Support NeoGAF

[StoopKidz]

Can't recall who said it during a podcast (was someone in the industry who has made/been involved with some big name games - may have actually been Bobby Kotick), but new games are effectively competing for players' time. Stating the obvious, however this person said that a lot of studios are in David vs Goliath situations where they have to compete with big established names (i.e. Fortnight, COD, LoL, Overwatch) for a player's time. People don't have the willpower or free time to focus on 5+ online games for any extended period of time, so they are going to pick what a couple they know and what has the player base.

 

[CowboyLou]

I care to a point. Highguard's premise sounded reasonably interesting pre-launch and I would have at least checked it out if it had a neat art style (like Marathon, for example). But with the way it looked, there was no way. I actually bought and played Concord at release out of curiosity. As goofy as some of those characters were, you could see Concord was going for something. Even if it looked unappealing, it didn't look generic. Highguard was both.

Depends on the person, obviously. There seem to be plenty of people - even in this thread - who find Marathon as visually unappealing as both Concord and Highguard. In a reasonable world people would just shrug and move on to things that actually interest them instead, but this is a drama forum after all.

 

[Men_in_Boxes]

yes, I do think good character design matters more in some games than others.

For example, I don't think anyone is playing Madden looking for cool characters.

I guess it matters this much...

They probably devote a relatively small amount of resources to how aspirational their starting characters are and a ton of resources to how the game actually plays.

That seems reasonable.

 

[bighugeguns]

Can't recall who said it during a podcast (was someone in the industry who has made/been involved with some big name games - may have actually been Bobby Kotick), but new games are effectively competing for players' time. Stating the obvious, however this person said that a lot of studios are in David vs Goliath situations where they have to compete with big established names (i.e. Fortnight, COD, LoL, Overwatch) for a player's time. People don't have the willpower or free time to focus on 5+ online games for any extended period of time, so they are going to pick what a couple they know and what has the player base.

Yeah dude it's true, there's like a giant "baseload"of 5 evergreen IPs and then there's literally everything else, it's nuts, the monogaming culture is real and increasing the younger the audience, so projections are likely grim for the console companies.

So everyone is fighting their nuts off for increasingly shrinking space. What's grim is that you might start development today targeting a space and by the time you hit market there's nothing there for you because 20 other teams chased the same spots.

 

[CowboyLou]

Can't recall who said it during a podcast (was someone in the industry who has made/been involved with some big name games - may have actually been Bobby Kotick), but new games are effectively competing for players' time. Stating the obvious, however this person said that a lot of studios are in David vs Goliath situations where they have to compete with big established names (i.e. Fortnight, COD, LoL, Overwatch) for a player's time. People don't have the willpower or free time to focus on 5+ online games for any extended period of time, so they are going to pick what a couple they know and what has the player base.

There's still space for games to find their niche and become successful with a few tens of thousands of devoted players instead of the hundreds of thousands the games you listed draw, but even reaching that point can be difficult and it all depends on how the game was scoped/budgeted and how the financials work out. Off the top of my head, The Finals and Hunt: Showdown are ticking along pretty well with peaks of 20-30k on Steam plus whatever on consoles. Obviously that's still a significant number of people, but it's not Fortnite numbers.

I don't have much interest on the mega-established games. Arc Raiders is the first BIG breakthrough game I've been drawn to in a very long time. I really want Marathon to succeed but I'd be happy for it to settle on Hunt numbers in the long term, as long as it's enough to keep the game sustainable. We don't know what internal expectations are. It's a more daring game than Destiny but also, I think, a smaller-scoped one.

 

[Shubh_C63]

Coming up with Heroes design and personality must be a tough thing to do.

And then I look at Deadlock and immediately so many characters speaks with their fashion alone.

All Highguard characters looks like the White versions of Black Panther movie characters.

 

[AMC124c41]

I think this is a pretty good analysis on what's wrong with the entertainment industry as a whole lately:



People just want outrage and drama to such an extent that the actual product doesn't seem to matter anymore.

