Why Concord Failed: A Game Developer Evaluates Concord Character Mistakes

[@SabrPath]

Check out my latest video for Character Design Tips kzbin.info/www/bejne/ZqjYfWpqh9Z3mbs

[@aimalkhan5028]

If you got rid of their weapons and told me they worked as futuristic janitors id believe you

[@tom901ful]

That's the best way to describe why they look unappealing and not interesting.

[@aimalkhan5028]

@tom901ful so much brown, dark green, and grey. Not sure why they used these colors for a hero shooter where character design is just as important as gameplay

[@KamenRiderBlackSun]

heck, one of them is a giant walking trash can

[@Straddllw]

@@KamenRiderBlackSunand another is a tupperware container.

[@gruexylo]

If I learned one thing from Library of Ruina as a game, it's that futuristic janitors do *not* have to be boring These wouldn't even qualify

[@Sheevlord]

Concord characters commit two cardinal sins: they are both unappealing and generic looking to the point of being boring. They look like the cast of an independent sci fi movie with no budget who had to raid local thrift stores in search for costumes and props. Helmet made from an air humidifier water tank. Random motorcycle helmet. American football gear with one pauldron missing. Old diving suit. Random mishmash of old clothes. And of course - the good old "paint a guy green to make him an alien" trick. It's a game. They could've designed characters however they like, limited only by imagination. And yet this is what they created. So sad.

[@humrH2360]

There's also that none of these designs tell you anything about the character and/or their role. The walking blueberry? He's supposed to be a medic. The beige astronaut? She's supposed to be a jetpacking rocketeer. The redcoat with grapes for hair? She's supposed to be a melee-assassin. The lady wearing black quilts? She's supposed to be a fire mage. These character designs not only fail to appeal, but also inform.

[@jonpaul3868]

Excellent take. Basically low budget costume😂

[@LV_427]

This is the limit of their imagination

[@TheGreatCraigWyvern]

@@humrH2360Wait… The Big Blue buff guy with a red face is a Medic?

[@davideassis87]

Somehow, sci-fi B movies from the 70s and 80s used to do exactly this, but somehow the results were insanely better.

[@TheSwiftAdventure]

"It's hideous, none of this makes any sense"

[@SabrPath]

It's important for a character's wardrobe to make sense.

[@handsomeni]

Good tldr summary

[@mrbluebell2735]

@@TheSwiftAdventure if hideous is what's intended then everything makes sense.

[@thubanhiroi]

​@@SabrPath I dont support concord, but I think that reason is flawed. In your example you used at 11:31, that ai generated image might have giving a backstory to the character. Just because you are ignorant to the technology being used in the world that the game is set in, doesnt mean its bad design.

[@alexandrer2972]

That's actually the most accurate comment we will ever make

[@quintusdiast3477]

What I've learned from the Concord drama is that character design is a serious job. I thought I simply disliked the characters, but it turns out, from a technical standpoint, the design was flawed. Now, I'm beginning to appreciate good character design, which I had taken for granted in the past.

[@SabrPath]

Glad you learned from the video. Character design and the game's presentation is the gateway drug to getting people into any form of visual entertainment.

[@ARStudios2000]

It's kinda amazing how much we take for granted. Like, I remember during the High Guardian Spice debacle, we didn't realize how well and good consistency and quality is done in most shows till HGS which was making amateur mistakes in it made us realize "oh damn, we've had it good all this time"

[@mrbluebell2735]

@@quintusdiast3477 there's a desperate need to look up masters in character design to suit an intention. And it's not limited to visual media. One of my favorite character beginnings is by Hiroyuki Morioka. Author of the long running Banner of the Stars series. He's shared that the main character Lafiel appeared as a dream. A beautiful woman who introduced herself as the Empress of all Humanity. He's spent near 20 years writing her story since. Of course he's had to define beautiful, Empire and Humanity in order for her to exist. Back to Concord. The only way the designs can possibly unfold as it did was if the visioneer wrote down non binary representation in hero shooter and clearly defined it every step of the way.

[@orkhepaj]

no it is not

[@masteroak9724]

For this kind of game, more than anything. Money comes from when people really dig a character design to the point they want to invest into them. Just look that League of Legends and see the common point on all the characters who generate the most revenue and those who generate almost none.

[@BrotherO4]

character design is very important, much more so in a Hero shooter. i think their true failure is ignoring the Feedback that everyone gave them regarding the design of the characters with the first reveal. "people confuse technical beautiful with artistic look". 100%.

[@SabrPath]

You bring a good point about ignoring feedback. While I understand that it's expensive to redo designs, doubling down when everyone is saying it's bad, is not a good path to take. Just look at how well the Sonic movie benefited after everyone complained and the studio went back to the drawing board.

[@maccagrabme]

Regarding colours I'm not seeing enough white for my liking.

[@handykamal7555]

They had 8 years to listen and response to the feedback. But nooooo..."we're good."

[@mrbluebell2735]

Details and definitions matter. The marketing for Concord refers to itself as a team shooter. It's everyone else calling it a hero shooter. Will need to look into the trailer again, but I believe the characters being heroic is absent. Edit: had another look at trailer and marketing. The word hero is absent throughout. There's crew, adventure and free gunner (wth is that?) In reference. Nothing that says the characters are elite or paragons. They clearly were going for the outcast/miscast instead of Avengers.

[@ivebenwatching]

​@@mrbluebell2735 they can call their game whatever they want they're still competing in the hero shooter genre Hero Shooter's a shooter game where they have unique characters with unique skills/abilities attached to them Ex. Team Fortress 2 -all of the mercenaries in TF2 are not heros. They are either a criminal, a psychopath, or both

[@chinogambino9375]

Describing the lunchbox lady design as 'frustrating' is spot on. She looks like she's covered in entrails, reminds me more of a space horror vibe. Looking at these characters is almost offensive.

[@moseszero3281]

Nurgle plague marine?

[@Bombardier15]

Mom can we have Mr Freeze. No have Mr Freeze at home. Mr Freeze at home:

[@BattleFlyNate]

This game isn't diverse, this game has the exact diversity of a high school in California. Even the aliens just look like people in light makeup. When these people say: "this isn't what the real world looks like" they actually mean: "this hasn't been my exact experience"

[@OnurUysal-nc3fu]

The consumer base (The West) is largely white.

[@Moon-lt1dl]

Shhh! That goes against their culture war narrative

[@lastmanstanding7155]

So green and red and blue people go to schools in California? Also are people saying that? Because I've mostly heard everyone say the designs are nonsense. Are you just building a strawman to knock down or what?

[@JuniorTech-q1k]

Heroes were made by people hired based on their color and sexuality rather than talent

[@Mortablunt]

Come to realize that the creative industry definition of diverse just means ‘looks like the clientele a Southern California college campus coffee shop.’

[@sheena659]

Bro I had to pause to laugh when he said "Going back to Lizzo over here." lost it so hard, thanks man.

