Contradictory reactions to Lawbreakers v Visceral

[Deleted member 2945]

Is this a misreading on my part?

We had the Crowbcat video that came out and constant updates about player counts (on the other forum) where the tone almost seemed to be of glee that Lawbreakers completely flopped. An indie developer trying to create something fun (which appears they've done I don't know I haven't played the fugging game).

Then we have, for me, a different reaction to news of Visceral and their closing, questions about the volatility of games and all that; hand-wringing and hate aimed towards EA etc.

Just seems Cliffy B's biggest "crime" was to be arrogant in wanting to launch another great franchise - that was enough for people to turn or celebrate?

Found the tone to be a bit weird regarding Lawbreakers considering it's meant to be a decent game. Have I misread this completely?

 

[ZanderEzekial]

I agree that the blowback against LawBreakers has been a bit overblown. I think people were keyed into Cliffy's arrogance initially and he's now suffering because it didn't set the world on fire right away.

LawBreakers is 100% great though and I hope that it finds an audience on Xbox or if/when it goes F2P.

 

[Mass_Pincup]

I don't really understand how both those reactions are contradictory to be honest.

 

[hotcyder]

As far as I'm aware it was mostly in reaction to Dude Huge's arrogant marketing style and confidence in his games success. His comments about Overwatch probably wound a some gamers too. People like seeing others fail.

Shame really. I like him and I like LawBreakers.

Visceral I'm not sure. Dead Space 3 and Battlefield Hardline were put on blast after release.

 

[ManaByte]

I agree that the blowback against LawBreakers has been a bit overblown. I think people were keyed into Cliffy's arrogance initially and he's now suffering because it didn't set the world on fire right away.

LawBreakers is 100% great though and I hope that it finds an audience on Xbox or if/when it goes F2P.

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There was a rumor going around that it won't go to the Xbox for...reasons. Not going to expand on something that's completely unconfirmed and could paint someone in a bad light. But, think of burned bridges.

But that's why they've been hinting at a Switch version.

 

[Silky]

Those aren't remotely similar things

For one, Visceral isn't attempting to make a breakthrough FPS in a saturated market.

The PR mouthpiece are night and day between Visceral and Boss Key. Boss Key are awful at PR

I get that people shitting on Lawbreakers excessively kind of sucks and I get you have some kind of investment in that IP or something but come on

 

[Panther2103]

Lawbreakers should have been bigger than it is. The population of people on the subreddit and other forums related to the game constantly threw out the idea that there wasn't enough people which scared off quite a few potential buyers. The game itself may have needed more incentive to keep playing but in general I found it fun constantly until I wasn't able to find matches anymore. The PS4 population is still okay on the USE servers but that's it.

I don't really see how they are contradictory reactions.

 

[Deleted member 2945]

I don't really understand how both those reactions are contradictory to be honest.

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General consensus about gaming studio closing/people losing jobs v the glee in seeing a game fail for an indie studio which could lead to the same thing.

And it appears that the reaction to the failure of Lawbreakers has nothing to do with the quality of the game - purely about the man: Cliff Bleszinski

edit: disagree on respective markets being saturated versus another.

Attitude seems to be don't try and create a similar game to others because there's one that's excessively more popular? Seems really defeatist.

 

[BossLackey]

Cliffy B's attitude really made me dislike him. Distilling it down, he's kind of a douchebag. People like seeing douchebags fail. I'd say it's that simple.

I feel bad for him though, and especially his team. It was just bad timing as far as market saturation goes. I'm sure it would have seen at least mild success had the same game been released under different circumstances.

 

[ManaByte]

Those aren't remotely similar things

For one, Visceral isn't attempting to make a breakthrough FPS in a saturated market.

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This is true too. Visceral wasn't trying to beat Overwatch at its own game. On the PC you have Overwatch and PUBG.

I actually fear for Unreal Tournament. The alpha is awesome, but it's so hard to break in past Overwatch and PUBG.

 

[Deleted member 11413]

They aren't really the same thing, tbh. Visceral is a long-running studio that has produced some incredible games, now shut down and their cool-sounding Star Wars project is canceled.
Lawbreakers is a game made by Cliffy B and his new, unproven studio. He talked a big game before the game released, and it ended up not finding an audience. I don't know why people were so happy about it's failure, tbh, as it seems like a well-made game.

