Cliffy B: "As of right now, Boss Key Productions is no more"
71 replies, posted
Imagine going from Gears of War to this. Fucking hell.
On the one hand I want to laugh, but on the other hand I had to watch Tramell Isaac go from art director on Planetside 2 to being poached by Cliffy B to serve on his sinking ship. The guy was super active in the PS2 community and happily mentored myself and other aspiring 3d artists through the Player Studio program. It sucks to see him and the rest of the Bosskey Crew get dragged down like this.
I disagree, unless one of those changes was making the game F2P. Not to defend his statements trying to sell people on Lawbreakers, statements that ranged from smarmy arrogance all the way to not-so-passive aggressive jabs at other games and gamers but I don't think Lawbreakers bombed because people saw him and said "wow that guys a dick I ain't buyin his game". I imagine the amount of people who play games, who also actively follow a games development or watch conference interviews, is a small group. I think they just tried to release a class-based, objective-focused shooter in a space that is full to the brim of these sorts of games. Yeah, it was really unique and had a lot of things going for it, and maybe it had a higher skill ceiling than games like Paladins or Overwatch but it's still the same sort of gameplay and anyone who just sees a game pop up on Steam or watches youtube videos of the beta or whatever only sees that.
I agree with the latter half though. There is no way Radical Heights was released without them Blezinski knowing he was probably going to have to shut down soon and while the onus is always on the consumer to be aware of what they are buying, it's pretty damn cynical to have made "founders" packs for it.
Its like taking TotalBiscuits tweet about guy getting cancer and then laugh at him for finally getting that himself, fcompletely forgetting that he has apologized multiple times.
Difference is that TB changed over the years, while Cliff remained the same short-sighted man-child through all his career.
Wow I thought CliffyB was just an idiot, he has cancer!?
rip in peace cliffster
Literally the only news I heard about Lawbreakers was that it had no player base right after launch. I wasn't following the game at all but every gaming news site had an article about that basically. I could see that as a huge reason why people didn't play the game, because nobody wants a "Lead and Gold" where it has seemingly good gameplay but nobody is playing.
There was very little news on major websites about the game before launch and no hype to build it up. I didn't even know it was out until like 5 days after release, and I bet the change from F2P to paid product turned off a lot of people due to the monetary investment needed to start playing. Even other websites have commented on the abysmal marketing strategy.
They marketed the game as difficult, high skilled, and competitive, which will turn off people who aren't hyper competitive. I'd bet that when most people think of "highly competitive, high skill requirement" games they're going to assume the playerbase is going to be full of pros wiping the floor with them and teammates bitching in voice chat. Casual players don't want stress like that; Overwatch, TF2 and Paladins have modes for fucking around and playing casually but Lawbreakers tries to put itself into a very tiny niche for high skill players, and they are the minority of gamers and can't keep your game afloat by themselves unless you lower your budget immensely. Nexon blames most of their losses in the quarter on Lawbreakers, so they must have had a big budget behind it. They launched into a saturated market, having to compete with Overwatch, Paladins, TF2, R6:S etc. without the strong art direction or memorable characters. Then they had Cliffy B as the face of marketing which was a terrible idea.
I've never liked Cliffy B's personality, and looking back a lot of the marketing was abrasive and douchey. Trying to put down other games and say yours is the best is a shitty strategy because you'll turn off players who like those other games, since you're basically insinuating they have inferior taste. I think putting him in front of a microphone to promote your game is a bad idea, especially with the pro gamer audience they were trying to get, because that audience is the same that was around for him to shit on the PC when Gears of War was getting big and Unreal was left in the dust.
Overall the game would need much better marketing to have stayed afloat, and limited F2P of some kind could have been the way to get players interested. Other games can thrive in this marketplace but they have either great marketing strategies or a unique artstyle to make them stand out. Paladins got popular, in my opinion, because it was a free alternative to Overwatch on Steam, so players who didn't want to buy into Overwatch had a reasonable alternative that could stand on its own. TF2 has been going somewhat strong for 10 years so it's the juggernaut that made the genre gain popularity. Lawbreakers just didn't catch people's attention the right way.
