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[PC Gamer] Highguard didn't flop

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Dont underestimate how clever gaming employees can be. Loud, grifting for attention and jobs, boisterous social media accounts. They love attention.

And considering how almost everyone is already fired, they need to make sure any recruiters can be convinced it wasnt their shitty job that tank the studio. So not their fault.

It's the kind of industry where it seems no matter how big you fail (some Concord employees migrated to Wildlight), you can always score another job at a different studio. So might as well get your name out there so every recruiter knows your name.
 
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I think toxic positivity is such a cancer that it's pretty much what tanks these projects more than anything
It's great to be confident and to believe in yourselves, that's awesome, but somewhere down the line someone has to keep everyone in check, I guess. But yeah dude starting something today with the aim to release it in 3+ years from now in a space as busy as GaaS seems insanely hard.
 
Not calling this game a failure is the same toxic positivity that generates more of this slop in the first place.

These journalists will never stop shilling for publishers that give them exclusive access, and then months or a few years later flip to calling the game a failure when it's safe.

Bringing up all these other games with smaller concurrent player counts, but incredibly smaller budgets is just such a low-IQ argument you might want to check yourself into a padded room.
 
It's great to be confident and to believe in yourselves, that's awesome, but somewhere down the line someone has to keep everyone in check, I guess. But yeah dude starting something today with the aim to release it in 3+ years from now in a space as busy as GaaS seems insanely hard.
Yea it's a field I absolutely wouldn't want to be in.. But I think they just struggle with any criticism at all it seems if everyone has to just applaud every aspect of the work I can see why failures happen so easily
 
These journalists will never stop shilling for publishers that give them exclusive access, and then months or a few years later flip to calling the game a failure when it's safe.
That's life. Getting free shit works wonders to change anyone's mindset.

Never mind doing it for a career to cover games. Just go to Costco and you'll see people standing around those demo kiosks pigging out on tiny samples. The point is to test it out and maybe you'll buy the product. Not stand there for 10 minutes treating it like dinnertime. lol
 
That's exactly the kind of brainless positivity that got them in such a deep financial hole. Feel bad for the investors more than the developers.
 
PC Gamer is invested with mentally ill Activists and not reputable Journalists!!!
I still wish I understood how it seems 90% of that field is all activists, if not 100%...how couldn't it maybe be a 70/30 split where 30% are just normal, why and how did it become literally a law that to be a journalist you have to be a fucking mentally ill retarded liberal left cocknozzle? When did we cross over?
 
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That's life. Getting free shit works wonders to change anyone's mindset.

Never mind doing it for a career to cover games. Just go to Costco and you'll see people standing around those demo kiosks pigging out on tiny samples. The point is to test it out and maybe you'll buy the product. Not stand there for 10 minutes treating it like dinnertime. lol
Yep, it's just annoying when it's combined with the self-righteous attitude that their job is important/sacred, holding to "truth to power" and all that, while they regularly suck off mid to bad content from large corporations.

I just went to McDonald's today for a quick lunch, they looked like they needed a few more people.
 
I still wish I understood how it seems 90% of that field is all activists, if not 100%...how couldn't it maybe be a 70/30 split where 30% are just normal, why and how did it become literally a law that to be a journalist you have to be a fucking mentally ill retarded liberal left cocknozzle? When did we cross over?
It's a combination of universities churning them out like a conveyor belt and extreme in-group bias. Once they achieve adequate numbers/power in an organization all normal people are forced out or never hired in the first place.
 
The goal of articles like this isn't to seek or spread truth. It's to get clicks by any means necessary. This thread links to it, ergo getting it more clicks. PC Gamer succeeded in its goal, and everyone laughing at them is playing right into their hands.

If you want articles like this to go away, stop helping them be profitable.
 
The headline is an obvious intentional clickbait but the article has good points in it. Highguard flopped, but it also did similar numbers as many other shooters...numbers that are normal, because only few games become big hits. Its developers were delusional about their game and expected to become one of those hits, but didn't. Happens every day.


If GTA 6 sells 10M copies in its first year, it will be a flop.

It's all about context.
 
It's a combination of universities churning them out like a conveyor belt and extreme in-group bias. Once they achieve adequate numbers/power in an organization all normal people are forced out or never hired in the first place.

