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Well, looks like SBI's latest masterwork Unknown 9: Awakening is on trajectory to bomb

Predict the game's player peak

  • Less than 100

    Votes: 67 27.2%
  • 101 - 500

    Votes: 108 43.9%
  • 501-1000

    Votes: 56 22.8%
  • Over 1k

    Votes: 15 6.1%

  • Total voters
    246

ahtlas7

Member
Animated GIF
 

StreetsofBeige

Gold Member
If SBI's advice is so great, why are so many games failing? Is it just a coincidence, or could their 'expertise' be part of the problem?

One day, people will look back and wonder how SBI got away with it for so long.
It's also normal for small companies with contracts with big companies to promote them on their site. Consultant firms, marketing companies and advertising companies do this all the time. It helps build up their brand to sign up more companies. SBI got lucky they got away with it for years as it wasnt till 2024 where anti-DEI and dreadful sales really hit the fan. Maybe some in 2023 too. But this year has been a disaster. People had enough.

The fact they whipsawed changing their website pages to hide game companies and some of the games from their site shows they and the game company are embarrassed. The game company is shitty bricks hoping to avoid getting nailed by DEI detector gamers, and SBI gets frowned upon if companies are pressuring them to do this. So other companies will avoid them as they dont want bad exposure either.

Not a good look on both sides.
 

Soodanim

Gold Member
GAF, tell me DarkstarRising13 DarkstarRising13 isn't an AI posting bot set to "Angry yet verbose anti-SBI" mode. It has nothing else to say.

Others are right, this is generic game #612 and doesn't draw much attention by itself. The only way their non-involvement would make a substantial difference is if the original.plan was for the character model to be of Anya's topless scenes in The Witcher.
 

Hohenheim

Member
I got this game when I brought a Radeon GPU some time ago, but I don't think i'll bother redeeming the code when its out. Looks very uninspiring.
 

StreetsofBeige

Gold Member
Wont make a difference as this game looks like it'll bomb. But at least they made it more budget friendly at $50. They could had gone balls deep trying to hook in gamers at $70.
 

Dr.Morris79

Member
I'm still not really sure where the disassociation comes from that these games actually need a paying customer to actually work in any justifiable form :unsure:

Are these up front utter woke fests a 'red herring'? Whilst they slip in generic shit into other, much bigger AAA games? Working in the background, slipping progressive norms into games?

Makes me wonder if all this drama IS the subversive form. Whilst they toil away digging deeper into the industry.
 

Cakeboxer

Member
Is there a SBI infested game that didn't bomb? I don't count Spider-Man 2, because the franchise name + Sony's marketing + bundles are already easily 80% of the sales no matter the quality of the game.
 

Gandih42

Member
I wishlisted it. Not expecting much but its a new IP and it seems a bit similar to 3rd Birthday with the teleportation possession stuff. Look at all this glorious slightly janky AA stealth. That is my fetish.



I'm 100% picking it up on sale.


I remember being mildly intrigued by a trailer at one of the gaming showcases this year, but the Gameplay Overview actually makes it look kind of neat. Sure, the combat and stealth looks janky, the setting seems a bit generic (at least for someone not familiar with this "Unknown 9" setting), and the graphics are a bit dated. But all of that in a smaller, narratively driven, package is enticing. Especially being a new IP.

What really stands out is that "Step" mechanic though. It's probably not very in-depth, but at times it almost looks like you turn the game into a pseudo turn-based tactics affair. The idea of combining that with action combat is neat for sure.
 

SJRB

Gold Member
We've had this

concordbazzabilitiestrailer-ign-blogroll-1723054497162.jpg
\


and we've had this

zo.png



Well, ladies and gentlemen, get ready to feast your eyes on this!

GZzECK4XsAA8NhN



.... how long until we can seriously make one of those "gruff white male video game character" compilations for this tired, overused design template?

Layla.jpg


Ah yes, the diverse and inclusive character who is actually an insanely racist stereotype made by people who apparently have never seen a black woman in real life.
 

pudel

Member
This doesn’t make sense to me. Imagine a company hires a consultant to help them improve their sales, but the consultant’s advice actually leads to a decrease in sales. Yet, they keep hiring them.
I dont know if anybody is still hiring them (i doubt it...unless you have complete idiots/activists in the management). But game development usually happens for several years and the backlash just happened this year. So I expect we will see a lot more games over the next two, three years where SBI was heavily involved....cause it cannot be undone anymore.
 

midnightAI

Member
As a comparison, Robocop that came out last year sold 800+.

New games coming soon like Veilguard are 1000+, A Quiet place 300+, Farm Sim 2025 is 200+, and Poppy Playtime is 300+.

At 50+, Unknown 9 is selling as well as Empire of the Ants also in the 50+ tier, and released 6 months ago.
By mentioning Veilguard as 1000+, that does prove that only a few care about SBI involvement as they are heavily involved in that game also.

