Days Gone Lead Designer Thanks Fans for Playing the Game No Matter How Much Money They Spent

I do feel bad because a lot of people slept on it or didn’t pick it up over launch reviews myself including but after playing it free on ps+ and getting the platinum a few months back it was truly a great fun game with a good story. Sucks a sequel was denied hopefully one gets green light in the future especially with the hidden ending setting one up

Maybe both are right?

I just couldn't get into it. The gameplay just frustrated me to no end cause of how clunky it felt with it's crappy gunplay(Although gyro aim improved the experience for me a bit) and the bad AI. I was excited for it too cause of the horde I saw at E3.

People should not get so mad about this statement. Im sure he is not shaming anyone i think he is just annoyed. The gaming industry is not a easy one. People want more but dont want to pay its that easy and some cant thats a thing to.

But if you want to play a complete package with no extra stuff like a expansion or MT yeah that costs money.

Just like Steam sales yeah its great but if you want the bigger games funded there needs to be people paying full price.

@LTPenguin Thats great but thats life i want a lot of stuff to. But he has a point if it does not make enough money they are not going to greenlight a sequel.

And his point is if everyone waits on a sale or for it to be included with a €60 subscription they are not going to get that sequel.

So why complain about that sequel because if it sold enough im sure we would have seen a new game.

As much back-tracking as an MP.

@LTPenguin
Sure, but he never said everyone should buy it full price at release, just that people who don’t do so can’t then complain that there is no sequel due to the original not being very profitable...

It was my 4th favourite game of 2019 behind control, death stranding and resident evil 2 remake. It’s a shame we won’t get a sequel but I’m excited to see what bend do next

@Fuzzymonkeyfunk good choices for game of the year that year, all really good games IMO. I've always liked remedy but Control just took them to another level

It's in response to the press click baits.
All present or past Bend developers who worked on the game think the same.
Stop trying to bring gamers or developers one against another.

@Flaming_Kaiser “ People want more but dont want to pay its that easy and some cant thats a thing to.”

This is very true about everything. I have to deal with that constantly in my industry as well. It’s no excuse for the director getting saucy at the game’s target audience.

Personally I enjoyed Days Gone on PS5 but if I had bought it at full price on PS4 then I likely would’ve been frustrated by the game’s many problems pre-patch. And the thing is, it may no longer be full price by the time it’s fully patched up.

Sony should be the target of his frustration, not a portion of the gamers. It’s not like they bootlegged it, some people show more support than others which is another universal fact just like people demanding more for less. Welcome to normal life, director.

I think Days Gone suffered "we've awarded PS Exclusives too many high scores, one needs to flop and DG is the perfect prey at the right time" from reviewers. I know PushSquare tries to make use of the whole 1-10 scale but 6s and 7s still drag things down on Metacritic regardless.

@djdizzy He should have said in another way thats what i agree with but in the end he is right.

Sounds rather insincere

@JJ2 This tweet from Eric Jensen doesn't exist without John Garvin making those comments.

I bought days gone at full price on day one. Then a week later, after I beat the story, got the platinum and killed every horde for no reason (even though that's the only unique feature of the game, yet isn't required for anything, apart from the 2 choreographed hordes in the story which both died by literally running single file into the path of my bullets), I sold the game on ebay.

As someone who's never played it I've been really thinking about it lately. I know I'm late to the party but maybe this is just the hidden gem I'm looking for. If i found something to like in the Mad max game maybe I'll like this.

I was excited for Days Gone, bought it day one, and found it to be buggy and stereotypical with a clunky control scheme and not near enough visual clues as to where objects were that you can pick up.

Since then, I've heard so many people praise this game that I finally downloaded it free from PS+ to give it another shot after all the patching.

What I found is a less buggy version of a stereotypical game with a clunky control scheme and not good enough visual clues for picking up items.

I'm glad they're not making a sequel, and in truth, Bend still needs to show me they are even base level competent for me to invest in something they make in the future.

