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“Blame the gamers” backfires: Highguard dev’s tirade over reviews and memes draws heavy criticism

I couldn't find anything definitive about the character with pronouns listed (Una, apparently?), but I'd forgotten that the game had LGBTQ+ as its #1 Steam tag. Apparently those tags can be user generated, though, so that doesn't necessarily mean anything.

So yeah, I wasn't able to find anything at all, basically.
 
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uncreativename said:
I couldn't find anything definitive about the character with pronouns listed (Una, apparently?), but I'd forgotten that the game had LGBTQ+ as its #1 Steam tag. It's very weird considering there's nothing obviously gay or whatever about the game. Then again a lot of weird choices were made with this game's marketing lol

I read something saying that those tags can be user generated, though. I'm not sure if that's true, gonna look into that :pie_thinking:
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Ah, I swore I read something about that. But to be honest, I'm losing track of what people even consider woke anymore. Half the time I've seen people throw it around because there's a character that isn't white, pronoun text in-game, or a pride in-game asset. But I've also seen people say the same thing when the game itself has nothing of the sort but a dev on the team has unnatural hair color, a gay pride shirt or asset in-game, etc. So, I don't really know anymore, it's hard to track, lol.

I believe people can still choose tags, and if enough people apply the tag it'll appear as far as I know.
 
The reaction from the devs was weak as fuck.

But people are hating or loving games to be part of something. I never cared about the game from day one. Talked about it once or twice and that was it. Some people are milking this, just as much as they milked the success of Clair Obscur, and it's becoming hysterical every time because people care more about connecting with people online through social conformity and easy opinions.
 
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Sebastian1295 said:
I think the highguard dev should've shut up, but i do believe that games are hated on before they're even given a chance to prove anything nowadays and that a hate parade is common among live service games. It feels like alot of gamers get joy and satisfaction out of seeing games fail that they had no interest in to begin with.
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Yes, we don't like seeing our industry be flooded with garbage. What's your point? That's like complaining that someone celebrates finally having their apartment be cleared of a cockroach infestation that's been bothering since they moved in.
 
Blaming customers is never the right way. It doesn't make any tangible difference and makes the devs who do it look like entitled whiners who can't take criticism or responsibility for their own errors/actions. It's strange how many people like this are in the western gaming industry and how they're frequently propped up by games media too.

In Highguard's case, they started with a huge advantage due to exposure from the awards show - that propped up their numbers in terms of how many people were willing to try the game. The fact that players dropped it is because the game isn't good. That's on the people who made it - not Geoff, not streamers, not gamers, or anyone else. The dev pretending otherwise just makes the whole team look bad too.
 
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Dr.D00p said:
Gamers are a bunch of self entitled cunts for the most part though...
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Cry Baby Football GIF by Parship
 
uncreativename said:
Hey, while you're here, can you quickly explain why. I'm not gonna call you names, I'm not interested in getting into a fight. I just wanna know why this game is supposedly woke. Just finished looking into it and found nothing at all.
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One look at the characters shows it's more of the 'Modern Audience Woke Slop' that is so rampant in todays gaming. There are many videos online of various gamers and reviewers calling it out as such. Devs just can't help themselves anymore in keeping away from their agenda driven shite as opposed to just making a good game that doesn't try so hard to conform to these ridiculous standards. Horizon Hunters is the next and is receiving tons of criticisms for it as well with its insane looking character designs. Highgaurd is in a death spiral as well and being called Concord 2.0 which in and of itself is embarrassing. Concord was also called out for its Modern Audience Woke shite and look how that ended for them.
The saddest part is devs blaming gamers for their shite games they keep putting out. Shutting down comments or blocking anyone who criticizes them is also weak and looks pathetic on their part. alot of that going on in this case also like some others. That is the sad state of gaming it seems today and the results often speak for themselves as with this game.
 
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Moriarty1889 said:
One look at the characters shows it's more of the 'Modern Audience Woke Slop' that is so rampant in todays gaming. There are many videos online of various gamers and reviewers calling it out as such. Devs just can't help themselves anymore in keeping away from their agenda driven shite as opposed to just making a good game that doesn't try so hard to conform to these ridiculous standards. Horizon Hunters is the next and is receiving tons of criticisms for it as well with its insane looking character designs. Highgaurd is in a death spiral as well and being called Concord 2.0 which in and of itself is embarrassing. Concord was also called out for its Modern Audience Woke shite and look how that ended for them.
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Yep. I had someone unironically post some "female" characters like from that mobile game looking Horizon trash like we're supposed to be impressed with these flat as hell, bland feminist self inserts. The only thing that impressed me about the game is how Aloy someone manages to look more masculine and uglier with each new game. I also like how the devs completely went back on their whole "big boobs are unrealistic" so long as they're attacked to Jabba the Hutt's wife.