[@ルハイダーダアゴナー]

18:29 games 10 years ago were diverse as well. I liked FONV and that game has a white lesbian character who is separated from her girlfriend forever,a white gay dude who is an intellectual and has a dark past, a Mexican character who was loved by the community, a traumatized straight white guy, I’m pretty sure plenty of black characters as well, and even Asian doctors in the game. But the game well-written and well thought out. The characters feel natural and human. The gay guy never explicitly says that he is gay, but will express interest towards the main character if he was a male character. The lesbian character never explicitly said she is lesbian either, but she talks about her ex girlfriend very indirectly, players would have to really pay attention to realize that she was dating a woman. Games can be diverse and good at the same time, it’s been done correctly before. So instead of devs hyper fixed on diversity, they should think about the characters as human beings before thinking about the characters’ skin color and gender identity.

[@Jetiix]

I don't think I would agree with your point of view on every issue, but what you've said here is something I can confidently back up. The surge of ugly token characters hitting franchises right now, where art comes second to quotas and bullet points that end up hurting the inspiration for the token characters. When you see a surge of annoying, snarky, ugly looking flamboyant minorities in games and movies you may develop a negative stereotype that minority groups are annoying or unpleasant. I believe negative representation in media that is purportedly acting in the interest of people from edge groups in society is only doing them a greater disfavor by always saying "this is what diversity is and if you don't like it, you have a problem with the minority group we picked" - rather than the designs being unappealing aesthetically or writing wise.

[@SabrPath]

No two people agree on everything, it's fine to disagree on points. But to your main point about these stereotypes having negative representation, while I was editing this video, I removed a rant about Muslim characters in media. I took it out because it felt like a tangent and the video was too long as it is, but a summary of what I cut out is that for the longest time, Muslim characters have been portrayed as violent savage extremists, and then around the 2010s there was a flip to have more "good" Muslim characters, but all these "good" Muslims never follow Islam and do things that are forbidden, such as drinking alcohol and promiscuous life styles. These "good" Muslim characters are harmful due to portraying Islam incorrectly.

[@kaylemain2006]

If you look closely in the cinematic trailer you'll notice that the lifevest worn by not-yondu is made of that kind of weird fabric that generates a shitload of lint and looks itchy as all hell. So not only are the colors unappealing, the materials are too. All of this seems like almost bad on purpose.

[@Arcademan09]

Studios *need* someone with balls to stand up in a meeting and say "hey this looks like trash, let's do something better"

[@SabrPath]

This is what happens people people surround themselves with "yes" men and people pleasers. We need to be told that it's a bad idea.

[@masteroak9724]

This game character design failed because they wanted too hard to avoid conventional attractiveness in favor of an agressive (physical attractiveness) stereotype subversion. And well said, diversity is not the problem, a short sighted view on diversity we see from modern developers that ends up creating less diversity as result is the problem.

[@catmeow11111]

I have to say, the bad AI designs looked a million times more interesting and appealing than Concord characters.

[@SabrPath]

Ouch lol

[@weirdreportt]

not really, it’s just a beautified version of them still. I work as an art director, and I can tell they still aren’t interesting enough, even with a beautiful face. Character design is more than just a beautiful face or sexy body. With a tons beautiful and interesting characters nowadays, it will take a lot of effort and artistic power to create a more meaningful and interesting character like the ones we’ve got in other games (especially shooter games). Compare concord characters side by side with Apex Legends, even if they are different in artstyle, you can tell that none of Concord characters really hit the nail in terms of a really strong character design. It must leave an impression, it must communicate well, it must be really creative. AI designs is just another knockoff

[@SabrPath]

@@weirdreportt I don't think you watched the video. The AI gen images I show in this video don't have faces or sexy bodies.

[@weirdreportt]

@@SabrPath yes I haven’t reach the part of the video by the time I left this comment so sorry for both of ya’ll for the confusion. Rest of my point still stands, and the critiques in video supports that, which is a really good commentary about the game btw. If a character can’t communicate or resonate well to its audience then it’s an example of bad character design or failed characterization.

[@moseszero3281]

The color palette is 'bad body fluids'. Poop brown, puss green, pizz yellow. 7:08 Random ship mechanic 7:38 Dude on right is discount Alucard from Wish - girl on left is artists goblin waifu - dunno what to say about thunder thighs sniper in the trash bag 9:00 Dude is drowning just like this studio - And tarp lady has pooped those pants full... 10:00 rocket girl is the posterchild for the color palette. I like the urban mech design, because it is obviously stolen from Battletech, though the pizz yellow color sux 12:38 That's a last minute 'astronaut' Halloween costume. Dude on the left is discount hulk with random crayon job - purple puff pants stole her outfit from a power rangers villain convention 15:00 That's a plague marine... from Wish

[@SabrPath]

"last minute 'astronaut' Halloween costume" had me laughing

[@Eisenwald64]

​@SabrPath Also, what they say once selected also doesn't stand out too much; no serious catchphrases.

[@sayamqazi]

Apex legends voice lines are so good. People made songs out of them. ​@@Eisenwald64

[@ARStudios2000]

It is unbelievable how 8 years and an art team consisting of ex Bungie devs who worked on Destiny, a game with incredible aesthetics, domehow produced this. As an artist, i respect artists who work on games, providing what is needed to shape these worlds. But here i have to ask "What. Happened? How did this happen?" As for a game that attracted me through its character design, it was a gacha game called Limbus Company. What got my attention was that Limbus Companys artstyle is pretty much the exact opposite of other gacha games. If you were to put gacha games in a scale and think of them like bodies of water, many gacha games are oceans of nearly NSFW tier character designs. Limbus Company on the other hand is practically the Gobi Desert. The games sense of style and fashion is built around dystopian corporate uniforms ranging from paramilitary crusading security teams to office wear martial artists in suits, ties, and dress pants while wearing fire bending cybernetics. Its aesthetic is VERY grungy, gritty, and sombre. I was sucked in by the visuals, curious to see "What kind of gacha game is this?" and I'm speaking as a gacha games hater. Well I have up to this point 365 hours in Limbus Company as I got sucked into its world building, it's characters that are so well written and rounded they make most video game characters and even most media writing look like second grade literature, and its genuinely unique gameplay designed for insane people who have a combined interest in chance, gory death animations, team building, and sanity mechanics. And it has a gacha system built around low spenders unlike other ones I feel like I've made my point when i say, you may want games for gameplay, but visuals are the hook that reels you in. Presentation matters

[@TKAandMore]

I'm starting to wonder how much that "8 years in development" might be the driving force behind a lot of the problems with Concord, the art direction included. Imagine working on this for eight years as an artist. That's a huge chunk of your life. These characters may not look great in game, but maybe they looked great in your concept art six years ago when the game was set to have a different art style. Maybe, since these characters have been a part of your life for so long, you feel attached to them and refuse to entertain the thought of killing your darlings. Maybe you don't even work there anymore. Eight years is a long time, and since you left, other artists have tinkered with your designs and it became an issue of too many cooks spoiling the broth.