@LTPenguin
The fact is that the vast majority of revenue comes in the first weeks of release, this is due to back orders, hype , people just waiting for the game...sales after that tail off quickly, and then enter a low profitability era of sales. This is not the platform holders fault, nor even the publisher, it’s just how things are and have always been.
With micro transactions things have changed (for the worse) but Sony games generally do not include them.

@LiamCroft
You mean doesnt exist without the press spinning John one sentence in an 4 hours stream.
Also without updating it with John response.

It's a good game but the main selling point was the large zombie hordes which doesn't warrant a sequel as the story was weak and tied up nicely in the first game.

@hypnotoad What you just saw was two different points of view.

@Mega-Gazz What is an example of a sincere response in this regard?

I wonder if it would be possible to have a Donate button near the games given free for past classics. I bought god of war. But had I played it on ps plus collection I might want to send some money to the team as it was a blinder. This could also support potential sequels to games that were slow burners.

@Batesy125s it would of been a bit lower if I hadn’t waited till the year after to play sekiro and fallen order. To be honest 2019 was a cracking year for games and for days gone to crack the top 20 for games sold is a great achievement

Hopefully this next game does well and they can earn enough trust to make what they want. Looking back, days gone had a messy development and i don't think Sony want to go through that again.

Wasn't really my cup of tea. May try it on plus collection though. J-rpgs are my bag lol

@OrigamiCrane I feel the same. Sure, worse games have gotten sequels, but this game just doesnt hold a candle against it's ps4 exclusive peers (god of war, horizon, last of us...)

@OrigamiCrane

I've got my waders on.

I wanted to like it, but just couldn't. The menu system was crazy, wanting you to use swipes on the touchpad to navigate. The steering on the motorcycle went from straight line to omfg, I'm headed straight off the road. I'd forgotten how many issues I'd had with it until I tried it again. Can't see myself finishing it. You're right, it earned the scores it got.

The problem isn't Days Gone or how much people paid for the game because it did sell well in the end. The problem is Jim Ryan and his outdated mentality on what games will sell or not.
No one asked for or wanted a remake of LoU, but we have that moron focusing on crap no one want while ignoring the issue that he is responsible for one Japan abandoning PS, and guess what happens when you no longer have Japanese devs supporting your platform you end up where the xbox one is, a stagnate cycle of games and a brainwashed fanbase that constantly buy the same crap over and over again.
At least Japanese devs still have Nintendo.

Someone got a good telling off when he got back to the office then.

I suppose buying a game at launch for full price depends on how much value u get from it,my son paid 50 quid for miles morales and was done in 10 hours, I paid same for days gone and put in 100 hours and thoroughly enjoyed it.

People are going to pick up games at launch when games create a value parity. That means for an adequate price providing a good game that works.

I picked up a physical copy when the game was around patch 1.18. When they start making and testing games so they don't need a 60Gb patch day one I might stump up the cash. A few comments about the bike handling not being good, must be me I love riding round on the bike, drifting round corners 😎

I’m one of the sad souls who still hasn’t purchased or played this game. It’s on my bucket list of games to get as I clear up my backlog. Regardless, it’s glad to hear some positivity here. Thanking players is always the right route instead of blaming them.

Two important things didn’t happen here. First, Mr. Garvin did not say, “If you didn’t buy Days Gone at full price then I don’t appreciate you.” Second, Mr. Jensen did not say, “John, you are wrong and I disagree with you.” These are two valid viewpoints that are not in conflict with each other. In fact, one feels like a guy candidly and honestly speaking his mind, another feels like PR damage control.

@YeoSprings While it’s nice that they’re at least letting the studio work on a new game, it still leaves a bitter taste. Considering the team was and still is passionate about this world they’ve created to want to refine and build upon the original. Sure the game was rocky at launch, but I think now considering more and more people have picked up the game now, the game will sell quite well with a sequel. If it’s true about Sony putting more value on metacritic scores and these triple A blockbuster exclusives as opposed to smaller innovative IP’s then it’s a little concerning for the future of the platform. Even though I wouldn’t exactly call Days Gone completely innovative, it was surprisingly fresh considering how crowded the post apocalyptic genre is.

