Weekly Roundup: Highguard Hiccups, Amazon Explodes, and Cryptic Studios CEO Returns
Here’s all the video game industry news you need to know if you don’t know what news to know.
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Highguard Falters
The debut title by Wildlight Entertainment launched on Monday with zero promotion outside a trailer at December’s Game Awards. The studio likely expected to replicate the shadowdrop release success of Apex Legends (which numerous Wildlight devs worked on) but instead Highguard has been met with, perhaps predictably in this day and age, a ton of negative feedback.
The game, which pits teams of “Wardens” against each other in a live service raid shooter setting that employs both sci-fi and fantasy trappings, currently sits at a Mostly Negative review score on Steam, with only 32% of the 292,202 reviews being positive.
To be fair, many of the player reviews are at least coherent if not constructive. “Currently feels like a collection of familiar mechanics stitched together, often in a weaker or less polished way,” and “Could be fun, but there are TOO many things that annoy me with this game that I’m just not having a good time playing it,” are common themes, with many finding the overall style and gameplay bland.
Others have noted that while “it’s not Concord 2” it’s also nowhere near the “new breed of shooter” Wildlight claimed it would be. Another studio that knows a thing or two about unrealistically overhyping its game is 1047 Games (Splitgate), which jumped to Wildlight’s defense on X:
“No game is perfect on day one (ours certainly wasn’t). If you see potential, share feedback. It helps make the game better, and that’s something we should all be rooting for. There’s room for tons of great games. Wishing you success on Highguard, Wildlight.”
1047 Games weren’t the first to do this, though, with everyone from Larian’s CEO Swen Vincke to Cliff Bleszinski weighing in on social media beforehand about the overwhelming hate towards Highguard.
“I get that there’s a lot of disappointment out there. Good games are being mutilated to turn them into money machines and that obviously causes a lot of frustration because it makes the games worse,” Vincke posted. “But they were not the ones I was thinking of when writing my words. Instead I was thinking of those who truly care about their craft and want to continuously improve what they’re making. I know many of them, and I’ve seen how hurtful packaging of criticism has affected them.” He ended with a repeat call for people to be kinder in their criticism.
CliffyB asked a more succinct “When did it become trendy to hate on a new game?” According to player comments, Cliff, the answer is: when it’s apparently undercooked and generic.
For its part, Wildlight has kept comments contained to the official Highguard X account, with news about upcoming patches to address a ton of technical issues.
Amazon Hemorrhages More Staff
Amazon cut a bunch of its video game staff last year, and this week it revealed it’s cutting around 16,000 jobs. Beth Galetti, Senior Vice President of People Experience and Technology at Amazon, said in a news post that it’s “not our plan” to “announce broad reductions every few months,” although how true this is will be apparent in, well, a few months.
It’s currently unclear which, if any, of Amazon Game Studios’ projects are on the chopping block again, although Jason Schreier at Bloomberg reported that the AGS boss, and former CEO of 2K, Christoph Hartmann, is leaving the company. Schrier said this is due to Amazon continuing “its retreat from the PC and console video-game space in favor of its cloud gaming service Luna.”
Cryptic Studios CEO Returns
In quite literally the reverse of this news, another game company got its old boss back this week. Cryptic Studios, the original developers of City of Heroes (and City of Villains), and main devs behind MMOs of Neverwinter and Star Trek, has welcomed once-and-future CEO Jack Emmert back into the fold.
The news was shared on YouTube and the Steam page for Champions Online, the still-popular superhero MMO launched in 2011 as, initially, a direct competitor to COH after that was sold to NCSoft (and which has its own ‘back in the game’ story).
In the post, Emmert said: “I cannot promise results, but I can promise effort. I’m going to do everything I can to live up to the team’s and your expectations. I want to make sure that together we make our games flourish. If you’re a current player, THANK YOU! And if you’ve once played but are reading and simply curious, COME BACK!”
He noted that Champions Online’s publisher, Arc Games, “has promised full support to make Champions Online, Star Trek Online and Neverwinter the best they can be.” The publisher was also the subject of news in December when it was revealed that it’d split from parent company Embracer and was now set on being independent.
Player reactions to Emmert’s return vary wildly, as while many praise his work as Lead Designer for COH and Chief Creative Officer for Champions Online, others blame him for “ruining” DC Universe Online. He’s also come under fire for not offering any concrete details on whether he intends to help Champions Online get out of the pit many players believe it’s in following the shift away from a monthly subscription in 2018 to a Premium Pack upgrade.
Any concerned gamers, or those who are just curious as to what Emmert has planned, can join in a live Q&A with him via the Cryptic Studios Twitch Channel on Feb. 3 at 11:00am Pacific Time.