[@mrm7058]

@@TKAandMore Yeah, had similar thoughts. 8 years of development can also mean multiple restarts and/or changes in direction during this time. When I look at the characters, I have the impression as if they don't belong all to the same game. They may have changed art direction once or even more than once during development and wasted time and money this way.

[@SabrPath]

This is my first time learning about Limbus Company. This brings up the whole discussion of ugly women vs lude women in games. This discussion has been going on for a while, and I think sparked up around the release of Stellar Blade. I'm a husband and a father of small kids. I will not play a game like Stellar Blade, which has women on the screen portrayed that way. At the same time, I don't think women should be ugly in games either. I'm all for having characters be attractive and can also be dressed modestly.

[@ARStudios2000]

@@SabrPath I fully understand. I'm not against attractive characters in games either, heck, Limbus Company makes wearing corporate uniforms look attractive because of its unique aesthetic (look no further than the main casts default uniforms) and well designed characters. I personally am a fan of having variety in presentations and for different games having their own unique presentations.

[@bingusdingus39]

Another game with interesting character designs is Identity v, I don't play it but the characters look pretty cool

[@XmortoxX1990]

I peffer this type of videos, that instead of just beating a dead horse, it explain how the horse died in the first place.

[@SabrPath]

I believe in growth mindset. Even though I kept pointing out how bad and ugly everything looks, I don't believe in only pointing out problems. Anyone can point out problems, but only valuable people can show solutions.

[@emalinedickinson7492]

They all look like they assembled their armor and clothing from thrift stores. The chick next to the Guardians of the Galaxy wannabe looked cool in her darker dress, then she has bright yellow shoes that don't match anything else in her aesthetic. Why?

[@SabrPath]

Despite her being a cookie cutter design, I will agree that she's probably the least bad out of the crew. And yes, the yellow shoes makes no sense. Maybe there was nothing else her size at the thrift store.

[@genoamiibo]

the first time i saw the yellow guy's design up close he made me feel itchy

[@SabrPath]

Yeah he looks gross. Definitely doesn't look like a protagonist design.

[@genoamiibo]

@SabrPath they totally could have done a "dashing rogue" or a "criminal with heart of gold and morals" han solo type of deal with him, and i feel like thats what they were trying to do, but really nothing comes across visually that would suggest that to a regular player that isnt looking into character design. idk none of these characters really say anything at all visually lmao

[@GaigeStorm]

I'm an animator, storyboarder, and character designer who works in 2D cartoons and one of the first and most important lessons I was taught is that whatever you're working on, you need characters that that audience can instantly gravitate towards. 2 main factors were: 1: Strong lead with grounded flaws to grown on that the audience can relate with. A lead that's likeable, full of heart, and welcoming. 2: Ideal, pleasing to eye, and inspiring. Someone the audience can instantly grow towards and aspire to, a first impression to capture an audience's interest a character and their journey. I feel character design as an art form is slowly going down the drain. I don't know if it's just DEI hiring people who aren't really qualified for this type of thing or if it's higher ups pushing the tokenism on character designers, but the point stands that something has to change in the industry. As a art director where I'm currently working, I'm seeing these same woke/tokensim/bland type of character designs coming from the team everywhere in the studio, typically from the younger, less experienced. It makes me wonder if it's more a social contagion bringing this on in modern games and entertainment then lack of skill or imagination from the art teams

[@mrbluebell2735]

@@GaigeStorm i take the view that the generation currently entering creative work believe themselves masterless yet slave to every whim and thought. The path of self mastery is one of tremendous discipline and continuing to work at inspiration. No one wants to go the Tolkien route of starting on a blank page and writing 'in the shire there was a hobbit' . I seen them take his effort and just warp it. It's happened to star wars, legacy marvel and dc character.

[@GaigeStorm]

@@mrbluebell2735 comparing the people in their 30s and 40s in my team to the ones in their early 20s and late 20s, the younger crowd are often difficult to direct and give constructive feedback to. Now I expect that from younger people to a degree but in the last 5 years it's taken a very rough turn. I have had younger people who have been great but then there's the others like you mentioned that let it get to their head who all do and act very similar, the entitlement and treading on eggs shells to talk with some is often mentally exhuasting. I'm only 29 but I was trained old school animation and art direction by, John Pomeroy and that experience taught me a ton in how naive I was with art direction and design. I've been trying to steer direction on art as best I can to the older values we yearn for but the execs seem to add fuel to the fire on these kids with this new dare I say, terrible direction they're taking art for the sake of DEI or whatever it is they're going for. No body likes talking about it but DEI has had nothing but a negative effect on the industry, I know first hand since I was rejected a 3 year contract at Disney because I'm a white man. I never believed the stories, hoping it was some far right-wing propaganda until it actually happened to me.

[@mrbluebell2735]

@@GaigeStorm my sympathy for your experience. I do take the entire Concord debacle as a blessing in a way. It's an object lesson in real world consequences where a creative commercial product is consumer hostile and rejected wholesale by the market. A lot of people will tragically be in hardship from this. I pray the youngsters learn from this.

[@GaigeStorm]

@@mrbluebell2735 it is a rude awakening but I think it needed to happen, becoming a blessing in disguise for everyone involved with the game and hopefully the industry. I hope the people involved get some enlightnement from this and the industry changes from it but I also know how stubborn and stuck in their ways corporate are in these types of situations. Far easier to blame your audience on bigotry and misogyny than admit to your investors that their data and your ideas to conjure it didn't work.

[@furyberserk]

Sorry to rant. As a person who went into are and failed after school, most of the ideas like color is personality and such are bad designs to me. Too much is like a gimmick, which is the simplistic/elegant design. It's bad cause it's essentially saying the character is flat or 2 dimensional, thus the story revolves around circumstances rather than actual character. It's okay for Dante, Virgil and Bayonetta, because they are a bit in the absurd, satire, comedic levels, which can use those colors, but also 3 dimensional. I think some of what's taught in school is bad. Look at any anime sketches. Some are interesting without gesture CSI lines, but straight single lines. The ability to show interest seems philosophical and personally, the west is bad cause it explains in a hand holdy/ "feel the power, see the emotion" kind of way.

[@deltase7en717]

When you started talking about fighting game character design, for me it showed that you truly understand the importance of character visuals in games, back in the day it was to attract people for their arcade machine, and that was a competitive environment, nowadays i would say its even worse, normal people dont care that much if the game has amazing gameplay, if you cant find a character to attach yourself into, if the character is cool or cute, if every single one is ugly, it doesnt matter much how revolutionary is your gameplay, Marvel vs Capcom Infinite suffered from this fate, and essentially i think this was the downfall of this game, it was not the fact that this game was paid and alternatives are free to play, because if the game had a killer character roaster, it would attract way more people at least, people play videogames because they want to be a hero, a cool guy, a cute girl, a badass, no normal person look at the characters in Concord and say, i want to be that. Character design is king at the end of the day, amazing video.