The game got okay reviews but sells good, I still think if bend make a sequels, it will be better received as long as it's free of bugs.

It’s funny, I bought this game at launch for full price. Honestly though I’m only playing it for the first time right now. I started it when it came out and was to busy to get into it. I’m really enjoying it now!

lol at last they relise people aren't made of money! 🤔 il just play exclusives on ps5 im not agreeing with this 70 a game nonsense il play my older games or use gamepass for new or steam, il wait for the sales for console games.

Rented it when it first came out and now playing it again on PS+. Thanks for appreciating me - I really like the game.

@Constable_What

Hah!! Forgot about the NOT picking up stuff because it was already 'full'. You're right, it was a waste of time to explore, not just because you could only hold a limited amount of things, but also because they just didn't make any interesting places to visit that weren't already tied to the plot.

If a stealth system works perfectly, I'm able to enjoy stealth, but never when it's instafail. I'm in a small minority who thinks no open world has really been done right since Skyrim/Fallout. You've got to build interesting places off the beaten path that have nothing to do with the quest line. For me the true joy of open worlds is getting lost and then finding something that was worth getting lost for.

In my opinion the developer has been supported with the initial sale. They’ve no entitlement to any more from that copy in the same manner that Ford don’t receive anything from a used car sale. If they want full price then release as digital only and never lower the price.

@Kidfried

You are right. Not all of them have to be the same. I don't see where I said that, though. I spoke of my personal likes, not how all games should be made. Bethesda pioneered 3D open world games, and any game that uses an open world now is in at least a few ways derivative of them.

I get what you're saying. In many ways, the feelings are parallel to mine. While you are sneaking over to the other base, or hiding in the rain, it's almost like you are creating your own story, irrelevant of the games plot. That's the kind of thing I'm talking about. Those moments are gaming bliss to me. I've just found far more of them in Bethesda's games than anywhere else.

We might not be on the same page, but I think we're reading the same book!

@Muttt To a degree, maybe but you can't really blame those who didn't buy it because of the bugs and glitches. Not every games are as lucky as Days Gone to recieve additional support to fix many of the game's shortcomings. I mean, just look at what's happening with Anthem. Despite buying the game at full price, hoping that they'll improve on the game, they sadly canned the support for it, meaning that my money wasted on it was all for nothing.

Days Gone just happened to be one of the fortunate ones. Regardless, it's quite sad that the sequel won't happen. But who knows, maybe Sony will reconsider it in the future? Especially after Jim Ryan finally listened to the complaints in regards to the PS3 and Vita store shut down.

Good job creating controversy where it didn't exist.

I'm not a zombie/apocalypse fan, so none of these games are my cup of tea. But Days Gone had a single problem, and it's name is The Last of Us. Even when it was announced, even as someone that doesn't really do the genre, when they were hyping this at its E3, all I could think of is "oh great, another zombie game, that's all Sony has anymore are zombie games."

I think if TLoU didn't exist, this game would have been great and gone down well. But Sony's limited first party output doesn't really need two somewhat different otherwise similar games in the same setting and genre. It's kind of surprising it was ever greenlit as-is to begin with. Changing the environment and theme, something like aliens even, could have given it a fresh identity. But it came from the "let's all clone Walking Dead because that's popular" era, so so it is what it is.

This guy, this guy I like.

@TheArt I'll be extremely disappointed if that was happening. A game should be rated on its own merits. I can't believe PuSqu would think like that.

@NEStalgia Are they similar at all though, other than 'zombies' (or mushroom approximations of)? Genuine question. I've played TLOU and DG, but not TLOU2. I'm struggling to think of similarities between TLOU1 and DG.

@grahamd They didn't say anything, it was the writer who no longer works for bend.

Got the game for free and loved it, had to buy it after reading the writer's comments. He had a point...

