Current Events > Square Enix claims Crystal Dynamics was wrong fit for 'disappointing' Avengers

(+) Yeah! (+)

https://www.videogameschronicle.com/news/square-enix-claims-crystal-dynamics-was-the-wrong-fit-for-disappointing-marvels-avengers/

In an overly negative statement published in the companys annual report, Square Enix president Yosuke Matsuda said that the company needed to learn from the games disappointing performance.

Marvels Avengers was an ambitious title for us in that we took on the GaaS (Games as a Service) model, Matsuda said.
We overcame a variety of unexpected difficulties in the final phase of the games development, including needing to transition to work-from-home due to the pandemic. We were able to surmount these challenges and release the game, but it has unfortunately not proven as successful as we would have liked.
Nonetheless, taking on the GaaS model highlighted issues that we are likely to face in future game development efforts such as the need to select game designs that mesh with the unique attributes and tastes of our studios and development teams.
While the new challenge that we tackled with this title produced a disappointing outcome, we are certain that the GaaS approach will grow in importance as gaming becomes more service oriented. How we go about creating new experiences by incorporating this trend into our game design is a key question that we will need to answer going forward.

Personally I think the business model was the 'wrong fit' more than the developer. What an asshole.

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You greenlit The Quiet Man, SE so shut the fuck up.

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It should have been a free to play mobile game that would have just died and become forgotten 8 months after launch.

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Maybe GaaS as a mode is a tough pill to sell



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There's throwing someone under the bus and then there's throwing the bus onto someone.

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I'm surprised they even acknowledge trying to nickel and dime people might have an effect. Normally companies ignore it.

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DeadBankerDream posted...

There's throwing someone under the bus and then there's throwing the bus onto someone.

Seriously. I was gonna pick up a $30 copy at Cartidges Galore, but this genius just talked me out off it.

Imagine saving face by shitting on all these people, just to jerk off GaaS. This ones baffling, because I still see tons of people playing, and it doesnt seem like a 2/10, so I have no idea why, with all the heartless turds this guy shit out, he decides to go ham on Avengers.

Imagine working for this person.

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It should had been UBISOFT

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Don't blame the developer. Everybody knew a GaaS Avengers game was a terrible fucking idea but Square-Enix got $$$ in their eyes

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I honestly dont understand the game. Like i just hear "Its GaaS so its bad" i dont know what that means.

I can enjoy Dynasty warriors but i also play single player only so i cant tell if id enjoy this game.

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Lairen posted...

I honestly dont understand the game. Like i just hear "Its GaaS so its bad" i dont know what that means.

I can enjoy Dynasty warriors but i also play single player only so i cant tell if id enjoy this game.

Haven't played but it seems like developers focused a lot on microtransactions while the base game itself has barebones content otherwise

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Lairen posted...

I honestly dont understand the game. Like i just hear "Its GaaS so its bad" i dont know what that means.

I can enjoy Dynasty warriors but i also play single player only so i cant tell if id enjoy this game.

I'm starting the game now and the first couple of missions show promise but from what I remember from feedback at the time there's too much of the game that's compromised to make GAAS work. Repetitive enemies, objectives, boss fights and a combat system that doesn't really keep things interesting enough for a service game.

Basically if they focused their game on what it does well it would be a much better game.

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if they ditched all the post-game content and focused on the single player it might have been better received. the campaign was the best part of the game, and last time i played, you couldn't repeat it at all.

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SE seems like an awful company to work for. They almost always blame the devs for their extreme and shitty expectations.
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TwoDoorPC posted...

you couldn't repeat it at all.

Seriously? That sounds very odd.

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Talk about taking the complete wrong lesson away from this games failure

fuck squeenix tbh

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pass that buck

So they're doubling down on GaaS. Why? Nobody likes it.

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Lairen posted...

I honestly dont understand the game. Like i just hear "Its GaaS so its bad" i dont know what that means.

I can enjoy Dynasty warriors but i also play single player only so i cant tell if id enjoy this game.

