Hey guys 2) things : as you quickly pointed out yeah apparently that is an AI image of deadlock but I had no idea. This is embarrassing. I’m trying to get this video done quickly . I have never played deadlock before I just grabbed something pretty quick. And secondly credit to Tyler Bourne for doing the initial pass on the redesign.
I think that's the problem with concord. They don't want to "stereotyping" character design to their roles (like, you don't have to skinny to be agile, etc), and by doing that , they failed to show player what those character are even about
@@animarok9032 i'll double down on that with warframe's grendel. the biggest fat man frame. he can roll his mass into a bowling ball and come after targets like that boulder from indiana jones lol
I'm so glad Concord will help as a guideline on Character Design for years to come on WHAT NOT to do! As an artist myself this is so insightful. And your video is so well articulated and put together, bravo!
One of the issues here is that the developers of this game demonized archetypes. Archetypes are good. They’re typical representations of a character or thing that help communicate ideas quickly. A big muscular man carrying a heavy weapon is probably slower, but deals more damage. A lean, agile character with a light, sleek weapon can likely move faster, but deals less damage. In video game art, archetypes are essential to give the player a good read of the character’s traits and abilities without them having to literally read a description telling them what the character does. Good character design does all this while also providing a visually appealing design to look at. I literally have no idea what the Concord character’s can do based off a simple read. They communicate nothing. They’re unusual without being interesting, and they lack the aesthetic’s to boot. A failure on every level.
I think it's the fact they have marketed it as undesirable characteristics and then people with said characteristics don't feel represented, but rather insulted. It's like having a poor friend and then telling them you made a character based off of them in your game... the character being dirt poor with that being their entire personality. They are represented, but do people really want to be represented like that? Imagine escapism only to play a character like them...
@@cosmicspacething3474pharah. Holding a rocket launcher. Jetpacks on the back. Helmet faced like an eagle beak. The colour is blue to represent the sky and gold to represent an eagle. That alone can tell you what she does.
The more I learn about the characters of Concord the more I realize just how much of a disservice the designs did to their character. The amount of times I said "Wait, that person is supposed to be [x]?!" is exhausting.
I feel that this type of thing also really sucks for the player expectations, even if they somehow do like the design. Imagine seeing that soup kitchen bouncer and liking the design and thinking, 'oh, is that a Tank? can't wait to play them in the game!' just to boot it up and find out they are in fact a healer and be disappointed.
I've said it in a few videos where people design working versions of Concord characters, that it's not really a challenge to improve on them. But if someone wants a real challenge: Try to make them worse. The more I thought about that the other day, the more it blew my mind how difficult it would be. Almost any addition or change made me eventually think "no, it'd add character", "no, it'd draw more attention", "no, it would make me laugh".... even if going with something grotesque and ugly would make them have MORE intrique or illicit more of a reaction than the bland designs now.
They are well executed in the technical sense, take that away and have weird UV distortions, bad topology, uneven texel density etc, and they'll be worse alright.
That'll be the reverse Concord rule. If art is so horrid that people attempt to fix it, the opposite has them endeavor to make it worse. Who knows, they may eventually reach early Rob Liefield or Shintaro Kago levels of hideous. Edit: Liefield eventually got better and Shintaro Kago is disturbingly awesome.
That really is the biggest problem. I think so many people have made videos about the designs because of how hard it is to really say what's specifically bad about them. None of them have a super obvious "This is stupid." or "This is dumb" thing to them. Like, people love to talk about how silly anime hair is, with characters like Yugi from Yu-gi-oh being the go to examples, but even in those cases, when you look at Yugi, you remember that over the top hairstyle. With Concord, it's hard to even remember anything about the characters, you get at most, "They had a big helmet, they were a yellow robot, they were a giant ball, they look like Michael Jackson if he had no style, no grace, and a funny face." Apathy, the key word they elicit is apathy.
I think that is the positive side-effect in the whole negative cloud that surrounds the failure of Concord. It is good that there is a game that can be critically viewed from various points of view what needs to be learned from all this and what not to repeat.
That's putting it lightly. The E.T. game that people often attribute to nearly erasing games as an entertainment industry was said to have been made in only 5 weeks and to have managed to sell about 1.5 million copies. The closest thing I was able to find on its budget was the licensing rights, which cost 20-25 million USD ($65.2-81.5 Mil adjusted). This game took 8 years and had a budget of $200-300 million. And it was shut down in only 2 weeks. This game is objectively a bigger failure than E.T.
There is NOTHING to study or analyze it is a SIMPLE MATTER. The internet just using this situation as a mean to get attention to themselves just as with every other scandals. They drag it out and talk a lot about it for contents but the heart of the matter is simple, just point at the elephant in the room. DEI! Why the designs of Concord so horrendous and nobody liked them? Cause they were never aimed to benefit the game and follow the guideline of gaming character design. They were designed solely to identify with political agenda. WOKE! It's not a failure because of amateurism, lack of experience, lack of knowledge...It's a failure by CHOICE!
I think in order for it to be the biggest flop, there had to be a high point for it to fall from. Most people wouldn't even know this game existed if it wasn't for the bad character design videos about it. Nobody knew or cared about it otherwise. Not far to fall! All said, a very average flop.
I agree,i think the reason the android looks like that is because they were inspired by james bond like characters who wear suits and do spy/assassination stuff but didn't want to use the generic suit and tie fit for the android
Ironically, Android 99 is probably the most effective in communicating her role because she's wearing a business suit and wields a pistol with a silencer just like the Spy from TF2.
I feel like that character dressed like a stereotypically overweight souses chef who throws around food item (like Hoovy) to heal team mates would be a really good concept that doesn't appear more often
I don't understand shit about art or character design, but even so, I watched the whole video without realizing it was basically a 30min lecture. You are a great teacher, keep up the good work
There is something I call "cool ugly" - stuff purposefully designed to be hideous, or monstrous even, but it still has artistic appeal and visual coherency. Think of most well known horror monsters - made to be ugly and terrifying, but generally are interesting and strangely appealing. And there is "ugly ugly" - designs that lack coherency and/or any appeal - and Concord commits to this massively. Half the characters look like basic Starfield goons, others look like they are shoddy cosplayers trying to be "special forces" with "cool" airsoft and football gear imitating military rig. Even the characters that are close to approaching good designs tend to have critical flaws that ruin the entire thing. And most of them - especially the support classes fail to visually convey what they are about. Concord is an endlessly fascinating masterclass of bad design.
I always thought Mr. X and Nemesis full jacket suits really cool. You know damn right they are tyrants, and you wonder, are they aware? Were they humans before and wore clothes? Are their memory fuddled? Why is Mr. X wearing a suit and a hat, was he a detective(Remake)? Why is Nemesis, this ugly ass monster, wears like he is going to an underground cyber club(Original)? Some of the unique non-human characters of Concord looks like they belong in Ratchet & Clank to be honest.
Cool ugly immediately brings to mind cruelty squad. It's so intentionally ugly because it's portraying the ugliness of its world with its biopunk dystopia - the ugliness has narrative value. Concord is just ugly because the designers rejected the basic concepts of visual language out of a misguided belief that archetypes are the same thing as stereotypes.
@@alexjeffrey3981 Cruelty Squad, I'd say rides the fine line between cool ugly and ugly ugly - this game is basically a playable shitpost - it is intentionally hideous, but so much so it may drive a lot of people away. They overdid it a bit, maybe. Though I personally like it. What I meant was more along side of monster or alien designs - horrifying stuff from The Thing. Cronenberg's or Giger's monsters, and slew of video game monsters and aliens. Horrifying paintings by Francis Bacon - this kind of stuff. And then we have contrast in form of ugly-ugly - cheapo things with no rhyme or reason - think of shoddy exploitation movies, or things done without care or serious thinking. And as mentioned before - Concord's designs are ugly, but they are not interesting to look at to compensate. They lack appeal, composition, proper colours. Designs themselves do not tell you much and they fail to even satisfy the basics of "rule of cool".
@@hideshisface1886 yeah I agree, ugly can be an intentional motif used to emphasise the innate grotesqueness of a concept or entity. Body horror like Cronenberg's work does this well with tying monstrous actions and beliefs with our inherent revulsion towards gore and that's a clever storytelling tool. I think it all comes back to intent and service to narrative - if ugliness is used as a storytelling device it can be just as powerful as beauty. But if ugliness is caused by lack of care and attention to design, or in concord's case, an unwillingness to lean into visual storytelling modes, then it just comes across as bland and muddled. I'm a big fan of cruelty squad's aesthetic, both for the novelty and the storytelling power. It's a neat subversion of cyberpunk tropes where capitalist power structures are portrayed as enigmatic and uncaring, instead portraying the fictional world as disgusting and devoid of redeemable qualities.
In the art/animation world, that's called "appealing ugly." Appeal is the visual distinctiveness that grabs the viewer's attention and makes you want to see more, even if the design is purposely hideous.
It’s odd that Concord looks so derivative but somehow intentionally less distinctive. You can see “inspiration” from other IPs but they look cheaper. Even from a hyper-cynical perspective, shouldn’t someone have asked “Can we sell merch of this character?”, and obviously no one did.
@@oriandthesleepytime No it doesn't. At least a character designed by spreadsheets based on social media trends would have SOME appeal. Otherwise social media trends wouldn't be trends. You need to point out the real problem. Which is that the devs are subversive, wannabe revolutionaries who - by their nature, hate everything that's normal without ever questioning WHY those things are normal. In their mind, norms = bad. Tradition = evil. And because they hate normality so much, they defy character archetypes, established design principles, and general stereotypes without ever once thinking why these ideas are the norm to begin with. And why are they the norm? Because they WORK. And the few character designs that do defy these principles and still look great only look great because the designers knew the rules so thoroughly that they knew how to break them effectively. Concord designers hate normality and tradition so much that they didn't even bother to learn why we find certain design decisions to be sound - at least not enough to know how to break them EFFECTIVELY. So it's no wonder that their character designs appeal to nobody when they specifically try their hardest to make them as unappealing as possible to the normal people - which is most people. Frankly, suits who only see numbers would have actually made the designs BETTER. Because they actually want their characters to sell the game, and so will give people what they want if it means they'll buy their game. The only people who would make these types of characters are bitter activist types who care more about pushing their misanthropy than actually making a good damn game.
@@cosmicspacething3474 now say it to the balding project manager who shouts at people until he's red in the face and has ties to law enforcement after he just told you to stay in the office for another four hours tonight.
The most hilarious bit in regards to healer archetype design is that Concord proves why most games go with a skinny form for them; Daw's hitbox is so massive he often died before he got to really aid anyone, and it was difficult for him to actually hide his bulk behind teammates or obstacles. And given that he's supposed to be a healer, he gets the usual lack of healer durability, despite the initial "read" making it seem like his bulk should have given him more durability, akin to Roadhog from Overwatch. Heck, the few bulky healers that exist outside of the healer archetype usually end up being the paladin archetype or "tank healer" that self-heals, but could sometimes heal nearby allies while pushing or holding a point.
I could've told you that would happen for free. Lifeweaver from Overwatch had this problem in spades on his release, so much so that he's gotten a health buff (or 3, depending on how you count). Nowadays he doesn't feel _as_ fragile, but he's still pretty fragile and you want to play pretty safe with him.
The redesign at 9:56 is very cool, she reminds me of a dragonfly or The Fury from MSG. That design clearly says "I'm nimble in the air, but I have low defense".
It's "Pharah/Valkyrie at home", it fulfills similar function as those two characters but lacks an identity and theme beyond it's function. As he said, fulfilling the function is only the first step.
Just adding the boosters while maintaining the suit design immediately conveys the message she can fly, At first look best I can guess is she can maybe run fast and go invisible.
Everyone in VALORANT is forced to have the exact same height and proportions because it is a tactical shooter. However, my god, the designs are so distinct and vibrant and SCREAM gameplay design. Viper and her poison smoke, Omen and his ominous smoke, Jett & Phoenix embody their elemental abilities. Hell Chamber is a suave French dude with sick guns. So even if you are forced into a locked proportion, it’s no excuse. The concord designs are just so lame. Toddlers get more inventive with design motifs in kindergarten lol EDIT: Woah! I got 100 likes? I don’t comment much that’s pretty neat. It’s true tho, Concord doo doo dog water lmao
I'm actually of a mind that a design restriction like that can make for more creative characters, since it forces devs to come up with unique solutions rather than just redesigning them. So, say Concord's restriction was "none of these characters can follow an archetype. They all have to be atypical." Okay, so make the healer a big dumb lumbering bruiser, or like a literal gorilla or something, who "heals" people by picking them up and throwing them out of the fray into cover and then throwing a first-aid kit at them which heals them if it beans them on the head. Make the heavy a little tiny guy with a gun like the Noisy Cricket from Men In Black, that sends him flying after every single shot and if his reeling body hits an opponent that does more damage than the already highly-damaging projectile. Make the scout an 80 year old dude in a wheelchair, but the chair is turbo-charged like the motorcycle wheelchair from Silver Bullet. If it was consistent it would work.
