Boss explains why the great Evolve failed so disastrously on PC, PS4, Xbox One – Acknowledges 2 major flaws

Der Boss erklärt, warum das großartige Evolve auf PC, PS4, Xbox One so katastrophal scheiterte – Räumt 2 schwere Fehler ein

In February 2015, the first-person shooter Evolve was released for Xbox One, PC and PS4. Evolve is considered one of the worst gaming flops of the last 10 years – the asymmetrical shooter had completely convinced many fans. The former boss of the company behind the game, Christoph Hartmann, now looks back on Evolve and admits 2 serious mistakes: a cheap, quickly slapped PvE and the decision not to offer the game “Free2Play”. And somehow it’s Titanfall’s fault.

How badly did Evolve fail?

The former 2K boss says he had “pressure from above” from the start – afraid it would flop

Who is speaking now? In an interview with GameSpot Christoph Hartmann explains the failure of Evolve. Hartmann is now the boss of Amazon Games, at that time he was the “President of 2K Games”, i.e. responsible for Evolve.

Hartmann says they bought the game at an auction after THQ went bankrupt and had “pressure from above” early on.

The upper floor apparently feared that the new game of the “Left 4 Dead” people would be a flop.

Evolve is the game you should all miss

Boss hoped for Titanfall – But that showed: Only PvP does not work on Xbox One, PS4

That was the 1st big mistake: Evolve was originally intended as a pure PvP game. Hartmann said at the time it was thought that the new game Titanfall would now prove that you could sell a PVP-only game on the PS4 and Xbox One consoles. At least he had hoped so.

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But in reality, Titanfall was trying to sell PvP and it “didn’t quite work out,” so Hartmann had to change his plans at short notice.

The game was only PvP and I felt like we had to add PvE to it because otherwise it wouldn’t sell. Titanfall tried to sell “PvP Only” and it didn’t really work. I was hoping that Titanfall would prove that a pure PvP game could be sold on consoles. But it pretty much proved the opposite.

So we made a cheap PvE version that we should never have made.

Christoph Hartmann, then President of 2k Games

What was the 2nd big mistake? The big criticism of Evolve at the time was the price model: Because the game was released at full price, but offered hunters and monsters as purchasable DLCs. That was ultimately the game’s undoing. Today Hartmann also sees it this way:

The right decision would have been to make the game Free2Play right from the start. It would have been a brave decision – but I looked at the numbers and thought we had to reach a certain number… I didn’t. It would have been a brave but right decision.

Christoph Hartmann, then President of 2k Games

Wrong price model and then came the death spiral

That’s behind it: Evolve is a tragic case of a game with an incredible amount of potential that failed due to these wrong decisions: The price model in particular turned out to be a fatal mistake.

Because with the game, when they saw the trailer and understood the concept behind Evolve, many had the impression: Evolve will be a Free2Play game in which you can either earn heroes, monsters and cosmetics or optionally buy them – like League of Legends. That would have been the convention then and now for a type of “hero shooter”.

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However, as a full-price title plus purchasable DLCs, it triggered a very negative reaction from many players.

Then, as is usual with multiplayer games, a kind of death spiral set in: There were no new players, the regular players kept getting better and better, getting started became more and more difficult, at some point the match search took too long and then the game was considered a total flop, the nobody wants to buy anymore.

You can read an opinion article on the downfall of the game from the perspective of the time here:

Evolve was doomed when players wanted to win

Reference-mein-mmo.de