Gamers want games to fail

I watched a video by a creator on YouTube I don’t follow but have seen before. He is generally very good and although I don’t always watch his content, when I do watch him I find that he is usually very nuanced and thoughtful rather than drama focussed and reactionary. His videos are normally well thought out and have a reflective tone. He recently released a video with the focus on being tired of gamers being blamed for games failing. I agree with this sentiment to a point. I agree that often when a game fails, the publisher or the devs or both, blame the gamers (we are often described as the consumer or somesuch) for the demise of the game and bemoan that gamers just want games to fail. This has happened repeatedly and is happening more frequently. 

But here is where I sit on the fence a little in this situation. Sometimes there is a huge amount of negativity around a game that it cannot get over, where a game that would have been somewhere between passable with some tweeks needed to a game that would be the middling review score of just good. There is also the current thing that in order for a game to break through, it needs to be exceptional. OK, 7/10 or a good game just generally doesn't cut it anymore. This is where I feel a little for Highgaurd. I will preface this with the fact that I would never have played Highgaurd, it is not my sort of game but from the bits I have heard it fits directly into this category of game. Some people really liked it, some thought it was OK or fun but needed work, others bounced off and of course some hated it. I cannot say whether this was a good game from direct experience or from the viewpoint of someone who plays these games. But what I can do is speak from the viewpoint of someone looking at it from the outside with no skin in the game. I generally couldn’t care less if it succeeded or failed but what does interest me is the way we as gamers react to games and why that is.

Another point to note is that this is just one example. There are plenty of examples of games that were just not what people wanted and where very few people actually stated they enjoyed the game like Suicide Squad Kill the Justice League. There are games that when they came out were universally panned as being terrible games that undershot the expectations of the people who bought the game, who through multiple patches and iterations became excellent games. Cyberpunk and No Man’s Sky come to mind. Then there are games that come out well, lose their way a little then somehow come back, Overwatch seems to be one of these games. There is no one reason a game succeeds or fails and who they appeal to, any situation has multiple viewpoints and paths leading to it. But sometimes those paths require us to look at ourselves and other times it requires the others to review their responsibility in the failure. But most times it is a mixture of both.

I referenced the creator and his video and who it was is completely irrelevant. I have seen this argument from many gamers in comments sections in various places, Reddit posts and so on, and I feel they all fail to take our part in this into account for some of these game’s failures. In the video he compared current games that are doing well to Highgaurd as a way to explain why we as gamers don’t want these kind of games. One of my issues with this section was the games he was comparing. I feel he was comparing games that don’t compare. The games were Slay the Spire 2, Resident Evil Requiem, Marathon, Deadlock and Highgaurd. Slay the spire 2 is the second version of a very popular game and people knew what they were getting. It is basically the same game with new components added on. There was an article stating that it felt the same in so many ways. This is of course a boon as well as a curse. Resident Evil Requiem is also another installment of a well trodden, well loved IP and the previous game, Village, was very well received. Marathon is an old IP with a new take and is doing OK and Bungie is a very well known developer with a huge fanbase. Deadlock is probably the worse comparison to Highgaurd as the game is invite only and you have to get someone already in to invite you. It is also made by Valve, a developer that hasn’t really put many games out in recent memory, but the games they have put out have been very well received. If you are trying to get into Deadlock, you also want to get in and therefore want to play the game and have a friend who is willing to invite you because they enjoy the game and of course it isn’t even out yet. And then there is Highguard. This is a new IP and a different take on the genre. There are similarities to Deadlock in some ways. It should be noted that this game was called Concord 2 long before people had even played it or they had seen very much of it. The attention granted from the Game Awards reveal I don’t think helped and the trailer didn’t seem to have sparked interest in the game rather confusion. 