@Constable_What

Agreed. Everyone's entitled to like what they want to, but for me this game missed the mark on just about everything. I like a robust crafting system in open worlds, and like @NEStalgia pointed out, this one was very limited and borrowed heavily (almost copied, really) from The Last of Us. It worked for a linear game like that, but not for what Bend wanted to do.

I'm curious to see how much they've learned since then and now, though. But this time, no amount of hype is going to get me to pull the trigger on them. I'll need to see gameplay and read some reviews, before waiting for a sale to help make up for what I felt was a waste of money last time around.

Games are getting more expensive all the time and companies are just being greedy,
Not everyone can afford £60 r so a game.
And I wonder how many games some ppl would own if they paid top whack for everyone.
Not as many,
Gta 5 made more money than what the game cost to make just on preorders alone.
Also say it cost 200 million to make they sold more than that in copies, so work that price out at £50 a pop
All companies think of is greed.
The higher they hike prices the less their going to sell, common sense

I got put off paying full price when I bought ps3 game in a sale for £25 and no word of a lie or took me less than 2 hrs to complete, and I thought to myself glad I didn't pay full price id have cried.

Gamers are certainly very entitled when they expect everything for free or heavily discounted.
I see it all the time “wait for it to be $20” etc..

Gamers should buy things at full price sometimes. The industry doesn’t run off fairy dust.

@Muttt i agree , i don't think the first guy ment it to slam or bash people , it just came from him being upset there isn't going to be a sequel because of that. but then he sees people write about how sony is the bad guy and be upset about the game because they just wanted to jump on the sony hate bandwagon and they don't actually care about the game.

@Arnna the business mantra if "charge the maximum the market will sustain" is a 2 way street. If the market isn't willing to sustain it, you need to cut your price or budget to market. Or embrace that the products goal is to diversify appeal of a platform and not to make a direct return on it.

In this case I think the market was there, but it was always going to be lost in the shadow of TLoU.

@PossibLeigh They're both very similar and very dissimilar at the same time. Ones an open world game, ones an in rails action adventure. Different gameplay design but with some common elements. TLoU2 doesn't really matter since this game was already doomed by the first.

But they're both basically zombie survival horror themes in similar settings, and emerged from the period of zombie success via Walking Dead. TLoU became the poster child of the genre and set the touch points for others in the genre to recycle elements from. IMO even if Days was just absolutely amazing and did everything right day one, which it didn't, it still had no chance of being anything other than "Sony's other zombie game." It's awkward when the same publisher has multiple games in the same theme and genre. One will always end up riding sidecar.

That's one thing nintendo does well it's IP management. They design the game without a theme and then choose or create an IP that fits it. For all its faults, I think if someone had stepped in and said Days can't be zombies, it needs a different theme, it could have gone safe with aliens, armies, mutants, insects, androids gone wild, or gone totally off the wall and made it some kind of comedy with animals, waking beer kegs, or something.... They could have taken their gameplay ideas (although Days already borrows it's main gimmick from Valves Left 4 Dead series), had a unique presentation that stood on its own, and spared it the necessary comparison as TLoUs little sibling and given it more of a chance as an ongoing IP. But as it is, when Sony as the publisher is looking and seeing they now have 2 studios working in essentially the same genre, and one is selling a mega blockbuster and the other sells mediocre, it's not a hard call to axe one.

@twitchtvpat
Was my comment deleted?
There was one B word I used to describe Jason Cryier report which was at the origin of days gone devs long live streams on David Jaffe channel. Sorry about that one word I didn't know was forbidden then.
All to say John Garvin posted a video explaining which unfortunately PushSquare doesn't seem bothered with.
It was just a poor choice of words in a 4 hours long live stream that prompted the press to pile on the man who also has been thankful and appreciated everyone playing the game even if they didn't buy it (he said it thousands times for months) so this article is also pointless and the 'controversy' wasted everyone's time.