Its basically designed to be a drip-feed grind

every Character starts out with barely any moves, you have to slowly power them up by gaining XP to unlock even basic moves like counter

you also have to up their power level (separate from leveling)with gear that can then be further upgraded by combinations of like 7 different resource currencies

there is also grind to earn faction xp and unlock associated awards

the levels are nearly all designed around being able to randomly generate basic missions in them instead of being tightly constructed

Its all designed to annoy you into paying for xp boosts and resource packages

sidenote: most egregiously the massive slowed down xp gain via an update shortly after launch becaus players were overwhelmed with how fast they were leveling up

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Crystal Dynamics is no more responsible for that dumpster fire than Team Ninja is responsible for Other M.
Good developers can and will make bad games, when the producer insists on it.

Square-Enix is always like 5 years behind the trends.

$60 GAAS is pretty much done. The far majority of them have sold way under expectations. I don't even know a single publisher who has overall been happy with the performance or development cycle of one.

If people want GAAS they go for F2P or cheapo games. There's too much competition to pay $60 for a mediocre game at launch that promises to be better later.

One thing that's good about Fortnite is that it gave a solid boot up the ass on this business model.

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I think part of the problem is that they didn't go the extra mile to include the actors' likenesses for the characters. You're boasting about a next-gen high fidelity action hero game and then decide not to make Thor look like Hemsworth?

Like yea that shit costs hella money but at least then it would show that they cared about the game's success a little bit.

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Ivynn posted...

So they're doubling down on GaaS. Why? Nobody likes it.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m37G-06ibAU

Questionmarktarius posted...

Crystal Dynamics is no more responsible for that dumpster fire than Team Ninja is responsible for Other M.
Good developers can and will make bad games, when the producer insists on it.

Yeah a single player avengers game in the mold of their Tomb Raider games should have been a slam dunk

its very clear what went wrong with this game between initial reveal and actual release, and it has nothing to do with the developer

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Questionmarktarius posted...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m37G-06ibAU

But aren't there a lot of live service games that aren't doing well? Gamers are burnt out on that shit.

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Ivynn posted...

But aren't there a lot of live service games that aren't doing well? Gamers are burnt out on that shit.

But this time it'll work and make a fuckton of money!

TheGoldenEel posted...

Its basically designed to be a drip-feed grind

every Character starts out with barely any moves, you have to slowly power them up by gaining XP to unlock even basic moves like counter

you also have to up their power level (separate from leveling)with gear that can then be further upgraded by combinations of like 7 different resource currencies

there is also grind to earn faction xp and unlock associated awards

the levels are nearly all designed around being able to randomly generate basic missions in them instead of being tightly constructed

Its all designed to annoy you into paying for xp boosts and resource packages

sidenote: most egregiously the massive slowed down xp gain via an update shortly after launch becaus players were overwhelmed with how fast they were leveling up

Its reputation is bad and its presentation is confusing enough for me not to be able to tell if id enjoy it.

At $20 im still on the fence and thats a bad sign. It may go to $10 coming black friday and even thats a strong maybe.

It should be an easy yes....

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TheGoldenEel posted...

Yeah a single player avengers game in the mold of their Tomb Raider games should have been a slam dunk

its very clear what went wrong with this game between initial reveal and actual release, and it has nothing to do with the developer

Single player game with optional coop or something like a Horde mode.

That would have been enough and a lot easier to figure out.

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People waited like 10 years for this crap too lmfao

I wish square enix would just go back to focusing solely on jrpgs because this aint it

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The GotG game proves that the studio isn't the problem. CD has been pretty solid with the TR reboot.

The problem is with GaaS, and they're going to do it and fail again. These fucking greedy morons.

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Lairen posted...

Its reputation is bad and its presentation is confusing enough for me not to be able to tell of id enjoy it.

At $20 im still on the fence and thats a bad sign. It may go to $10 coming black friday and even thats a strong maybe.

It should be an easy yes....

Yeah, I'm only playing through it because it's on Gamepass. The story is actually good, but the gameplay loop feeds very heavily into "we want you to grind for everything and spend 100's of hours on this game" style that GaaS games go for. If it wasn't built around that, it would have been a good game.

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MaxEffingBemis posted...

I wish square enix would just go back to focusing solely on jrpgs because this aint it

Can you imagine an Avengers JRPG? Shit woulda been so cash.

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GaaS needs to be tied into a sack and thrown in the river

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Jagr_68 posted...

You greenlit The Quiet Man, SE so shut the fuck up.

And their horrid attempt at reviving Front Mission with Left Alive.