Our standards as gamers are completely gone at this point. We used to get Western female characters like Halo 4 Cortana, Elizabeth Comstock, Miranda Lawson, Lara Croft, Dragon Age 2 Isabela, Fear Effect Hana, and Rayne. Now we have "based" gamers praising ugly mutants like what we get in the corpo/feminist safe Horizon series.
 
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Game and movie makers who blame their target audience are leeches whose presence in the entertainment industry is only supported by dumb investors and complicit access media. They are not in it for passion or to entertain us so they have no business here.
 
Angry_Megalodon said:
Game and movie makers who blame their target audience are leeches whose presence in the entertainment industry is only supported by dumb investors and complicit access media. They are not in it for passion or to entertain us so they have no business here.
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I agree. The problem is that Western devs are beyond saving. I genuinely believe that. We will never go back to when the AAA industry at least from America, Canada, Europe (except for a small amount of countries there) were full of passionate nerds who wanted to make something they felt was special and fun. Now it's infested with bitch ass feminist brown nosing "male allies" shitting these games out to appeal to slacktivist losers on Bluesky. That's exactly why I only play random A or AA games from Western devs. AAA is too fucked beyond repair for the forseeable future for me.

If China and SK can fill the void of Western devs, then I'll be more than happy to do so. The only problem with that is I want those two countries to make single player games that aren't just Souls clones.
 
diffusionx said:
I will repeat this in every thread, the game's peak player count on steam was almost 100k. If the game was good, then they would have found success, no matter who hated it beforehand.
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Yup. Doesn't matter if everyone on YouTube hated it, if the game was good, all those that tried it would have stuck with it. Game's fucked.
 
Moriarty1889 said:
One look at the characters shows it's more of the 'Modern Audience Woke Slop' that is so rampant in todays gaming. There are many videos online of various gamers and reviewers calling it out as such. Devs just can't help themselves anymore in keeping away from their agenda driven shite as opposed to just making a good game that doesn't try so hard to conform to these ridiculous standards. Horizon Hunters is the next and is receiving tons of criticisms for it as well with its insane looking character designs. Highgaurd is in a death spiral as well and being called Concord 2.0 which in and of itself is embarrassing. Concord was also called out for its Modern Audience Woke shite and look how that ended for them.
The saddest part is devs blaming gamers for their shite games they keep putting out. Shutting down comments or blocking anyone who criticizes them is also weak and looks pathetic on their part. alot of that going on in this case also like some others. That is the sad state of gaming it seems today and the results often speak for themselves as with this game.
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One look at the characters shows it's just lazy and box-checky. There's zero ammo for misdirected culture wars rhetoric here; so very little in Highguard that could be accused of being "woke". The word woke in your "Modern Audience Woke slop" is doing zero work. Using it all the time to throw mud at stuff you don't like for whatever reason dilutes the times it might actually add to the conversation when a product is obviously crossing a line and putting preachy messaging before anything else to an audience that is largely unreceptive to it.

Lazy, formulaic, trite, boring, soulless, offensively bland, vapid, uninspired, dull, etc. etc. - all perfectly valid labels for this miserable publisher wank-bait excuse for a game.
 
Echo chambers and bubbles can be very unhealthy. The fact the devs thought their game was good says it all really, they were just trapped in their own positive bubble and sheltered from reality.

Asmongold didn't say anything wrong or radical, he didn't say anything tens of thousands of other people weren't saying about Highguard. The devs were just taken aback and shocked by it because their own positive echo chamber kept the truth hidden from them. So the devs anger is very misplaced here. They shouldn't be mad at gamers or Asmongold, they should be mad at themselves for keeping their heads in the sand for too long.

But, that would take reflection and critical thinking. It might be too hard a step for them to take.
 
Draugoth said:
highguard_promo_image_3_heroes_posing_source_steamDB_Studio_WIldlight_Steam.jpg-jpeg-q82-w480-h.webp

Amongst the louder voices is another popular YouTuber, Asmongold, who labelled the game "Concord 2." This apparently didn't sit well with one of the game's developers, Josh Sobel, who, using his X account, wrote a lengthy view of his own experience:





Via NotebookChecker
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He's correct in blaming people who decided to trash the game from the second it was announced. Steam has dozen of thousands of negative reviews with less than 15 mins of playtime (how many of them even finished the tutorial?)