I think John's comments only reflected the reality of video games. Nowadays, for a sequel to happen, they need to sell well in launch window. In the non-hd era, you could still see sequels to games that had bad launches but long tails, but now this will happen very, very rarely (and usually with live service games). It's less of a comment on days gone and more a comment on the industry. Even movies are a bit like that. It's very rare that we see a blockbuster movie not performing in theaters having sequels because they sold a lot of dvd/blu-rays (I know it happens, but it's very rare imo).

Hyothetical situation, but basically the same:

CDPR: People should f*****g buy games day one to support studios.

Gamers: Errrrrr

You see, studio's, if they want to be supported by gamers with day one purchases etc, need to get their heads out of the clouds and make games that are finished and work, from day one. I didn't play DG because I have no interest in it, but from what I've read it was buggy at launch. Well, why should someone put down a not inconsiderable amount of money on something that doesn't work 100%?

Good cop....Bad cop.

It's almost like they just want to keep people taking.

Any press is good press?

Cleaning others toilet throat...

Eric Jensen > John Garvin

You came to the zombie game waaaay to late. People are burned out from zombies. Plus ppl are getting much less content at higher prices. So I will eventually play it but I am in no hurry. I had about 7 zombie games b4 yours came out.

@Arnna "The industry doesn’t run off fairy dust."

Didn't the games industry just have its best year ever, and make more money than the film and music industries?

Make a good game and it will sell, dont blame other about your failure, shame yourself old man

@LordSteev

Breath of the Wild?

I have played this game through on every mode, and Survival 2 multiple times. I even convinced my girl,who had never played a game other than mortal combat, to learn how to play and is almost to the end, her new favorite game! We want a second!!! We can do a go-fund me for "Days-A-Goner" 😉 👀 and pay to have it created.

People defending garvin are the reason this community gets swindled so much. A millionaire complaining his clients don’t pay enough, and those clients defending the millionaire, you have to be really dense. I say it again, we the gamers, as a community, are trash.

@djdizzy If I had to guess, and knowing what the gaming community is like. He probably got saucy due to probably getting 5 billion messages from people asking about if a sequel is in the work even tho he doesn't work for studio anymore. Then when the news broke the sequel was can he was probably getting more messages about why it was canceled.

Personally, I don't think it needs a sequel. There are some games, such as this and TLoU, that are amazing and should just be left as a one off. I was quite content with the way Days Gone ended and felt that the story was done.

Going forward a demo should be made available before a game releases.

You can stick you stupid "apology" where the sun don't shine, what a farce smdh

Get *****, buddy.

I personally think the Twitter post is a bit of a cheap shot. A creative former colleague was venting frustration. If you don’t agree, you don’t need to make a company man response. It’s very woke and it’s reaching at its worst.

Pure damage control at its finest... sorry but the damage is done and you can’t reverse that. The game wasn’t the best but wasn’t bad either, for me I played it more then Horizon or GOW or Spider-Man. So they just needed to say, nothing, instead of causing the s*** storm like they have.

Loving it so far. Put at least 2 hours into it already.

@Richnj may be true but if gamers expect huge AAA high quality games they should understand that those things cost a lot of money to develop.

@Arnna I'm going to go on record as saying, I believe that the expectations of gamers is the fault of the publishers.

They've been pouring money in to their games to have the biggest game each year, have the biggest hype, and best reviews pre-launch, and gamers have started to think that's normal. And I just don't think it is.

And a lot of these big budget games do in fact make a lot more money back. That's why they keep making them. $100m down could mean $500m return, plus any merchandise, sequels, spin offs, and long term digital sales buzz.

Companies are happy to produce those games because gamers do spend big money on those games. Everybody is happy, until one big budget title fails to capture the audience's attention at launch and then all of a sudden, gamers are entitled little brats who don't spend enough money on games.

I would love to be able to support every game at launch but as time goes on people have more obligations and less time and money for video games.

@NullForce this is a good idea which reduces risk for the consumer.

But also if the publisher have a bad game on their hands they won’t provide a demo because it ‘outs’ them.

I just signed the Change.org petition supporting the push for Sony to greenlight the sequel.