“None of that is something you can get in a tiny little slice of it.”: Concord Pulled the Plug, But The Franchise’s Director Admitted We Hadn’t Seen Anywhere Near It All
Concord may have risen to greatness if it could have managed to get more players actively playing it at launch with a lot of content planned for it.
- Concord's failure has been a bitter disappointment to Firewalk Studios considering its long development cycle.
- The team clearly saw the game from a long-term perspective, never doubting its success against some of its heavy-hitting competitors.
- Concord may have managed to succeed with a better initial response from players.
Concord’s failure to put Washington-based developers Firewalk Studios on the map with their debut title is a tragic showcase of how brutally competitive the genre of shooters can be in modern gaming.
Despite pouring a lot of time and effort into a title that should have been able to capture a large player base with its unique sci-fi premise and charismatic cast, the studio has been forced to pull the plug on its maiden project after a meager two weeks online. The game’s failure is all the sadder when an interview with one of Firewalk’s team members from June is considered.
A Promise of Things That Could Have Been
A conversation between Concord’s director of IP Kim Kreines and Video Games Chronicle about the game’s reveal trailer and the poor response it received back in June shows that Firewalk had elaborate plans for the game in the form of its Galactic Guide, a feature that would showcase snippets of lore every week in order to flesh out its roster of playable characters while simultaneously giving context to the game’s premise.
The trailer, showcased below, was only a glimpse of the overall narrative that Firewalk had planned for the debut title – a fact that Kreines was quick to touch upon in the run up to Concord’s release.
Although his assertions were in defense of the game in the wake of a lackluster response to the trailer, they are nonetheless a showcase of just how much work Firewalk had put in to make its title stand out among its competitors like Overwatch and Valorant, making its failure a devastating blow to the studio and to gamers who bought into its initial promise.
Even the Best Laid Plans Can Fail Sometimes
Kreines’ statements indicate that Firewalk always intended to play the long game with Concord even as they failed to anticipate that the game would perform as badly as it did among its intended audience – a factor that was perhaps out of the studio’s control when the game launched in August.
His defense of the release trailer and his assertion that it was a challenge to showcase all that the developers had planned for the game in such a short timeframe is a detail that stands out in this regard. Touching upon the game’s long development cycle was another indicator of the team looking to give their characters distinct personalities and quirks similar to titles like Marvel Rivals.
While it is certainly heartbreaking to see a team that had a lot of faith in their work have their title fail so miserably, players may yet be treated to the best of what they can do if Firewalk takes Concord back to the drawing board to bring it back better than ever in the future.
