During a keynote speech at MIGS, studio head for The Coalition, Rod Fergusson, talked about how they made Gears 5 “inclusive” and basically designed the game around a demographic that wasn’t core to the franchise (which was partly why they teamed up with Facebook). Fergusson covered the key points of the “inclusivity” that they heaped into the game courtesy of Microsoft’s GLEAM team, all while completely avoiding talking about the sales data since the game isn’t doing so hot on the market.
GamesIndustry.biz picked up the quotes from Fergusson at the MIGS event, where Fergusson stated…
“Gears is known as being a pretty hardcore franchise. I think Gears has the most number of people with tattoos of any game franchise I’ve seen in my life. And when this is your audience, how you think about expanding that to be a little more mainstream or more approachable is always a challenge.”
“Before there was a $60 barrier, where you go, ‘Do I want that game?’… But now this little tile was going to light up in their library for millions and millions of people. So how do we welcome these people? These are people who maybe have no idea what Gears of War is.”
Fergusson begins to talk about inclusivity – mentioning a bunch of things they included that have nothing to do with growing or retaining their core demographic. Some things are useful, like the scalable text for UHD televisions or additional subtitle options.
However, nothing was done on the front of actually improving the gameplay experience. Fegursson was focused on “inclusivity” for Gears 5, but failed to include basic features that were present in Gears of War 2 and 3, such as destructible cover, a gorier and darker presentation, and threatening enemies.
He stated…
“Unless you consciously include, you will unconsciously exclude.”
“If you just do what you’re doing without thinking about how to include others, your normal biases are going to kick in and you’re going to forget people just because they’re not part of your social circle, not part of your demographic. You’re not thinking about them. It’s just a reminder that if you want to include and grow your audience, you have to be very explicit about how you do that.”
The problem is that the team focused on including a lot of the wrong things or did so at the exclusion of others, like adding 19 Pride flags but no straight pride flag.
Fergusson also talked about the issue of including the LGBTQIA+ flags in a game that was going to be sold internationally where gay propaganda is illegal, like in China or Russia.
He explained that they brought up the issue with Microsoft’s internal GLEAM team, the Global LGBTQ+ Employees and Allies group.
GamesIndustry.biz quoted Fergusson as well as explained how they included the flags internationally without tripping the propaganda alarms from certain countries…
“‘Initially we anticipated this could be a problem for us, because we’re a global company, an international company, and the rights of [LGBTQ+] people are not the same throughout the world,’ Fergusson said. ‘We were a little bit nervous about what we were supposed to do.’
“Fergusson said he brought the issue up with his boss, Matt Booty, and his boss’ boss, Phil Spencer, saying this was how he wanted to handle the flags. (The biggest concession made for international sensibilities was that the various flags were included listed as “Pride 19 Banner,” for example, rather than “Transgender Pride Flag” or whatever specific group the flag was expressing pride about.)”
Every group except for straights, right?
Fergusson talks heartily about all the “inclusive” features they added to Gears 5 and talks up how big of a launch the game was on Xbox and Steam, but avoids sales data at all costs. The reason for that is because the game hasn’t sold that well, especially compared to previous entries in the series.
Media outlets are pushing a lot of spin, such as Screenrant’s report that Gears 5 has sold more than Gears of War 4, but the reality is that Xbox head Phil Spencer only said that the game sold “better” than Gears of War 4, not “more”. His exact quote is…
“Gears 5 sold well for us. It sold better than Gears 4. And we feel good about it. If people want to make the choice of buying Gears, that’s an option we want to give them. I’m not trying to funnel everybody who wants to play Gears into the subscription. It’s about giving gamers choice. Certain players will make the decision as part of Game Pass that they’ll either want to start to subscribe, or they’re already a subscriber and they stay subscribed.”
Spencer doesn’t specify that Gears 5 was also sold on Steam, a platform that Gears of War 4 was not available on.
Combining sales from Steam and Xbox and Xbox Game Pass gives Gears 5 a clear platform advantage over its predecessor, but that still doesn’t speak to how much it sold nor its revenue to date. But saying that it did better than Gears of War 4 while launching on more platforms is an unearned celebration for that disingenuous milestone.
Having the game launch on Game Pass also meant that revenue was not going to be as high as it could have been because a lot of people could try oout the full game on Game Pass without having to put down $60 for it. This also muddies the water because we saw reports from places like VentureBeat, which failed to delineate that while they had 3 million players during the first weekend, many of them got to play the game without paying a dime for it thanks to Game Pass.
So the real question is: how many actually paid $60 for the game and how many actually bought it to keep it? And how many are still playing?
PCGamesN was probably one of the only outlets to drop the truth bomb that Gears of War 4 sold horribly, and it took them more than a year to sell what Gears of War 3 managed to move over the course of three days. It’s also the only outlet to remind people that Gears of War 3 is still the king of the crop in the franchise…
“[…] As analyst Daniel Ahmad notes, Gears of War 4 sold 4.5 times better in its launch week [compared to Gears 5], and Gears of War 3 – at the height of the Xbox 360’s success and before digital distribution was a major factor – sold 20 times better.”
Unfortunately there’s a lot of muddied data being spread around to give the impression that Gears 5 is a huge success, even when there’s zero data to suggest as much. In fact, the game barely maintains 300 players a day on Steam, according to Steam Charts.
Also, the game has been bleeding its rather meager playerbase since releasing in September. Hardly “success” numbers for a game that’s supposed to have a robust multiplayer ecosystem.
Of course, Microsoft and The Coalition can’t admit that going woke with Gears 5 was a disaster. They have to take what numbers they can from wherever they can and attempt to spin it as a success. The funny thing about it is that as soon as you ask for hard figures, whether it be in revenue or units moved, there’s nothing but dust and echoes.
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