By Aidan O’Connor | Play-by-Play Broadcaster
Gaming culture has become too toxic, reaching a point where it is affecting people’s livelihoods. Nothing has made this toxicity more apparent than what happened recently with the game Highguard.
Highguard is just one example of this toxicity, but it is the most recent and blatant. It all began at The Game Awards, where it was presented as the final game of the showcase. It was hyped up by the presenter, Geoff Keighley, as the next big title and had former Apex Legends and Titanfall developers involved.
Immediately, millions of people were excited, followed by immediate disappointment as the game was shown. To many, it looked like a generic live-service hero shooter and nothing like what the developers had previously done. In an instant, almost the entire gaming community was against Highguard.
There was a sense of vitriol at the fact that it was a departure from what they wanted from these developers, but for Wildlight Entertainment, this was exactly what they wanted. They sought to branch out and do something different than continuing to work on the same games.
I provide this background to truly set the stage for how this game was a multiyear passion project by Wildlight. A team that wanted to escape the clutches of a big company like Electronic Arts and make something that was their own. While there are many bad actors in the gaming industry, this was not one of them.
It didn’t matter, though, as once the game launched, it was review bombed and lost 90% of its player base. Now, there were legitimate issues with the game, like uninspired character designs and too much dead time, but it primarily received this reaction because of the disappointment from those who watched The Game Awards showcase.
This decline in numbers and players led to the studio having mass layoffs, cutting to 20 employees, compared to the initial 100. All of those years of hard work and passion evaporated in less than a month.
People had a right to be disappointed when Highguard was shown at The Game Awards, and it was hyped up to be more than it was, but actively starting a hate campaign on the game was the wrong decision. Wishing for a game to fail and dogpiling on the developers is something that needs to be fixed within the gaming community.
There needs to be a realization that a mob mentality of hate against certain games, whether you like them or not, has real ramifications. If you dislike a game for how it is, that is completely fine, but joining in on hate for something you haven’t played is wrong.
If you have an issue with a game, express it in a constructive, not hateful, way. Hate does not help developers improve a game or keep their jobs.
The only issue with this is that 60-plus staff who helped build the game are gone because of the gaming community’s reaction. In an industry that isn’t afraid of layoffs, this is something that needs to change, and the gaming community needs to improve.