@@ScrambledAndBenedict yep, restrictions breed creativity and cohesion when applied properly. An easy example is how TF2 design is heavily restricted by a few key art directions, such as the colour palettes, relatively realistic proportions (Heavy pushes that a little, but not to the point of disbelief), and so on. The restrictions are used to force the designs to look like they fit and in so doing allow for all the side characters to be easily made to look like they belong, and they force the designs to focus on more creative ways of distinguishing between them.
@@theapexsurvivor9538 Yeah. TF2 had great designs. Honestly, if anything, Concord is a cautionary tale of what happens when the designers clearly had no limitations at all other than their own abilities.
I think the NPC comment hit the nail on the head. If you go to a "health clinic" in Cyberpunk or Starfield, and that blueberry jacket soup kitchen bouncer comes out, it would be fine. Odd for a medic, but there can be story reasons for the guy looking odd. Wouldn't work in a Hero Shooter.
Todd McFarlane said it best "I can sell a book that is drawn by Michaelangelo and written by my dog. But what I can't do is sell a book that is written by William Shakespeare and drawn by my mom." Good design and/or sex appeal can sell products just by themselves.
Yep. I didnt find Stellar Blade all that interesting. Tits and ass alone isnt enough for me, but it was enough for plenty of players and at the end of the day game dev is a business.
@@The_og_moonwalker it was in one of those videos were people send tweets for specialists in an area so that they awnser in that video. Someone asked Todd McFarlane what was most important in a comic book, the art or the writting, and he repplied the art, cause comics are an extremely visual media, and with that quote he meant that it's way easier to sell a comic book with amazing artwork, but a mediocre/bad story, then to sell a comic book with amazing story, but shitty art.
The most respectable dissection of the designs so far that doesn't involve insults and making fun of the original. Lots of great tips here, might try and redesign some of them using the notes pointed out in this video.
I love when they actually discuss the design and not just rant about the precieved "Wokeness" of it, when Overwatch and Apex Legends has a bunch of minorities too but no-one complains about them because they are actually well designed.
YOu can clearly tell this is a critique coming from a real skillfull profesional... not like some other videos I've seen around, of people just wanting to jump on the hate bandwagon to get views
@@Spubbily01There is a direct correlation with "wokeness" and bad character designs. Someone else in the comments here pointed out that these devs were so afraid of going into archetypes they went out of their way to make everyone look flat, bland, and the same. Guess what? When you advocate for more "inclusivity" by trying to make everyone look "unique" and different, if you apply that to EVERY character you design, you end up with this mess. Your flippant disregard for why inserting ideology into your character design process is bad is you willingly ignoring the reason why these character designs were terrible. If you want an example of actual diversity done correctly, you can simply look at Overwatch. While Blizzard is no longer the Blizzard of old and their OW2 designs seems to have taken a nosedive compared to their OW1 characters, the reason why they sold well was because they were able to make characters that actually fit into these archetypes. Even the ones that looked like they were pandering to the imaginary "modern audience" like Zarya were good designs. These characters have personality, with the bright colors that lean heavily into and embrace those archetypes. Their personalities stood out from one another and didn't feel like flatly written tokens made to check off boxes. Oh, and it helps that it wasn't written with millennial writing. OW tries to be its own thing, not yet another slop Avengers/Marvel ripoff. People like you need to realize that all you're doing by ignoring the elephant in the room is the reason why we get these games that are flops and are absolute trash. These games were designed with this ideology in mind FIRST instead of trying to create a great game with great designs. Do you remember the 90s and the spat of bad Christian themed games? Because I do. Why do you think I oppose nonsense like this? They're the same thing, you just replace one religion with another. The sooner some of you folks see this the better. And if you do support this ideology and just think it's just giving a good message but they're doing it incorrectly and they just have to try it again, you are missing the entire point as to why these games always turn into FAILURES.
it's not like shitting on the game is a bad idea anyway. even AI can make better designs than this slop that apparently "real human artists" made. let that sink in
Bro, the amount of people that gave a shot at redesigning Concord characters... and I'm here for all them. A lot of people can learn from this game's failure. Might not be an artist for games but I'm an artist that does like games so this is all fun for me to watch. Imagine if people managed to mod this game and put in all these redesigns. The fact that the executives immediately pulled the plug on such an expensive project only makes it feel like they *are* ashamed of what they made. They didn't even try to salvage anything.
They pulled the plug because the game was leaking money. They put Millions of $ into development, and they did not get anything back from sales, but costs don't end there, continuous support would keep costing them a lot, on top of server infrastructure, customer support and everything else. No matter how you look at it the only good decision was to shut it down, question was only when and the sooner the better. It should not have been released in first place, but once it was it was the moment to hit panic button and shut it down ASAP.
This session is a typical design review session in design school. The professors can be brutal with their criticism of your design. Questioning your design choices, your line of thinking. Etc. I wonder if the concord team had one. Or they're so toxic positive and afraid of hurting anyone's feeling that these designs got thru...
Considering how angry they are that people didn't like the design I very much doubt they would allow anyone to mod it, I wouldn't be surprised if they pushed small updates just to mess up with the mods.
@@nulnoh219 considering that, my theory is that the guys in the design team got chewed out by their teachers, got salty and said something like: "my designs are not bad, they say that because they're intolerant, I'll show those bigots" And proceeded to prove them right
I'm a 3d character artist for an indie studio and I'm often left with having to design characters as well sometimes which I'm a little weak at. But all these Concord character videos and this one in particular has really helped me identify some of my own issues with character designs. Thank you for this very informative video.
As someone who is studying character design. What shocked me about concord wasn't that the characters where just ugly. There poorly designed. There colors don't compliment each other, concord body types are mostly bland and samey. There costumes look amateur at best. And worst of all there porsonality/character isn't highlighted by the design. Most of these characters look like something my friend would create in skyrim.
Could be like in the movie prod. Someone on the higher ups are messing the design team. Just because it didnt suit their taste. with that budget, i believe the design team are aces, but with poor leadership and game sense in the higher ups , that is a pending disaster
Ugly isn't even the problem. The characters were just unappealing. People think Ivy from deadlock, a literal gargoyle/grotesque, is adorable (and some even less wholesome things...)
theres no way the design difference 11:00 it went from a character I wouldn't even take a 2nd look at to a character I would probably main. Thats crazy.
That's too bad, but you weren't the only one to fall for it (totally not me). It's not really anyone's fault, though; Concord was so shortlived that it never had a chance to cement what it was/had been. Although, with what I am seeing in these comments, one may question if that would ever be possible. Great vid btw. I appreciate the research you put into everything beforehand, as well as the measures you have taken to correct your work after posting it.
Yes, but its between a lot of parts that were pre-made to look good together. Still though, you are right, no man's sky slapping a bunch of prefabs together looking better than concord is a testament to how bad the art design went
I think one problem with Concord was that they started with concepts close to Moebius, with low contrast and muted pastels. Which could have looked great if they went with that idea across the complete game and created stylised characters and environment in that style. Problem started when they decided to merge Moebius style with reality.
After hearing the retro inspired theme music I get the feeling that the artists were possibly stuck in some weird lurch where they wanted to make something retro inspired but no one on the team was old enough or knew enough to know what made retro stuff appealing so they ended up with a bunch of slop.
@@Its_Only_Chill Let me see if I understand the logic here ... because there are gay characters in a game, the game developers are trying to tell you to be gay too. Therefore no-one wants to buy the game. Is that it?
I have never seen a game flop SO hard that I have seen multiple videos use it as a case study of what not to do by professionals in character design before Concord. These videos kind of help me design my characters for my projects too so that's nice
I have been saying that from the start: Concord's character design is not ugly. "Ugly" implies it has some sort identity, we still remember Ugly Sonic after all. Concord's design is the equivalent of rice waffles.
I’ll disagree with you there. The cast of heroes is so repulsive to look at I immediately lost interest after the initial reveal. I’m sure 50% of viewers from that trailer felt the same. The color schemes, the normie look, and the overweight characters all look ugly to me. The plump characters in Overwatch at least have some edginess to the designs like Roadhog.
@@ewjiml But you're still not defining "ugly" in what you said. I've compared every one of these characters to people in real life that I would NEVER call traditionally "ugly". You can, as an artist, find things unappealing, having bad aesthetic, not following traditional design rules, etc. But these characters are far from ugly. To me, these characters represent 'regular people' you would see on a street who were just plopped into an arena battle. They look like characters you would see in a made for Netflix mini series. Not bad, but not good either. Their 'costumes' are too clean, but the colors of their outfits are pretty realistic in terms of 'real life' standards. Just go outside in a big city, most people don't look like blizzard concept art. And I feel like that's what they were attempting here. It just wasn't received as well as they assumed it would be. People just can't let go of stylized PBR for games like this. And there are PLENTY of design choices that are followed with the Concord designs. I could pick apart Overwatch in a similar manner as often done with Concord lol.
@@gatleonhart UGLY definition - unpleasant or repulsive, especially in appearance. You don’t need to write any essay…..I get it. Your definition in more complex. Mine is not.
Watching this great vid, it suddenly hit me why this may have gone the way it did: clearly the artists, going by early concept art, knew how to make things visually appealing. More importantly, they probably _liked_ to make certain kinds of characters, attractive ones, heroic ones, 'this one is SUPPOSED to be ugly' ones. If an artist who likes creating things is told they are not allowed to create what they actually enjoy doing and instead have to follow orders by people who seem hellbent on making things the artist would never make on their own, that's probably a recipe for bad results. And if bad results still get approved by someone who doesn't care about art but only about boxes being checked... not a good recipe.
Normally I'd agree, but I really don't think it's the case here. Based on what the artists believe and have stated on various social media, they're exactly the kind of people who want to make non-gendered stereotype breaking uggos. None of the images online are concord concept art, they're redraws done after the game came out by people who had nothing to do with Concord, just independent artists showing that the designs could've been better. Case in point: the Emari design shown at 2:48 is a redesign by art_attackx. He drew it on his bus ride home one day :P
@@Geminosity This game is made by clearly skilled artists - but the people that paid their salary constantly asked them to do things that just don't work. I've been in this position myself where I have to draw something that I clearly know isn't working, but the client doesn't care and thinks it's cool, and sometimes even wants to just double down on it. Well, they're the client, they're always right because they're buttering my bread - even if I disagree, because ultimately that's just how it goes. At some point into this project, every artist on this game must have broken and just went with "yes boss, whatever you say, sure, I'll make things more boring and muddy and then add photorealism filter on things nobody will ever zoom in and look at" and just dreamed about clocking out. There's just no way it could have been anything but soul crushing drudgery. What the artists then state on social media is Stockholm syndrome stuff. The thing they've worked on for 6 years is bombing, they're in danger of being laid off in the worst year for the job security in the industry since the 80s crash. Of course they're going to try and polish the turd - they've been doing this for 6 years already, what's another twitter post or two?
Apparently one of the early concept arts shown here is actually a redraw done by an artist after the game came out: ruclips.net/video/7CDzyYqILpw/видео.html
@@thesunthrone Thing is I've worked in the games industry myself for over 8 years. To this day I'll still happily point out everything wrong with what I worked on. I'm well aware that meddling from on-high is soul-crushing. I've had the most stupid reasoning deployed to prevent me from fixing things or for crowbarring unnecessary things in and that it's hard to escape from in the industry. As such, again, normally I'd just assume the same as you, but in this one particular case, I just think the (vocal) members of the team actually drink the coolade and would've produced this rubbish on their own. While things like the texture work and a number of technical aspects are well done, the designs reek not of corporate homogenization but instead of stereotype breaking and going against the established for the sake of it. You need to actually know a number of artistic practices and actively avoid or subvert them to end up as wildly repellant as what they've pulled off... I don't think you get there by sheer chance or incompetence :P Not to mention their own output has various hints of trying to masculinize the feminine, feminize the masculine and mash things into an ugly middle ground. There's a reason people have been pointing at Amanda Kiefer's evangelion fan art of rei and asuka :P
Concord has taught us 2 things. 1) Design concepts. 2) Overwatch is way better than we previously thought. Seriously, Concord design is so bad that they made Blizzard look good.
