What people are saying about "The Secret Formula"
The Secret Formula
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Gabriel Vargas
about 2 months ago
If your intention was to cultivate a right-wing conspiracionist nutjob audience, you did an excellent job by looking into the comments, Jo!
Cesar Sampaio
about 2 months ago
Imagine paying money to get ugly design, boring gameplay, uninspired world building and "The Message!" while being belittled, offended, preached and indoctrinated by the hateful, mentally ill, colored hair fat uggo rainbow brigade? What a steal?
SANG MIN LEE
2 months ago
How many comics are you gonna make about Concord?
2 months ago
Without using Google, or a YouTuber's rant, tell me what was "preachy" about Concord?
Just stick to drawing tits. Thinking isn't your speed.
2 months ago
Not nearly enough advertising and hype building, and yes - boring ugly and forgettable cast of characters. Overall making the characters more sexy wouldn't have saved the game, It would have helped a little, but not nearly enough. [2/2]
2 months ago
Concord failed due to many factors: Oversaturated market, Game that's midiocre and missing any new hook to draw players, The fact that development was way way too expensive, 40$ price tag that meant that when the game couldn't recover from the fact it didn't establish player base at launch [1/2]
No No
2 months ago
@Jack Montana He's not even talking about Concord specifically here. It's the same with a ton of these preachy woke trash games that insert self-serving agendas willy-nilly.
Politics are fine if done cleverly, like the aforementioned Metal Gear Solid games, Bioshock, the old Fallout games.
Jack Montana
2 months ago
@No No what preaching by what mentally ill people? It was just a generic hero shooter that no one wants which was priced compared to the other free to play ones. Jo is alright sometimes but even I'm confused by this comic. It would more sense it was suits not caring and just following trends.
No No
2 months ago
@Lexou Not liking being preached to by mentally ill people is now "right wing lunacy". Noted.
T
2 months ago
Even if SF5 didn’t do well Street Fighter is one of the biggest fighting game franchises in the world. One game not doing as well as expected isn’t reason to abandon the entire franchise. It would be like Disney ditching Mickey because Donald got more popular.
Freakin' Magic
2 months ago
now ugliness isn't really a factor in failing games, take cruelty squad for example. consumer softproducts intentionally made it the most repulsive and grotesque mess of a game in visual appearance, yet people still play it because they enjoy it.
2 months ago
@T Historically over the last decade Capcom's biggest money makers were Resident Evil and Devil May Cry. Monster Hunter only got big with Monster Hunter World. Capcom chases the money, but it isn't all about only supporting blockbusters. Capcom takes chances. Look at the dino game that just flopped.
2 months ago
@T I'm a long time fighting games fan. If Capcom was only focusing on its popular games, Street Fighter wouldn't exist. SF5 was a flop. Capcom basically ignored its fighting games division for a decade. SF6 marked a turning point and the people in charge of fight games are doing fantastic, now.
T
2 months ago
@Lexou It certainly was not generic. It didn't look like your generic game character design. How many games have you seen with characters who look like that? It is suspicious how the comment section was flooded with people defending it.
Lexou
2 months ago
I'm sure it's great for clicks, though.
Lexou
2 months ago
No, there was no 'moralism' in Concord, and the appearance was just overly generic. It was just a boring, generic hero shooter game that is several years too late to the genre, with no hook to separate it and terrible word of mouth. It's a shame Joe has ascended into right-wing lunacy on this topic.
T
2 months ago
@Samuel Measa Capcom is just shit at releasing what people want and basically ditched most of their IP to focus on their most popular IPs like Street Fighter. I blame executives.
No No
2 months ago
@Swagner The difference is quality of writing. Metal Gear for example is very political, but it does so intelligently, unlike most modern games.
I can't fathom how people can defend the current landscape, it's completely baffling. If you can't tell the difference, I feel sorry for you.
Andreas Schone
2 months ago
In the end, games act as escape from the real world. Gamers don't want real world morales and real world ugliness, look at GTA and Nintendo games.
Portal 2 was a success because of story and gameplay, yet a shooter with portals did flop because it was just a shooter with portals.
2 months ago
@Wynne Rogers
Its true. If Sexy and Violence where all that was needed to carry a game, then we'd have that Darkstalkers 4 everyone wants. That or the modern remake that combines the best of the old games into one game.
2 months ago
The top mods are for unique looking, or sexy companions. Also mods that make in game companions sexier.
After that its mods that add some level of realism to a game, change up the game play, or turn all the armor into bikinis.
FO4 Atomic Winter is one of my favs, not good for Bikini Armor.
T
2 months ago
If you want to see what gamers actually want look up what mods they use. People will use mods that looks cool, sexy or funny. Even in “representation” people don’t want to look lame. A Brazilian would rather be represented by Blanka than some generic bland standard brown guy.
Andreas Larsson
2 months ago
Yep, I lost any kind of interest in Concord the moment I first saw it. I don't play ugly, "inclusive" games. Attractive characters are pleasant to look at, simple as that.
2 months ago
It's rather, sex and violence are a very easy, very safe way to make buck. There always will be enough horny teenagers to profit off. Other ways are riskier and require actual talent. Like, look at Portal/Portal 2. No sex. Almost no violence. Absolute legend.
2 months ago
@No No stories having morals is not some new thing invented by the "woke libs" in the last decade. Every story you've ever watched or heard has *some* sort of message behind it; you just don't notice when it's one you already agree with or you watched it lacking context during your formative years.
2 months ago
@Eboreg and Marvel Rivals had a much better hook (pre-established, popular characters), so what's your point?
Wynne Rogers
2 months ago
Also, there are a very large number of Sex and Violence games that flop. look at Suicide Squad. Sex and Violence may move initial numbers, but don't hold an audience. If there are too many game play cycle pain points, people will stop playing. Then Word of Mouth will spread and it will die.
Wynne Rogers
2 months ago
Ugliness and moralism? I thought the game was the worst thing that any game can be... Forgettable. The characters weren't ugly. They were boring and bland. Moralism? Preachy? The story and everything in any advertising was generic AF.
2 months ago
I just want to say at no point I talked about Concord on the strip itself.

