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Highguard dev blames content creators for the game's failure - "It was dead on arrival"

They thought they were the shit, now they're realising they're just shit.
That 'from the creators of' blurb always makes me suspicious.

Anyway, the drama got me to download the game, I discovered it was a hodgepodge of every awful multiplayer trend of the last 10 years and I couldn't stomach more than a few matches. The marketing did it's job
 
So stunning and brave of him to make lame excuses instead of taking responsibility for the game failing. I always find it amusing when asshats like this will blame the "evil content creators" like Asmongold when their games fail, but will pay these people to promote games as well like Hasan Piker, or hell even fucking hire some as voice actors (Alanah Pearce and Penguinz in Dispatch).

It's Schrodinger's Youtubers. They're responsible for both destroying their shitty game's reputation, but are also so nice and agreeable that they will pay them to boost sales or even hire them.
Peter Defazio GIF by GIPHY News
 
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"Internal feedback was very positive, even from people outside the studio. Many believed the game had mainstream potential and felt confident it would succeed."

Who? WHO!?

my guess is family and friends, who OF COURSE will objectively review your game right? 🙄
 
Randall365 said:
I am not sure, but certain genres just don't seem to lend themselves to all the woke bullshit. First person shooters are one of those.
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It's a fair pattern to notice, frankly. Multiplayer games generally need a big audience to function properly, FPS chief amongst them. If you're failing to draw in a wide audience with your designs, or push people away with them, your game is as good as dead. I don't think it's "woke" versus "non-woke" though. The designs in Arc Raiders, for example, aren't what I would consider "anti-woke"; no big breasted super models, for example. But the world and character designs are unique, and they don't push people away like Highguard's did.
 
Highguards character models looked objectively better than Deadlocks character models, which have been in unfinished form for the last year.

It's not about the character models. It's about the gameplay.
 
Clear said:
So you think that any single company deserves to be held responsible for the "sins" of an entire industry ?

As usual emotional thinking is being exploited here because its easily monetizable by amoral hucksters in social media.
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Every single company that still churns out live service slop like Highguard certainly is.

And how is some ragebait more amoral than companies milking their whales dry for hundreds if not thousands of $ a year?
 
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On the one hand, the game looked pretty lame and the decision to give it the premier final slot at the game awards was one of the greatest failures to read the room in recent gaming history.

On the other, I think he's broadly right about content creators being desperate to manufacture another Concord moment for clicks and engagement. I don't even blame them for this. I don't know if it's a change in the YouTube algorithm or if audience tastes are becoming more and more pessimistic because of bleak economic conditions, but it seems like the vast majority of successful gaming videos now are ragebait. I've noticed a major shift in the kind of content on my feed in the last year or so and a lot of the more positive and/or straight news focused creators I follow have seen significant declines in the number of views they're getting, while videos about how X, Y, or Z game is doomed or a scam or slop are regularly topping 100k views. It's pretty depressing, honestly.
 
blacktout said:
On the one hand, the game looked pretty lame and the decision to give it the premier final slot at the game awards was one of the greatest failures to read the room in recent gaming history.

On the other, I think he's broadly right about content creators being desperate to manufacture another Concord moment for clicks and engagement. I don't even blame them for this. I don't know if it's a change in the YouTube algorithm or if audience tastes are becoming more and more pessimistic because of bleak economic conditions, but it seems like the vast majority of successful gaming videos now are ragebait. I've noticed a major shift in the kind of content on my feed in the last year or so and a lot of the more positive and/or straight news focused creators I follow have seen significant declines in the number of views they're getting, while videos about how X, Y, or Z game is doomed or a scam or slop are regularly topping 100k views. It's pretty depressing, honestly.
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Click "Not Interested - I don't like this video.", do it a few times and the algorithm will get it.

But we both know you won't do that.
 
bighugeguns said:
Click "Not Interested - I don't like this video.", do it a few times and the algorithm will get it.

But we both know you won't do that.
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Oh definitely. I do this every time I see some clickbait shit, but a lot of the channels I have been following for years are still visibly struggling, and when I do get recommended something from a new channel it's often either more performative negativity or it has like 1.5k views, lol.

