Former 'Concord' Developer Laments Company Didn't Do Any Counter Programming And Allowed "False Narratives" To Spread

A former developer at Firewalk Studios who worked on Concord lamented that the company did not do any counter programming to combat the plethora of criticisms the game faced and declared that this allowed “false narratives” to spread.

In an interview on the “A Life Well Wasted” podcast, one of the developers shared, “I think the most frustrating part about it, to me, was people had made up their mind about the game and I felt like it was based off of-. And this is more our fault than theirs, we did a bad job of communicating what we were trying to do and I felt like there was such a disconnect and I just felt like if I could sit down with any individual that said something bad about this game and plead our case, I could convince them 100% to be on board with the game. It's just we did a terrible job of appealing to the mass of gamers and it just didn't go too well."

Another added, “It’s certainly unpleasant. It was incredibly frustrating that we didn’t do any counter programming. That started immediately after the reveal of the game and it was just total radio silence. So a lot of false narratives about the game got built and it was outside of our control.”

Still another added, “We didn’t really have a voice in the noise and I think that really damaged the game. I don’t know if we necessarily knew how to be that voice in the game. [Firewalk Studios] was a tiny little startup suddenly having these daunting expectations put on to this game with a huge scope that I do not think we could have matched.”

Later in the podcast, one developer blamed fans for bandwagoning on wanting the game to fail, “There's like a schadenfreude of, 'Oh, big game fails, and like, that's awesome. We gotta see something crash and burn, and like, that's kinda great. That's really cool.' And to be a part of that process, it's really easy to bandwagon on that too. Like well, we're punching up, and not really taking into consideration that like, well, you're punching up at that, but then all of these people that work really hard on it are not those people."

Another added, “It's just weird that there is this audience who's just constantly wanting to be excited that something fails. But the reality behind it is is we're just looking at our keyboards, and then we're like 'Oh, no job today.”

There was one developer who had a different view and recognized that the game was unlikely to do well and had much of the same criticisms that the game faced. He said, “I was consuming every bit of media about it. I didn’t have as strong of an emotional reaction to the failure as-. I kind of already made up my mind that it was going to be rough. It was not going to perform how they needed it to.”

“So I consumed like everything, any talking head talking about it I was there watching their content for it and I mean I agree with a lot of the criticisms players had with it. They were the same criticisms we had internally. They were the same things that we were trying to fight against for sometimes even years,” he continued. “It’s one thing to be tunnelvisioned on a project you’ve been working on for years and years and feel like you know, feel like you have the correct opinion and then when the internet goes and tells you this thing sucks, you’re like, ‘I knew it!’”

Another developer admitted that the game was uncool, but failed to explain why it got that reaction, “The audience that our publisher was catering to did not want this game at all. From the get go the game was labeled as uncool and so everyone that talked about it was like, ‘Yeah, but this game’s uncool.’ But you haven’t looked into it. You haven’t played it yet. Even my family, they’re like, ‘Oh yeah, I heard about this game. I heard it wasn’t cool.’ I was like, ‘Bro, you gonna play it? Please.”

Firewalk Studios shut down Concord less than 2 weeks after it released with Game Director Ryan Ellis announcing on the PlayStation blog, “At this time, we have decided to take the game offline beginning September 6, 2024, and explore options, including those that will better reach our players.”

By the end of October, Sony shut down the entire studio with Herman Hulst announcing, “As part of our ongoing efforts to strengthen SIE’s Studio Business, we have had to make a difficult decision relating to two of our studios – Neon Koi and Firewalk Studios.”

Specifically regarding Firewalk Studios, he said, “Regarding Firewalk, as announced in early September (An Important Update on Concord), certain aspects of Concord were exceptional, but others did not land with enough players, and as a result we took the game offline. We have spent considerable time these past few months exploring all our options. After much thought, we have determined the best path forward is to permanently sunset the game and close the studio.  I want to thank all of Firewalk for their craftsmanship, creative spirit and dedication.”

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