 

[bighugeguns]

I think this is a pretty good analysis on what's wrong with the entertainment industry as a whole lately:



People just want outrage and drama to such an extent that the actual product doesn't seem to matter anymore.

A game can just be mediocre, the market read wrong, dude, shit happens. No point in bitching about it.

By the time I finish this post 80 new games will have entered the market. If it didn't pop off make something new.

 

[PeteBull]

Hindsight is 20/20, the problem with trying to raise issues to publishers is you've got this absolute monopolistic cultural wall in Reddit, games press and elsewhere violently drowning out any attempt to highlight issues in favour of raw marketing. At some point people are tired of being attacked by echo chambers and drop giving meaningful feedback altogether, ending in ruin.

Thats what developping a game in western dev studio looks like, even if u got some based devs here and there there is tons of DEI hires pushing for clownworld agenda and any diseagreement to this is met with crazy pushback/HR training and being branded bigot/racist/mysoginist/nazi etc.

 

[bighugeguns]

Thats what developping a game in western dev studio looks like, even if u got some based devs here and there there is tons of DEI hires pushing for clownworld agenda and any diseagreement to this is met with crazy pushback/HR training and being branded bigot/racist/mysoginist/nazi etc.

Well, it's not our problem if they have shit leadership. There's enough throughput of titles today that apathy is a legit off-ramp.

 

[PeteBull]

Kinda unfair to call it Concord, even right now it has 10x more players.

Concord was 40$ so ofc f2p shit like this will have more players, but give it few weeks and audience will diseaper xD
Ofc in terms of profitability, or lack there of nothing gonna beat concord, likely ever

 

[Signalis]

Did The Professor work in Highguard too?

THE FUCK YOU JUST SAY!

 

[simpatico]

I guess it matters this much...

They probably devote a relatively small amount of resources to how aspirational their starting characters are and a ton of resources to how the game actually plays.

That seems reasonable.

All these games are just copying the Team Fortress 2 root and somehow they don't understand what made it great. Hubris and leather jackets is the reason. These senior devs get gassed up on a few years of profit sharing and start thinking their ideas are good.

Check it out.

 

[PeteBull]

I care to a point. Highguard's premise sounded reasonably interesting pre-launch and I would have at least checked it out if it had a neat art style (like Marathon, for example). But with the way it looked, there was no way. I actually bought and played Concord at release out of curiosity. As goofy as some of those characters were, you could see Concord was going for something. Even if it looked unappealing, it didn't look generic. Highguard was both.

Depends on the person, obviously. There seem to be plenty of people - even in this thread - who find Marathon as visually unappealing as both Concord and Highguard. In a reasonable world people would just shrug and move on to things that actually interest them instead, but this is a drama forum after all.

U admitted urself u bought concord, bro, and how many sales it had? 25k worldwide total, something around that number
U are likely as rare as male nanny or male kidergarten teacher (or attractive virgin female after last college semester ).
Those big AAA games cant count on only u to buy them or they simply go bankrupt, they need massmarket appeal or they simply go out of business

 

[Chuck Berry]

Catastrophic take, sir.

That's what he's known best for

 

[CowboyLou]

U admitted urself u bought concord, bro, and how many sales it had? 25k worldwide total, something around that number
U are likely as rare as male nanny or male kidergarten teacher (or attractive virgin female after last college semester ).
Those big AAA games cant count on only u to buy them or they simply go bankrupt, they need massmarket appeal or they simply go out of business

I bought it and then I refunded it (before the mass refunds went out for everyone). Just wanted to try it out for myself. Most of the time, judging games without playing them is dumbfuck territory. Dogpiling is for lonely people who desperately need to feel like they're part of something. I'm better than that. But then like I said, Highguard was free and I couldn't be bothered.

Of course games need to appeal to masses to succeed. That's like saying water is wet. But appealing to masses is also no guarantee of quality. Many, many great games, some of my all-time favorites, were commercial flops.