[@SabrPath]

I agree. Fighting games are all about the characters. People will go out of their way to try to learn to play a specific character because of how cool they look. Hero shooters also rely on good character design just as fighting games do.

[@howdoyoudo5949]

What happend with Marvel v. Capcom Infinite?

[@SabrPath]

@@howdoyoudo5949 All the Capcom characters were extremely ugly. They put a lot of effort into making the Marvel characters look good and no effort into the rest of them. Chun Li looked like an alien with giant creepy eyes.

[@jessep5280]

I really appreciate that you spoke about your own ethnicity in the context of stereotypes and diversity. I'm Mexican-American, but my family is very pale. Some of us even have blonde hair and green eyes. Personally, I feel that I look Mexican, but I guess it would be more accurate to describe myself as racially ambiguous. I've had people assume I'm Korean, Greek, Italian, Japanese... most of these don't make sense to me. I say all this because I agree with you, and also feel that I've never seen my ethnicity represented in a non-stereotyped, non-shallow way. People are always so surprised when I inform them that many Mexicans look exactly like white people. That's what happens when Europeans genocide your ancestors. I really wish white, Western artists/designers working in video games would stop pursuing these silly, cultural agendas.

[@enightc]

You said it perfectly, none of the characters looks like the main character. But that was intentional, because they wanted to attract that modern audience that hates uniqueness and beauty that is usually associated with being a main character. Their entire direction is flawed, that is why they keep shifting the blames to the consumer, instead of understanding why no one resonated with their characters.

[@TankHunter678]

If you look at when they started development they were more likely inspired by Guardians of the Galaxy, so the lack of main character and going for misfits design could have worked. They just forgot that the GotG crew still looked good despite being the misfits who were not main character material.

[@weirdreportt]

⁠@@TankHunter678if they are inspired by GoTG they are ultimately failed in the fundamentals of good and strong character design. GoTG is prime example of a good and strong character design, whether they are presented in realistic or stylized form, you can tell which is which. Their design communicated well enough to the people tied with their personalities makes them unique as they are. You can create an ugly character but still make it look fun, interesting, invoke certain emotion or drive certain personality or idea to the viewer or player. None of these things achieved well in Concord characters sadly. They tried, I give them that, but it wasn’t strong enough especially for a game that focuses on mainly on its characters

[@Lubey117]

For the AI clutter section. I believe the artistic term you're looking for is greebles. Used well, they help break up smooth, even surfaces. The core use for greebles is believable visual interest to break up bland materials and surfaces. They act as supplementary aspects to a larger object. Greebles lose their purpose when they overtake the overall object they are trying to break up.

[@IN-tm8mw]

I love this input.

[@takarahayashi4124]

"who is this for?!" < the magical modern audience.

[@vegeta002]

The "modern audience" is probably just the developers who actually push for this stuff, which may be why they never show up.

[@theangrynerd101]

"Is this 'modern audience' in the room with us right now?"

[@gavinpowell4607]

It is for me! I loved all of these designs because they were empowering to all of my genders and all of my races while not offending any of my religions. Truly they ticked all of my boxes. I am also a crusader for youtube comment rights, and I find your comment offensive and have reported you to REDDIT. Also if you disagree with me in any way, shape or form, that's because you hate gaming. RAINBOWS EVERYBODY, RAIIIIIIIINBOWS!!!!!!!!! 🌈🏳‍🌈🌈🏳‍🌈🌈🏳‍🌈🌈🏳‍🌈🏳‍🌈🌈🏳‍🌈 🙄

[@DaenaMichelle]

"Look at Reinhardt, all of this looks very straight" Yup, on point on that. Concord characters... not so much.

[@supercool1412]

The characters looks like NPC from a futuristic slump city most of them.

[@KarmikCykle]

They look like they went down to the dump of said futuristic city to scrounge for costume parts.

[@lilbannedz1618]

​@@KarmikCykleexactly, well said

[@22Arcana]

For characters that attracted me to play it, what comes to mind is the Persona series. The box art and characters for Persona 3 Reload, 4 Golden, and 5 Royal just really stand out. Meanwhile I think we should also look at gacha games, especially Genshin Impact which is 1 of the most popular ones out there. Every character in these games (be it male or female and in some cases not even human) are visually appealing in one way or another, because they developers know that visual appeal plays a large role in attracting players to their game AND makes players want to obtain the character, even if it would cost them real money. Concord on the other hand I feel is so unappealing that it PUSHES players away, throw 1 of these characters into something like Genshin Impact and I can only see things going VERY badly.

[@SabrPath]

I was substitute teaching high school students for a little while. Some of the kids were talking about Genshin Impact. I never played it but I'm familiar with it. I told they students to stop talking about it because that game is for lonely boys. All the kids busted out laughing.

[@raven75257]

​@@SabrPathYou're kind of right, but also wrong. A rather large amounts of women thirst for male characters in that game

[@deadby15]

@@SabrPath what's so wrong with a game for lonely boys, even if that's true?

[@Ante-Anima]

DIVERSITY IS NEITHER GOOD NOR BAD Agreed. Just like sex : don't force it.

[@katelandis6123]

At some point you have to ask "Would anybody want to imagine being this character?"

[@mrbluebell2735]

@@katelandis6123 Self inserts. Daw is a spitting image of the lead designer.

[@Doomwolf82002]

The designs were like that one early episode of South Park where South Park Elementary Faculty attempts to throw a Christmas Pageant design to be entirely inoffensive to please everyone but in the end it cause the exact opposite as nobody ended up enjoying it due to it's terrible blandness.

[@billyhunter144]

kzbin.info/www/bejne/b6WzpKlmZaiUl8ksi=VOHk6EvAPhj-Xh4K This episode?

[@jsullivan2112]

"It wasn't our idea to take out Santa Claus!" haha!

[@keijidash9646]

Lizzo cosplaying as DoomSlayer was spot on 😂 You can just tell immediately that the designs were off. The robot up looks like a trashcan, another girl appears to be wearing a beekeeper helmet for some reason, but I thought Rocket Girl was the worst. Her design straight up looks unfinished. Like, they were going for Samus Aran, but decided they’d come back to it later. Edit: also, your point about the characters needing to look like a like main characters was also on point. Especially, when you brought up Street Fighter. Every gd character in that franchise looks like they could hero their own game, or be the main bad guy. Ryu looks like an MC. Vega looks like the primary villain.

[@SabrPath]

I agree with your assessment on Rocket Girl. While editing the video I realized how much I missed when talking about her. Such as, the importance of having an interesting looking design if the character has their face concealed, because once the face is concealed then they no longer have any facial expressions.