Ah I got ya. But what's wild is how there aren't like not that I want to use political descriptors but a balance where someone like a more right minded individual have their own journalist gaming company saying fuck those people . But it's like there's no major balance, it's all lefties... But if someone on the right is in full control they'd have the ultimate say, just nuts there's not like some to balance it out unless there's some gaming journalist sites that are more right minded.
 
It's a combination of universities churning them out like a conveyor belt and extreme in-group bias. Once they achieve adequate numbers/power in an organization all normal people are forced out or never hired in the first place.
I think it's valid when people say that a lot of these games journalists don't like videogames, or they did at some point, but they certainly don't now that 50% of a games journalist's job is anxiously checking social media to find out if there's something problematic about the game they're covering, and the other 50% is trying to get attention because it's a dying field and you need to be noticed to survive, even if it's negative attention. There's very little room for just genuinely enjoying videogames in that field anymore, apparently.

And not that many of them have the skills to move into the games industry, except maybe as community managers or whatever. Obviously Geoff Keighley is doing his own thing, and I respect how good he is at it. The only games journalist who I can think of who's really become a respected member of the games development industry is Greg Kasavin. Big respect for that guy.
 
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I think a lot of games journalists genuinely do care about video games. The unfortunate reality is that, in the social media era we're in, salacious articles are the ones that get traction. Well-researched, well-written investigative journalism takes time and resources. Throwing someone under the bus for today's pointless Twitter drama doesn't. Compounding this, the latter gets exponentially more clicks. It's not that games journalists necessarily WANT to write dumb clickbait (although some do) -- it's that they HAVE to, or else they'll go broke. The whole ecosystem is fucked.
 
Yep, it's just annoying when it's combined with the self-righteous attitude that their job is important/sacred, holding to "truth to power" and all that, while they regularly suck off mid to bad content from large corporations.

I just went to McDonald's today for a quick lunch, they looked like they needed a few more people.
When it comes to creative types, they often arent just creatives. Because they are often outspoken, their personalities are actually part salesman. When things go well or poorly, they got no problem telling the world whats going on and they are always right.

Sales people caught in the corner having trouble hitting sales targets are the exact same type of people. Outspoken. When things go great they think they are the company's gods. When they struggle to make a sale, it's always every other department's fault for a bad product, bad strategy or bad marketing campaign. Marketing department is similar too.

You'll notice the departments who are most outspoken, rarely admit defeat for mistakes.

But other departments like finance, logistics, category management, warehouse crew..... if someone makes a mistake I guarantee you they got a higher chance of admitting mistakes than blaming others. People in these departments have personalities and job functions which are more quiet. But IMO also more honest. More open to admit mistakes and got no time blaming others like above functions.
 
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When it comes to creative types, they often arent just creatives. Because they are often outspoken, their personalities are actually part salesman. When things go well or poorly, they got no problem telling the world whats going on and they are always right.

Sales people caught in the corner having trouble hitting sales targets are the exact same type of people. Outspoken. When things go great they think they are the company's gods. When they struggle to make a sale, it's always every other department's fault for a bad product, bad strategy or bad marketing campaign. Marketing department is similar too.

You'll notice the departments who are most outspoken, rarely admit defeat for mistakes.

But other departments like finance, logistics, category management, warehouse crew..... if someone makes a mistake I guarantee you they got a higher chance of admitting mistakes than blaming others. People in these departments have personalities and job functions which are more quiet. But IMO also more honest. More open to admit mistakes and got no time blaming others like above functions.

Sales people really do know how use that to fail upwards, by either deflecting accountability, or taking extra credit for any success.

I've seen the same working in jobs, anything involving numbers, physical labor or engineering usually are more merit-based than other jobs that can abstract their value.
 
It's really something how out of touch many west coast development studios are (As are investors for that matter).
You mean the entire West game development studios

These days the only playable games are being made in the East, if it wasn't for Japan, South Korea, and China, the gaming industry would be dead
 
Am I reading this right, or is his thesis that Highguard didn't flob because there are other games that did worse and making good games is hard?

Pretty much. The title is just inflammatory. A less biased headline would be "Highguard performs according to observed trends for FPS GaaS". Highguard is a flop for the developer while not really a flop in the market given that it performed similarly to comparable games.
 
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