 

[Men_in_Boxes]

All these games are just copying the Team Fortress 2 root and somehow they don't understand what made it great. Hubris and leather jackets is the reason. These senior devs get gassed up on a few years of profit sharing and start thinking their ideas are good.

Check it out.

No, it is not the game developers who know. It's the people who don't play or like competitive games who know. For all their time watching The Last of Us cutscenes have made them experts in the hero shooter field.

 

[PeteBull]

I bought it and then I refunded it (before the mass refunds went out for everyone). Just wanted to try it out for myself. Most of the time, judging games without playing them is dumbfuck territory. Dogpiling is for lonely people who desperately need to feel like they're part of something. I'm better than that. But then like I said, Highguard was free and I couldn't be bothered.

Of course games need to appeal to masses to succeed. That's like saying water is wet. But appealing to masses is also no guarantee of quality. Many, many great games, some of my all-time favorites, were commercial flops.

Exactly, but here is the difference highguars vs for example niche singleplayer game who is beloved by core comunity but had initial terrible sales/reviews= as every multiplayer GAAS highgroud/concord/other shit like that will be closed while singleplayer game can be enjoyed even 20 years later, proof:

God Hand Reviews

With great power comes great responsibility. Play as a drifter bestowed with supernatural-like abilities who must confront the fate and responsibilities inherent with this new found power. Hand-to-hand combat is at its best when gamers unleash the power of the God Hand to deliver righteous...

www.metacritic.com

Look how terrible sales it had:

God Hand - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

The game was the fifth best-selling game during the week of its release in the country, selling 48,280 units.Capcom managed to both ship and sell nearly 60,000 copies of the game in the country by the end of 2006

This game killed clover studio btw

 

[GrayChild]

Our honorary GAF Lady

No. There can be only one:

 

[simpatico]

No, it is not the game developers who know. It's the people who don't play or like competitive games who know. For all their time watching The Last of Us cutscenes have made them experts in the hero shooter field.

Game developers have collectively burnt a trillion dollars in the past handful of years and sent investors running for the hills.

 

[Men_in_Boxes]

Game developers have collectively burnt a trillion dollars in the past handful of years and sent investors running for the hills.

I'm still taking industry expertise and a long term history of success over the opinions of gamers who like to watch cutscenes in their games.

 

[simpatico]

I'm still taking industry expertise and a long term history of success over the opinions of gamers who like to watch cutscenes in their games.

The only people making money out of this phase of gaming is the psychiatric drug and eccentric leather jacket industrial complex. They've become a Resident Evil monster, one big muscular arm of talent being dragged around by a body with a broken mind. Lashing out and flailing at anything that passes. Sometimes that lashing reminds you of the work before the mutations, sure. Leon knows there's no hope for him and ending his suffering releases him from his coil and allows the gamers of Raccoon City to begin rebuilding and creating new, unpoisoned expertise.

Giving these guys more funding in the state they're in is just more opportunity for them to damage in the market in ways that cannot be easily repaired. Institutional trust and all that.

 

[Neon Xenon]

This part. Keep screaming this part out.

Almost getting to the point where if one of these games do not have a few rounds of public play tests to collect feedback and iterate based on those feedback, I'm not touching it.

Saw that with Concord. Almost saw it with marathon. Hoping we don't see it with Fairgames. Crowd sourcing feedback on an MP game is one of the most no brainer things you can do in this industry.

Yeah. To me, this is one of the most frustrating parts about Highguard and what the result is. Yes, Wildlight can correct over the course of their roadmap, but this didn't have to turn out the way that it did, not with some playtesting sessions in closed betas or even closed alphas with the public (and not just streamers, content creators, and some games media).

 

[Neon Xenon]

Misfire. Ignore this post.

 

[Men_in_Boxes]

I can't wait for Laura Fryers next video titled "Deadlock has failed because it lacks aspirational characters".

 

[Hollywood Hitman]

I personally would be more interested in Highguard if it had some other classic pvp modes to go into that standard shooters have. Just not interested in juggling so many different genres in a match.

The gun play looks decent but I dunno the actual loop doesn't grab me as a pvp guy