C-Suit idiots might legitimately fear that the mere existence of its episode could overshadow the entire rest of the show.

I’ve worked for those idiots. In the streaming video industry. They do not think this or fear this and this is one of those rare cases where they’re not being idiots. People will hate watch the Concord episode of Secret Level. People will be curious about the episode because of the trainwreck that the game is. The social media buzz around Concord being gawdawful will put butts in seats. These guys are not wrong that there is no bad publicity, and they don’t need people to love the Concord episode of Secret Level for the series as a whole to hit their “hours streamed” benchmarks, sell a fuckton of ads, and have them call the whole thing a success so they can do it all again for Secret Level season 2 where they never speak of Concord again.

What’s more, they don’t even care if the Concord episode is good, they care that you watched another 30-40 minutes of content and pumped all their metrics. They know that the average viewer of content on Prime Video doesn’t know what a ‘Sifu’ is, or an ‘Unreal Tournament’, or an ‘Armored Core’… They know that the majority of the viewers for Secret Level are not going to know that ‘Concord’ is dead, nor will they care if they ever find out, so it won’t matter at all for their single episode in an anthology. Hell, for that matter as much as it sucks, Unreal Tournament has been dead for years and you can’t even buy most of the legacy versions of that game anymore thanks to Epic, so I really doubt that Amazon Prime Video cares much at all about the games represented in their anthology being alive. They just need things to fit the framing of the show so that viewers at home will go, “Oh, it’s that thing from the makers of ‘Love Death + Robots’ about video games, think I’ll have a look.” So long as everything under the label looks sufficiently video gamey, the average viewer will enjoy the show and move on whether or not they could ever actually play those games.

They do not own or operate Concord, which probably no longer exists as a product.

All the more reason for Amazon to not give a fuck and release the episode anyway. They already expended the effort and money, they’ve probably already sold the ads to run against it, they’ve got streaming hour benchmarks to hit if they want to claim the show is a success, so everything is running in favor of Amazon taking a look at the shitshow the game is in and saying, “SHIP IT” for their Secret Level episode. Normies who aren’t super into gaming aren’t going to know that the game it represents is dead, and there’s a fair chance that Sony will pursue F2P explicitly so that it can not be when the episode airs so they can attempt to get some money from those people who will see the episode and want to play the game. The people behind “Love Death + Robots” are behind this series, they’re probably going to ship a good Concord episode that will make that bland mess of Live Service nonsense seem interesting whether or not the game is good or even alive.

There are no announced plans to take it F2P

The fact that the announcement says they’re taking the servers offline and looking at options to connect with “their players”, while Sony have also not just shut down Firewalk Studios (A wholly owned subsidiary of Sony) is more or less a full endorsement of the idea that they think they can make a go of this by going F2P. Studios that flat out fail don’t stick around in this day and age and the director of the game is saying that they’re looking at options to connect with “their players”, how is that not saying that they’re going to remove the one barrier to entry that everyone is talking about by taking the game free to play?

Its no longer a headline IP… its a total flop of an IP.

I think you may have misunderstood, I didn’t mean to suggest that Concord was a headline IP, I was saying that Amazon considers Secret Level to be a headline IP for Prime Video and they’ve got zero fucks to give about what good (or bad) business the game their episode is based on is doing, they need butts in seats to watch their prestige video games anthology series from the makers of “Love Death + Robots” and I don’t think they give a single shit if Sony feels bad because their game didn’t make it and Amazon still launched an episode set in the same universe as the game.

It’s an anthology style show, meaning a bunch of basically self contained plots and stories, you could easily just drop one.

