A developer for Concord has made an interesting revelation about its development. But we think you won’t be too surprised about it.
As reported by MP1st, Lead Character Design dev Jon Weisnewski shared this statement on Twitter:
“Today @FirewalkStudios launched @PlayConcord! The game has been in development for around 8 years and I’ve been there for almost 5 of them. We don’t get a lot of Launch Days in our careers so today is special for a ton of reasons. Oblige me some good vibes today.”
Weisnewski also added that he was personally involved in Concord‘s development for only five years. Finally, he says that Firewalk Studios is “strapped in and ready to push it for years to come.”
We’re going straight to Wikipedia to confirm that Overwatch, the title that launched the hero shooter genre, was initially published on May 24, 2016, for the PlayStation 4, Xbox One, and Windows, on Battle.net. That means that there were people at Firewalk Studios who had the idea of making this game as early as when that game got released.
But, everything doesn’t quite line up here. As established in this Venturebeat feature, the studio was founded in 2018. Tony Hsu, who was general manager of Destiny for Activision, joined Ryan Ellis, Bungie’s creative director, and Elena Siegman, Bungie producer, to leave Destiny to make something new.
Firewalk was itself part of ProbablyMonsters, a game company that was helping form the studios that actually made games. In 2021, Sony made the deal to make Firewalk’s first game for PlayStation 5, and in 2023, Sony bought the studio outright, alongside Concord.
So is there a mistake here? We don’t think so. Weisnewski is probably alluding to how Firewalk’s founders had the initial ideas for Concord around 2016, while they were still at Bungie. And the actual development period was probably the five year period that he says he was involved in as well.
Now, we have to say that correlation does not mean causation. It is possible that those first ideas for Concord were not that close to the hero template for Overwatch as we know it today. But even if that was the case, it’s clear that they did lean towards that template when they finally got to making the game.
And it’s true that they came up with their own spin, and ideas on how the game was going to work. But if our idea of this timetable is correct, it was not possible for Firewalk to have published Concord soon after Overwatch. As many fans point out, the game is now entering the market at a time when it’s saturated with similar games, and even more competitors are coming out.
So it isn’t just that Blizzard has responded to them by planning a new Season for Overwatch 2, with a new hero, to match their launch. It’s also that other hero shooters, like Marvel Rivals and Deadlock, are appearing as clear threats to their own success.
It certainly feels like there was a lot of decisions that could have been made to keep Firewalk and Sony from entering into this awkward situation. For example, I would suggest that if Sony had launched their own Early Access for Concord, they could have gotten the feedback on what needed to change earlier on. While it’s great to make surprises for the audience, that only works if the audience actually wanted the surprise.
With all that said, now is no longer the time to speculate on the things that could have been. We wish Firewalk Studios the best with Concord’s launch, coming later today.