 

[Silky]

And it appears that the reaction to the failure of Lawbreakers has nothing to do with the quality of the game - purely about the man: Cliff Bleszinski

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What if

What if Lawbreakers was a sterile looking Frankenstein of popular classic shooter and modern shooter conventions that, while great to play, felt ultimately soulless and uninspired like the myriad of other throwback styled FPS like Nexuiz and Toxikk

You for real expect people to care about that game?

Like Dirty Bomb manages to have a popular and stable community doing it's own thing, why couldn't Lawbreakers do it's own thing

 

[quincognito]

It doesn't seem weird to me that people were happy to see a multiplayer game that was mostly disliked and made by an unpopular dev flop, and also sad to see a studio close whose single-player output they mostly enjoyed.

 

[verygooster]

Sort of confused what's being discussed.

A major studio closed down and a massive licensed project went with it to be re-tooled into something from its original vision. People were understandably upset and disappointed at the news.

Lawbreakers has its fans but the only people celebrating what is being called a failure are petty people wanting to see CliffyB eat crow

 

[Silky]

This is true too. Visceral wasn't trying to beat Overwatch at its own game. On the PC you have Overwatch and PUBG.

I actually fear for Unreal Tournament. The alpha is awesome, but it's so hard to break in past Overwatch and PUBG.

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Lol The UT team is doing Fortnite BR now

That shit will always be alpha

 

[Otto]

I think people were keyed into Cliffy's arrogance initially and he's now suffering because it didn't set the world on fire right away.

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Well, include me on the ones that were not rooting for it to fail but somewhat pleased when it didn't set the world on fire. Cliffy's arrogance comes from the first Gears success and, tbh, I never liked his attitude. He's very talented but his behavior alienated me from his efforts the same way Randy Pitchford did for different reasons.

I don't really understand how both those reactions are contradictory to be honest.

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Exactly, I think they're completely different styles of games and target audiences.

 

[Deleted member 2945]

It doesn't seem weird to me that people were happy to see a multiplayer game that was mostly disliked and made by an unpopular dev flop, and also sad to see a studio close whose single-player output they mostly enjoyed.

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Boss Key haven't been around long enough to become an unpopular dev with that logic.

Surely Visceral is living off itsreputations of 7 years ago - their recent outings being shocking should make it an easier case to accept their demise.

A lot of strange thresholds and standards for things when not consistently applied.

 

[ManaByte]

Lol The UT team is doing Fortnite BR now

That shit will always be alpha

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But it's soooooo good. Way better than Fornite.

 

[fcooly]

I don't see the contradiction. The criticism again Lawbreakers seem to have two origins: Cliffy B' arrogance, that defined the marketing of the game and the fact that we are starting to see a tendency to create Overwatch killers, with the industry again collectively trying to clone successful games without control.

The response towards Visceral closing was exactly the opposite because the reasons are precisely the opposite, those guys were trying to make something not really following market tendencies (ok, they were trying to copy Uncharted but hey, there are no many Uncharted games out there) and had to continuously suffer the horrible management of EA that recently made so much damage to other expected games (MASS EFFECT, I will never forget what you did, EA).

 

[chrominance]

I think the bandwagoning about Lawbreakers' poor performance wasn't great, and generally speaking I don't want decent games to fail.

That said, I'm not sure why the OP would compare the reaction to Lawbreakers versus Visceral's closing. For one, Lawbreakers is a game that exists; Visceral is a game studio. Even assuming we're talking about the cancelled Star Wars game, Lawbreakers is an online multiplayer shooter, and Visceral's game is a single-player adventure associated with a beloved blockbuster franchise. Lawbreakers was released, people played it, and many of them didn't stick around. Visceral's game didn't even get far enough into development to have a real name, and was likely cancelled due to a number of factors including mismanagement.

Lawbreakers' failure sits in the context of a booming multiplayer shooter landscape, which just so happens to contain two of the biggest games released in the past two years (Overwatch and Playerunknown's Battlegrounds). The Star Wars game sits in the context of a market that seems to value single-player games less and less, except for a core group that happens to make their home on forums like ResetEra and cares very much about their continued existence.

I think first the OP needs to make a case for why we should consider these things as similar in the first place. There seem to be more differences than similarities to me. We might as well be discussing why the failure of Final Fantasy XV got a different reception than the failure of Toki Tori 2.