[@mrbluebell2735]

There's Tali'zorah from Mass Effect 2. Full helmet thus no obvious expression. Somehow beat Miranda Lawson and Liara as preferred romantic interest. That said, she's meant to be the literal space princess of the franchise. Her encounter suit reflects that. Beautiful piece of work

[@mrbluebell2735]

Character design for Concord is only one component in its failure to capture its audience/market. Having the company creating this be absolute bell ends and obnoxious is the trigger to this failure cascade. For the most part, the apparent trouble with the designs were there before inception /storyboard stage. There has to be some major trauma for the design leads to write/intend for non binary representation. Then have to characters be desexed women, trans men and feminized adolescent boys. I can't unsee it now, all the female coded characters are teenage lads. Narrow hips, male stance and small chest. Even Emari is flat under that armour. This is Silence of the Lambs level of trauma and ideation. I truly hope whoever is In charge gets therapy.

[@SabrPath]

Yes. there were multiple factors to this game's failure, but I wanted to go in depth on one topic so that game developers can learn from this, which is why I focused primarily on character design. The original recording before I edited down was over an hour long.

[@mrbluebell2735]

​​@@SabrPath my background is in Autocad for machine and civil design. I've worked with German, Japanese and UK engineers on design and commissioning of factories. A bad design to these guys is one that's dysfunctional. That's when something doesn't work and the factory is suddenly flooded because a drainage line is in the wrong direction. My assessment of Concord character designs is that it's working as intended. I. E. To completely omit the male/female gaze in an aesthetic manner. In this view, character designs that's so effective in its repugnance that no one wants to buy it. It really is an alien way to approach a commercial product like a game. In summary, an excellent design with a very bad result 😂

[@marsmotion]

the elitist agenda is first to confuse sex, then to make it bad seeming, then to make it cool to not have it at all, eventually leading to basically pod people or humans without their humanity. like those little gray guys who are cyborg slaves in the future. thats you in the future if they get their way. the transhuman elite will have sex and pleasure and all things we enjoy as humans they just want to take it away from you. thats the end game here. they plan these things in 100yr increments and many increments to get there. your food and water is also de sexing you. same with medical treatments.

[@Elayzee]

The developers at Firewall Studios took "representation" and the mantra of "we want to see ourselves on-screen" as they thought the audience wanted to see the literal DEVELOPERS of this game on-screen. And it turns out nobody does, and they "represented" NOBODY anyone was interested in. Concord is "Developer Self-Insert: The V idea Game."

[@arsenkurmangali2997]

Character select animations are so bad. They are barely moving, just shuffling the guns, you cant even guess their abilities thru the select screen. Compare it to Apex Legends, those short 5 sec intros are filled with personality

[@bananas3841]

It-Z’s genuinely makes me want to kill myself

[@jinxtheunluckypony]

I’ve heard the aesthetic of this game referred to as “plumber core” and I honestly can’t unsee it.

[@alonso7599]

Concord really taught me a lesson about what happens if you ignore some major things when it comes to character designing from silhouettes, color scheme, poses and much more about whats going on with these concord heroes. Really appreciate the video analysis Sir.

[@orboakin8074]

Great video, friend. Objective and well researched and balanced. Also, as a black man, i am grateful that you didn't shy away from addressing the identity politics bebind their flawed designs. It's clear their misguided "good" intentions didn't include good character designs. I am also tired of seeing lazily drawn diverse characters in western media that get excused. Normal people like attractive or just good looking or well designed characters. I am not asking for spank material but just good character designs that i can see myself playing in a game.

[@SabrPath]

I actually pointed out a lot more negative things in the original recording, but my wife told me it's probably not a good idea to have all of it, so I cut some of it out. I think tokenism needs to be called out. I'm Arab and Muslim, and all Arab and Muslim characters are either savage extremists, or they are token characters.

[@orboakin8074]

@@SabrPath I hear you! I'm Nigerian and many of the "African" characters in current western media are just tokenism personified. Seriously, that's why I always call out this trend of woke representation. It never does characterization well and just promotes nothing but toxic identity politics.

[@DanielIbanez]

It's less about the color, The colors are fine. It's okay to have a retro color scheme or a modern color scheme or whatever kind of color scheme you want... The problem with this game's characters is about the design and the value. The designs are so ambiguous and confusing. I played the game for about 18 hours and I never even knew who the healers were. Firstly because they were so ugly I didn't want to pick them secondly because there was no intelligible visual indication of their character class. It is just completely confusing visually to the point of being comical. It is as if there was no art director on the project.

[@SabrPath]

I didn't know that there's a healer until someone else in the comments mentioned it

[@Stashmyash]

but the other problem is that concord is being marketed as COLORFUL and VIBRANT. Which it is NOT.

[@SobiTheRobot]

Another media example you can reference for good character designs-action figure series from the 80s and 90s. He-Man, GI Joe, Transformers. There are clear heroes and villains to pick from, and theres always someone you gravitate towards.

[@AlexanderFort]

Street Fighter 2 has such amazing character design. Going through all the tests that you mention like the squint test or the zoom out test they pass with flying colors.

[@SabrPath]

Even Ryu and Ken, who literally have the same body, will look different when you squint/blur/zoom out because their bodies are different colors.

[@benashbaugh5982]

The guy from the Sungrand studio also did a really technological review of the characters. He made comments similar to you when it comes to color and material.

[@Daft_Savant]

Go on, Im taking notes😊

[@SabrPath]

Glad you found it informative. While I was editing together the video, I noticed I left out some points and also realized I could have explained a few things better.

[@uzunaruMelonness]

It is nice to learn from you and Developer Jerrel Dulay, from Sungrand Studios. Each of you have interesting takes in regards to Concord characters.

[@SabrPath]

I like him too. He's much more knowledgeable on color than I am though.

[@rasmachris94]

I completely agree that these designs lack material consistency or clear definitions of what they are. The character at 16:52 for example should as a slow heavy gunner be wearing some kind of metal. Instead they're wearing what looks like cheap plastic. And the worst part is that this doesnt end with just this character. All the characters appear to be wearing synthetic materials of plastic or rubber instead of actual combat materials or at least materials that break apart the form to create visual interest. The homogeneity of materials makes them aesthetically boring. Imagine if the plastic plating were contrasted by textured fabric. I think this is in large part why the characters look ugly. Your eyes are drawn towards visually interesting textures and colours and this can be used as a guide to lead the viewer towards points of interest. It's why Bokeh is so effective. The blur takes away your attention from the environment and brings it to the focal point. The fact that both are boring and homogenous leave you underwhelmed on the overall character design.

[@Alloveck]

3:00 I agree, and not just in regard to this game. People have always done a bad job of separating technical presentation and art direction when assessing game visuals. But to really understand where game visuals succeed and fail, it's vital to regard the two separately.

[@KurwaRomek]

Haven't played the game so thanks for showing the characters in detail. Yes they are repellent af, it baffles me that the executives saw that and thought it was good enough to be released.