Not if ad sales has already written contracts for ads against a set number of episodes. Not if you have streamed hour targets that you need to hit for the show if you want to keep making future seasons of the thing. Not if you are not a gamer and don’t give any fucks about the stupid decisions that Sony made with the IP they probably paid you to make an episode about. There’s absolutely zero reason for Amazon to shitcan an episode of this show just because the game it’s based on was nonsense and everyone knew it years before the game ever launched, it’s an extra 30-40 minutes of space to stick ads and pump “hours watched” even if the episode is as bland as the game. Ads and hours are the only things that video platforms care about, they’re going to keep that episode unless there’s a contractual obligation to cancel it. I doubt that Sony had the foresight to put something in their contract that allowed them to shut things down if the game flopped, and even if they did, such a provision would usually mean that they’d have to pay Amazon some penalty to exercise that option which probably makes it cheaper for Sony to just allow it to move ahead.

I’ll bet two cents the entire Concord IP just vanishes as brand management trumps over anything else.

I would not take that bet. I also think the brand is dead. It’s got a year or two tops of being a shambling zombie, but you’re thinking too much like a rational person and businesses don’t think like that, they’re going to try to squeeze blood from this stone, it’s the only thing they know how to do.

It makes zero sense trying to save it here and now, but that’s how C-Suite idiots think, so I won’t be surprised. The show launches in just over 90 days, chances are pretty good that episode is already in the can and it’s far too late to steer resources into another franchise for a different episode to fill the spot. Ad sales against that content have already closed big contracts, marketing has already laid campaigns that mention Concord all over the place, and for the content industry 3 months is too late to try to steer the ship away from a disaster.

Animation (outside of South Park) often takes 7-10 months on the low end to get a single episode from start to finish. Like I said, they’re doing a New World episode and that shit is dead as doornails. I doubt they’ll allow an launched/un-launched game off the hook. Hell, it’s probably now their plan to convert the game to F2P in time to simu-relaunch with the animated series episode so that they can get Amazon promotion synergies.

I think it’s too late for Amazon to be willing to take a bath on an episode of one of their new headline IPs. The show is coming December 10th. I’d be shocked if Amazon is going to be willing to just drop a whole episode of their show because the attached game launched flaccid. They’re doing a New World episode for goodness sake, so it’s clear that they’re very willing to push this vehicle for promotion all the way to the finish line even if the engine has dropped out and the wheels have ground down to nothing.

Concord will be back as a F2P, guarantee it. They’ve got Amazon churning out an episode of their Secret Level series for the game, they’re not going to fully kill it here and now.

The feedback that I heard everywhere was that the game should have been F2P, so they’ll make that happen.

I already had a fairly extensive take on this last night, but the team have put together a response to the video that I feel is worth sharing, and not just because it supports my prior post.

https://www.patreon.com/posts/statement-from-110167302

Meanwhile, Kevin over here being all: Am I a joke to you?

Meh. There’s a fair amount here where it’s people admitting they don’t have the receipts and he still ran with it. It’s all fine and well to say that you’ve got receipts that you can’t share because they’d screw people, but you only get away with that if those withheld details are backing credible allegations where the quantities and people involved are known and there wasn’t a lot (if any) of that here that hasn’t already been acknowledged and remediated or resolved from the point of view of the people sticking with Second Wind if their statements on their Discord are to be believed. You don’t get to claim you have receipts that prove a terrible situation is happening while everyone involved with the situation is standing there wishing you well and saying that it’s not terrible.

At best you could charitably make a narrative out of Frost’s “proof” that supports his claim that Nick is all of Second Wind’s problems, but then you have to ask why nobody else is leaving like he has, or trying to force Nick out as he did. Frost claims that Nick is keeping everyone in the dark, but the Second Wind team have been pretty transparent on their Discord about acknowledging Nick’s issues and have claimed that they’re both aware of them and working on improving the situation, so I can’t see where Frost’s argument still has any gas after that? Hell, the Second Wind team saw Nick’s social media presence as an issue and arranged a performance improvement plan around that for him which it seems he is adhering to, so clearly they have the ability to reign him in if they wish and have done so. Where again is the issue?

