Have any of you heard of Unknown 9?
If you haven't- I don't blame you. I haven't either. Apparently it's a 4-month old game developed by Reflector Entertainment who also made... uhh this game and it's DLCs.
This screenshot gives a lot away but fear not, it was published by Bandai Namco, the guys who made the Dark SoulsTM of videogames These guys know a good investment when they see it, and at 50 eurobucks (USD to EUR is almost 1:1 at the time of writing !eurochads), a price comparable to that of God of War 2022 (50 EUR, 95% rating), HOI 4 (50 EUR, 90% rating) and Mount & Blade: Bannerlord II *editor's note: why are there so many MLP emojis when querying 'horse' (50 EUR, 87% rating(should be 100)), it is sure to deliver the same experience, right?
Well, from the screenshot you might have noticed that the ratings are mediocre: 49%. But that does not tell the whole story.
Unknown 9 currently has 7 concurrent players , 11 player 24-hour peak and a 285-player all-time peak [1]. This means it is mogged by the likes of Gollum 2023 at 758 all-time high [2], 6 year old rockstar game Red Dead: Redemption 2 at almost double the rating [3], a 2023 unity slavshit game Contraband Police at almost double the rating and half the price [4] and absolutely mogged by LEWDAPOCALYPSE, which has double the concurrent players, double the rating, and 1/50th of the price [5].
IGN gave Unknown 9 a 9(-4) rating [6], so is it really that bad?
Looks pretty bad, but is this the lowest we can go? Just some failed garbage from an upcoming studio, but is that it? Can't we do worse?
Heck no! It was in the works for at least 4 years, and was supposed to be a tans-media project, "including video games , film , and books (!bookworms), for example. Unknown 9 was conceptualized as an ongoing series, spanning podcasts , comics , and even a web series , many of which have already been released." [7]. So you've been laughing at Concord for having an Amazon episode despite being a dead game- well, you've seen nothing yet kid. This shit was supposed to be massive, at least according to the cited source (I didn't check further (yes how could you tell, I work in academia )). It was supposed to be the next fricking star wars by the looks of things, expecting to bank on their notoriety to create the equivalent to Netflix's Witcher [7] (which is not something to be proud of tbh). While we have no numbers on the project costs, one might imagine that a AAA game with massive marketing like that would've cost a lot. While we do not know how much exactly the project did cost, it is hardly believable that some unknown studio with 0 releases might have funded it. Indeed, the studio is owned by the publishers- Bandai Namco, who can probably afford to throw money around [8]. Looking at their website and LinkedIn is pretty funny as well, considering that they have announced that they will cease support for the game [8].
But you don't have to trust me, you can view the official gameplay trailer posted on Playstation's account and come to your own conclusions:
The lore/narrative trailer, which is just as stupid, can be found at
TL;DR?
Well, it's about a brown woman with supernatural abilities . Kind of like Forespoken from 1 2 years ago if anyone remembers that.
"Unfortunately, part of Hoerdt's statement confirmed several staff members would be made redundant, including back-office employees, and given severance packages, further health benefits, access to counseling services, and "proactive" career planning support." [7]. Lmao imagine getting free counselling from a company that fired you. I would probably take that as an insult, equivalent to one of those "reddit cares" messages . One might accuse me of using a chuddy source, but the same website compliments Unknown 9's use of "stepping powers", which states that "Stepping is the ability to project one's mind into the consciousness of another, by way of the Fold. While Stepping, one has access to the weaponry, strength, and intellect of a given vessel, and may fully control their actions." [9]. A totally true statement which has never been done before.
Here's Cr1tikal AKA Charlie AKA penguinz0 explaining it probably better than I do (it's the weekend and I've had several drinks already ):
He quotes the investment value into the IP at 100 million $ [citation needed]
In conclusion: 1) gaming in 2025 is dead, do not bother. 2) Nominative Determinism is true- the game was titled Unknown 9, and it remained unknown. For anyone running any sort of business- watch what you name your product.
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is this mostly a new studio failing to find an audience? Gaming is hard to break into and get yourself noticed
Concord was more funny for how much it cost
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Read the fricking post BIPOC. It probably cost a lot too, we just don't know it yet. I t will probably become known in a couple of months at Namco's quarterly report, but expect it to be a lot. It's not just the game, it's also licenses to shows, podcasts etc. The fact that you (or anyone) hasn't heard about it only makes it worse
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!r-slurs
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The $100m figure seems pulled out of thin air. There's a lot of proposed media (shows, podcasts, etc.) but I don't see evidence that any of them were actually created, seems more like some ambitious ideas from the developer.
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Prolly
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Market is hungry for games. If you play games and underdtand games and keep eye on things. You will see where there is room. All you have to do is then make one mid sized game thats good enough to get in. Work up from there. Manor lord is very good example of this.
But that requires devs to play games. Understand them and investors to be okey with not making biggest thing ever. Like with this game. Cinematic unvierse stuff reeks investor influence.
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Devs especially if big studios seem to just not be capable of making great games anymore. They're good at making more COMPLICATED games (look at ck2 vs ck3 from paradox for example) but very few games seek to be GREAT anymore
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It think its becouse they dont play games themselves. They dont understand what makes game fun and good. They dont even underrstand why their customers play their game.
Oposite of this is something like fromsoft. Demon souls came out of 2009. Elden ring in 2022. 13 years and 7 games plus dlc of same formula. Becouse they played it themselves and understood it and what their customers wanted.
From games is antithesis of western mentality. Same engine. Recycle assets. Same formula with small tweeks and ocasionally new take on formula.
I like to read about development of orginal half life. They were serious and went back to basic. They brainstormed on everything and made whole book about their design philosophy. They asked themselves. Why are we here? What are we doing.
Lot more devs should do that
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