[@SabrPath]

Yes it's mind blowing. These large AAA projects need to get green lit from the execs. So the leaders of Firewalk had to put together a presentation, showed it off to Sony execs, and the Sony execs said this was a good idea. All those people need to lose their jobs., not the people at the bottom who I'm sure will get laid off.

[@KurwaRomek]

@@SabrPath indeed, and it had to through several (probably dozens) of reunions between the creative team and the executives, so I can only conclude it must have been their intention from the start to make such unappealing characters. Why though? Most of the time fiction works because you identify with the main character, and it's also the case in video games, at least for me. Nobody wants to become Lizzo in a Doomguy cosplay, as you brilliantly put it.

[@jsullivan2112]

I doubt the executives knew what they were even looking at beyond someone showing them a power point demonstrating how each character ticks all the boxes on their DEI list.

[@Regigigas777]

Why are game developers making minority characters LOOK LIKE the caricatures that they've been wrongfully assigned throughout the years? That's what upsets me the most.

[@SabrPath]

My guess is they have very few friends in real life, outside of their bubble of coworkers.

[@Tremuoso]

That’s all they know. These are literally the kind of people who genuinely think “without foreigners who will do my gardening?!” while calling you a racist

[@IN-tm8mw]

14:44 I know the first thing everyone says is "hip-hop" when they think of Black American culture (Mainly because that is the predominant culture now) but their designs are more 1970s/80s Culture; Soul, Funk, Jazz, and Blaxploitation era. I see a lot of those design elements but they're still unappealing in color scheme and design philosophy.

[@RealCoachMustafa]

Yeah, someone pointed out to me that the designs are funk, not hip-hop. And it's not that it's a negative stereotype, but just an overly played out stereo type. I could have explained that point a bit better.

[@IN-tm8mw]

@@RealCoachMustafa I feel yah, the problem is that historically, most of those elements were mainstream at certain points, so designing Black Characters using cultural inspirations and making them fresh, isn't easy. I'm old enough to remember when the Black Nerd design was new and now that's been played out in modern designs.

[@MasterAlighieri]

I think they basically look like a bunch of Cyberpunk NPCs from Night City importet into a hero shooter game as characters

[@pulpodesigner]

Wonderful video! I wasted an hour on another video with a guy just saying "this is a nightmare", but you actually gave a proper critic in many aspects of the designs and I learned a lot! Thanks and keep up with your channel, is actually criminal you have so few suscribers

[@SabrPath]

Thanks for the support. I guess I just had to make a video on a topic that was trending with the algorithm. I'm going to make more videos though.

[@waynemorgan6153]

The issue with these designs was never that they were diverse. Practically any game with a comprehensive selectable roster of characters is by definition diverse. The issue was always with how they were diverse. In that you seem to have yet another Western dev studio seemingly taking direction from a frame of reference that has become somewhat of an industry standard. A standard geared around representation and inclusion which seems to birth very similar often unappealing designs. What's funny is part of the intent behind this type of thought process is to break "harmful" stereotypes and tropes. Whereby now they seem to have created their own brand of stereotypes and tropes which whilst potentially harmful to the appeal of the product could possibly be harmful to the very groups they're trying to uplift.

[@humrH2360]

In their efforts to be as inoffensive as possible, they only made their product even more offensive. Go figure.

[@guygadbois3010]

How did they not spot their character design problems over eight years when the rest of us spot it in moments, and when someone like you with the proper experience can explain it detail? Surely, they spent some of that money on market testing and focus groups! It seems like they really were determined not to notice for some reason . . . but why? It's baffling!

[@SabrPath]

Real friends will tell you when you pants are unzipped. Fake friends smile and tell you that you look great.

[@fattiger6957]

Though there is a lot of stupid hyperbole (from both sides) around this game, I really appreciate takes like this. I also watched another video from a character designer and it was great. I'm not a game dev, but I have recently started doing custom paint schemes on my mecha model kits and videos like this are actually helpful for me.

[@Doggieman1111]

Easily the most nuanced and perceptive of any of the critiques of this game. Thank you

[@nunyabusiness8000]

Glad you’ve released this video because it helped me find your channel. There’s quite a few vids in interested in. Subbed

[@SabrPath]

Thanks for the support! I'll make more content similar to this.

[@thelordofpie7157]

People need to stop checking off "diversity" checklists. Both in hirering and in video games, movies, tv shows, ect. Higher the best people for the job no matter what they look like, and make the best product you can without forcing anything. Let things come about organically

[@aSweetSummerSolstice]

The reason diversity hire became popular is because there was biased hiring in the past where people would overlook merit based on racial biases, physical appearance, gender, and age. For example, parts of the tech industry can be sexist to female programmers, even if they graduated top of their class, went to an Ivy League, and even if they outperform male colleagues during performance reviews

[@thelordofpie7157]

@@aSweetSummerSolstice And now they get the job based on their race or gender, even if they're not the best person for the job to meet their "diversity quota"

[@ImN0tInsane]

Super interesting video. Learned a lot about character design and why some things are bad design and others aren’t. I could feel it, but wasn’t able to put it into words. Thank you.

[@yoshimasterleader]

It's not that Hip-hop is a negative stereotype for black people it's the most prominent stereotype. It's played out. That said I would say the clothes and sunglasses evoke more of a funk look than hip-hop.

[@LegaLImmigrnt]

Crossbow chick is my choose for best looking character only to have shoes that make me say "WHAT ARE THOOOSE!"

[@asianpablo1574]

Great video/analysis! People can be so caught up in being negative, but you do a great job in criticizing and being constructive with your feedback and why it doesn’t work.

[@SabrPath]

Thanks! I'm a big believer that if you want to be valuable to other people, you need to provide solutions. Anyone can point out problems, but valuable people will point out how to fix those problems.

[@abgvedr]

Those characters look absolutely pathetic

[@sungrandstudios]

Great video! Nicely done. Best wishes to you and your upcoming projects.

[@SabrPath]

Thanks for the support! Your videos are very good. You have a great understanding of color. I need to study to have a better understanding of that topic.

[@sungrandstudios]

​@@SabrPaththank you. I've subscribed! I look forward to seeing more videos from you and hearing more. Let me know when you launch your new game.

[@captainphoton1693]

New overwatch character may be tokenised. But at least it make sense for the game as the point is that the character come from all around the globe. And while they get a lot of tokens in the game, it's not the characters themselves that are tokenised. It's the things they bring that are tokenised. The thai didn't came with any racist or stereotypical Thailand stuff. He is a scientist that found a way to make living matter out of light. And his main plant he is using is lotus flowers. Wich are very comon in Thailand. That's far from stereotyped. Iliari use the power of the sun as she is Peruvian. Maya or aztèques idk roast me. But like in overwatch magic exist. And it seems that Peruvians have certain persons able to harness sun power. Is it sum I don't care. But outside of that. Her armor is ancient civilisation inspired. Her healing turret look like a mini sun. He weapon is a sword gun that look like thoses ancient weapons that where slabs of wood with obsidian bits as edges. Its all Peruvian. But isn't cliché per say. As they don't use her tanned skin to stereotype her. Nor well idk any Peruvian stereotype. But you get what I mean. And all of thoses are great. The 2 I mentioned are some of the wildest ones. Almost looking like fantasy. I often compare them to paladins character (pls do a video on paladins designs. You have some good takes. I want to see the parts you would like and parts you would roast). But characters like venture. Canadian.. Québécois young archéologue. That uncovered extremely precious (and important) artefacts. That équipe to deal with people trying to snag them right after digging them up. They have a dusty large coat, yellow gloves, googles to go underground, utility belt, large boots that look like they'd grip well. Dusty hairs that are clearly undone. A broken teeth. And their design is really original cast looking. Like add them with the outcasts like Mei torb and all and she look right at home.