Blizzard have always done some of the best character design and law in video games. There's a reason why WoW is still going after 20 years, longer it you consider Warcraft. Overwatch has been going and is still going strong contrary to belief, after 8 years, their games are made to last and it's why they only release one barely a decade at a time.
@@cosmicspacething3474 I mean every business has to make money, that's just how games are these days. The battle pass, skin/shop prices are on the lower end compared to a lot of F2P games, I'd say on par with Fortnite. All heros and modes are free then you don't have to put a penny into the game if you don't want too
@@cosmicspacething3474nah it was ruined by bad balance and lack of content every season to bring people back. That's why it has stayed at the same player count for 10 seasons.
A point to highlight is that, had the characters from concord been in a story and character driven game, they might well have worked. If they were in a game that allowed their character to be portrayed in ways other than their visuals, core game mechanics, and a limited amount of voice lines, and importantly if they were in a game where immediate recognition of "what's this character about" wasn't important; then they would stand much stronger. Notably, many/most could still be better, but my point is that, what here makes these designs objectively bad, could in a different context provide some value. For example, the medic that doesn't match the aesthetic of a medic, has potential as a character concept. Is he insecure? is he discriminated for not looking the part despite being skilled? Does he let all this impact his work? All questions that in a different game where these questions can be explored would provide interest. But in a hero shooter, at best they're background details few notice and fewer still care about. Worst case they muddle the design and lead to a more messy experience overall.
I legit had no idea that the hobo kitchen bouncer was a healer and that rocket girl was supposed to be aerial based until you mentioned it. The designs are so confusing that I'm convinced that it was done like that on purpose at this point. Maybe they were trying to send a message against visual stereotypes or something.
That's exactly what they did. They were trying to make a political statement. Look up articles about the game prior to it releasing, they went on long-winded rants about it.
im no professional artist (freelance at best) but that is the first thing i said when looking at Concords characters if i were to blackout these characters do they standout from each other or telegraph anything? no they did not. The one good thing these characters did is help teach what not to do or focus on when it comes to character or even creature design. For me its given a fun challenge in redesigning characters as a lot of em are outside my comfort zone (robots (1-Off), and any human character).
When I saw the rocket girl design, I was confused, like her whole kit is rocket boots, ground slamming and a rocket launcher so why isn't the boots massive with big rockets on it, so it has weight to it for ground slam and flying. Could even put wings on it to mimic Hermes for the fast-moving character
Fr, one of the most immediate things I noticed on the redesign showed is the swap from a random dirt bike helmet & sand colors to an actual jet pilot (at least inspired) helmet and more military type colors Like, what about the original design reads "aerial bomber" other than the launcher? She looks more like some psycho Mad Max biker with a rocket launcher than someone who'd even think about flying. Look at Pharah, or Drogoz (from Paladins) and tell me that they could be anything *but* people that fly and shoot rockets. Pharah is literally a sky colored bird, and Drogoz is a dragon. What else could they possibly do?
@@dr.facilier5186 Yeah, I just have no idea what they were thinking, when you make a character fly there should be some noticeable element to show there flying. if there isn't then the world itself should just allow flight for everyone like DB but it wasn't for concord.
19:30 realistic proportion could have also worked if you changed the silhouette with equipment / clothes. Character doesnt need to have unrealistic proportion, you can do that with equipment too right? Give someone a big puffy coat, long slender jacket, beefy armour in some areas, but none of that is implemented, and the colours feel a bit muted. Im a graphic designer so this really hurts my eyes cuz despite not knowing concept art or character design, even I can tell whats wrong .
Funny enough even COD used to do that with BO2. The SMG skin has cloth hat and really light armor, the LMG skin has a bunch of armor padding around their body and big helmet, the sniper skin has a hood over their head, etc.
Big aspect of gaming in modern time is meta-gaming - i.e. things that happens outside of the game itself - the narratives, the reddit/youtube posts etc etc. If people are talking about your cool characters, or cool videos and trailers, lore explorations etc etc then you did something right. When first Overwatch came out, everyone was just buzzing about the characters and the main trailer etc etc there was fan art of all sorts etc etc. Point being is you have to get your characters right (in a character-focused game) and then the internet and word of mouth will do the marketing for you.
Feels bad for the artists tbh. Usually a game that failed is it's own thing and the artists after the fact can still show their work proudly, for example skulls and bones. For Concord tho, everyone, even their peers are dunking on the design. I wouldn't blame them if they don't put this in their portfolio.
I mean the designs/models on a technical level is well done and that effort should be shown off and acknowledged. This feels more like a management failure where the artists weren't given a proper brief and direction and had to wing it
@@Exospray I saw a twit from the artist saying that there was a 'committee' that had the final word about the characters, so as we can see they have more a personal taste than that a technical knowledge
@@TylerEdlin84 They're already removing this game from their profiles, but the issue is that some members were on it for years (up to 8), leaving big gaps in their employment history. They can always lie about these gaps.
Wow man, I used to follow your work on deviantart around 2010s when I was into drawing. What a happy coincidence to have your video shown in my feed. I didn't realize the channel name until the introduction. Thank the algorithm!
When Overwatch first came out, I hated Zarya. But now she is one of my favorite characters. And the moment I saw Concord, I realized that no matter how long I played Concord, I would never like these characters.
I mean visually I can understand why people don't like her, but nevertheless, her design works. You can just show her design to anyone not familiar with Overwatch and they will correctly associate her with "big strong woman carrying big gun".
You realize the first sentence of your comment is really weakening the second sentence of your comment, right? I mean, sure, Concord design is bad, but as someone who first hated Zarya and then years later learned to love her your opinion on design in a game that got shut down within two weeks isn’t exactly… useful.
Did you know back then, when you “hated” Zarya (why hate?), that you would come to like that character? A few parts of what you said kind of don’t fit together too well… I agree Concord characters are tasteless, bland, uninspired and that I too likely wouldn’t like it… but you do get the issue here right??
I love how this sort of conversation always circles back to TF2. Those characters will most likely outlive their own game because of how often they’re used in SFM, gmod and just pop culture.
When working on my game, character design was the hardest part. Thanks for putting this together there is a lot to learn, especially from the silhouette part.
@@TylerEdlin84 Honestly a lot of what you showed in the video was baffling to me, like the desaturated comparison @13:00. Thanks for the video! It was super interesting, and it's refreshing to get some insight into the flop that isn't fixated on the political stuff
They wanted to subvert expectations and show a bigger guy could be nimble... If you subvert expectations you need to take a lot of time to explain it in the story.
20:52 Tf2 characters have story but it is more to enhance the feeling you got from your first glance. Just look at the Meet the team videos they take the core parts of the characters and turn it up to 11 (but it also shows their flaws especialy in Experation date)
Daw looks like a pest exterminator from Alaska who shoots ice. I was absolutely surprised when it turns out that He was a guy, thought he was a woman He's a healer And thats a regular gun
As a non-professional, for me it simply comes down to appeal. A game with a cool aesthetic and cool looking characters will draw me in; there's a reason I did play TF2 and Overwatch, but never even considered playing Concord for even a fraction of a second. When I look at the Overwatch cast, there's a lot of characters that I want to play as because they look like badasses. When I play a game that's supposed to feature heroes, I want my character to look cool, strong and badass, to make me feel like I'm playing an actual hero.
Amazing video. It feels like this should be a 2hr lecture! I hope the developers of that game understand that its not about "dancing on the grave" of this game but noticing it has serious flaws
@@TylerEdlin84 You should release an extended cut! As a former game dev student, I found this to be incredibly fascinating. Definitely subscribing to you, too, by the way.
I'll never understand why they chose to use those tube-like shapes on many of the characters in Concord- it gives an offputting feeling when characters have like intestines on their shoulder pads or around their gut. It'd be fine for one character if they were meant to be the quirky or even scary design, so that moment of offputting grossness feels like punctuation, but it's on a lot of the characters. If weirdness is punctuation, then the designs are all punctuation.
@@TylerEdlin84 Yeah, sort of a hybrid of pipes/tubes and a puffy winter jacket look. It's incredibly offputting, the only word that comes to mind. Thanks for doing this breakdown btw. Great video.
He _did,_ fortunately, go for sexualization though. I would absolutely do her in her redesign if my girlfriend weren't standing behind me with a lead pipe.
i keep saying this. a character design does not need to be sexy, but aesthetically pleasing in eyes. they can be cute, cool, pretty, graceful, etc something that makes a player want to play as the character.
I never played Concord, but one thing I noticed from the character design is that they were very reminiscent of the art style of Jean "Moebius" Giraud, especially in the less standard bodyshapes and use of pastel colours. I am a big fan of his work and while I don't think that the characters in Concord looked amazing, it would be silly to say that taking influence from a well regarded comic book artist like that can't be used in a game. His style was used as a touchpoint for games in the past like Panzer Dragoon or Sable, so it can work, perhaps not in this exact type of game and while it's also using Marvel/Wheedon chatter on the characters.
Moebius's muted style work because his character and background design is really captivating. You can switch the comic into black and white and the comic would still be fun to read. Also the muted color probably brings about the 60s noir art style, which Concord definitely isn't since it is based on the wacky GOTG Franchise that has a lot of bright colors
The issue is that Moebius style works because the big shapes are then broken down by small details on them - whether design elements or hatching and grime, lots and lots of wear and tear and grime, the muted pastels giving your eye the space to focus on the intricate linework. Yet here, there is no linework at all. Concord's designs are clean, pristine, sparkling polished because for some reason they decided that they want to both go for Moebius-style shapes AND photorealism, two opposite ends of the spectrum. I'd wager many of these designs would read better if the artists were allowed to just dirty them up more and create focus points and areas of interest with markings and wear & tear. Had this game kept the cel-shaded style some of its promo art had and went with hard black outlines, these designs would work much better, the tone would likewise come across better. But Guardians was popular, so the voice from above said "make it more like Marvel" and here we are...
16:16 looking at the full art again and realizing just how damn good Junker Queen's design is. If you take away her weapons, you'll see her tattered clothes and all the spikes and immediately know she likes to brawl and scrap. The gladiator waistband shows that as well. Exposed midriff and thigh bring your attention to the fact that she's physically pretty strong. then we get to colors and she has shocks of red around her outfit. The bandana/rag/whatever it is, the shoulder armor, and most importantly...her gauntlet and she's not wearing one on her right arm quickly telling a new player "Hey! Pay attention! You'll be using this if you pick her!". Give the shotgun and big axe back at this point and you'd have to be an idiot to not realize that she's a hero that likes to be up close and personal when fighting, but that was mostly told before we even got to what she even fights with and what abilities she has.
I saw the director artist of concord artstasion her art is amazing, very moebius inspired. Yet her design doesnt comunicate in video game, it could work in comics like saga or lincal. Unfortunaly the style doest adapt to the game style.
Concord's design is what you get when you are stuck in a hugbox, or a room full of people who don't want to "offend" you and keep saying everything you do is great.
One thing I noticed in the Concord character designs is it appears they went out of their way to de-femenize almost all of the female character's body shapes. Yes, not all females are curvy, but not all of them are sticks either. It's a gross and unrealistic over-correction.
@@RKNancy It's mostly those weird people from twitter. Crazy how they think making female characters feminine is somehow discriminatory towards women, and then go and make them all so androgynous to the point of discriminating against feminine woman.
Honestly it's kind of insulting how they de-feminized the characters here. It feels to me like the design team really thought the best way to de-sexualize their female characters was to make them unappealing and androgynous. It's almost like they're implying that appealing feminine designs are automatically sexual in nature, which is... definitely an opinion I disagree with.
As a Concept Art student, Concord is a great case study on what not to do in character design. I'm even taking their characters and making my own re-design of them, as practice and as a way of learning, myself Your video is very well structured, earned my subscribe ❤
24:02 “We know she’s a good character” Mei in game: slowly freezes enemies in place, then looks them in the eye as she yeets an icicle into their brain.
I’ve seen people try to fix the designs and you have easily the best redesign among them. Too many people stick with the atrocious colors and drag down their own attempts to salvage the character. Great video.