My "don't recommend this channel" list has probably quadrupled in the last year.
 
blacktout said:
Oh definitely. I do this every time I see some clickbait shit, but a lot of the channels I have been following for years are still visibly struggling, and when I do get recommended something from a new channel it's often either more performative negativity or it has like 1.5k views, lol.

My "don't recommend this channel" list has probably quadrupled in the last year.
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I found that getting into retro gaming channels while rejecting current stuff really reduces the drama factor, maybe a lot of the outrage stuff is inherently tied to modern gaming, so it gets served to you first and foremost because it's the most popular "genre".

I still dip into the outrage shit once in a while, but I'll manually go to those channels, I don't want that engineered emotionally triggering shit near me in any automatic capacity.
 
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bighugeguns said:
I found that getting into retro gaming channels while rejecting current stuff really reduces the drama factor, maybe a lot of the outrage stuff is inherently tied to modern gaming, so it gets served to you first and foremost because it's the most popular "genre".
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Oh absolutely. Retro and speedrunning content still seems pretty healthy. You're right that it's really localized to the news/rumors channels. Some of that is almost certainly grounded in the fact that there's a lot of (justified) dissatisfaction with recent trends like price increases, going all-in on GaaS, endless dev cycles, etc. that's being amplified by the algorithm, but I wish it were easier to just get information about new games that you're interested in without it being drowned by discourse.

Like, the other day I searched for Turok Origins after the Partner Showcase because I thought the new trailer looked like a huge improvement over the one from a year ago and literally all that came up were reposts of the trailer and a few lazy shorts of people reacting to the trailer. I think I found one guy total who was actually discussing the game.
 
Men_in_Boxes said:
Highguards character models looked objectively better than Deadlocks character models, which have been in unfinished form for the last year.

It's not about the character models. It's about the gameplay.
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Counterpoint, Deadlock character oozes of personality and are memorable even in their current unfinished state

The only thing memorable from Highguard is the Broccoli head guy.
 
Ridiculous. I don't watch TGA or streamers/content creators and my first impressions of this game was you all trashing it immediately after the reveal. Game was rejected instantly and organically.
 
struggler_guts said:
"Internal feedback was very positive, even from people outside the studio. Many believed the game had mainstream potential and felt confident it would succeed."

Who? WHO!?
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"Many" is possibly a misinterpretation of the word "Manny"
i theorize it might possibly be a nickname of this guy:
900x.jpg
 
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Eesha said:
Counterpoint, Deadlock character oozes of personality and are memorable even in their current unfinished state

The only thing memorable from Highguard is the Broccoli head guy.
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Nah. People play for gameplay, not because they care about the personality of the characters they choose in a PvP game.

I honestly think the discourse on this is embarrassing. People are obsessed with art style and woke characters because they don't know how to talk actual game design.
 
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Fuck you. You're designing a non-essential entertainment product. It's your job to make it good enough to make people want to buy it. It's not our job to prop up a product we have no interest in.

Too many people in this industry are entitled fucking crybabies. Enjoy the unemployment line, asshole.
 
MALpractice311 said:
Fuck you. You're designing a non-essential entertainment product. It's your job to make it good enough to make people want to buy it. It's not our job to prop up a product we have no interest in.

Too many people in this industry are entitled fucking crybabies. Enjoy the unemployment line, asshole.
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Don't forget to like and subscribe, check out the link to our Patreon in the description!
 
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ssringo said:
The game drew in almost 100k ccu. If it was something people enjoyed they would've stuck around regardless of the "ragebaiting grifters".
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That is an important point.
The game had a ton of people trying it out, despite all the nay-sayers. And the game failed miserably to prove them wrong.
In fact, the opposite happened, as people played it and realized the negative comments were justified.
In the end, it's only the studio to blame for a bad game.
 
Kilau said:
Ridiculous. I don't watch TGA or streamers/content creators and my first impressions of this game was you all trashing it immediately after the reveal. Game was rejected instantly and organically.
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The problem was the reveal and how and where it occured. It put the game on an unearned pedestal that everyone was eager to knock it off of.
If they had instead invested the million(s) it cost them (free my ass) with small play tests and betas etc they might have been able to build the game up slowly and earn an audience.
For my part this game never would have interested me but the reveal looked painfully generic with every character booming out in a hero voice "Feel the power of the ice storm of Tragera" "Time to feel the heat of my firestorm of Axelam" or similar generic phrases.
 
poppabk said:
The problem was the reveal and how and where it occured. It put the game on an unearned pedestal that everyone was eager to knock it off of.
If they had instead invested the million(s) it cost them (free my ass) with small play tests and betas etc they might have been able to build the game up slowly and earn an audience.
For my part this game never would have interested me but the reveal looked painfully generic with every character booming out in a hero voice "Feel the power of the ice storm of Tragera" "Time to feel the heat of my firestorm of Axelam" or similar generic phrases.
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Very true, the big game announcement of TGA was not the place to reveal this game. That show is all about hype so anything short of some well established and loved franchise getting a new entry, is going to be attacked.
 