[@SabrPath]

I may have sounded dismissive with Overwatch, but their characters are definitely top tier. I don't like that they admit to using a tokenization algorithm, but at the very least their artists know how to design characters.

[@captainphoton1693]

@@SabrPath yeah that software was ass. Hope they stoped using it.

[@HalNordmann]

Part of why people don't complain about OW's characters even when they are stereotypical is that those characters are also just plain badass. Instead of thinking "hey, that's insulting to us", they think "I wish we were as cool as this"

[@stevendobbins2826]

Are you talking about Lifeweaver in your first paragraph? He's Thai, it's the new space girl that's Vietnamese.

[@captainphoton1693]

@@stevendobbins2826 sorry. You get what I meant. I'm gonna fix it up right now.

[@nightwalkerj]

I'm glad Concord is what it is. There are not a lot of AAA games that have so many design issues, making it really easy to study if you're into game design.

[@SabrPath]

Best to learn from the mistakes of others.

[@tubageza5324]

Only can agree. But also weirdly it feels like everyone of the characters has the same bone structure. That is also why all of them feel so human even tho they meant to be alien and robotic. Also the eyes of some of the alien characters are just pure human.

[@mrbluebell2735]

Managed to nail the internal structure of the characters being unusual. I suspect it's 1 motion capture person for everyone, even the female coded avatars. Welcome to the uncanny valley of human movement. Where a lad moves like a girl and vice versa. Human brain registers that as wrong and keeps away on instinct. I sincerely don't know if the devs were being cheap or cheeky. It's led to what's supposed to be an unreal fantasy into being an unrealistic one.

[@kenpanderz]

older games like Ratchet & Clank, Spyro and Sonic knew how to make their characters unique and stand out. maybe we need to go back to the days when making a character look realistic wasnt even a thought, so they could get as wacky with it as they wanted. the problem with some modern games is that they want to ride the line between realistic like Call of Duty or Battlefield, but they also want to make their characters cartoony, but not too much of either. its hard to get it right, and when you already have highly successful competition saturating the same genre, you should expect to fail.

[@jcrapirap]

Great breakdown. For me having characters that are generic looking that no one resonates with, together with a 40$ price tag where their competition are f2p, really gated their audience into trying Concord that ultimately resulted in a very low player count.

[@bazikon7717]

I remember the very first time I saw someone play WC3:TFT when I was a kid. It immediately caught my attention because the races and style was just so different from anything else. Also Splinter cell was a game that made me say "I have to buy that and play it" the character design on the cover was very cool.

[@Aisaaax]

"Why did they use all the negative stereotypes?" I am 90% sure that it's to push "Everyone is beautiful" mindset. This is toxic positivity when you try to say that a fat person is just as healthy and beautiful and is "body positive". This game's design is filled to the brim with agenda, diversity and representation, leaving no space for any sort of rule of cool or creativity. And FWIW I totally agree with your take on diversity. In fact we used to have good organic diversity in videogames before everything started snorting DEI. I don't mind diversity at all. I like female characters, I'm OK with black characters, etc. However I do not agree that this game didn't fail due to "forced diversity". Because it absolutely did. If you tell me to write an action story I will give you a decent marvel-esque story. You tell me protagonist needs to be a woman - I will write slightly worse story because I have no experience to give me good insight into such character. You ask me to write it to be black fat 40+yo woman - it will be unreadable. Point being - the more you restrict my creativity with a checklist of features and tropes - the worse the result. When you start from a DEI agenda and work backwards to a character design - you get a crappy design, because it sucks the soul out of your creatives. The other thing to consider is the office. If we were to bet, do you think that Firewalk has heavy DEI practices? Do you think that I will be reported to HR if I disagree with woke agendas? What happens in such studios is that any people who are not all-in on that brand of politics get pushed out, until you have created an echochamber. And that means that you are severely limiting your hiring pool by rejecting or alienating people for wrongthink. Is it better to roll dice 6 times and chose the best outcome, or 10 times? By limiting your pool and including politics into your hiring decisions - you're also lowering the average skill of your team. And that's where you get bad designs.

[@edbot5437]

7:00 more than a background Star Wars character, he looks like he got ready to play laser tag

[@jrmloh]

I think their character designs are basically what happens when nobody comments on improving the initial sketches. Like they just look like the first draft and they were just "yeah this is good lets ship with it"

[@tripphazzard6679]

0:36 dang it, but thats why im here

[@Eltanin]

What's so frustrating about the alien characters in concord (except Mushroom guy I guess) is that they're literally just guys. It's like they figured it would be way easier for the mocap animators if they just made a 1 to 1 conversion of their mocap actor then added spikes to them and then called it a day. They could've done so much more with their alien designs but no, they're literally just human people colored differently.

[@SabrPath]

I see your point but I'm not going to hold that against them. None-humanoid models would require completely different animations and that increases the scope.

[@mrbluebell2735]

I believe the guy part here meant that every character is actually male from a structural standpoint. It's why quite a number of people have pointed out that the women coded characters are actually adolescent boys in shape and movement. The vast majority of humans actually caught that then checked out because it looked/felt wrong. Even if it wasn't articulated, this is hard wired instinct no social engineering can overcome.

[@KamenRiderBlackSun]

the game is so Inclusive they added a “Trash can” character for anyone that synergies with that character

[@HaloseBetaM14]

Just noticed the big black character with the green armor has a literal red flag...

[@TheSwiftAdventure]

Going back to Lizzo over here

[@Jackrost01]

I don't get it. Is that reference to something?

[@LordMuzhy]

@@Jackrost01yeah Emari is Lizzo cuz she’s huge lol

[@idkman2729]

Her beached whale cosplay is on point 😊

[@mrbluebell2735]

@@LordMuzhy I'm going to counter on that with how much volume is left if all that armour and padding is removed. I actually found the design grotesque but couldn't articulate why initially. Had large legs, straight hips and likely no mammaries once armour is removed. It's a guy that's why.

[@zzz66688]

There's 2 of them as well, Emari and Daw, and apparently Daw is a bloke too.