All these games are so different from Highgaurd that I think it is an unfair comparison. GTA6 will do gangbusters. There is no doubt in anybody's mind about this. There are no questions around why it has been delayed so many times and for so long. If another game comes out around the same time it would be unfair to compare the two games, not because of clout of budgets but because they are different games. I realise that Overwatch, Marvel Rivals, Deadlock, Apex and so on are similar games to Highgaurd, but from what I heard Highgaurd was trying something new. People seemed to think there was promise there but there were issues. I heard people complaining that it was too sedate, that they felt the world was empty, there was not enough action in the beginning bit and that the mechanics, although fun, were confusing and not explained very well. These are issues that could have fixes. There didn’t seem to be anything mechanically wrong with the game and many said it was fun when you started to get it but it needed tweaking. As an example they changed to 4v4 as opposed to 3v3 and some people said that made a difference. 

Cyberpunk and No Man’s Sky came back from the brink because they were given the time and had the resources to do so. Highgaurd had none of these. This is not to say that Highgaurd should be given the time and resources but rather if Hello Games or CDProjekt had not had the time and resources to do so, then we wouldn’t have the games we have today. No Man’s Sky’s fan base basically begs Saun Murray and Hello Games to allow them to buy the new content as DLC or just have a way to give them money as they feel the developers have atoned enough for the launch. Their new game, Light no Fire, is hotly anticipated with many saying that if it is a mess at launch they don’t care because they know the team will work hard to correct any issues that arise. CDProkekt had built up a huge resource of trust and appreciation from their fans until Cyberpunk 2077, which flew out the window with many gamers stating they would never buy one of their games again. People are now willing to give them another cautious shot with Cyberpunk 2 and the Witcher 4 in development, but let's be honest, people will preorder the games when they are due. These are games that were ‘Concorde 2’ style games but came back from the edge because the devs worked hard, yes, but also because gamers gave them a shot. Highgaurd released a patch within a few days and then released a huge patch just before they were due to shutter the studio and people who tried it seemed sad the game was going. 

I would have been interested to have a thought exercise as to what would have happened if it didn’t receive the Game Awards bump, and started off slow (like Deadlock) and had been able to gather feedback in a more controlled way allowing them to tune the game. Deadlock had a few hundred playing initially and these were the big PvP people. They gave feedback and Valve responded. They then released more keys and rinsed and repeated the process. This was also the worst kept secret in gaming. Everyone knew about it but didn’t necessarily know what it was. Information kept leaking and people slowly became interested. This is also a new take on the genre and I agree that Valve did the right thing, although I don’t think it was planned. Again Deadlock may be an amazing game and Highgaurd may just be a huge steaming pile of excrement, but there seemed to be a good number of people playing (almost 40K) until they heard the studio let people go and that they were likely to scuttle the game altogether. As they say there were lessons to be learned but the issue is those lessons are unlikely to be of any help to the next game to come along. 

While speaking about Highgaurd people all spoke about where the game went wrong. They touched on the good points or the bits they liked only to stress the points they didn’t like. No one I saw speaking about Highgaurd suggested bits that would have made the game better. Maybe a suggestion of ‘if this was in the game it would have added to the game’. I do wonder, as someone who once again wont play these games or has enough experience of them, if they were given a restricted playerbase and that playerbase were active in giving advice and suggestions if there was any hope for this game. The No Man’s Sky, Cyberpunk and Deadlock show that under the right conditions a game might become something amazing. Also did the devs need 200K concurrent players to maintain the game? What were their success parameters before the Game Awards blow up? There are currently 89 people playing Highgard on Steam even though the game is being shut off. 

Maybe Highgaurd was always doomed for failure, but a playerbase increasingly tired of these kinds of games but at the same time wanting a new one of these games are always going to be difficult to please. The success of Arc Raiders and Helldivers 2 recently has shown that people do want new takes of their favourite games. This is a notoriously difficult area to break into so realistically it was always going to be a hard sell. We will wait and see as I am sure there will be a new one of these in the works. 

Please leave a comment as I would really like to hear people’s viewpoints on this, especially if you play these kinds of games and if you played Highgaurd. I would like to know if this game was ever savable or if you felt Concord was savable.