Submitted 2 hours ago by rtxn@lemmy.world to games@lemmy.world
Archived article: archive.md/HONwC
“We don’t need player counts to be super huge in order to be successful” is starting to ring hollow.
That’s crazy. I guess it’s good practice to never pick up live service games because you’ll be rolling the dice. I’m glad I pretty much play single player games exclusively.
I genuinely wouldn‘t say so. The game shuts down because nobody played it anyway. The chances you pick up a game no one plays is pretty slim by nature. But even if you have been burned in the past you can just pick up one that is already popular.
Pre-ordering on the other hand is rarely a good idea and that goes for any game, not just live service.
Every live service shuts down because not enough people were playing, eventually. Even ones I loved. I’ve got multiplayer games from 25 years ago that I can still play, but I can’t still play the ones from 10 years ago.
I must have been under a rock. This is my fist time hearing about this game. I guess I have a week to check it out and hopefully not like it.
It’s a PvP hero shooter + siege + looter + capture the flag + demolition all in one game.
Marathon next? Place your bets ladies and gentlemen!
Marathon is probably life or death for Bungie. Sony can’t exactly afford to put out a mid game after spending so much on the studio… and “mid” is exactly what Marathon felt like. Just like so many copycats during the battle royale boom.
Mid is exactly how I have seen Marathon described by the server slam feedback. People vasalating between whether or not they like it immediately after starting to play it is not a great look.
Idk I played the play test and it was easily one of the better extraction shooters. Bungie has gun play locked in. But they shot themselves in the foot with BattlEye linux support and my new linux build is literally being put together this week. So regardless, I won’t be buying it when it launches cause it wont run on linux.
I heard the most recent playtest brought some hype back. Did you play it?
Given how boring it is to watch others play it, I don’t think it will see any huge success. It will probably find a loyal fanbase, but probably not enough to sustain it long term.
Marathon is the complete opposite of ARC Raiders in the fact that it essentially forces/encourages you to fight. I give it like 2 months before all the casuals go back to ARC because of spawn rushers (they were already doing that during the server slam).
DOA is my guess but they’ll probably prop it up for a month or so.
High risk, high reward. At least 2 million players tried the game and said, “No thanks.”
Real indie studios would kill to get those player numbers.
Are games like this grifts?
Build hype, get whatever cash you can, and then shut them down?
From some interviews, it sounds like it was just an ambitious mess that didn’t have good testers. IIRC, they said something about everyone pitching 5 ideas every day, and added a couple each time. And it really shows, it is some kind of franken-monster that combines all kinds of ideas that make a patchwork of meh. And then the testers they had either all worked on the game, or were friends with those that did, and nobody wanted to be a downer so they always gave positive feedback.
I don’t see how this would be a grift. Tencent’s funding seems to have been contingent on some kind of metric, and they pulled out because Highguard fell short.
That’s just the marketing cycle.
Is marketing a grift? I mean, kinda. But you’ll get marketing on good games and bad alike.
Nobody seemed to mind the endless marketing for Expedition 33 or Eldin Ring or Stardew Valley or Minecraft.
It didn‘t sell so no, it‘s not simply a grift. It’s just that nobody wanted it.
Google says they started development in 2022. I’m guessing Overwatch 2 going FTP in January made it seem like the genre was growing instead of trending sideways.
build…a player base? should it be expected on day 1? idk
The hubris lol… Oh the hubris!
“Who needs beta testing or early access, we made Anthem, this will be brilliant! Who needs a staff, we can run it with the bare minimum.”
Feel sad for all the devs who already lost their jobs a few weeks back n now these last few left but fuck that company! Thought they could simply profit off all the work from their staff by sacking them all immediately after release.
Sometimes companies do get exactly what they deserve.
I feel like Geoff really did a disservice to this game. It might actually could have ramped up some dedicated players and it built out its vision. But Geoff swooping in and saying it’ll be the next, greatest game did it zero favors.
2 million players gave the game a chance thanks to Geoff. I doubt the game would even get 1000 players if they decided to shadow drop it like they originally intended.
The fact that they laid off most of their staff just weeks after release shows that they couldn’t afford a slow ramp up.
I agree completely. There’s only one chance to make a first impression. The final ad slot of TGA needs a worthy game that the audience can be excited about, and putting the most generic, most corporate-looking game there felt like an insult. Kind of like this absolute flop.
Too be fair, TGA doesn’t seem to have historically given a lot of weight to the last spot. And they probably should, because of the public perception of the last spot being inherently prestigious. But it doesn’t seem like they were trying to say it’s some sort of capstone or anything. By all accounts he just thought it looked neat and threw it in the last open spot.
Never heard of this game, lol
Kolanaki@pawb.social 2 hours ago
Hey… At least it lasted longer than Concord. 🤷♂️
rtxn@lemmy.world 2 hours ago
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Kolanaki@pawb.social 2 hours ago
I do feel slightly bad for the dev team. A lotta stuff outside their control spun things out of hand; but I also don’t think it would have had any success regardless of the whole situation. At least what happened got it some attention and gave it a chance.
iamthetot@piefed.ca 1 hour ago
It was also free, unlike Concord.
RightHandOfIkaros@lemmy.world 58 minutes ago
Even if Concord was free, it still would have had less players than Highguard. Nobody wanted to play Concord, at least some people wanted to play Highguard.