Also, why the comparisons with Concord? Highguard's characters were attractive.
 
PlayStaytion said:
The guy looks like J but he call himself a weird guy with a weird look. He can't get married as long he keeps hating himself.
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You are too kind, you surely don't know half of his depravity.
Dude has roaches as guest in his bedroom on stream, not because he hates himself but because he is terminally lazy. But at the same time can we expect anything else from an elite WOW player and twitch streamer ?

HAving said he also is a chill dude with non judgmental takes (apart from when needed) who has a great community behind him. The streams where he is bombarded with gacchi mucchi vids by his fans are very fun.
 
uncreativename said:
Hey, while you're here, can you quickly explain why. I'm not gonna call you names, I'm not interested in getting into a fight. I just wanna know why this game is supposedly woke. Just finished looking into it and found nothing at all.
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I think it's more nuanced - 'woke' is a catchall for a safe, centre-right, corporate-approved, blandly inoffensive, middle-class, metropolitan elitism. At it's most transparent, it manifests as direct activism and virtue signalling, but even when that's not on show, it maintains a certain aesthetic that suggests that elitism in the creators.

I think the outburst of this developer demonstrates the point well-enough: they're in the right, they made a good game, but the audience and the toxic streaming community conspired against them, because they're the good guys, fighting the good fight and everyone else is a so-called 'bad actor'. Most journalists fall into the same category, too, insisting that games like this haven't been failed by their own lack of merit, but by a terrible gaming audience that was banking on their failure from the get-go.
 
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BbMajor7th said:
I think it's more nuanced - 'woke' is a catchall for a safe, centre-right, corporate-approved, blandly inoffensive, middle-class, metropolitan elitism. At it's most transparent, it manifests as direct activism and virtue signalling, but even when that's not on show, it maintains a certain aesthetic that suggests that elitism in the creators.

I think the outburst of this developer demonstrates the point well-enough: they're in the right, they made a good game, but the audience and the toxic streaming community conspired against them, because they're the good guys, fighting the good fight and everyone else is a so-called 'bad actor'. Most journalists fall into the same category, too, insisting that games like this haven't been failed by their own lack of merit, but by a terrible gaming audience that was banking on their failure from the ge main problem is these devs so worried about 'Fighting the good fight' and being activists instead of just making a good game.
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That is where the problem originates with a lot of these activist devs due to them wanting to 'Fight the good fight' as opposed to just making a good game with no messaging or political agendas. They just can't help themselves and are falling over eachother trying to see who can virtue signal the hardest and score 'Look at me doing my part' points among their peers. Absolute lunacy and the main reason so many games today are shite. The shutdowns of these studios and the games dying are proof of that. The entire industry needs a purge and reset.
 
The characters seem fine. Not great, but similar to other gaas games like Team Fortress or Overwatch. The gameplay looks awful, but so does Fortnite. But that is free to play. With too many of these games out there, and the existing ones have large dedicated communities, you really need to make something special to stand out in the very large crowd. These lazy attempts to dethrone existing gaas games are doomed to fail.
 
Dev timeframes, even ad short as Highguard's was, maybe not be enough to keep up with gamer tastes. I don't think anyone was very interested in another hero shooter back when Highguard was greenlit, but opinion has certainly soured by now with so many other games in the genre releasing and failing. Problem is they still need to release the game, and hope it's successful. There is risk you'll mistime your release and it's only gotten worse with the sheer quantity of games releasing every year. If you don't differentiate or have exceptional quality, there is a high chance of failure.


Maybe Highguard would have been a hit in another time where the market wasn't so saturated, maybe it wouldn't have blown up as it has if Concord and others hadn't shat the bed first.
 
The issue with many of these games isn't that they're fundamentally bad, i.e. have terrible mechanics and gameplay. The real issue is how painfully dull and corporate they are in an already massive sea of similar content. And I think it feeling like content is the crux of the issue. Everything is starting to devolve into this gray mass of corporate streaming content and these types of Maximum Profit First videogames are cut from the same cloth.

Aggressively middle-of-the-road is often more boring and offensive than anything. Makes me think of something like DayZ that has a crazy following despite being janky as fuck for having heart and ideas. In this game's case you could've told me the entire thing top to bottom was one of those fake Videogame XYZ games you see some dipshit son play on a TV show.
 