A lot of people here are correct in saying archetypes in visual design are generally useful, but I just wanted to point everyone in the direction of Battle Chasers: Nightwar. It's a fantastic turn-based RPG, but its characters classes are not immedetly apparent from their designs. Gully, a small girl wieding her father's giant gauntlets, looks like she'd be a dps, but she's your tank, using magic barriers to protect your party, and story-wise, she literally has big gloves to fill. Calibretto, a giant, buff automaton, wields a minigun and looks like a tank, but is your healer and your resident soul of the party, and he's very gentle with animals. Garrison is a tall man in armor, with red clothing and a greatsword, who you might think is a tank or typical dps, but he's a rouge. He's thin, agile, quick, and deals bleed damage. These unusual classes extend to the rest of the cast, but even though their designs don't instantly convey their archetype, their mechanics, animations, personalities, and small visual nods to those traditional calsses do. Go check it out! Is good game. :)
There was a great example of good character design right behind you: The Final Fantasy 7 figurines. They were easy to identify even at a smaller size and blurry in the background of the video, but just with that it was enough to know who they were.
I'm flabbergasted that all the redesign of concord characters are looks amazing and the fact that most of redesign done within homework hours is just too funny
I remember hearing something about breaking design rules or theories to make a character appealing and unique, adding a certain twist, contrasting their design with what they’re really capable of. For example, One Punch Man. They did that..... . . Too much, making it questionable, beyond rational.
Thank you for these videos!! Character design is something I struggle with and have been trying to improve for years but your videos on Concord have helped more than anything else! Breaking down why it failed and explaining how to improve it has made it so much easier to understand. Thank you!
imo it's also semi-hero shooter burnout. Like, we've done this bit already. TF2, Paladins, Overwatch, all hero shooters with the same formula. class based characters, objective based combat, is in first person. What Overwatch did new was add the moba/MMO-esque ability system to those classes, with Paladins doing roughly the same but also adding the build system from mobas, but simplified. Now, what does Concord do uniquely? They're already almost a decade late to this hype train, and generally doesn't do anything unique. You touched on Deadlock for a bit, and to me the difference is that Deadlock is a MOBA first, hero shooter second. It has an interesting artstyle, ofc character design is done well, but they do something unique to MOBAs. It's no long top-down and the combat is no longer exclusively on a flat plane. You got verticality now, shooter-style aiming, the classic MOBA skeleton, AND a slightly simplified build system + browse system to make it less daunting for people to get into. That's, to me, the biggest difference between Concord vs Deadlock outside of design.
Really, the problem is that the devs wanted to try and prove that a-typical, non-fantasy type character designs were fine to try and break the status-quo and they found out the hard way they were wrong.
Funny thing is, character design was one of the two reasons this game flopped, the other being the gameplay itself. Gameplay was too slow for a hero shooter especially movement (any slower and they'd be going backwards) and mostly every hero did so little damage that it cost 400,000$ to kill an enemy in 12 hours
a quick correction, the "original design" of Emari is actually a redesign from an artist called Sean, or Art Attack X on the bird app. it was edited to remove the signature and change the lipstick color
Is art subjective? Sure. But there is a point where when art is so unanimously disliked it crosses that barrier of subjectivity, Concord's characters are just an absolute failure
The Concord rocket launcher girl has the worst design by far of any playable character I've ever seen in a video game. There's a term popularized by Riot Games called "player fantasy", which is the idea that the player should be intrigued to play as a character just based on a simple description of them. Like Genji from Overwatch is "cyborg ninja dude". That's a strong player fantasy because who wouldn't want to play as one of those? The Concord character looks like a generic NPC for the player to target during a tutorial on how to shoot. No one has the player fantasy of being a target dummy. I'm baffled on how this design made it to the final game.
She looks like a LIDL version of The Stig from Top Gear, and that dude is literally just a racer wearing an all white racing suit and helmet. How someone can take such a simple concept and break it to the point of making it unappealing is beyond me.
As a non-Artist this was fascinating. I’ve never thought about all the little details and considered things like silhouettes to enable gamers to recognise in a rush.
It would not surprise me if the assassin robot of Concord was inspired by characters like Agent 47 from Hitman. 47 wears black, which we associate with death and sorrow. Agent 99 wears a colorful suit we associate with happy-go-lucky characters
Black is more for elegance, the detail on 47 is the red tie, is a really saturated color that makes it so strong on his simple design that resembles blood, the design completes when you notice he wear a pair of gloves... He is a bad man in a suit
Something I think gets buried in these conversations is aesthetic context. If I was flipping through an art book and came across some of the Concord designs, I'd probably think they were pretty cool. If I flipped to the next page and saw, like, a colorful picture of Tracer or something, I'd think 'that's fun' and move on. What makes something interesting and unique is often a refusal of the established rules. Whether or not those deviations are successful are determined by the context and the culture. TF2 deviated hard from the aesthetic context of the time and with careful consideration was able to tap into something interesting and unique to great success because it focused on the most important part of video games. Fun. I think this was the trap that the Concord designers fell into. It may be interesting, but like Reggie said 'if it ain't fun, why bother?'
25:01 The designs are a lot better if you swap the characters. The top one looks more like a knife-wielding assassin type and the bottom looks more like a fire mage.
Hey Tyler! The official trailer for Borderlands 4 just dropped and people hate the designs of the Vault Hunters. People are saying they look like NPC’s. Can you do a break down video on it? I’d love to hear your thoughts!
I feel really bad for the designers and artists who spent years of their lives working on this - cause you know the final decisions weren't up to them, yet now the whole internet thinks it's cool to shit on their design when actually, they're good designs - it's professional work to a high standard, but, it just doesn't work in this context.
One of the most baffling flaws of the character designs in Concord is that green juggernaut thing. She just look sad. Like really bad mood sad and depressed. Like I don't want to be here sad. Just why.
I know, right? These characters look like they are self aware when it comes to how bad they look, whether it would be their malnourished appearances or lack of energy. They resemble sad wash-ups. What is even worse was that this game had a budget of 200-300 million dollars, thus making these designs inexcusable. I genuinely feel ashamed of ever having seen these lame, politically driven disasters of character design. These were painful to observe. If these characters were just some terrible ocs and Sjw posted to instagram, the comments would’ve shredded these designs apart with their typical remarks. Overall, these just fail in all aspects: Zero appeal, zero design language to hint players on how they behave, and overall just ugly. Comparing Overwatch’s designs to Concord’s abominations is like putting Iron man in the same room as Iron deficiency Man.
Very interesting video, learned a lot. I appreciate that it was not only about "Concord sucks, point and laugh" but most importantly about teaching how to do better. I'll try to apply your recommendation to my designs (not pro, just working on it for myself)
One thing Nintendo do better over every other gaming company , is the design is clearly gameplay oriented and made to be appeling and practical, Capcom use that formula too for there fighting game, you know exactly what special ability the fighter have supposed to be, with there animation and charisma look, Blizzard clearly learn that, they put that fighting game design/charisma and power ability to get a balanced Multi player FPS that make Overwatch stand from other FPS , if your miss the gameplay design and the look of the avatar you made for that game you intend to make, you're in trouble , a game should be playable for almost everyone but you must have a strong game play idea and design to make it work.
TF2 chacater design: "yeah, all of these makes sense, the colours being palet oposites to make it easy to distinguish each team, the different shapes and skin colours, the phisique, the guns, silhouetes, TF2 is a a amazing game" Concord: "uhhhh, i think thats a... assasin? Thats a.... Tank?... what am i looking at?"
It's crazy you used Serial Experiments Lain for the anime example. I feel like it's so under the radar but such a gem for people who grew up when the age of the internet was still in it's younger stages
Hey guys 2) things : as you quickly pointed out yeah apparently that is an AI image of deadlock but I had no idea. This is embarrassing. I’m trying to get this video done quickly . I have never played deadlock before I just grabbed something pretty quick. And secondly credit to Tyler Bourne for doing the initial pass on the redesign.
Happens to everyone now. The internet is now full of this garbage.
The reason most likely is that way is because originally Deadlock was a sci fi game,called NeonPrime
Really relieved to see this, I'm into the character design in Deadlock and seeing an AI generated poster of it made me seize up real bad.
Easy mistake with google nowadays. Alot of the search results are ai ☹️
Just shows that even ai has better tastes lol
I think that's the problem with concord. They don't want to "stereotyping" character design to their roles (like, you don't have to skinny to be agile, etc), and by doing that , they failed to show player what those character are even about
and the funny thing is that overwatch managed to do that, dva is a skiny character however her mecha is big and bulk,
@@animarok9032 i'll double down on that with warframe's grendel. the biggest fat man frame. he can roll his mass into a bowling ball and come after targets like that boulder from indiana jones lol
This. If you could tell what a character was by looking at them then that was a _faliure_ in their eyes.
@@davonsden Talking about real problems here, you can leave your culture war grievances at the door.
@@davonsden those they/thems living rent free in your head I see. How does it feel to be the brainslut of the blue hair mob? 😂
I'm so glad Concord will help as a guideline on Character Design for years to come on WHAT NOT to do! As an artist myself this is so insightful. And your video is so well articulated and put together, bravo!
Absolutely!
cringe
@@yasnizory3292 projection
Like the sequel trilogy is used by Screen writers what not to do.
we hope they will learn from this remember everything else other then the design is currently being blamed by game journalists
One of the issues here is that the developers of this game demonized archetypes. Archetypes are good. They’re typical representations of a character or thing that help communicate ideas quickly. A big muscular man carrying a heavy weapon is probably slower, but deals more damage. A lean, agile character with a light, sleek weapon can likely move faster, but deals less damage. In video game art, archetypes are essential to give the player a good read of the character’s traits and abilities without them having to literally read a description telling them what the character does. Good character design does all this while also providing a visually appealing design to look at. I literally have no idea what the Concord character’s can do based off a simple read. They communicate nothing. They’re unusual without being interesting, and they lack the aesthetic’s to boot. A failure on every level.
I don’t even think you have to stay rigidly to archetypes, just give us SOMETHING that makes it obvious what they are
THIS. They tried to defy visual character archetypes in a genre where they're VERY important to express roles
One can have the archetype in game and the contrast in the video. The Demoman a black Scotsman but clearly archetypes what he is.
I think it's the fact they have marketed it as undesirable characteristics and then people with said characteristics don't feel represented, but rather insulted.
It's like having a poor friend and then telling them you made a character based off of them in your game... the character being dirt poor with that being their entire personality.
They are represented, but do people really want to be represented like that? Imagine escapism only to play a character like them...
@@cosmicspacething3474pharah.
Holding a rocket launcher.
Jetpacks on the back.
Helmet faced like an eagle beak.
The colour is blue to represent the sky and gold to represent an eagle.
That alone can tell you what she does.
The more I learn about the characters of Concord the more I realize just how much of a disservice the designs did to their character. The amount of times I said "Wait, that person is supposed to be [x]?!" is exhausting.
Their designs reek of "smash the patriarchy".
The irony of this is all the characters are structurally male. They just aren't Men.
@@mrbluebell2735 in the grim darkness of the far future there are only 'persons'. not men or women
Wokemallet 2024
I feel that this type of thing also really sucks for the player expectations, even if they somehow do like the design. Imagine seeing that soup kitchen bouncer and liking the design and thinking, 'oh, is that a Tank? can't wait to play them in the game!' just to boot it up and find out they are in fact a healer and be disappointed.
I've said it in a few videos where people design working versions of Concord characters, that it's not really a challenge to improve on them.
But if someone wants a real challenge: Try to make them worse.
The more I thought about that the other day, the more it blew my mind how difficult it would be. Almost any addition or change made me eventually think "no, it'd add character", "no, it'd draw more attention", "no, it would make me laugh".... even if going with something grotesque and ugly would make them have MORE intrique or illicit more of a reaction than the bland designs now.
it's actually easy. add this game's design philosophy with Dustborn's design philosophy. 2 shitchildren born from the same putrid womb
They are well executed in the technical sense, take that away and have weird UV distortions, bad topology, uneven texel density etc, and they'll be worse alright.
@@pakumies That wouldn't be design, but otherwise yeah, you're right :)
That'll be the reverse Concord rule. If art is so horrid that people attempt to fix it, the opposite has them endeavor to make it worse.
Who knows, they may eventually reach early Rob Liefield or Shintaro Kago levels of hideous.
Edit: Liefield eventually got better and Shintaro Kago is disturbingly awesome.