 

[Deleted member 3876]

It's totally Cliff being a dick. If he lightened the fuck up people might give him and his product the time of day.

Totally unfair to everyone else on his team, they didn't deserve failure because of Cliff's douchebaggery.

 

[Deleted member 5864]

Another victim of EA's systematical dismantling of studios who have developed somewhat beloved franchises vs. a new studio which developed a me-too game in an already saturated market? Don't seem like contradictory situations at all to me.

I do concede however that the developer's messaging and perceived arrogance add a tinge of glee to a lot of the reactions online.

 

[ozz ex machina]

It doesn't seem weird to me that people were happy to see a multiplayer game that was mostly disliked and made by an unpopular dev flop, and also sad to see a studio close whose single-player output they mostly enjoyed.

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I can't fathom how it was mostly disliked, I don't think many people who actually played the final version of LB could have disliked it much at all (beyond the long search times & not liking shooters i guess?).

Most people I saw moaning were the kind of people who would NEVER actually play a competitive shooter outside of Overwatch (not a good shooter). It was a bunch of people going * dismissive snort* "GEE another generic snoozefest shooter guys, lets shit allll over this".

I admit the marketing on it was poor and some of the voice work etc was really lame. But fuck me Lawbreakers is one hell of a solid shooter. In a year where a lot of MP games have been utterly underwhelming, this game was very well polished with some excellent mechanics/classes. I'd actually love to hear a decent critique of Lawbreakers as an arena shooter from someone who has played it a lot, loves the genre and actually has some valid issues with it...because it's a genre I'm very fond of and I'm hard pressed to come up with much to complain about.

 

[ManaByte]

I think the bandwagoning about Lawbreakers' poor performance wasn't great, and generally speaking I don't want decent games to fail.

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No, but it was hilarious when the game only had 10 concurrent players...which is enough to launch exactly one match.

 

[Kill3r7]

Lawbreakers is a new MP focused IP that few people played vs a studio that had some success with the Dead Space franchise (amazing first two games) and was working on a SW SP game lead by Amy. I think it is pretty easy to see the difference in outrage and coverage on gaming forums, ours included.

 

[AcademicSaucer]

People were really excited by the prospect of an Star Wars Uncharted game by Henning

 

[Deleted member 2945]

I don't really follow the point of saturated market - it just seems to be Overwatch and that's it? UT doesn't register and Quake hasn't fully released.

Pubg launched into that exact landscape - no one could have predicted it to become the latest hotness, surely you'd all say the same thing and advise them not to?

Am I misunderstanding that - because Overwatch is so big there's no real point in attempting it?

 

[spam musubi]

Visceral is a beloved studio scorned by one of the most hated publishers, forced to close down after making good games. Lawbreakers was made by an independent studio so all their failures are their own. They also had an arrogant mouthpiece making bold statements, so they're hard to root for as an underdog.

 

[Alienous]

People have an attachment to Visceral Games, they don't have as much of an attachment to Boss Key Studios.

One was the 'failure' of a project, the other was the closing of a studio (jobs lost / future games from the studio lost) by an outside force.

I don't think it's that complicated. If LawBreakers' sales resulted in the studio being shut down I don't think people would revel in that (except for maybe as it relates to Bleszinski, who people know won't starve as a result). But when a game assumes an audience or status, and releases to far less, it's "well, look where your hubris got you". They don't have the perception of being underdogs that failed (probably due to Cliff being the studio figurehead), but as group of people who came at the king (Overwatch) and missed.

 

[Forestar]

There was a rumor going around that it won't go to the Xbox for...reasons. Not going to expand on something that's completely unconfirmed and could paint someone in a bad light. But, think of burned bridges.

But that's why they've been hinting at a Switch version.

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Bosskey said that they choose the PS4 and Steam due to their large audience, which is fine by me. The only problem people had was the way they said it.

 

[Deleted member 2945]

People have an attachment to Visceral Games, they don't have as much of an attachment to Boss Key Studios.

One was the 'failure' of a project, the other was the closing of a studio (jobs lost / future games from the studio lost) by an outside force.

I don't think it's that complicated. If LawBreakers' sales resulted in the studio being shut down I don't think people would revel in that. But when a game assumes an audience or status, and releases to far less, it's "well, look where your hubris got you". They don't have the perception of being underdogs that failed (probably due to Cliff being the studio figurehead), but as group of people who came at the king (Overwatch) and missed.