BbMajor7th said:
I think it's more nuanced - 'woke' is a catchall for a safe, centre-right, corporate-approved, blandly inoffensive, middle-class, metropolitan elitism. At it's most transparent, it manifests as direct activism and virtue signalling, but even when that's not on show, it maintains a certain aesthetic that suggests that elitism in the creators.

I think the outburst of this developer demonstrates the point well-enough: they're in the right, they made a good game, but the audience and the toxic streaming community conspired against them, because they're the good guys, fighting the good fight and everyone else is a so-called 'bad actor'. Most journalists fall into the same category, too, insisting that games like this haven't been failed by their own lack of merit, but by a terrible gaming audience that was banking on their failure from the get-go.
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Huh. I hadn't heard Woke used that way before. Seems a little broad.

Anyways, thanks for explaining it to me, though.
 
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BbMajor7th said:
I think the outburst of this developer demonstrates the point well-enough: they're in the right, they made a good game, but the audience and the toxic streaming community conspired against them, because they're the good guys, fighting the good fight and everyone else is a so-called 'bad actor'. Most journalists fall into the same category, too, insisting that games like this haven't been failed by their own lack of merit, but by a terrible gaming audience that was banking on their failure from the get-go.
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You make a good point. Interestingly, it seems to be a uniquely Western approach to modern media.

I can't think of the last time I saw a Japanese developer blame the fans for a failed project.
 
Generic said:
He's correct in blaming people who decided to trash the game from the second it was announced. Steam has dozen of thousands of negative reviews with less than 15 mins of playtime (how many of them even finished the tutorial?)

Also, why the comparisons with Concord? Highguard's characters were attractive.
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I think you're confused about exactly what make a hero shooter enticing to play. Laura, pointed this out brilliant.
Basically you have to make the characters enticing enough for people to care for them, exactly how Blizzard did with Overwatch (at start), Marvel Rivals got an easy pass cause, well, its fucking marvel.

If you design characters that nobody cared on the first place, its dead on arrival.
 
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I am going to say this again.

First impressions matter. A lot.

The pubs and devs know it or else they wouldn't spend so much time/money on first reveal and get really upset when things get leaked. So, they themselves know that first impressions matter a lot.

Consumers will form lasting feelings on a product or service on the first impression. They will review and judge in however amount of time they deem they want to engage with it.

Devs and pubs are not entitled to the benefit of the doubt nor a minimum amount of time for a consumer to form an "educated opinion". They know this (well aside from autistic devs that decide to crash out on social media).

So people got to piss off with this bullshit that people don't (or shouldn't) form opinions on just marketing and impressions. The industry itself disagrees with that sentiment with how much they spend on it and how much they try to control the marketing.
 
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I think the characters were wherever, they didn't bother me like concord was absolutely the poster child for woke fucking characters, fat ugly, retarded etc.. Just pure trash.


Highguard imo killed itself with one being 3v3, I was honestly out once I learned that. Then hearing it's just got all these stupid elements, way way to many blends of game modes.. That was the 2nd huge knock.. And that's all it took got me. Way to fucking niche of a mode to be your whole game.

I think that's what buried it imo
 
uncreativename said:
I'm still not sure why this game is woke, though. Haven't seen anyone clearly explain that. Concord's undeniably meant to push political messages, but Highguard? I just think it's a bad generic game.

Someone who thinks this game is woke, explain please. Honest question.
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Its made for modern audience, aka women, u can call it woke or not woke, but its not catering to 95% of ppl who play that genre aka teenage boys and young male adults.
What u need to have a chance is tons of sexy women(yes visibly cheeks, breats, nice cola-bottle typed figures, sexy faces too) and on top we want gore/brutality and push msg about men being awesome, basically all opposite things woke games do :)

To give u examples of non woke games which all kinds of forces tried to cancel(smearing campaing, not reviewing or giving low scores for "lack of diversity etc" would be kcd1/2(especially 1 since it was new upcoming studio so woke mob thought they got enough power to nip it in the bud- gamers loved the game and though otherwise ofc), other such recent game would be space marine 2.

What u see succeed in same space/genre where concord and highguard failed are games catered to male audience- marvel rivals and helldivers 2 :)

Lets see how marathon will do, but i can tell u one thing- if its not cathering to males and they dont like it/dont play it it will defo flop big time, if it does it has chance to be succesfull, we will see in 3 weeks :)
 
I feel like marathon will do overall poorly for a bungie game but will stay alive in some sense maybe top out at 15k or so players when the dust settles and just hang in there long enough to stay alive but I can't see it being an arc raiders situation.