[@Antillles]

Between the realistic face style, diverse body types, muted colors and strange material choice, they end looking like amateur cosplayers. Like a group of common people on cheap cosplay made of scrap in a convention. Like you said, some of them almost look they have a potato sack for cloth. Someone said in another video that the character looked a bit better in that 3D anime style animation they released close to the launch of the game and I agree. It doesn't fix everything, but is an improvement. A cel-shading hero shooter would have give them some originality.

[@blogdogs9462]

7:20 my man, john concord

[@SabrPath]

🤣🤣🤣

[@brendancoulter5761]

You really cant tell if the armor is made out of metal, plastic or stress ball plush.

[@malitnk]

I have a feeling you're gonna be my new fav youtuber. Investing at 57 subs. Loved the vid keep up the good work

[@SabrPath]

Thanks for the support!

[@matteste]

That bit about random clutter makes me want you to take a look at the character designs by Masayuki Doi who is currently doing designs for the Shin Megami Tensei series. He is an artist whose style I have long had a peeve with, especially compared to the series previous artist, Kazuma Kaneko. And all that random clutter is one thing I feel Doi is really bad at. Several of his designs just feel wrong to me even when I struggle to articulate why.

[@headecas]

Hero shooter with bad hero designs is just like trying running a marathon with no legs

very educational video, thank you so much

[@deviancepurplehaze6045]

Yes! Finally someone that notice the shitty colors! These set of colors make me want to puke the first time I saw the trailer and it make me avert my eyes every time the characters pop on the screen.

[@SabrPath]

It was the first thing I noticed. I couldn't see the bad characters because I was stuck at the ugly colors for so long.

[@wastelandwanderer2693]

My favorite game of all time is Gears of War. The human characters might not stand out visually but the enemies in the game called the Locust Horde have such excellent design. There is a vast diversity of enemies in that game and they all look so menacing and unique.

[@artaizen1613]

I was playing first descendant yesterday, and a random guy played as Ajax, the tank, randomly tanked and carried me, like I feel safe that a huge armored guy came to my help lol, imagine I was playing concord, and the character I see is a blue skinned topless guy or that girl with rugby attire ..... it gonna be feeling weird lol

[@apersonontheinternet9085]

The most annoying part of concord, from a character designer who loves weird freaky aliens and thinks diversity is a neutral aspect and does not automatically make art good or bad, is that everyone looks like Just Some Guy. They did hyper realistic textures and mocap animations to save money and it looks so bad as a result. It’s a game where magical psychic teleporting catgirls fight fire wizards and lizardmen alongside sentient mushrooms and demon zombie gorillas in space. Why do they all look like normal people. Whey do they all use normal weapons when they wrote Alien Magic into the lore. I couldnt for the life of my figure out why they’d make them all look like people in bad cosplay. If you decide your character is going to be a MAGICAL TELEPORTING ALIEN CATGIRL, then let me play as a magical teleporting alien catgirl, not a woman with blue body paint. TLDR: this game would have been better looking if they were sillier with it.

[@SabrPath]

I heard one person compare the aliens to the costumes in the original Stark Trek, when they had no budget to make people look like aliens and would just make a person bald with pointy ears. And I agree, the guns look like they're slapped in from some other game. They don't look sci-fi. Most of them look very modern day.

[@pixelb0i255]

Thank you! People's lives went into this.

[@SabrPath]

I feel empathy towards the people who worked hard on this game and had nothing to do with the visual design choices.

[@godsend-gw5ef]

You make so many good points keep on making videos pal

[@kevinletterer4171]

I don't think all of the characters are irredeemable, some of them happen to be surrounded by so much ugliness that we just bag them all together. If you remove all of the other characters, the robot dude in the tan suit could shine with a bit of tweaking. I don't hate the pink haired girl either, if she was surrounded by more interesting characters I don't think she would be receiving flak. For me the worst of them all is the standard woman model with some sort of rocket launcher on her shoulder. You can't get more generic, boring and uninteresting than that. At least others evoque SOME emotion even if it's disgust.

[@arch5701]

Street Fighter and Overwatch I believe have the best art teams. All their characters look so cool in unique way.

[@ErrolBeats]

"Back to Lizzo" Had a laugh and hit the like button fast!

[@cinnamonshiv]

Another thing I've come to learn is that 'silhouettes' of characters are so damn important. I thought aside from 4-5 characters in Concord, most of the characters have silhouettes i wouldn't recognise from a distance. (Granted we haven't had the chance to spend a lot of time with them, but even an untrained eye would notice that imo). The player needs to know who they're going up against from a distance. Games like Apex legends, TF2 and overwatch do that so well.

[@mrbluebell2735]

That's a good point on the silhouettes. Of the 16 characters, 9 are essentially the same body type.

[@jamesrusselleriii8284]

I've learned more about good character design from the downfall of this game than anything else. Very educational. Thank you so much!

[@jestersraven408]

a lot of people confuse technically impressive graphics with beautiful or good-looking graphics its one of the reasons why so many people only play hyper realistic looking games its technically impressive but not necessarily beautiful

[@LordFren]

Ahhhh... bucket head / tupperware head. My favorite design :D

[@SabrPath]

That character drove me to making this video. It's such an incredibly bad design.

[@nadtz]

It's honestly puzzling to me how Firewalk/Sony thought these designs were good when every person I've seen with game character design experience has immediately pointed out how bad they are and others who do design work of some sort felt the same. I don't do any kind of design so I didn't know *why* i didn't like them, but as soon as I saw the characters I knew I didn't like them. Thanks to you and Sungrand Studios I have a better understanding how bad these are from the perspective of people in the industry, thank you for your time explaining it. I hope at some point we get a good deep dive of what happened over the course of this games development to understand how this game went so horribly wrong.

[@mrbluebell2735]

I have a theory on this. When the test group is sellected from a small pool by the organization that skews the result in their favour. Think Olympic Breakdancing. Australian 'expert' who just happened to win every competition organized by her husband. I swear, this scandal is an even bigger commercial and prestige tank than Concord.

[@nadtz]

@@mrbluebell2735 So as someone who works adjacently in the industry there are safeguards against exactly that. The whole point of play testing is to find out what people actually think about your game, not to reaffirm what you think about it. That said with some of the stuff I've heard about Firewalk this might actually be true. If so they are paying for it now.

[@mrbluebell2735]

@@nadtz I really hope I'm wrong. But the amount of ESG cash thrown about the last decade throughout media makes the grifting very attractive.

[@nadtz]

@@mrbluebell2735 The thing is the entities throwing out that ESG money are doing it with the expectation of a return at some point. The longer that these projects flop the sooner that money dries up. Any grift is attractive but when the money dries up the grifters move along to the next grift.

[@kirisakijake7028]

Now I want to hear on your take on good vs bad mech design. And also to answer your question on 27:11, not for the character design, but the mech design of Megaton Musashi W instantly got my purchase.

[@SabrPath]

I like mechs and that sounds like a cool topic for a video but I don't think I'm qualified to give feedback on what makes a bad mech design