That really is the biggest problem. I think so many people have made videos about the designs because of how hard it is to really say what's specifically bad about them. None of them have a super obvious "This is stupid." or "This is dumb" thing to them. Like, people love to talk about how silly anime hair is, with characters like Yugi from Yu-gi-oh being the go to examples, but even in those cases, when you look at Yugi, you remember that over the top hairstyle. With Concord, it's hard to even remember anything about the characters, you get at most, "They had a big helmet, they were a yellow robot, they were a giant ball, they look like Michael Jackson if he had no style, no grace, and a funny face." Apathy, the key word they elicit is apathy.
This case will be studied and analyzed for years to come. Probably gaming biggest flop ever.
biggest flop yet
I think that is the positive side-effect in the whole negative cloud that surrounds the failure of Concord. It is good that there is a game that can be critically viewed from various points of view what needs to be learned from all this and what not to repeat.
That's putting it lightly.
The E.T. game that people often attribute to nearly erasing games as an entertainment industry was said to have been made in only 5 weeks and to have managed to sell about 1.5 million copies. The closest thing I was able to find on its budget was the licensing rights, which cost 20-25 million USD ($65.2-81.5 Mil adjusted).
This game took 8 years and had a budget of $200-300 million. And it was shut down in only 2 weeks.
This game is objectively a bigger failure than E.T.
There is NOTHING to study or analyze it is a SIMPLE MATTER. The internet just using this situation as a mean to get attention to themselves just as with every other scandals. They drag it out and talk a lot about it for contents but the heart of the matter is simple, just point at the elephant in the room. DEI! Why the designs of Concord so horrendous and nobody liked them? Cause they were never aimed to benefit the game and follow the guideline of gaming character design. They were designed solely to identify with political agenda. WOKE! It's not a failure because of amateurism, lack of experience, lack of knowledge...It's a failure by CHOICE!
I think in order for it to be the biggest flop, there had to be a high point for it to fall from. Most people wouldn't even know this game existed if it wasn't for the bad character design videos about it. Nobody knew or cared about it otherwise. Not far to fall! All said, a very average flop.
I actually don't hate Android 99's design, but I never would have guessed that she's an assassin. She looks like a gumshoe or detective.
is that ace attorney reference 😮
I agree,i think the reason the android looks like that is because they were inspired by james bond like characters who wear suits and do spy/assassination stuff but didn't want to use the generic suit and tie fit for the android
i would probably like Android 99's design if they chose better colors
@@OreVYussnone of the characters have good colours.
Ironically, Android 99 is probably the most effective in communicating her role because she's wearing a business suit and wields a pistol with a silencer just like the Spy from TF2.
The soup kitchen bouncer will heal you by putting you to a forever sleep
I feel like that character dressed like a stereotypically overweight souses chef who throws around food item (like Hoovy) to heal team mates would be a really good concept that doesn't appear more often
bro will throw you a meat pie 🥧
That character I think could've been saved by making him the nerdy gadget guy and improving a few things about his appearance
He gonna bring you one of his chicken soup
@@quakethedoombringer This! Where my foodie support/healers at!! Under-utilized trope right here.
I don't understand shit about art or character design, but even so, I watched the whole video without realizing it was basically a 30min lecture. You are a great teacher, keep up the good work
Hahaa thank you
Yh i only ever "feel" that something is good. So its nice to listen to a professional explain how that is achieved
There is something I call "cool ugly" - stuff purposefully designed to be hideous, or monstrous even, but it still has artistic appeal and visual coherency. Think of most well known horror monsters - made to be ugly and terrifying, but generally are interesting and strangely appealing.
And there is "ugly ugly" - designs that lack coherency and/or any appeal - and Concord commits to this massively.
Half the characters look like basic Starfield goons, others look like they are shoddy cosplayers trying to be "special forces" with "cool" airsoft and football gear imitating military rig. Even the characters that are close to approaching good designs tend to have critical flaws that ruin the entire thing.
And most of them - especially the support classes fail to visually convey what they are about.
Concord is an endlessly fascinating masterclass of bad design.
I always thought Mr. X and Nemesis full jacket suits really cool. You know damn right they are tyrants, and you wonder, are they aware? Were they humans before and wore clothes? Are their memory fuddled? Why is Mr. X wearing a suit and a hat, was he a detective(Remake)? Why is Nemesis, this ugly ass monster, wears like he is going to an underground cyber club(Original)?
Some of the unique non-human characters of Concord looks like they belong in Ratchet & Clank to be honest.
Cool ugly immediately brings to mind cruelty squad. It's so intentionally ugly because it's portraying the ugliness of its world with its biopunk dystopia - the ugliness has narrative value. Concord is just ugly because the designers rejected the basic concepts of visual language out of a misguided belief that archetypes are the same thing as stereotypes.
@@alexjeffrey3981 Cruelty Squad, I'd say rides the fine line between cool ugly and ugly ugly - this game is basically a playable shitpost - it is intentionally hideous, but so much so it may drive a lot of people away. They overdid it a bit, maybe.
Though I personally like it.
What I meant was more along side of monster or alien designs - horrifying stuff from The Thing. Cronenberg's or Giger's monsters, and slew of video game monsters and aliens. Horrifying paintings by Francis Bacon - this kind of stuff.
And then we have contrast in form of ugly-ugly - cheapo things with no rhyme or reason - think of shoddy exploitation movies, or things done without care or serious thinking.
And as mentioned before - Concord's designs are ugly, but they are not interesting to look at to compensate. They lack appeal, composition, proper colours. Designs themselves do not tell you much and they fail to even satisfy the basics of "rule of cool".
@@hideshisface1886 yeah I agree, ugly can be an intentional motif used to emphasise the innate grotesqueness of a concept or entity. Body horror like Cronenberg's work does this well with tying monstrous actions and beliefs with our inherent revulsion towards gore and that's a clever storytelling tool. I think it all comes back to intent and service to narrative - if ugliness is used as a storytelling device it can be just as powerful as beauty. But if ugliness is caused by lack of care and attention to design, or in concord's case, an unwillingness to lean into visual storytelling modes, then it just comes across as bland and muddled.
I'm a big fan of cruelty squad's aesthetic, both for the novelty and the storytelling power. It's a neat subversion of cyberpunk tropes where capitalist power structures are portrayed as enigmatic and uncaring, instead portraying the fictional world as disgusting and devoid of redeemable qualities.
In the art/animation world, that's called "appealing ugly." Appeal is the visual distinctiveness that grabs the viewer's attention and makes you want to see more, even if the design is purposely hideous.
It’s odd that Concord looks so derivative but somehow intentionally less distinctive. You can see “inspiration” from other IPs but they look cheaper.
Even from a hyper-cynical perspective, shouldn’t someone have asked “Can we sell merch of this character?”, and obviously no one did.
The team is too afraid to ask. Imagine what would you say about Daw that won't end with you sitting in front of HR and getting fired.
Hey! We can't sell characters, that's objectifying... lol
@@hanyuchuang “His choice of clothes suck ass” …nah that was pretty easy to say
@@oriandthesleepytime No it doesn't. At least a character designed by spreadsheets based on social media trends would have SOME appeal. Otherwise social media trends wouldn't be trends.
You need to point out the real problem. Which is that the devs are subversive, wannabe revolutionaries who - by their nature, hate everything that's normal without ever questioning WHY those things are normal. In their mind, norms = bad. Tradition = evil. And because they hate normality so much, they defy character archetypes, established design principles, and general stereotypes without ever once thinking why these ideas are the norm to begin with. And why are they the norm? Because they WORK. And the few character designs that do defy these principles and still look great only look great because the designers knew the rules so thoroughly that they knew how to break them effectively. Concord designers hate normality and tradition so much that they didn't even bother to learn why we find certain design decisions to be sound - at least not enough to know how to break them EFFECTIVELY. So it's no wonder that their character designs appeal to nobody when they specifically try their hardest to make them as unappealing as possible to the normal people - which is most people.
Frankly, suits who only see numbers would have actually made the designs BETTER. Because they actually want their characters to sell the game, and so will give people what they want if it means they'll buy their game. The only people who would make these types of characters are bitter activist types who care more about pushing their misanthropy than actually making a good damn game.
@@cosmicspacething3474 now say it to the balding project manager who shouts at people until he's red in the face and has ties to law enforcement after he just told you to stay in the office for another four hours tonight.
The most hilarious bit in regards to healer archetype design is that Concord proves why most games go with a skinny form for them; Daw's hitbox is so massive he often died before he got to really aid anyone, and it was difficult for him to actually hide his bulk behind teammates or obstacles. And given that he's supposed to be a healer, he gets the usual lack of healer durability, despite the initial "read" making it seem like his bulk should have given him more durability, akin to Roadhog from Overwatch. Heck, the few bulky healers that exist outside of the healer archetype usually end up being the paladin archetype or "tank healer" that self-heals, but could sometimes heal nearby allies while pushing or holding a point.
He should've had some kind of ability to throw a shield or reduce damage taken from enemy fire, smth like that, to compensate for that
I could've told you that would happen for free. Lifeweaver from Overwatch had this problem in spades on his release, so much so that he's gotten a health buff (or 3, depending on how you count). Nowadays he doesn't feel _as_ fragile, but he's still pretty fragile and you want to play pretty safe with him.
The redesign at 9:56 is very cool, she reminds me of a dragonfly or The Fury from MSG. That design clearly says "I'm nimble in the air, but I have low defense".
It's "Pharah/Valkyrie at home", it fulfills similar function as those two characters but lacks an identity and theme beyond it's function. As he said, fulfilling the function is only the first step.
It has a slender waistline. They won’t allow that
Just adding the boosters while maintaining the suit design immediately conveys the message she can fly, At first look best I can guess is she can maybe run fast and go invisible.
It's giving me Firefly from DC Comic's and that's a good thing
Reminds me a lot of Firefly from Batman Arkham
Everyone in VALORANT is forced to have the exact same height and proportions because it is a tactical shooter. However, my god, the designs are so distinct and vibrant and SCREAM gameplay design. Viper and her poison smoke, Omen and his ominous smoke, Jett & Phoenix embody their elemental abilities. Hell Chamber is a suave French dude with sick guns.
So even if you are forced into a locked proportion, it’s no excuse. The concord designs are just so lame. Toddlers get more inventive with design motifs in kindergarten lol
EDIT: Woah! I got 100 likes? I don’t comment much that’s pretty neat. It’s true tho, Concord doo doo dog water lmao
I'm actually of a mind that a design restriction like that can make for more creative characters, since it forces devs to come up with unique solutions rather than just redesigning them. So, say Concord's restriction was "none of these characters can follow an archetype. They all have to be atypical." Okay, so make the healer a big dumb lumbering bruiser, or like a literal gorilla or something, who "heals" people by picking them up and throwing them out of the fray into cover and then throwing a first-aid kit at them which heals them if it beans them on the head. Make the heavy a little tiny guy with a gun like the Noisy Cricket from Men In Black, that sends him flying after every single shot and if his reeling body hits an opponent that does more damage than the already highly-damaging projectile. Make the scout an 80 year old dude in a wheelchair, but the chair is turbo-charged like the motorcycle wheelchair from Silver Bullet. If it was consistent it would work.
@@ScrambledAndBenedict yep, restrictions breed creativity and cohesion when applied properly. An easy example is how TF2 design is heavily restricted by a few key art directions, such as the colour palettes, relatively realistic proportions (Heavy pushes that a little, but not to the point of disbelief), and so on. The restrictions are used to force the designs to look like they fit and in so doing allow for all the side characters to be easily made to look like they belong, and they force the designs to focus on more creative ways of distinguishing between them.
@@theapexsurvivor9538 Yeah. TF2 had great designs. Honestly, if anything, Concord is a cautionary tale of what happens when the designers clearly had no limitations at all other than their own abilities.
I think the NPC comment hit the nail on the head.
If you go to a "health clinic" in Cyberpunk or Starfield, and that blueberry jacket soup kitchen bouncer comes out, it would be fine. Odd for a medic, but there can be story reasons for the guy looking odd. Wouldn't work in a Hero Shooter.
It's a whole new genre. They could never expect to compete with Hero Shooters when what they created was an NPC Shooter
Todd McFarlane said it best "I can sell a book that is drawn by Michaelangelo and written by my dog. But what I can't do is sell a book that is written by William Shakespeare and drawn by my mom."