I'm torn ill be tryin it but I really dislike extraction, i just man anything but fucking extraction
 
I'm not so sure that Highguard is supposed to be aimed mainly at women, but if they were trying to do that, that seems like some bad judgment lol. I mean, it's just common sense that these multiplayer shooter games are mostly played by men.

If you try to appeal to everyone all at once too much (which is what I think happened here, although it's a bit more complicated than that.), then you end up with a boring, safe product that appeals to no one, and if you try to appeal to an audience that isn't interested, you won't sell any copies either, so I think that you're right that these shooter games probably should be trying harder to appeal to men.
 
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Unknown Soldier said:


Western developers causing their own extinction isn't something I had on my bingo card but thank God for the Eastern studios who still make good games and are carrying the industry these days
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I get that maybe some struggle to find work and western devs haven't done themselves any favors but I fucking can't stand posts like that, the constant doom and gloom of the industry is so over done and tired. Like I'd love to ask that mother fucker how is it I'm litrelly buying MORE than I ever have and loving game after game? How is that possible, am I in another fucking dimension than this cock sucker?
 
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I do honestly appreciate when developers publicly make themselves look like fools, because it's at least one way they can entertain me.

The doom and gloom so many of them have about this industry is also in stark contrast to more and more small devs finding success. The industry doesn't feel like it's dying, just changing.
 
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Durin said:
I do honestly appreciate when developers publicly make themselves look like fools, because it's at least one way they can entertain me.

The doom and gloom so many of them have about this industry is also in start contrast to more and more small devs finding success. The industry doesn't feel like it's dying, just changing.
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Yea I been hearing and seeing people mention the industry in a bad place even when it was in its best eras. Like I litrelly could go back thru the decades and see the posts constantly regurgitating how it's gonna crash and yet year after year after year it only finds ways to get better, constantly put out new amazing games.

Sure mayhe the titans like ubisoft are on their last legs, I doubt it but who knows, New titans and new companies will take their places. Gaming is awesome and only the miserable, sad and desperate for attendees will say otherwise.
 
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Unknown Soldier said:


Western developers causing their own extinction isn't something I had on my bingo card but thank God for the Eastern studios who still make good games and are carrying the industry these days
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It's always been a fairly nepotistic industry, but now its shifted towards heavy ideological/cultural nepotism.

It's going to bite them.
 
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DeepEnigma said:
It's always been a fairly nepotistic industry, but now its shifted to a heavy ideological/cultural nepotism.

It's going to bite them.
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It's going to? It already has lmao, the entire Western gaming industry is in full collapse because they hire people based on woke political ideology and make games to push that ideology. No one in Western gaming studios seems to make games which try to be fun anymore, they make games to try and force you to adhere to insane political views and unsurprisingly gamers aren't buying or playing those games

The Eastern gaming industry is in a full Renaissance these days, not only is Japan surging back from decades of dormancy but now South Korea and China are rising quickly and founding new studios and hiring new developers and pumping out new games people like. Marvel has largely quit Western developers because everything they made for Marvel was shit, the recent highly successful Marvel Rivals and the upcoming Marvel Tokon are both made by Eastern devs. I expect this trend to continue as Western media companies who own huge IP's will simply no longer trust Western devs to make a game which can sell copies, after Star Wars Outlaws I cannot imagine Disney continuing to invest into letting Ubisoft make Star Wars games for example
 
Hollywood Hitman said:
Yea I been hearing and seeing people mention the industry in a bad place even when it was in its best eras. Like I litrelly could go back thru the decades and see the posts constantly regurgitating how it's gonna crash and yet year after year after year it only finds ways to get better, constantly put out new amazing games.

Sure mayhe the titans like ubisoft are on their last legs, I doubt it but who knows, New titans and new companies will take their places. Gaming is awesome and only the miserable, sad and desperate for attendees will say otherwise.
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I think people fixate on parts of the industry or certain companies getting worse, and they extrapolate that out to the industry as a whole.

What we really have is an oversaturated industry where there are so many options to consume content, that if you can't find anything good...it's because you're not looking very hard. It's always why devs should stop attacking/blaming gamers for things, because that audience has plenty of other options to replace them.

AAA games climbing in budget has probably hit a peak where it's unsustainable for most, but they'll be forced to come down, and probably be healthier around later half 360 gen budgets for most. I have an endless backlog of games, and continue to buy more, just not buying that much AAA anymore.
 
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