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Not that I entirely agree with that, but definitely addresses the disproportionate response.

 

[jimboton]

Cliffy B's biggest "crime" was making a game that asked for more of the players both in terms of skill and patience than most other games.

 

[Silky]

I don't really follow the point of saturated market - it just seems to be Overwatch and that's it? UT doesn't register and Quake hasn't fully released.

Pubg launched into that exact landscape - no one could have predicted it to become the latest hotness, surely you'd all say the same thing and advise them not to?

Am I misunderstanding that - because Overwatch is so big there's no real point in attempting it?

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Overwatch
Paladins
Dirty Bomb
Team Fortress 2
Gigantic
Battleborn (flopped)
Titanfall

Couple that with Counter Strike, CoD, Battlefield and yes even Halo still being incredibly popular shooters....why the hell would anyone want to play Lawbreakers

The market has too many competitive first person shooters with a lot of them falling into the pit and dying

 

[Alienous]

Not that I entirely agree with that, but definitely addresses the disproportionate response.

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Yeah, I found myself disagreeing with the bolded part also. I edited it.

 

[Deleted member 2945]

Overwatch
Paladins
Dirty Bomb
Team Fortress 2
Gigantic
Battleborn (flopped)
Titanfall

Couple that with Counter Strike, CoD, Battlefield and yes even Halo still being incredibly popular shooters....why the hell would anyone want to play Lawbreakers

The market has too many competitive first person shooters with a lot of them falling into the pit and dying

Click to shrink...

Do you consider PUBG to be in a different market to that list?

 

[ManaByte]

Overwatch
Paladins
Dirty Bomb
Team Fortress 2
Gigantic
Battleborn (flopped)
Titanfall

Couple that with Counter Strike, CoD, Battlefield and yes even Halo still being incredibly popular shooters....why the hell would anyone want to play Lawbreakers

The market has too many competitive first person shooters with a lot of them falling into the pit and dying

Click to shrink...

And on the PC, people really only play CS, Overwatch, PUBG, and maybe Paladins (which is the best Overwatch clone).

Do you consider PUBG to be in a different market to that list?

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Nah, it should be included up there. But it does get a lot of non-FPS people playing it.

 

[Deleted member 2945]

If you consider PUBG to be in that same market - that was the same landscape for them too. Surely Silky would advise them not to bother then.

 

[Silky]

Do you consider PUBG to be in a different market to that list?

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Yeah actually. Dead By Daylight, PUBG, Culling, Friday the 13th, H1Z1 BR and Fortnite BR would be that market

 

[TyrantII]

CB is pretty arrogant period. His ego and blasting of fans / gamers left a pretty sour taste in my mouth and I'm sure others. He's got a history of running his mouth and likes playing the stereotypical Alpha personality.

But I don't think anyone is happy a bunch of devs with families are about to lose their jobs. CB on the other hand will be just fine, besides a bruised ego you'll never see.

I'd also point out there's no tears for EAs corporate office here or anywhere else in gaming culture. In fact they probably take more of the blame than they deserve.

 

[Pegasus Actual]

BF Hardline continuing support was garbage. So if I'm going to dance on a grave it'll be Visceral's.

 

[quincognito]

Boss Key haven't been around long enough to become an unpopular dev with that logic.

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It's goofy as hell to even talk about this without accepting upfront that "Boss Key" might as well not exist to anyone, any and all opinions of the game and the studio are contingent on how people feel about Cliffy as a person.

 

[Nirolak]

It's goofy as hell to even talk about this without accepting upfront that "Boss Key" might as well not exist to anyone, any and all opinions of the game and the studio are contingent on how people feel about Cliffy as a person.

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Right. The reaction to Lawbreakers is most similar to that of Battleborn due to Randy Pitchford, but with notably more people yelling in the other direction about how it's unfair to him.

Visceral is about a hypothetical unreleased game by a well loved director from Naughty Dog in a very popular IP. If the game had come out and was a 6/10, then there would probably be a lot of people who were actually positive about the game failing, similar to what happened with The Order 1886.

 

[quincognito]

I can't fathom how it was mostly disliked, I don't think many people who actually played the final version of LB could have disliked it much at all (beyond the long search times & not liking shooters i guess?).