Good design and/or sex appeal can sell products just by themselves.
Yep. I didnt find Stellar Blade all that interesting. Tits and ass alone isnt enough for me, but it was enough for plenty of players and at the end of the day game dev is a business.
McFarlane, the great man that he is🔥
I don’t really understand the quote.
@@The_og_moonwalker it was in one of those videos were people send tweets for specialists in an area so that they awnser in that video. Someone asked Todd McFarlane what was most important in a comic book, the art or the writting, and he repplied the art, cause comics are an extremely visual media, and with that quote he meant that it's way easier to sell a comic book with amazing artwork, but a mediocre/bad story, then to sell a comic book with amazing story, but shitty art.
@@matheusmoreira9951 that makes more sense👍
The most respectable dissection of the designs so far that doesn't involve insults and making fun of the original. Lots of great tips here, might try and redesign some of them using the notes pointed out in this video.
I love when they actually discuss the design and not just rant about the precieved "Wokeness" of it, when Overwatch and Apex Legends has a bunch of minorities too but no-one complains about them because they are actually well designed.
YOu can clearly tell this is a critique coming from a real skillfull profesional... not like some other videos I've seen around, of people just wanting to jump on the hate bandwagon to get views
@@Spubbily01There is a direct correlation with "wokeness" and bad character designs. Someone else in the comments here pointed out that these devs were so afraid of going into archetypes they went out of their way to make everyone look flat, bland, and the same.
Guess what? When you advocate for more "inclusivity" by trying to make everyone look "unique" and different, if you apply that to EVERY character you design, you end up with this mess.
Your flippant disregard for why inserting ideology into your character design process is bad is you willingly ignoring the reason why these character designs were terrible.
If you want an example of actual diversity done correctly, you can simply look at Overwatch. While Blizzard is no longer the Blizzard of old and their OW2 designs seems to have taken a nosedive compared to their OW1 characters, the reason why they sold well was because they were able to make characters that actually fit into these archetypes.
Even the ones that looked like they were pandering to the imaginary "modern audience" like Zarya were good designs. These characters have personality, with the bright colors that lean heavily into and embrace those archetypes. Their personalities stood out from one another and didn't feel like flatly written tokens made to check off boxes.
Oh, and it helps that it wasn't written with millennial writing. OW tries to be its own thing, not yet another slop Avengers/Marvel ripoff.
People like you need to realize that all you're doing by ignoring the elephant in the room is the reason why we get these games that are flops and are absolute trash.
These games were designed with this ideology in mind FIRST instead of trying to create a great game with great designs. Do you remember the 90s and the spat of bad Christian themed games? Because I do. Why do you think I oppose nonsense like this? They're the same thing, you just replace one religion with another.
The sooner some of you folks see this the better. And if you do support this ideology and just think it's just giving a good message but they're doing it incorrectly and they just have to try it again, you are missing the entire point as to why these games always turn into FAILURES.
it's not like shitting on the game is a bad idea anyway. even AI can make better designs than this slop that apparently "real human artists" made. let that sink in
hard to dissect and analyze shitty designs without roasting it to a crisp
Bro, the amount of people that gave a shot at redesigning Concord characters... and I'm here for all them. A lot of people can learn from this game's failure. Might not be an artist for games but I'm an artist that does like games so this is all fun for me to watch.
Imagine if people managed to mod this game and put in all these redesigns. The fact that the executives immediately pulled the plug on such an expensive project only makes it feel like they *are* ashamed of what they made. They didn't even try to salvage anything.
I am too greatly enjoying seeing everyone’s take.
They pulled the plug because the game was leaking money. They put Millions of $ into development, and they did not get anything back from sales, but costs don't end there, continuous support would keep costing them a lot, on top of server infrastructure, customer support and everything else. No matter how you look at it the only good decision was to shut it down, question was only when and the sooner the better. It should not have been released in first place, but once it was it was the moment to hit panic button and shut it down ASAP.
This session is a typical design review session in design school. The professors can be brutal with their criticism of your design. Questioning your design choices, your line of thinking. Etc. I wonder if the concord team had one. Or they're so toxic positive and afraid of hurting anyone's feeling that these designs got thru...
Considering how angry they are that people didn't like the design I very much doubt they would allow anyone to mod it, I wouldn't be surprised if they pushed small updates just to mess up with the mods.
@@nulnoh219 considering that, my theory is that the guys in the design team got chewed out by their teachers, got salty and said something like: "my designs are not bad, they say that because they're intolerant, I'll show those bigots"
And proceeded to prove them right
I love the redesign for the aerial character. Didn't even realize she was supposed to be aerial.
Yeah, she honestly just looked like some chick with a helmet and rocket launcher.
I'm a 3d character artist for an indie studio and I'm often left with having to design characters as well sometimes which I'm a little weak at. But all these Concord character videos and this one in particular has really helped me identify some of my own issues with character designs. Thank you for this very informative video.
As someone who is studying character design. What shocked me about concord wasn't that the characters where just ugly. There poorly designed. There colors don't compliment each other, concord body types are mostly bland and samey. There costumes look amateur at best. And worst of all there porsonality/character isn't highlighted by the design. Most of these characters look like something my friend would create in skyrim.
Could be like in the movie prod. Someone on the higher ups are messing the design team. Just because it didnt suit their taste. with that budget, i believe the design team are aces, but with poor leadership and game sense in the higher ups , that is a pending disaster
There = direction/place
They're = they are
Their = posessive
"There is a major problem, they're badly designed and their colors don't complement"
I actually think that was by design. I think they artists knew what they were doing tbh
Hey, don’t diss your friend like that…
Can't offend the Ts...
12:46
Weapon ❌
Grocery bag ✅
Looks like she's holding those plastic baskets, lol.
Ugly isn't even the problem. The characters were just unappealing. People think Ivy from deadlock, a literal gargoyle/grotesque, is adorable (and some even less wholesome things...)
CLACK CLACK CLACK CLACK
GET CHISELED GET CHISELED GET CHISELED GET CHISELED
deadlocks character designs are phenomenal, ESPECIALLY for something in such an early design phase
theres no way the design difference 11:00 it went from a character I wouldn't even take a 2nd look at to a character I would probably main. Thats crazy.
An FYI for 2:48 : that's a fan redesign by Sean Stephen, aka Art Attack X. It's not official artwork for Concord.
Yep I was baited
That's too bad, but you weren't the only one to fall for it (totally not me).
It's not really anyone's fault, though; Concord was so shortlived that it never had a chance to cement what it was/had been. Although, with what I am seeing in these comments, one may question if that would ever be possible.
Great vid btw. I appreciate the research you put into everything beforehand, as well as the measures you have taken to correct your work after posting it.
No mans sky alien desings do classic sci-fi much much better than concord
Aren't those procedurally generated like most of the stuff in NMS? If so, then that's especially damming for Concord.
And here I was thinking of could benefit from some touches of nms
@@Remington53I think they mean the races. Gek, Corvax, Vykeen, and the Autophage.
Even the NPC one in the Nexus (player HUB in game) looks interesting
Yes, but its between a lot of parts that were pre-made to look good together.
Still though, you are right, no man's sky slapping a bunch of prefabs together looking better than concord is a testament to how bad the art design went
haha i was waiting for a pro to take a look at those character designs, because oh boy WHAT HAPPENED THERE LOL
hell yeah TF2 designs never fail to warm my heart
@@UnusGrunus Simple, but so recognisable.
😂😂😂😂
I think one problem with Concord was that they started with concepts close to Moebius, with low contrast and muted pastels. Which could have looked great if they went with that idea across the complete game and created stylised characters and environment in that style. Problem started when they decided to merge Moebius style with reality.
then they went "make it black, make it gay"
@@j.2512 That is off lesser importance
After hearing the retro inspired theme music I get the feeling that the artists were possibly stuck in some weird lurch where they wanted to make something retro inspired but no one on the team was old enough or knew enough to know what made retro stuff appealing so they ended up with a bunch of slop.
@@conman7644 in my opinion,it isn't (no offence)
@@Its_Only_Chill Let me see if I understand the logic here ... because there are gay characters in a game, the game developers are trying to tell you to be gay too. Therefore no-one wants to buy the game. Is that it?
I have never seen a game flop SO hard that I have seen multiple videos use it as a case study of what not to do by professionals in character design before Concord. These videos kind of help me design my characters for my projects too so that's nice
I have been saying that from the start: Concord's character design is not ugly.
"Ugly" implies it has some sort identity, we still remember Ugly Sonic after all. Concord's design is the equivalent of rice waffles.
I’ll disagree with you there. The cast of heroes is so repulsive to look at I immediately lost interest after the initial reveal. I’m sure 50% of viewers from that trailer felt the same. The color schemes, the normie look, and the overweight characters all look ugly to me. The plump characters in Overwatch at least have some edginess to the designs like Roadhog.
@@ewjiml But you're still not defining "ugly" in what you said. I've compared every one of these characters to people in real life that I would NEVER call traditionally "ugly". You can, as an artist, find things unappealing, having bad aesthetic, not following traditional design rules, etc. But these characters are far from ugly.
To me, these characters represent 'regular people' you would see on a street who were just plopped into an arena battle. They look like characters you would see in a made for Netflix mini series. Not bad, but not good either. Their 'costumes' are too clean, but the colors of their outfits are pretty realistic in terms of 'real life' standards. Just go outside in a big city, most people don't look like blizzard concept art. And I feel like that's what they were attempting here. It just wasn't received as well as they assumed it would be. People just can't let go of stylized PBR for games like this.
And there are PLENTY of design choices that are followed with the Concord designs. I could pick apart Overwatch in a similar manner as often done with Concord lol.
@@gatleonhart UGLY definition - unpleasant or repulsive, especially in appearance. You don’t need to write any essay…..I get it. Your definition in more complex. Mine is not.
@@ewjiml how about the consistent odd organic piping that feels like guts? its gross, and several characters have it, yikes.
@@gatleonhart ugly definition - unpleasant or repulsive in appearance - the characters colors, looks, and faces are all ugly.
Imagine working for 6+ years on this game, having to stare at these characters every day.
8
A new layer of hell was discovered...
Have you seen the dev team? These designs are basically their self-inserts.
Watching this great vid, it suddenly hit me why this may have gone the way it did: clearly the artists, going by early concept art, knew how to make things visually appealing. More importantly, they probably _liked_ to make certain kinds of characters, attractive ones, heroic ones, 'this one is SUPPOSED to be ugly' ones. If an artist who likes creating things is told they are not allowed to create what they actually enjoy doing and instead have to follow orders by people who seem hellbent on making things the artist would never make on their own, that's probably a recipe for bad results. And if bad results still get approved by someone who doesn't care about art but only about boxes being checked... not a good recipe.
Yes. ALWAYS blame management. Never workers (artists) fault.
Normally I'd agree, but I really don't think it's the case here. Based on what the artists believe and have stated on various social media, they're exactly the kind of people who want to make non-gendered stereotype breaking uggos.
None of the images online are concord concept art, they're redraws done after the game came out by people who had nothing to do with Concord, just independent artists showing that the designs could've been better. Case in point: the Emari design shown at 2:48 is a redesign by art_attackx. He drew it on his bus ride home one day :P
@@Geminosity This game is made by clearly skilled artists - but the people that paid their salary constantly asked them to do things that just don't work. I've been in this position myself where I have to draw something that I clearly know isn't working, but the client doesn't care and thinks it's cool, and sometimes even wants to just double down on it. Well, they're the client, they're always right because they're buttering my bread - even if I disagree, because ultimately that's just how it goes.
At some point into this project, every artist on this game must have broken and just went with "yes boss, whatever you say, sure, I'll make things more boring and muddy and then add photorealism filter on things nobody will ever zoom in and look at" and just dreamed about clocking out. There's just no way it could have been anything but soul crushing drudgery.
What the artists then state on social media is Stockholm syndrome stuff. The thing they've worked on for 6 years is bombing, they're in danger of being laid off in the worst year for the job security in the industry since the 80s crash. Of course they're going to try and polish the turd - they've been doing this for 6 years already, what's another twitter post or two?
Apparently one of the early concept arts shown here is actually a redraw done by an artist after the game came out: ruclips.net/video/7CDzyYqILpw/видео.html
@@thesunthrone Thing is I've worked in the games industry myself for over 8 years. To this day I'll still happily point out everything wrong with what I worked on.