Sure, I talked in the comments, but the strip can be about any game with ugly chars and moralism. It just Concord is the one that come to mind (and it does not even has moralism)
AcerBurner
2 months ago
Concord failed because its main selling point was supposed to be a on-going narrative with new installments each week but Helldivers 2 already claimed that niche for live service games on the same console by the exact same publisher. Also, there’s just too many 5 versus 5 hero shooters in general.
???
2 months ago
And the culture war continues unabated! No lessons learned!

Like, only reason Concord is still being talked about at this point is the Discourse™ needs something to talk about. They've yet to find another game or event that's worth complaining about, so they will milk this out for all its worth
Bharda Sullivan
2 months ago
Was there “moralism” is concord? Like effectively everyone, I didn’t play it.
Mostly because it was ugly & boring looking.
And I don’t generally like hero shooters?

…but mostly it looked ugly & boring.

And, I mean, lots of ugly things sell _great_. WH40K, to name the big one.
2 months ago
Get ready for Sony to rapid fire out 5 more live service games in the next 2 years. Concord was the first of 12 that went into development, and 6 already got the axe. The obvious thing is Sony gave up before Concord went live, because they didn't give a huge advertising push.
No No
2 months ago
And by that I mean the quote Kitsune used. The other posts were mostly rational.
No No
2 months ago
@Patrickdxs The point isn't your condescending, facetious "hurr durr I horny". It's that many of us are sick of being preached to by video games. We don't want that garbage shoved down our throat at every moment.
The only bad takes here are yours and Kitsune Inari's.
2 months ago
Joe comin in with the worst take possible. "Bad game sell bad cuz it doesn't make me horny"
Ovis Militaris
2 months ago
Games can be stuffed with moralism and preachy. Metal Gear Solid and Revengeance are FULL of miltary-industrial and sociopolitical commentary, but wrapped in great gameplay. The entire Final Fantasy series is a thesis on Gaia Theory (FF7 goes full hardcore even), but its fantastic RPG'ing.
George Blackwolf
2 months ago
Eh, trust in the incompetency of executives (and studio directives) to pin the blame on everything else BUT the problem, like "we got on the hero shooter trend too late" or "we suffered a trolling campaign".
2 months ago
@Kitsune Inari Marvel Rivals had a much better playcount than Concord.
2 months ago
"Every time a live-service game with no hook or strong word of mouth fails to penetrate an oversaturated market, the most annoying people on the planet will be there to blame diversity." —Jason Schreier
2 months ago
the main reason is that Concord is just an average game in a market and genre more saturated than a typical Where's Wally* page, with a lot of well established and higher-quality competitors, some of which have a price tag up to 40€ lower. - 2/2

* "Where's Waldo" in the USA.
2 months ago
If you ask on the Internet why Concord failed, the same few usual cockwombles will start shouting that it was too "woke" (Inclusive characters! Ugly feminists! DEI! Characters have pronouns!).
But even though it is true that some of the characters were uglier than a toothache in your butt, - 1/2
2 months ago
I think it's a lot less about "ugliness and moralism" and more about "this year was already flooded with overwatch clones", with a side of "there was so little advertising for the game that I didn't even hear about it until it had already been axed".
2 months ago
Concord for sure got extra dung on for being a poster child of "inclusive" values. But what killed the game was the fact it was chasing a gaming trend that already lost its steam.

Look at Deadlock. Everyone loves it. Yet you could switch heroes between those two games and no one would notice.
2 months ago
-The last comic strip had smut. And the strip before that had violence (but no smut). So Jo knows what the fans like.
-It could be worse. It could be smut + violence + ugly + moralism.