What Went Wrong? - Firefall

This is what went wrong with Firefall, an MMO that had a lot of promise but suffered behind the scenes with an a toxic work culture, identity crisis and a CEO with questionable marketing ideas. Firefall fell due to the failure to both keep an audience but due to funding issues later down the line. Firefall was a great MMO for a short time and it'll be missed by many who had the chance to play it.

Red 5 Studios was the company behind this game. But unfortunately Red 5 Studios was shut down shortly before Firefall was. All in all it's a shame.

[WickedWiz]

Oh yeah, they also mentioned a mobile version of this game but of course nothing came of that. Real sad to see this game die the way it did. RIP Firefall

[quickfate]

As someone who was a founder pack owner of highest level, getting that unique bike, i must admit, the game was great, but it just... stalled, like really hard, i miss it, it had potential.

[BrandonBMore]

It's funny hearing out how awfully employees were treated by the CEO and upper management considering how they were seemingly mostly ex-Blizzard talent. Must be something in the water there

[Giliver]

The fact he had a safe word leads me to believe he was aware he couldn't control his emotions fully.... Which is kinda sad honestly.

[ensuredchaos]

In all honesty I think the Firefall Bus could have been used for something really cool, like imagine if they travelled around the world and started mini E-Sports events with it, or public demos at major in person events. Such a lost opportunity.

[coastermad]

"Being told that you're doing everything wrong, while not receiving any real guidance and being forced to work overtime to re-do work it wasn't what the CEO envisioned, is enough to kill your drive and enthusiasm for the thing you're working on"

Yup. Totally. And from experience too. And it sucks.

[Mfr]

Firefall is something I still play in my dreams. Nothing else has come close. The ability to almost fly and use every ounce of tricks to get from one moutaintop or something to another was just fun. The resources thumping was the best drop in co-op I've ever played.

[presidentduckling]

I remember when Thumping was one of the main attractions in game, and you could call in a Thumper almost anywhere and summon the hordes. There was a tiny beach site just to the southeast of Copacabana with umbrellas, and you could call the Thumper down on top of one of the umbrellas. You'd get nothing but dirt in your Thumper, but it was hilarious to watch the critters try and get to you. That, and everyone would always grab engineers and go down to the beach to to the spot occupied by the shadowy dudes, and hide up inside one of the buildings with a second floor that you had to jump to, and set up a million turrets, and just turn the game into a building defense against the zombie hordes. Good times.

[stinky]

11:02 trust me, that is NOT a dumb analogy. I work at Starbucks. That exact scenario you described happens multiple times a day. unfortunately some people really just do expect anyone doing tasks for them to read their mind and magically know what they want 😭

[SeroX]

I remember enjoying early Firefall, I still have the Hat from the founders edition. But as the game kept getting patches, it kept changing its means of progression. From being able to Solo events, to be hard required for groups. From a simple leveling system, to requiring a bunch of materials that made no sense, breaking progression and only half working....And all of it completely changed the next patch cycle.

[TheRealGuywithoutaMustache]

"The employees are not fired for messing up, but for offending the CEO"

Wow, all you have to do to keep your job is act fake and friendly with the CEO.

[Annihilator]

You missed another one of Kerns' disasters.
FireFest...
Game was in Closed Beta and Kerns' went out and hired Nathan Fillion and couple others plus several twitch streamers
to showcase the game.
It happened way too early in the game's development cycle and it didn't draw in the people Kerns wanted.
Another huge waste of money.

[Samael_TD]

It's really crazy how ahead of its time this game was. Even just from a visual and fun factor sense. It's really a shame it had to die off so early in its life, it had so much potential to be incredible.

[andrecabral]

As a Brazilian, I cannot stop myself from noticing that Brazil was indeed mentioned in this piece of content.
Thank you from cooperating with our mastermind plan of spreading the world, and turn the whole Earth into Brazil 2.

Oh, and also, awesome video bro, your channel definitely is one of the bests I've found recently

Greetings from itaquera

[Neptunequeen]

Shit, man. Regardless of anything that happens afterwards, those actors at PAX looked absolutely great and I know I would have had stars in my eyes too after a show like that. It looked like they were the actual in-game face models too which is incredible.

[RelytTiNmad]

Honestly, I am loving the content — “What went wrong?” So many games I've loved only to disrespectfully spit in my face over the years. Just finished binging some of your videos, I would love to see a video on the disaster that was The Stomping Lands. The Kickstarter killer (IMO). I think it was the first game I really saw explode, only for the dev to run with the money. Making future Kickstarter projects very questionable to support for many people. But I have “great” news, return to the stomping land steam forums. For there you will find that the dev has returned. I repeat, after not paying artists, running with the money and going silent for about 8 years, he returns and 'updated' the game. As far as I have seen, he is silencing any questions about the disappearance and past scam that had occurred. I have seen very little talk about this except directly on the steam forums now renamed “Stomping Land”. All tho, I'm not sure if this has the amount of content required for a video of yours. I at the very least would like to spread awareness that someone who damaged the Indie Developer scene's reputation and trust has returned with no answers to his actions on his community and the indie community as a whole. This coupled with the fact that there seems to already be a small community following praising him as if he's some Messiah, for returning to finish a product he was already paid to develop. It all just puts a bad taste in my mouth. With the lack of transparency on the past, I fear that this will become “The Stomping Lands” 2.0 growing in size like the last only to run with everyone's money. Anyhow, this rambling has gone on quite enough. I bid thee farewell WickedWiz, til the next video. Cheers

[dominickpohnert]

I remember playing this in beta and having a blast. There were a lot more than 30k player peak due to it having its own launcher yet it was only fun for a few months in the beta

[DanteLorel]

Anyone remember the "Chosen Invasion" events? Firefall was always a very co-operative game, but a horde of 30+ players storming Chosen drop sites from one end of the overworld to the other was something else entirely.

[soulwynd]

I was in the forums from day one as well as in the closed alphas where they secretly invited people to play.

Here is the thing, we told them in several posts for years all the design issues, which parts of the gameplay they should focus on, which changes were good and bad. They didn't listen to anything in the tester's forum. Instead they tried to push the game into esports and failed to realize people couldn't even get a pvp match going because almost nobody that played the game wanted to pvp. When they finally revamped the frames, they did all the shit we told them not to do instead of the things people wanted.

It is failure by design. Massive lack of community awareness. Completely ignoring the playerbase. At least we have community of Firefall refugees trying to make the game we actually wanted. Either that or it will be vaporware.

[exp]

Really enjoying this series. Especially appreciate that you have a unique style in the way you approach these topics when compared with Death of a Game and Wha Happun. All these series have in common that they are very informative and entertaining at the same time and I hope you will continue seeing success covering these missmanaged projects.