Nick does seem like an ass, I feel confident saying that because I too am an ass, but this video did nothing to make me think that Second Wind is suffering because of Nick. Meanwhile Frost claims that he only has beef with Nick and doesn’t want to harm the remainder of the Second Wind crew, but that whole video is going to cause the whole Second Wind team a huge amount of damage over issues that they’ve already acknowledged and moved on from, so who is the larger ass here? These guys are both younger than I am by a fair amount and they’ve both seemingly made mistakes that I feel are on par with mistakes I have personally made in my life. I like to go with the Ted Lasso philosophy, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-udZZQB5OFU Clearly the Second Wind crew are taking a shot on giving Nick another chance, Frost should just accept that he wasn’t a good fit there, move on, be successful, and hope and pray that the people he supposedly bears no ill will over at Second Wind experience a Nick who has learned from his mistakes and manages to provide the support and success they deserve.

Frost left while nobody else did, that was what was right for him. He’s still trying to grind an axe while they’re wishing him well and allowing him to make his case on a forum they control. He’s made it clear on the Second Wind discord his leaving was because there was a disagreement about content (he thought that only larger shows should survive because it’s algorithmically better) and monetization (I somewhat agree on his point here that they should do something about the Patreon credit rolls at the end, but mostly because I don’t feel those are content, not because of what the advertisers want) and from everything he’s said there I have to say that I find Nick’s argument more compelling even if it does mean the eventual death of the endeavor as Frost seems to think it will.

I say this because the alternative is becoming the same thing that every “media company” these days ends up becoming. As a Patron of Second Wind I’d rather ride this current (maybe naive) attempt at being something not beholden to algorithms and content farming, and see it fail if it is indeed misguided, than have them become another something that can succeed by selling out like all the others have. Frost might not be wrong that they can’t monetize like they’re doing and survive, and he was definitely right to leave for his principles on that, but if the Second Wind team are happy while they’re trying (and all indications outside of Frost’s singular claims are that they’re doing less than perfect but still alright) then we should enjoy the time afforded to them in the attempt. I only ever watched Yahtzee on The Escapist (as I had been watching him before ZP was a part of The Escapist) but I watch more than half of the Second Wind content now and and enjoy it all thoroughly. I watch every Bytesized Review (and have bought or have gotten my wife to buy a handful of the games they’ve covered), every Cold Take (while that was a SW thing), every Design Delve, every Backdrop, every Unpacked, and of course every Yahtzee Tries (the videos not the livestreams) and Fully/Semi Ramblomatic…

If what Second Wind is doing right now is wrong, I don’t ever want them to be right. If Frost is right about Nick and for some reason nobody else is getting out despite that, I hope that they are at least finding joy and fulfillment in what they’re doing and I hope that Nick gets fucked for as long as he chooses not to grow from any of this. That said, unless there are other people coming forward too or leaving, it really doesn’t seem like Frost’s take is the eloquent and passionate truth he usually brings to the table, it seems like his take isn’t meshing at all with everyone else who is still a member of that going concern, and that’s fine, it happens all the time that different people read the same reality differently, but this video ain’t it if he actually cares about the Second Wind crew like he claims. That singular discordant note is enough to trash the whole of his credibility for now on this issue, because he is saying one thing and expecting me to look the other way as he’s doing exactly the opposite in the same YouTube video. It seems like a Hot Take from the guy who I came to appreciate for the other sort. I’ll probably give him another shot if he wants to keep making content, but I wish he was willing to extend the same courtesy to those he has perceived as wronging him instead of attempting to sharpen his axe on someone for their worst moments. 🤷‍♂️

The U-Force

Got one for $10 at a yardsale as a kid and that $10 was 200% too much, they should have given me $10 to take it off their hands and I still would have dumped it in a dumpster afterwards.

Tap to pay was pretty well established when they went with scan to pay, they just hoped the Walmart name was large enough that they could cut out all the middlemen inherent with traditional payment processors and keep a bigger piece of the pie. Specifically they were in a spat with Visa over merchant fees at the time so they wanted an option that allowed them to cut Visa out of the picture. They thought that having their own scan to pay system would allow them to do that, but they eventually reconciled with Visa and got the merchant fees discount they wanted and that aspect of the scan to pay system sorta dropped out of focus.