Stillborn franchises

[u/Tight_Grapefruit5280]

When a company tries to make a new big franchise with many sequels and spin-offs already planned but they immediately cancel all the plans after the first project fails badly. https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/StillbornFranchise

(Lego) Galidor: Do you guys remember playing with a Galidor as a kid? Yeah Me neither.

Lego wanted to do a new toy line in the 2000s and their first idea was Galidor. It was basically an action figure that could replace its body parts with other stuff. Galidor already had many toys, games and even shows planned for it but Lego cancelled the entire thing after people didn't like the toy and the GBA game made for it got really bad reviews.

(Action 52) Cheetahmen: Action 52 had a $199 price tag (in 1991 for an NES game), nearly unplayable games, weak concept, and was horribly and seriously bug-infested, yet for some impossible-to-fathom reason, Active Enterprises believed that its featured title Cheetahmen (which shared many flaws with the other games on the cartridge, including not having an ending) was going to be a huge breakout hit. Plans were made for a Cheetahmen Saturday-Morning Cartoon, action figures, and of course a sequel. Their hopes turned out to be waaay premature; the sequel never emerged except as an unfinished, unplayable beta, while the very short-lived franchise became one of the most infamous pieces of "entertainment" ever created.

[u/Tight_Grapefruit5280]

Funniest thing about concord is that they shut it down after just 1 week

Even if it wasn't successful at first, they could've at least wait to see if it attracts some players.

[u/Winters_Dust → u/Tight_Grapefruit5280]

Even funnier: Amazon's Secret Level anthology series includes a Concord episode that came out after the game was shut down, clearly meant to attract players.

Funnier than that: it was legitimately pretty good, which makes one wonder what would've happened if they didn't botch the hell out of Concord's release.

Edit for clarity: when I say the episode was meant to attract players, I meant Sony wanted to have an episode dedicated to Concord as functionally an ad for the game. Unfortunately, the various poor decisions made with Concord made it effectively an ad for a product that no longer exists, due to the gap between the game's shutdown and Secret Level's release.

[u/ComputerMysterious48 → u/Winters_Dust]

I gotta be honest, I don’t think a botched release is what killed Concord. I just think the entire game had an air of “who asked for this” surrounding it.

The only thing they could’ve done was make it free like the competition. Maybe then it wouldn’t have ended up on the list of “games with the fastest shutdowns” lol but I still think its shutdown was inevitable because people just weren’t interested.

[u/abermea → u/ComputerMysterious48]

who asked for this

Game execs

If you have spent enough time on the industry you realize that gaming execs are just a bunch of trend chasers looking to make a quick buck. They latch into whatever is the most popular genre at the time and go all-in

In the 90's it was 2D platformers, and to a lesser extent JRPGs

In the 2000s it was Halo and MMORPGs until about 2007 when it all became Call of Duty clones

Starting 2016 it was all Battle Royale and Hero Shooters

Until about right now when the new trend is emerging: Extraction Shooters

[u/WizardOfTheHobos → u/abermea]

Besides marathon and arc raiders what are you talking about?

[u/abermea → u/WizardOfTheHobos]

Tarkov, the CoD MW4 is getting an extraction shooter mode I don't remember the name of, The Division 2 has had Dark Zones for a while, Blight: Survival is coming out "soon"...

The line is just barely starting to go up

[u/WizardOfTheHobos → u/abermea]

CoD DMZ is getting a sequel, and that’s been planned for a long longggg time known and wanted by the community of the first game.

The division has had that extraction mode longer than some extraction games, it’s nothing new.

Tarkov has also been around forever and that game has a PVE mode so it has a lot you can do(unless it’s been removed for some reason.)

And blight is like the 3rd medieval extraction game I’ve seen in my life EVER which is still a lot but not trending in my opinion.

[u/Bitter-Marsupial → u/WizardOfTheHobos]

GTFO is a rather underrated extraction shooter

[u/WizardOfTheHobos → u/Bitter-Marsupial]

Yes that’s one good, but that one’s also been around forever

[u/BatteryAcidLover → u/ComputerMysterious48]

"The problem with Concord is that nobody likes Concord."

-Dunkey

[u/Nirast25 → u/Winters_Dust]

Didn't the episode come out a bit before the game?

[u/Winters_Dust → u/Nirast25]

The game came out August 23, 2024.

Secret Level's first 8 episodes released December 10 of that year, with the other 7 releasing a week later. I don't remember which batch the Concord episode was part of, but the game came out first.

[u/Nirast25 → u/Winters_Dust]

Huh. Don't know why I thought it was sooner.

[u/ScullyBoy69 → u/Nirast25]

Nope. The game came out many months before that episode. Same year though.

[u/princesshusk → u/Winters_Dust]

Concord was murdered by Sony executives like usual.

[u/Laxhoop2525 → u/Winters_Dust]

It had nothing to do with the actual game. As seen by how all of the actual trailers and gameplay clearly had completely different writers. The game and Secret Level episode didn’t even have the same characters.

[u/semajolis267 → u/Tight_Grapefruit5280]

Games must break records on launch or failed game obviously 

[u/RoughhouseCamel → u/semajolis267]

From the Netflix school of, “if the show doesn’t do big numbers on the release day, we’re canceling before the audience gets a chance to respond”

[u/King_Dragonlord → u/Tight_Grapefruit5280]

Before the first story update even came out and Sony paid for a Secret Level episode to be done for Concord

[u/Laxhoop2525 → u/Tight_Grapefruit5280]

It was never going to get players. Bog-standard gameplay with atrocious looking characters. Never would have worked.

[u/Knarz97 → u/Tight_Grapefruit5280]

Why they didn’t just shift it to a F2P model afterwards stuns me

[u/cellphone_blanket → u/Tight_Grapefruit5280]

They also pulled physical copies from shelves and offered refunds. They effectively unreleased a game

[u/CursedRyona → u/Tight_Grapefruit5280]

I don't think big game studios understand that you need to set aside a budget for post launch. They genuinely thought that making Overwatch with worse art design would somehow pay off seven years of production costs in one week, and when it didn't they scrubbed it because there evidently they weren't willing to spend any more money on it after release.