Secret Level viewers might scratch their heads when the Concord-inspired episode airs this December, long after the game itself went dark, but to director Tim Miller, the series is “the remaining vestige of that product.”
Concord, the Sony-backed live-service shooter, vanished as quickly as it launched, but Amazon’s new animated anthology series Secret Level is keeping it alive, or at least that’s what Tim Miller, Deadpool’s director, likes to believe.
Sony shut down Concord just two weeks after launch due to poor player response and dwindling numbers. Despite this quick end, Secret Level, a 15-episode Amazon Prime series celebrating video game worlds both living and dead, kept its Concord episode on the schedule.
In an interview with Rolling Stone, Miller explained his choice to keep Concord on Secret Level.
Miller explained that the Concord episode was already well into production when the game’s servers were shut down.
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And while it might seem odd to feature an episode about a defunct game, Miller wasn’t apologizing. “I don’t feel bad that it’s a part of the show,” he said. “I think it’s an episode that turned out really well, and you can kind of see the potential of this world and the characters.”
Miller hopes the Concord episode will serve as a small consolation to the developers at Firewalk Studios. “If it’s the remaining vestige of that product, I hope the developers feel that it’s in some way worthy, just a little bit, of the blood, sweat, and tears they put into it.”
For Miller, the inclusion of Concord is a reminder of the harsh realities of game development. He noted the irony of releasing an episode based on a game that no longer exists but compared it to other classic games like Mega Man and Unreal Tournament, which, despite their own lack of recent releases, still have lasting cultural impact. “It’s kind of the same thing,” he said, reflecting on the persistence of these franchises even in their “dead” states.
Ultimately, the Concord episode will serve as a final chapter for a game that never had a chance to fully develop. Whether it sparks renewed interest in the title or fades away, it will live on in the Secret Level anthology, leaving behind a small reminder of what might have been.
