>>713517810
You know what would have remedied them to not "work their asses off"?
Not listening to some "consultants" who have no idea what a good game is like. Not listening to some "round-table" discussion board about sensitivity. Not listening to some jackass higher-ups who think they have one iota of what makes a good game an actual good fucking game.
Making a good game has NOTHING to do with socio-economical backroom circlejerks, nothing to do with board members whose sole ideology is milk every last cent they can out of gamers, nothing to do with quotas/marketing strategies/demographic testing/diversity hires/or hurting others' fee-fees.
A good game can stand tall and on its own when the game itself is good. Helldivers 1 was a very mild success. Iirc, it simply broke even for Arrowhead in sales, and throughout its lifetime didn't make much else beyond a few dollars for them. HS2, however, exploded and made the franchise an overnight success and an instant classic. It didn't have the marketing. It didn't have diversity. It didn't have focus groups micromanaging shit. It was simply a good game, and simple word-of-mouth brought it to the GOAT level of 4-person co-op live service game that it now enjoys today.
Concord had none of it, and what could have been a fantastic was swept to the side because the financiers side of things thought they knew what was best and forced it onto the developers.
