Concord or: How I Learned To Stop Worrying & Love The ‘Quiet Shooter’

It’s no secret that Concord has had what could be described as a ‘slow start’. On the game’s opening day, it struggled to surpass 700 concurrent players, an accepted metric of a game’s success. Especially a multiplayer only game. Now, industry analysts have estimated that Concord has only sold circa 25,000 units. That’s an unmitigated disaster for a game that reportedly cost $150m to make, over the space of 8 years.

For those that count themselves among the 25,000, which I do, that’s certainly a worry for the medium to long term future of Concord. Only two new content drops have been announced so far – one in October and another in January. If the next steps by Sony don’t improve things, the shooter might be lucky to see the end of 2025.

In the short term, moment-to-moment play with Concord however, I’ve found myself enjoying the low key quietness of the game’s launch. In fact, after playing so many AAA shooters will tens of thousands of players on day one, it has been strangely nostalgic to dive into a shooter that’s not bulging at the weight of its player base. I’d even say I’ve enjoyed playing Concord more because it has had a quiet launch.

Striking A Concord With Me

Let’s start with the most obvious thing – I could actually play the game on launch day, and haven’t had an issue since. After so many rocky launches of live service titles over the past few years that saw people waiting in queue’s just to be allowed onto the game, it was refreshing to boot up a game and just play it. This wasn’t like the first days of Overwatch 2, Helldivers 2, or every new season of Fortnite. There was no red rope I needed to line up behind for 20 minutes. Oh no. Straight in, just like the other ~600 of us.

Because Concord has been relatively quiet compared to the other AAA shooters on the market, connectivity hasn’t been a problem either. The servers haven’t been heaving under the weight of the player base, remaining stable and accessible. Matchmaking wait times have certainly increased since launch day, but the longest I’ve ever waited is 2 minutes.

The other intangible benefit of being the new, quiet and seemingly uncool shooter on the market is that it hasn’t attracted the cheaters. While there are some incredible Concord players out there already, I’ve not personally seen anything that I could say was definitely cheating. That’s not something I could say about the mega popular shooters out there like Call of Duty and Fortnite. There are TikTok accounts dedicated to showing people how to cheat in Warzone and Battle Royale, or seeing how long it takes for the developers to ban them when blatantly using hacks. There’s no such thing for Sony’s new shooter – yet.

Ah, we meet again ‘Flicker of Beans’

It’s the less obvious elements of Concord having a quiet launch that I’ve enjoyed the most. One such element is the complete lack of ‘meta’ or universally agreed ‘best practice’. Games that garner massive audiences naturally gain more media attention. Strategy guides, loadout ranking, clips of people dropping nukes before a game even releases – it all feeds into the gamer zeitgeist until a non-insignificant portion of the player base are all doing the same thing. There’s a lot less of that for Concord. We’re all learning as we go as players, and it feels all the more rewarding for it.

My favourite part of playing Concord so far however has been how much it reminds me of the days when multiplayer on consoles was blossoming. Because the game might have only 500 players at any one time, you’ll invariably see the same players more than once. This is especially true if you’ve re-queuing for the same game mode over and over. You get to recognise some names, and when you play against them enough, they can become your nemesis. They may not even know that you’re cursing your name, but they will certainly feel it on the battlefield. I’ll chase down the player called “Lidl Car Park”, ignoring others in my path, after he/she/they set me on fire for the third time that night, in order to get my revenge. I’ll laugh to myself after I melee ‘Flicker of Beans’ in the chops, finally ending their streak.

I’ve gone through a few ‘Doug Judy’ style relationships with some players, too. Having had my ass handed too me thoroughly by ‘Platman and Robin’ and cursing their name, to see them teamed up with me a few games later, knowing how good they are, is a real turn up for the books. Going shoulder to shoulder with someone you’ve hated to play against is a humbling experience.

Playing Concord this past week has reminded me of the days playing on the PS3, playing shooters that only had a few dozen players to their name. I made lifelong friends and enemies as I battled it out on Killzone 2, Battlefield: Bad Company 2 or Bioshock 2. Ah, the nostalgia. I’ve made a few new friends from the lobbies of Concord too.

IT-Z Going To Change

While I’ve enjoyed the past week with Concord, a quality shooter with a small, passionate fanbase, it will have to change. Sony have a few things they can do to improve things – put the game on a deep sale, release some cross-over content with other tentpole games, release it on PlayStation Plus – and those things will have to work for the longevity of Concord. If they don’t, the writing may be on the wall. Concord’s support may be pulled.

Either way, this rather pleasant period of having a high quality AAA shooter bear all the quirky fruit of being a big indie title will come to an end. Right now feels like the best time to play Concord. Either player numbers go up, or they fall even further. If you’re sitting on the fence, give it a go, and maybe we’ll be cursing each other’s name after playing 3 consecutive matches against each other.

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