Secret Level 11-13 Full Reaction
Added 2025-01-10 20:00:08 +0000 UTCFull Watch Along Reaction for Secret Level Episodes 11, 12 and 13. Exodus. Spelunky. Playtime.
Comments
DBS is sticking with the Tuesday and Thursday schedule, but we get people are excited for the culmination of the show
Bethany and Ken
2025-01-12 15:21:01 +0000 UTCWow, what a fascinating story. Interesting that they even made this episode but I guess they did it before knowing what a colossal failure the game was going to be. Would be interested to know other people's reaction to this episode that aren't familiar with the game. π€ because take out the hate for the game and it's a damn fun episode
Bethany and Ken
2025-01-12 15:18:20 +0000 UTCDo you guys think you could upload dbs ep 126 tmr?
C. Brown
2025-01-11 01:49:50 +0000 UTCThe Concord commentary section is still killing me π. I just can't believe it. Being someone who watches the game industry like a hawk it's just so jarring to me how oblivious you two are to all that happened with it last year (no offense). Your Secret Level reactions don't seem to get as much attention as your other content, but I stilI foresee the YT comments about Concord being fairly "colorful" to say the least.
JT
2025-01-10 23:07:20 +0000 UTCConcord's story is one of many textbook examples of why I don't necessarily consider big companies "being too timid" as the sole reason why more new IPs/ideas are being released (at least, from the side of the games industry). While the fear of losing money with shareholders and the like is def part of it, it would seem that playing things safe is becoming harder to be considered "profitable" either. In the case of video games, development cycles have made following trends a questionable choice more than ever before. Concord probably sounded like a good pitch as an Overwatch-like game with inspiration from Guardians of the Galaxy when it was proposed 4-8 years ago, but in the time the game took to come out the live-service genre has become so saturated that people wrote it off on sight. Concord's not alone in that regard either. For every Marvel Rivals, Genshin Impact, or Fortnite it feels like there is another 3+ Concords, Suicide Squad Kill the Justice Leagues, or Babylon's Falls. Hell, idk if anyone's told you, but there was supposed to be a big Last of Us multiplayer game too. It was recently halted in development because Naughty Dog realized that it would take pretty much ALL of their manpower just to sustain the damn thing. Dev costs for big-selling single-player IPs are getting hard to sustain too. The big Insomniac Games that broke out a while ago revealed that Spider-Man 3 is being considered to be split into two separate releases (likely to lessen the cost in producing the big finale of the trilogy). A single flop would've been relatively bad news in the past, but title like Concord and Forspoken have shown that one failure is all it can take to sink an entire studio.
JT
2025-01-10 21:38:54 +0000 UTC37:00 Oh man... oh no. Well, this is super awkward. I'd think you two were fucking with us if I didn't know any better. Looks like I got my work cut out for me here: Concord was one of the biggest flops in gaming history. I don't have much to say for the other two episodes, so I'm about to go all in on episode 13. Here's a "condensed" timeline of the game's history. April 20, 2023: Sony Interactive Entertainment announces that it has acquired Firewalk Studios, the team behind Concord. The studio is said to be focused on producing quality multiplayer games and is made up of devs that have worked on titles like C.o.D., Destiny, Halo, and Apex Legends. The amount spent by SIE for Firewalk remains undisclosed. Concord was the studio's only title, so it's believed that SIE saw Concord during production and decided it was worth the investing in so it could become this big multiplayer smash hit that they could hold exclusivity for on consoles. May 30, 2024: A State of Play arrives, and Concord is revealed to the public for the first time as its first trailer debuts at the start of the presentation. First impressions online are NOT good. You two seem to have been drawn to the game's likeness to Guardians of the Galaxy, but let me tell you right now: many people saw that as a negative. The consensus was that the game looked like an uninspired hero shooter that had boring art direction and bland characters that were just discount GOTG (and not in a good way). August 20, 2024: Concord releases with many factors playing against it. 1) It's sold on PS5 and PC for $40. This is already a poor decision because Concord is a live-service game. In a genre with a market that has frequent releases that are free-to-play, putting ANY price point for a live service game is already self-sabotage (especially if you had poor first impressions like Concord). 2) Concord required a PSN account to play on PC. This was an issue that got PC players LIVID when it came up with Helldivers 2 (a game with far better reception). Helldivers 2 Steam reviews went from very positive to mostly negative just from the decision alone, which was reversed due to how quickly the reviews sank the rating. Having PC players write off your live service game (a game that HINGES on long term online player engagement) is a devastating loss since PC players make up a large chunk of gamers who gravitate toward online shooters. 3) The gameplay itself was just alright. Critic reviews seemed to think it was passable at best, and incredibly bland at worst. This doesn't sound too bad on its own, but again, a live service game needs to stick out from its competition if it's to survive. More than just "passable". Market's already flooded with hero shooters as is. August 31, 2024: Reports come out saying that industry analysts have estimated Concord to have only sold 25,000 copies. While I'm not able to make calculations to back them up, I do know that the game had an all time peak of 697 concurrent players on Steam. Don't know if this makes it THE worst selling game of all time should this be accurate, but it's sure as hell down there. September 3, 2024: It's announced that Concord is going offline starting Sep 6, 2024 (about only two full weeks from the game's full release). The decision is made to stop selling the game through any digital or physical storefront any longer. Offers for refunds are given unconditionally to anyone who bought the game. September 21, 2024: Reports come out that say Concord cost $400 million to create, and that "toxic positivity" prevented the game from getting any meaningful feedback during development. Reports online have argued that the $400 million may have been referring to everything surrounding Concords production (i.e. Firewalk's acquisition, marketing, this Secret Level episode, etc.) and that the dev cost alone could've been closer to $100 million. Whatever the case, I think we can agree that it was a lot of fucking money. October 29, 2024: It's publicly announced that Sony has decided to shut down Firewalk Studios, leaving Concord as their only mark on the world. 172 employees lose their jobs. PlayStation CEO Herman Hulst says that this was due to Concord not meeting Sony's sales targets and that they will, and I quote, βtake the lessons learned from Concord and continue to advance our live service capabilities to deliver future growth in this area.β Needless to say, Sony's investment didn't work out. Present day: This episode of Secret Level goes up, and ends up being the last piece of Concord related material we'll likely ever see. Today, you can find physical copies of it and the limited edition DualSense controller being sold on the second-hand market for $100-$400 a piece, as it's all that remains of a truly dead game. If you've read down this far: First of all, I appreciate it. Second, sorry to be the bearer of bad news with all this. Shame there's not much to support your hope of getting more out of Concord. Don't really "enjoy" making you read this much, but with how much the gaming industry means to me, I can't let a fuck up of this magnitude go understated.
JT
2025-01-10 20:08:51 +0000 UTC