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Lawbreakers is a game that mixes a style of gameplay that's fallen completely out of favor (old-school fast-twitch arena combat, which is really offputting to most players who can't top the scoreboard) combined with a hero-shooter gloss but with characters that are extremely unmemorable and unattractive. I'm not saying the game isn't fun, I can fully believe that it is if you're prepared for the specific stuff it's offering, but it's very easy to have an entirely justified negative opinion about it.

 

[Zoid]

I don't know, for one thing, Cliffy B isn't well liked by many. I personally think he's a bit of an ass at times. And LawBreakers was just a bad game, I could tell from the beta it wouldn't turn out well. On the other side you have a Star Wars game getting canceled and most people love Star Wars. Although, after reading Jason's article about it on Kotaku, I'm not so sure the game would have turned out well anyway.

All that said, it sucks for all the devs affected, people lost jobs because of this and I hope they land on their feet and make some good games.

 

[Nirolak]

Lawbreakers is a game that mixes a style of gameplay that's fallen completely out of favor (old-school fast-twitch arena combat, which is really offputting to most players who can't top the scoreboard) combined with a hero-shooter gloss but with characters that are extremely unmemorable and unattractive. I'm not saying the game isn't fun, I can fully believe that it is if you're prepared for the specific stuff it's offering, but it's very easy to have an entirely justified negative opinion about it.

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I think the most telling sign is this:

The game sold 80,000 copies on Steam. (If people are concerned about the Free Weekend messing with numbers, it was 75K before that.)

However, the game had a peak concurrent player count of 66 in the past 24 hours.

It's clear that almost no one who bought the game wanted to stick around.

 

[Principate]

Right. The reaction to Lawbreakers is most similar to that of Battleborn due to Randy Pitchford, but with notably more people yelling in the other direction about how it's unfair to him.

Visceral is about a hypothetical unreleased game by a well loved director from Naughty Dog in a very popular IP. If the game had come out and was a 6/10, then there would probably be a lot of people who were actually positive about the game failing, similar to what happened with The Order 1886.

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TBF though the Order was it's own beast an generated it's own specific backlash. Regardless of how good or bad the game came out it would have had plenty of detrators. Namely from the detractors of the cinematic story telling above all else for which it became the poster child of during it's pre-release.

 

[JeremyCraves_Snow]

I bought Lawbreakers on PS4 and enjoyed it. Probably a bad time to release a game close to the end of the year, before D2, Battlefront 2, and WWII.

Regarding the enjoyment of its failure. I have wondered if this is a Blizzard/Overwatch thing. If a game can even somewhat resembles Overwatch, Blizzard fanatics call it a rip off and root against it. When I was streaming Lawbreakers people would be searching for streams playing the game just to come in chat and question my purchase then inform me that it's a ripoff. Obviously people calling it a ripoff haven't played it. Battleborn made the enormous error of launching the same month as Overwatch but same thing. Overwatch wasn't even out and people were calling Battleborn a rip off and cheering it's failure.

I may be wrong but its something I have wondered. Whatever the reason I don't get people getting pleasure out of someones elses failure. Childish IMO.

 

[Mass_Pincup]

General consensus about gaming studio closing/people losing jobs v the glee in seeing a game fail for an indie studio which could lead to the same thing.

And it appears that the reaction to the failure of Lawbreakers has nothing to do with the quality of the game - purely about the man: Cliff Bleszinski

edit: disagree on respective markets being saturated versus another.

Attitude seems to be don't try and create a similar game to others because there's one that's excessively more popular? Seems really defeatist.

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Oh I get it now.

I think the fact that Lawbreaker was a multiplayer games and Viceral`s game a linear single player game coupled with Cliff Bleszinski`s history with Neogaf users and his way of talking are the reason why there`s this discrepancy.

Resetera's audience skewed pretty heavily towards single players game as well as AAA games.

So when you mix both of those and add on of the biggest franchise in pop culture it's bound to resonate more with this audience.

 

[RdN]

The blowback against Lawbreakers is 100% Cliffy B's fault.

He was arrogant, cocky, smug,. Whatever you choose to call it, while marketing the game..

Lawebreakers itself is a GOOD game, mind you. It just had the tremendous misfortune of launching after Overwatch.

 

[Darryl M R]

There's nothing contradictory about those two things.

Lawbreakers was fun. It is still the first AAA game in years to actually have something to say.

Despite this, marketing was poor and the team misread the landscape. I think hyper-realism is popular but not dudebro.