the other games from the same genre are free to play. It also released on a terrible release date so close to Wukong. I feel like there was also 0 marketing for it, I didn't even knew this game released

Yup. Though I'm not sure I'd describe Alan Wake 2 as a "flop" even, I think it will eventually turn a profit.

For Remedy though...I'm sure they're happy for the most part, Epic funded 100% of development for years, including the salaries of their employees, technically, Remedy hasn't lost any money on Alan Wake 2, only Epic has (thus far) but it may still sell enough to start turning a profit.

Epic's deal is 100% funding for everything, the development, the marketing, the salaries, and only when the game meets enough sales to recoup that 100% do Epic start sharing profits at a 50/50 split. I believe that Alan Wake 2 will eventually reach that. It's not a massive seller out the gate, like Alan Wake 1, it's a slow burner but it's currently selling faster than Alan Wake 1.

But Remedy, they had their entire game funded and they had their salaries covered for years, they didn't lose money on Alan Wake 2, they got to make the game they wanted and keep all IP rights. Meanwhile they have other games which continue to sell and other publisher agreements to work on, that's often the life of an independent developer, working from publisher to publisher.

But yeah, Alan Wake IP is what I'd call a "average" seller anyway, it was never a big selling IP.

Anyway, the fans still enjoyed it and it won a lot of critical acclaim.

I think it's fair to call it a flop for now since it's a product that didn't cover its production costs and it's not giving Remedy any profit. However, that's probably going to change eventually (very soon probably), and then it's going to turn a profit. Slowly but surely it will get there.

But at the end of the day we agree and it's just semantics.