Never their fault, never wanting to face the consequences of their bad judgement, it's always someone else's fault with this kind of people

The game was some generic shit done to death hundreds of times already in the ocean of generic hero shooters, nothing that was shown in the dorito's pope awards was new, groundbreaking or a standout that guaranteed to be the next big gaas game, deal with it
 
LectureMaster said:
ak13pa.jpg
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Well he's not wrong. Some times its just cool to hate on a game so people piled on. It happens every year, it happened to Death Stranding when it came out.


"At launch, we received over 14k review bombs from users with less than an hour of playtime. Many didn't even finish the required tutorial."
 
If content creators are so important, they should focus less on what game journalists think and start thinking more about what content creators think. Evolve with the times. Notice how gacha games ignore major gaming websites over content creators. The opinions of content creators are a lot closer to the consumer.
 
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poppabk said:
The problem was the reveal and how and where it occured. It put the game on an unearned pedestal that everyone was eager to knock it off of.
If they had instead invested the million(s) it cost them (free my ass) with small play tests and betas etc they might have been able to build the game up slowly and earn an audience.
For my part this game never would have interested me but the reveal looked painfully generic with every character booming out in a hero voice "Feel the power of the ice storm of Tragera" "Time to feel the heat of my firestorm of Axelam" or similar generic phrases.
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The only reason people immediately jumped to the conclusion that they paid big bucks for that trailer reveal is because nobody could believe that Keighley would promote such a shitty looking game and save it for the one more thing unless he was paid big bucks for it. If the game was awesome and the trailer looked awesome the positive reaction would have been through the roof. Youtubers jumped on it because the negative reaction resonated with the viewers, because they all hated it. The idea that content creators turned opinion negative on this game just shows you how deluded this guy is.
 
Said it before, but companies like these need devil's advocates coming in regularly to examine design documents, early builds.
Most of the people here on GAF would have been able to instantly spot glaring problems with Concord & Highguard.

SEGA could have saved a lot of money if they had a sober devil's advocate looking into Hyenas. It was in development for 5-6 years!
 
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I will agree the content creators have gotten worse, especially over the past few years. It feels like everything is click and rage bait. Everyone is regurgitating the same nonsensical takes to their own "community" and folks just take it and run with it.

That being said, that was not THE fault here. The game itself was at fault. They could've delivered an extremely impressive game that forced everyone to eat crow as they found it entertaining and engaging. But that didn't happen. What was delivered was a game that was optimized poorly, with gameplay mechanics and design that didn't feel confident. It needed more time in the oven as a whole. They REALLY should've leaned harder on external testing as well, so they could've taken critical feedback and applied it as necessary. But they didn't do that.

I agree that Geoff showcasing it as the final trailer on The Game Awards didn't really do it any favors. But that's not THE reason it failed, and I don't think it's one of the larger reasons either.

The thing that sucks is we've seen a number of examples where dogpiling happens, comments and feedback are extremely negative if not toxic, etc. Because of the toxic reactions it's extremely easy for the studios to attempt to spin the circumstances. It's gross, it's tone deaf, and it completely disregards all constructive feedback, opinions, and reviews.

Everyone can feel however they want about it all, but all I know is that any studio/developer that reacts like this will never succeed. Hell, they certainly won't get my attention either.
 
schaft0620 said:
Well he's not wrong. Some times its just cool to hate on a game so people piled on. It happens every year, it happened to Death Stranding when it came out.


"At launch, we received over 14k review bombs from users with less than an hour of playtime. Many didn't even finish the required tutorial."
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Irrelevant. Almost 100k people gave it a shot. Take away 14k and it's still a good start. They didn't retain players.
 
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