A bad game is a bad game whether SBI are involved or not (they are a terrible company though regardless of this and they certainly don't make games better)
 

FewRope

Member
The whole aesthetic is generally unpleasant, imo nothing to do with SBI but the whole concept art they are using
 

StueyDuck

Member
It's crazy that it took gamers themselves to figure out the scam that is SBI.

How devs and Journos let them slide under the radar is genuinely embarrassing for them.

It's almost a ponzi scheme at its heart. Hire SBI and in 3 years you'll be rich we promise 🤣
 

GymWolf

Member
I don't think it looks like Forspoken at all... The gameplay and the story are quite different. Forspoken gameplay is fast
paced, focused almost entirely on spells and mobility:



While Unknow 9 has a slower gameplay, focused on stealth combined with melee combat:




I know that is fun to shit on Forspoken, which has a bad story and some awful dialogues, but the combat can be quite fun and well made... If the player understands it... Which unfortunately most players didn't even tried to...

Yeah, forspoken at least had fun traversal and decent combat, this thing looks boring as fuck.
 

GymWolf

Member
I waited on Atlas Fallen until it hit GP. Looks AA but fun. Still have to play that. This looks similar. Easy playthrough on GP or for like $15-20.
Fallen is WAY more action-y than this, it's decent overall.

That game is mostly focused on combat and traversal puzzles, no stealth at all.
 
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Denton

Member
So many generic girl boss games lately, sporfoken, lintflock, borndust, literal unknown..

While it is funny to see these morons lose all their investments, it becomes less funny, when us taxpayers have to contribute to it (borndust). Plus so much effort going to waste that could be spent doing something useful, sad.
 

MayauMiao

Member
You people are still obsessed with SbI? Seriously why the F do you all care so much? They aren't going anywhere, they also aren't the ones killing games, the devs making bad games are. SBI are still getting hired as consultants and getting paid while you all cry, b*tch and moan like 4 yr olds. Bro it's time to move on and act like an adult.


We want to destroy SBI, you know, burn them to the ground like what they want to do with the gaming industry.


 

duck_sauce

Member
Don't get me wrong—I’m definitely not a fan of woke ideology creeping into gaming. Not at all. But reading through the comments in this thread makes me cringe. Some of the things being said are just awful; there are truly some terrible people on GAF.
 

keefged4

Member
You people are still obsessed with SbI? Seriously why the F do you all care so much? They aren't going anywhere, they also aren't the ones killing games, the devs making bad games are. SBI are still getting hired as consultants and getting paid while you all cry, b*tch and moan like 4 yr olds. Bro it's time to move on and act like an adult.
Most sane minded people are sick fed up with the way the industry is thesedays, and the only way that things will change is if we seriously start voting with our wallets. SBI and the like need to be monitered and rightfully called out so that we can enact change by avoiding products that are infested by them. So yes, we are still "obsessed" with them. A lot of us still care about the medium in general and wont sit by and ignore companies like this who are actively seeking to destroy it.
 
Don't get me wrong—I’m definitely not a fan of woke ideology creeping into gaming. Not at all. But reading through the comments in this thread makes me cringe. Some of the things being said are just awful; there are truly some terrible people on GAF.


In this particular case, we have a game made by the staff of a company that openly has stated their intentions to burn the industry,, a company that extorts devs to "make them fear us" , a company that doxxes Steam users, defames studios, and trash talk legends like Akira Toriyama on the day of his death.

Some of the above are criminal offenses. Rethink the whole thing before calling anyone terrible people.
 

finalflame

Banned
Most sane minded people are sick fed up with the way the industry is thesedays, and the only way that things will change is if we seriously start voting with our wallets. SBI and the like need to be monitered and rightfully called out so that we can enact change by avoiding products that are infested by them. So yes, we are still "obsessed" with them. A lot of us still care about the medium in general and wont sit by and ignore companies like this who are actively seeking to destroy it.
Sane people do not give a fuck. You are unhinged.

Game looks mid af, will bomb on its own merits. Has nothing to do with the “DEI” boogeyman.

Some of y’all honestly need to commit
yourselves to an institution before you end up hurting yourselves or others. Holy shit.

Don't get me wrong—I’m definitely not a fan of woke ideology creeping into gaming. Not at all. But reading through the comments in this thread makes me cringe. Some of the things being said are just awful; there are truly some terrible people on GAF.
Yah, it’s a symptom I’m “okay” dealing with (the unhinged retarded lunatics) because at least here you can call them out for being retarded.
 
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keefged4

Member
Sane people do not give a fuck. You are unhinged.

Game looks mid af, will bomb on its own merits. Has nothing to do with the “DEI” boogeyman.

Some of y’all honestly need to commit
yourselves to an institution before you end up hurting yourselves or others. Holy shit.
The above comment was in regards to SBI, not this game in particular. The game itself will most likely bomb as it looks as you say "mid af", true, but the SBI involvement is nothing to disregard, and pretend that they have nothing to do with this.

Judging by the reply you've already sent, It's a shame that you've went straight to the insullts instead of opening an adult discussion about the topic, but then this is the norm for the kind of folk who advocate for SBI and the like, so not surprised.
 
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