I'm well aware that meddling from on-high is soul-crushing. I've had the most stupid reasoning deployed to prevent me from fixing things or for crowbarring unnecessary things in and that it's hard to escape from in the industry.
As such, again, normally I'd just assume the same as you, but in this one particular case, I just think the (vocal) members of the team actually drink the coolade and would've produced this rubbish on their own. While things like the texture work and a number of technical aspects are well done, the designs reek not of corporate homogenization but instead of stereotype breaking and going against the established for the sake of it. You need to actually know a number of artistic practices and actively avoid or subvert them to end up as wildly repellant as what they've pulled off... I don't think you get there by sheer chance or incompetence :P
Not to mention their own output has various hints of trying to masculinize the feminine, feminize the masculine and mash things into an ugly middle ground. There's a reason people have been pointing at Amanda Kiefer's evangelion fan art of rei and asuka :P
Concord has taught us 2 things.
1) Design concepts.
2) Overwatch is way better than we previously thought.
Seriously, Concord design is so bad that they made Blizzard look good.
Yeah I’m not too into playing blizzard games even having them as a client. But these concord designs made me appreciate them on another level.
Blizzard have always done some of the best character design and law in video games.
There's a reason why WoW is still going after 20 years, longer it you consider Warcraft.
Overwatch has been going and is still going strong contrary to belief, after 8 years, their games are made to last and it's why they only release one barely a decade at a time.
Overwatch was only ruined due to corporate greed
@@cosmicspacething3474 I mean every business has to make money, that's just how games are these days.
The battle pass, skin/shop prices are on the lower end compared to a lot of F2P games, I'd say on par with Fortnite.
All heros and modes are free then you don't have to put a penny into the game if you don't want too
@@cosmicspacething3474nah it was ruined by bad balance and lack of content every season to bring people back.
That's why it has stayed at the same player count for 10 seasons.
A point to highlight is that, had the characters from concord been in a story and character driven game, they might well have worked. If they were in a game that allowed their character to be portrayed in ways other than their visuals, core game mechanics, and a limited amount of voice lines, and importantly if they were in a game where immediate recognition of "what's this character about" wasn't important; then they would stand much stronger. Notably, many/most could still be better, but my point is that, what here makes these designs objectively bad, could in a different context provide some value.
For example, the medic that doesn't match the aesthetic of a medic, has potential as a character concept. Is he insecure? is he discriminated for not looking the part despite being skilled? Does he let all this impact his work? All questions that in a different game where these questions can be explored would provide interest. But in a hero shooter, at best they're background details few notice and fewer still care about. Worst case they muddle the design and lead to a more messy experience overall.
I legit had no idea that the hobo kitchen bouncer was a healer and that rocket girl was supposed to be aerial based until you mentioned it. The designs are so confusing that I'm convinced that it was done like that on purpose at this point. Maybe they were trying to send a message against visual stereotypes or something.
I had to do a lot of research because I had no idea
That's exactly what they did. They were trying to make a political statement. Look up articles about the game prior to it releasing, they went on long-winded rants about it.
Got a link for that?
@@kommissar.murphy it’s all over RUclips almost hard to miss if you type in the game name
Rocket girl has a mechanical arm on her to support the weapon. Almost no one notices because they do nothing to highlight her only unique feature.
im no professional artist (freelance at best) but that is the first thing i said when looking at Concords characters if i were to blackout these characters do they standout from each other or telegraph anything? no they did not. The one good thing these characters did is help teach what not to do or focus on when it comes to character or even creature design. For me its given a fun challenge in redesigning characters as a lot of em are outside my comfort zone (robots (1-Off), and any human character).
When I saw the rocket girl design, I was confused, like her whole kit is rocket boots, ground slamming and a rocket launcher so why isn't the boots massive with big rockets on it, so it has weight to it for ground slam and flying. Could even put wings on it to mimic Hermes for the fast-moving character
Fr, one of the most immediate things I noticed on the redesign showed is the swap from a random dirt bike helmet & sand colors to an actual jet pilot (at least inspired) helmet and more military type colors
Like, what about the original design reads "aerial bomber" other than the launcher? She looks more like some psycho Mad Max biker with a rocket launcher than someone who'd even think about flying. Look at Pharah, or Drogoz (from Paladins) and tell me that they could be anything *but* people that fly and shoot rockets. Pharah is literally a sky colored bird, and Drogoz is a dragon. What else could they possibly do?
@@dr.facilier5186 Yeah, I just have no idea what they were thinking, when you make a character fly there should be some noticeable element to show there flying. if there isn't then the world itself should just allow flight for everyone like DB but it wasn't for concord.
19:30 realistic proportion could have also worked if you changed the silhouette with equipment / clothes. Character doesnt need to have unrealistic proportion, you can do that with equipment too right? Give someone a big puffy coat, long slender jacket, beefy armour in some areas, but none of that is implemented, and the colours feel a bit muted.
Im a graphic designer so this really hurts my eyes cuz despite not knowing concept art or character design, even I can tell whats wrong .
Funny enough even COD used to do that with BO2. The SMG skin has cloth hat and really light armor, the LMG skin has a bunch of armor padding around their body and big helmet, the sniper skin has a hood over their head, etc.
This video is SO much better than that other dudes who just sexualized the original designs
@@EntirelyInvisible most folks are taking that route because it’s easier.
Big aspect of gaming in modern time is meta-gaming - i.e. things that happens outside of the game itself - the narratives, the reddit/youtube posts etc etc. If people are talking about your cool characters, or cool videos and trailers, lore explorations etc etc then you did something right. When first Overwatch came out, everyone was just buzzing about the characters and the main trailer etc etc there was fan art of all sorts etc etc.
Point being is you have to get your characters right (in a character-focused game) and then the internet and word of mouth will do the marketing for you.
Exactly. Overwatch had/has balancing issues but people still come back because most characters are visually appealing
Feels bad for the artists tbh. Usually a game that failed is it's own thing and the artists after the fact can still show their work proudly, for example skulls and bones. For Concord tho, everyone, even their peers are dunking on the design. I wouldn't blame them if they don't put this in their portfolio.
I mean the designs/models on a technical level is well done and that effort should be shown off and acknowledged. This feels more like a management failure where the artists weren't given a proper brief and direction and had to wing it
@@Exospray I saw a twit from the artist saying that there was a 'committee' that had the final word about the characters, so as we can see they have more a personal taste than that a technical knowledge
If I were an artist on it yeah I wouldn’t want my name anywhere near this project.
I heard that the game was meant to be far more stylized, but higher-ups pushed for realism instead
@@TylerEdlin84 They're already removing this game from their profiles, but the issue is that some members were on it for years (up to 8), leaving big gaps in their employment history. They can always lie about these gaps.
Wow man, I used to follow your work on deviantart around 2010s when I was into drawing. What a happy coincidence to have your video shown in my feed. I didn't realize the channel name until the introduction.
Thank the algorithm!
I recognize your name from then ! Nice to reconnect
When Overwatch first came out, I hated Zarya. But now she is one of my favorite characters. And the moment I saw Concord, I realized that no matter how long I played Concord, I would never like these characters.
I mean visually I can understand why people don't like her, but nevertheless, her design works. You can just show her design to anyone not familiar with Overwatch and they will correctly associate her with "big strong woman carrying big gun".
you played Concord? more like Condolence
@@quakethedoombringerwhy? Like visually I can't fathom why people dislike zarya
You realize the first sentence of your comment is really weakening the second sentence of your comment, right? I mean, sure, Concord design is bad, but as someone who first hated Zarya and then years later learned to love her your opinion on design in a game that got shut down within two weeks isn’t exactly… useful.
Did you know back then, when you “hated” Zarya (why hate?), that you would come to like that character?
A few parts of what you said kind of don’t fit together too well…
I agree Concord characters are tasteless, bland, uninspired and that I too likely wouldn’t like it… but you do get the issue here right??
I love how this sort of conversation always circles back to TF2. Those characters will most likely outlive their own game because of how often they’re used in SFM, gmod and just pop culture.
When working on my game, character design was the hardest part. Thanks for putting this together there is a lot to learn, especially from the silhouette part.
@9:00 That character was supposed to be a healer!?
@@whitewolf_nl yeah baffled me
@@TylerEdlin84 Honestly a lot of what you showed in the video was baffling to me, like the desaturated comparison @13:00.
Thanks for the video! It was super interesting, and it's refreshing to get some insight into the flop that isn't fixated on the political stuff
They wanted to subvert expectations and show a bigger guy could be nimble... If you subvert expectations you need to take a lot of time to explain it in the story.
20:52 Tf2 characters have story but it is more to enhance the feeling you got from your first glance. Just look at the Meet the team videos they take the core parts of the characters and turn it up to 11 (but it also shows their flaws especialy in Experation date)
Daw looks like a pest exterminator from Alaska who shoots ice.
I was absolutely surprised when it turns out that
He was a guy, thought he was a woman
He's a healer
And thats a regular gun
As a non-professional, for me it simply comes down to appeal. A game with a cool aesthetic and cool looking characters will draw me in; there's a reason I did play TF2 and Overwatch, but never even considered playing Concord for even a fraction of a second. When I look at the Overwatch cast, there's a lot of characters that I want to play as because they look like badasses. When I play a game that's supposed to feature heroes, I want my character to look cool, strong and badass, to make me feel like I'm playing an actual hero.
As an art hobbyist, this was a great breakdown! Thank you!
Your redesign of Roka is really good
Amazing video. It feels like this should be a 2hr lecture! I hope the developers of that game understand that its not about "dancing on the grave" of this game but noticing it has serious flaws
I trimmed so much fat too. The original cut was 48 mins. It n my head at the start I wanted to deliver all the info in under 20
@@TylerEdlin84 You should release an extended cut! As a former game dev student, I found this to be incredibly fascinating.
Definitely subscribing to you, too, by the way.
12:19 I like that Sasha is "friendly, cute, innocent".
Is she not? It’s just a green blob to me. Like a cabbage sales mascot.
@@AngryBoozer you need to brush up on your Team Fortress lore.
@@AngryBoozer "Sasha" is the name of Heavy's stock minigun. Each of his primary weapons has a unique nickname, because Heavy loves his guns.
@@trainershade1937 Ooooooh, it’s been legitimately over 10 years since I played it, so that went entirely over my head.
I'll never understand why they chose to use those tube-like shapes on many of the characters in Concord- it gives an offputting feeling when characters have like intestines on their shoulder pads or around their gut. It'd be fine for one character if they were meant to be the quirky or even scary design, so that moment of offputting grossness feels like punctuation, but it's on a lot of the characters. If weirdness is punctuation, then the designs are all punctuation.
@@jetrexdesign right?? Everything as a tube theme to it
@@TylerEdlin84 Yeah, sort of a hybrid of pipes/tubes and a puffy winter jacket look. It's incredibly offputting, the only word that comes to mind. Thanks for doing this breakdown btw. Great video.
9:53
That redesign looks SO cool! Props for not going the easy route of hyper-sexualization and actually making something badass. Dope design.
He _did,_ fortunately, go for sexualization though. I would absolutely do her in her redesign if my girlfriend weren't standing behind me with a lead pipe.
i keep saying this. a character design does not need to be sexy, but aesthetically pleasing in eyes. they can be cute, cool, pretty, graceful, etc
something that makes a player want to play as the character.
Something can by hypersexulised and badass, just like look at the fate franchise, it has plenty of sexualised girls who are badasses
@ReeceRacc Glad you had your chance to virtue signal, buddy
@@zawarudo1041 You're right. I see your signal, and it is very virtuous. I Now know the error of my ways.
I never played Concord, but one thing I noticed from the character design is that they were very reminiscent of the art style of Jean "Moebius" Giraud, especially in the less standard bodyshapes and use of pastel colours. I am a big fan of his work and while I don't think that the characters in Concord looked amazing, it would be silly to say that taking influence from a well regarded comic book artist like that can't be used in a game.
His style was used as a touchpoint for games in the past like Panzer Dragoon or Sable, so it can work, perhaps not in this exact type of game and while it's also using Marvel/Wheedon chatter on the characters.
Moebius's muted style work because his character and background design is really captivating. You can switch the comic into black and white and the comic would still be fun to read. Also the muted color probably brings about the 60s noir art style, which Concord definitely isn't since it is based on the wacky GOTG Franchise that has a lot of bright colors
The issue is that Moebius style works because the big shapes are then broken down by small details on them - whether design elements or hatching and grime, lots and lots of wear and tear and grime, the muted pastels giving your eye the space to focus on the intricate linework.