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GaaS work best when the entry point is practically free and then you hammer people with transactions
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MaxEffingBemis posted...

I wish square enix would just go back to focusing solely on jrpgs because this aint it

Square always made more then just JRPGs. But they seem to have to forgotten that's what they are beat at.

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After playing Marvel's Guardian of the Galaxy, I think the answer is clear that turning a Marvel game into a GaaS was automatically the wrong approach. As someone who actually played Marvel's Avenger, it would've been ten times better if they stuck it as a single player game that focused on being a good story mode than all this junk about it being a multiplayer GaaS looter game. You don't know how many times I hear from Jarvis in game "these inhumans need help, HURRY!" and my whole team is just exploring around opening chests up.

ZMythos posted...

I think part of the problem is that they didn't go the extra mile to include the actors' likenesses for the characters. You're boasting about a next-gen high fidelity action hero game and then decide not to make Thor look like Hemsworth?

Like yea that shit costs hella money but at least then it would show that they cared about the game's success a little bit.

Because it's not a MCU game, they're doing their own thing with their own universe. There's a lot of things done wrong with this game, but them not making the characters look like their MCU counterpart isn't one of them

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Prestoff posted...

Because it's not a MCU game, they're doing their own thing with their own universe. There's a lot of things done wrong with this game, but them not making the characters look like their MCU counterpart isn't one of them

From a marketing perspective, you would draw in a huge crowd if they looked like the MCU characters. maybe 10% of MCU fans are actual comic book readers.

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ZMythos posted...

From a marketing perspective, you would draw in a huge crowd if they looked like the MCU characters. maybe 10% of MCU fans are actual comic book readers.

Modern Marvel's problem is tying everything to the MCU.

Let Marvel non-movies do their own thing.


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TC, what was your original user name?

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LightningAce11 posted...

TC, what was your original user name?

Darmik

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It wasn't actually fun to play.
Gaas need to be fun if you're going to grind shit out or compete with grinders by throwing money at the game.

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Ivynn posted...

Modern Marvel's problem is tying everything to the MCU.

Let Marvel non-movies do their own thing.

As someone who has only ever seen the movies, how is this the case?

Weren't there, like, 4 different TV shows/cartoons that were all supposed to be standalone things and went nowhere because it's non-MCU?


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GaaS is why it failed, not CD. Square has been butthurt about CD ever since TR 2013.

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Ivynn posted...

But aren't there a lot of live service games that aren't doing well? Gamers are burnt out on that shit.

There have been a few high profile flops but overall live service games account for most of the big money makers right now. Some games are kind of predatory but the general idea of a "live game" is very popular and doesn't really restrict what the game can do. There's nothing for people to get burnt out on in that regard. They're just games, and a lot of them are free.

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specialkid8 posted...

There have been a few high profile flops but overall live service games account for most of the big money makers right now. Some games are kind of predatory but the general idea of a "live game" is very popular and doesn't really restrict what the game can do. There's nothing for people to get burnt out on in that regard. They're just games, and a lot of them are free.

I think a big difference is that the live service games these days that are the big money makers don't have a $60 paywall. Avengers was doomed to fail from the start with the logic of "I want AAA retail sales money and I want GAAS money"

I think it now has to be one or the other.

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Avengers could have worked well if there was more content, they didn't announce the game with that awful trailer, and they had a better monetization scheme.

The game is fine gameplay wise, until you get to the more specific bits of it.
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Punished_Blinx posted...

Darmik

Aw, why'd you change it?

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Slayer_22 posted...

Avengers could have worked well if there was more content, they didn't announce the game with that awful trailer, and they had a better monetization scheme.

The game is fine gameplay wise, until you get to the more specific bits of it.

I think big budget AAA GAAS games all tend to run into this problem because they're so focused on maximizing recycled content to stretch out 'value' and 'retention' instead of just...making a good game with a fun and varied content.

It's almost like they're unable to really a convert a solid 10-20 hour game into a GAAS.

It's especially tough if there's no PVP content.

LightningAce11 posted...

Aw, why'd you change it?

Got bored with it. Didn't really mean anything to me anymore. Tried a new account and people kept accusing me of being an alt in topics lol

Also more than one person thought it was Darmilk and that sounds weird as fuck.

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