Yet here, there is no linework at all. Concord's designs are clean, pristine, sparkling polished because for some reason they decided that they want to both go for Moebius-style shapes AND photorealism, two opposite ends of the spectrum. I'd wager many of these designs would read better if the artists were allowed to just dirty them up more and create focus points and areas of interest with markings and wear & tear.
Had this game kept the cel-shaded style some of its promo art had and went with hard black outlines, these designs would work much better, the tone would likewise come across better. But Guardians was popular, so the voice from above said "make it more like Marvel" and here we are...
16:16 looking at the full art again and realizing just how damn good Junker Queen's design is. If you take away her weapons, you'll see her tattered clothes and all the spikes and immediately know she likes to brawl and scrap. The gladiator waistband shows that as well. Exposed midriff and thigh bring your attention to the fact that she's physically pretty strong. then we get to colors and she has shocks of red around her outfit. The bandana/rag/whatever it is, the shoulder armor, and most importantly...her gauntlet and she's not wearing one on her right arm quickly telling a new player "Hey! Pay attention! You'll be using this if you pick her!".
Give the shotgun and big axe back at this point and you'd have to be an idiot to not realize that she's a hero that likes to be up close and personal when fighting, but that was mostly told before we even got to what she even fights with and what abilities she has.
I saw the director artist of concord artstasion her art is amazing, very moebius inspired.
Yet her design doesnt comunicate in video game, it could work in comics like saga or lincal.
Unfortunaly the style doest adapt to the game style.
What’s her name? I’d like to see her art
3:36 this is a pre release image scout is holding a scraped gun
Concord's design is what you get when you are stuck in a hugbox, or a room full of people who don't want to "offend" you and keep saying everything you do is great.
One thing I noticed in the Concord character designs is it appears they went out of their way to de-femenize almost all of the female character's body shapes. Yes, not all females are curvy, but not all of them are sticks either. It's a gross and unrealistic over-correction.
Yep
They are afraid of boobs. As if they are ashamed of their own bodies. This shows a serious lack of self confidence being projected into their work.
@@RKNancy It's mostly those weird people from twitter. Crazy how they think making female characters feminine is somehow discriminatory towards women, and then go and make them all so androgynous to the point of discriminating against feminine woman.
@@rasna2212 Twitter can be so creatively draining when if comes to those kind of people.
Honestly it's kind of insulting how they de-feminized the characters here. It feels to me like the design team really thought the best way to de-sexualize their female characters was to make them unappealing and androgynous. It's almost like they're implying that appealing feminine designs are automatically sexual in nature, which is... definitely an opinion I disagree with.
I find funny that Concord has become a case study for future artist on what not to do when designing a character
As a Concept Art student, Concord is a great case study on what not to do in character design.
I'm even taking their characters and making my own re-design of them, as practice and as a way of learning, myself
Your video is very well structured, earned my subscribe ❤
24:02 “We know she’s a good character”
Mei in game: slowly freezes enemies in place, then looks them in the eye as she yeets an icicle into their brain.
I’ve seen people try to fix the designs and you have easily the best redesign among them. Too many people stick with the atrocious colors and drag down their own attempts to salvage the character.
Great video.
Kory Lynn Hubbell worked on this game. The talent was there
Dang… what happened.
Career ruined
A lot of people here are correct in saying archetypes in visual design are generally useful, but I just wanted to point everyone in the direction of Battle Chasers: Nightwar. It's a fantastic turn-based RPG, but its characters classes are not immedetly apparent from their designs. Gully, a small girl wieding her father's giant gauntlets, looks like she'd be a dps, but she's your tank, using magic barriers to protect your party, and story-wise, she literally has big gloves to fill. Calibretto, a giant, buff automaton, wields a minigun and looks like a tank, but is your healer and your resident soul of the party, and he's very gentle with animals. Garrison is a tall man in armor, with red clothing and a greatsword, who you might think is a tank or typical dps, but he's a rouge. He's thin, agile, quick, and deals bleed damage. These unusual classes extend to the rest of the cast, but even though their designs don't instantly convey their archetype, their mechanics, animations, personalities, and small visual nods to those traditional calsses do. Go check it out! Is good game. :)
Samus will always be one of my favorites! Loved this video, character design is so tough. Thanks for these insights!
Glad you enjoyed!
character design is tough but it's so much fun coming up with interesting ideas
There was a great example of good character design right behind you: The Final Fantasy 7 figurines. They were easy to identify even at a smaller size and blurry in the background of the video, but just with that it was enough to know who they were.
I'm flabbergasted that all the redesign of concord characters are looks amazing and the fact that most of redesign done within homework hours is just too funny
YOOO THE ROBOT SUIT FOR THE GIRL ON THE HEAD SHOT FOR THE VIDEO THAT DESIGN IS SICK I WANT A FIGURE OF THAT
They made all the characters as plain as possible to incentivize cosmetic purchases.
@@TheDavesTV yeah that’ could certainly be a thing
I remember hearing something about breaking design rules or theories to make a character appealing and unique, adding a certain twist, contrasting their design with what they’re really capable of. For example, One Punch Man.
They did that.....
.
.
Too much, making it questionable, beyond rational.
It's like they went to a community college and sketched random students walking by
Giant trash can on their way to game design 101
Thank you for these videos!! Character design is something I struggle with and have been trying to improve for years but your videos on Concord have helped more than anything else! Breaking down why it failed and explaining how to improve it has made it so much easier to understand. Thank you!
imo it's also semi-hero shooter burnout. Like, we've done this bit already. TF2, Paladins, Overwatch, all hero shooters with the same formula. class based characters, objective based combat, is in first person. What Overwatch did new was add the moba/MMO-esque ability system to those classes, with Paladins doing roughly the same but also adding the build system from mobas, but simplified.
Now, what does Concord do uniquely? They're already almost a decade late to this hype train, and generally doesn't do anything unique. You touched on Deadlock for a bit, and to me the difference is that Deadlock is a MOBA first, hero shooter second. It has an interesting artstyle, ofc character design is done well, but they do something unique to MOBAs. It's no long top-down and the combat is no longer exclusively on a flat plane. You got verticality now, shooter-style aiming, the classic MOBA skeleton, AND a slightly simplified build system + browse system to make it less daunting for people to get into.
That's, to me, the biggest difference between Concord vs Deadlock outside of design.
Really, the problem is that the devs wanted to try and prove that a-typical, non-fantasy type character designs were fine to try and break the status-quo and they found out the hard way they were wrong.
Funny thing is, character design was one of the two reasons this game flopped, the other being the gameplay itself. Gameplay was too slow for a hero shooter especially movement (any slower and they'd be going backwards) and mostly every hero did so little damage that it cost 400,000$ to kill an enemy in 12 hours
a quick correction, the "original design" of Emari is actually a redesign from an artist called Sean, or Art Attack X on the bird app. it was edited to remove the signature and change the lipstick color
This is a fantastic video not just for the critique but also the amount of design theory you explain. Great job!
Is art subjective? Sure. But there is a point where when art is so unanimously disliked it crosses that barrier of subjectivity, Concord's characters are just an absolute failure
The Concord rocket launcher girl has the worst design by far of any playable character I've ever seen in a video game. There's a term popularized by Riot Games called "player fantasy", which is the idea that the player should be intrigued to play as a character just based on a simple description of them. Like Genji from Overwatch is "cyborg ninja dude". That's a strong player fantasy because who wouldn't want to play as one of those?
The Concord character looks like a generic NPC for the player to target during a tutorial on how to shoot. No one has the player fantasy of being a target dummy. I'm baffled on how this design made it to the final game.
She looks like a LIDL version of The Stig from Top Gear, and that dude is literally just a racer wearing an all white racing suit and helmet. How someone can take such a simple concept and break it to the point of making it unappealing is beyond me.
9:55 your redesign is seriously cool
As a non-Artist this was fascinating. I’ve never thought about all the little details and considered things like silhouettes to enable gamers to recognise in a rush.
It would not surprise me if the assassin robot of Concord was inspired by characters like Agent 47 from Hitman. 47 wears black, which we associate with death and sorrow. Agent 99 wears a colorful suit we associate with happy-go-lucky characters
Black is more for elegance, the detail on 47 is the red tie, is a really saturated color that makes it so strong on his simple design that resembles blood, the design completes when you notice he wear a pair of gloves... He is a bad man in a suit
@@Voldrim359
he looks like somebody attending funerals which is fitting because he causes the funerals
@@xelldincht4251
And don't forget that he even feigned his own funeral to eliminate his targets! Twice, even!
Something I think gets buried in these conversations is aesthetic context. If I was flipping through an art book and came across some of the Concord designs, I'd probably think they were pretty cool. If I flipped to the next page and saw, like, a colorful picture of Tracer or something, I'd think 'that's fun' and move on. What makes something interesting and unique is often a refusal of the established rules. Whether or not those deviations are successful are determined by the context and the culture. TF2 deviated hard from the aesthetic context of the time and with careful consideration was able to tap into something interesting and unique to great success because it focused on the most important part of video games. Fun. I think this was the trap that the Concord designers fell into. It may be interesting, but like Reggie said 'if it ain't fun, why bother?'
25:01 The designs are a lot better if you swap the characters. The top one looks more like a knife-wielding assassin type and the bottom looks more like a fire mage.
4:16 wha, 2 soldiers? DEFENSE? THEIF?
Hey Tyler! The official trailer for Borderlands 4 just dropped and people hate the designs of the Vault Hunters. People are saying they look like NPC’s. Can you do a break down video on it? I’d love to hear your thoughts!
I feel really bad for the designers and artists who spent years of their lives working on this - cause you know the final decisions weren't up to them, yet now the whole internet thinks it's cool to shit on their design when actually, they're good designs - it's professional work to a high standard, but, it just doesn't work in this context.
2:47 HOLY SHIT THAT DESIGN THEY REJEXTED IS SO MUCH BETTER
I feel like it would be better with a bulkier torso/arms, but yeah it conveys a lot more unique personality charm
That's a redesign somebody did on twitter a few days ago after concord launched, but yes, it's an improvement.
I love how they became the case study for game developers/designers on what NOT to do. Atleast they contributed something to the gaming industry. 😂
One of the most baffling flaws of the character designs in Concord is that green juggernaut thing. She just look sad. Like really bad mood sad and depressed. Like I don't want to be here sad. Just why.
I know, right? These characters look like they are self aware when it comes to how bad they look, whether it would be their malnourished appearances or lack of energy. They resemble sad wash-ups. What is even worse was that this game had a budget of 200-300 million dollars, thus making these designs inexcusable. I genuinely feel ashamed of ever having seen these lame, politically driven disasters of character design. These were painful to observe. If these characters were just some terrible ocs and Sjw posted to instagram, the comments would’ve shredded these designs apart with their typical remarks. Overall, these just fail in all aspects: Zero appeal, zero design language to hint players on how they behave, and overall just ugly. Comparing Overwatch’s designs to Concord’s abominations is like putting Iron man in the same room as Iron deficiency Man.
Very interesting video, learned a lot. I appreciate that it was not only about "Concord sucks, point and laugh" but most importantly about teaching how to do better. I'll try to apply your recommendation to my designs (not pro, just working on it for myself)
Thank you. I couldn't put my finger on why I disliked the characters so much but this really clarified things
One thing Nintendo do better over every other gaming company , is the design is clearly gameplay oriented and made to be appeling and practical, Capcom use that formula too for there fighting game, you know exactly what special ability the fighter have supposed to be, with there animation and charisma look, Blizzard clearly learn that, they put that fighting game design/charisma and power ability to get a balanced Multi player FPS that make Overwatch stand from other FPS , if your miss the gameplay design and the look of the avatar you made for that game you intend to make, you're in trouble , a game should be playable for almost everyone but you must have a strong game play idea and design to make it work.
"The character design you found off Temu"
TF2 chacater design:
"yeah, all of these makes sense, the colours being palet oposites to make it easy to distinguish each team, the different shapes and skin colours, the phisique, the guns, silhouetes, TF2 is a a amazing game"
Concord:
"uhhhh, i think thats a... assasin? Thats a.... Tank?... what am i looking at?"
It's crazy you used Serial Experiments Lain for the anime example. I feel like it's so under the radar but such a gem for people who grew up when the age of the internet was still in it's younger stages
I remember someone comparing concord characters to stock photos, as in "you can put them anywhere, and they'll blend"