The Highguard situation is everything wrong with the games industry.
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The Highguard situation is everything wrong with the games industry.
And by that, I mean the problem clearly wasn’t with the devs. They were genuinely doing their best.
The problem is the economics of the industry and the toxicity of so-called “gamers”.
This game took 2.5 years to make. From the moment it was announced at the Game Awards, they got a dogpile of hate—for a game that was unreleased and free-to-play. And within 16 days of its release, lay-offs ensued because 2.5K daily concurrent users is supposedly not enough to sustain devs.
I don’t understand why someone’s livelihood has to live or die based on the assumption it will pull in 100,000s of users instantly. I also don’t understand why gamers put so much energy into hate instead of celebrating the things they love.
Personally, I didn’t play Highguard because it’s unplayable on Linux. Oh well, there’s 1,000s more games for me to play. I’m not wanting for titles.
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The Highguard situation is everything wrong with the games industry.
And by that, I mean the problem clearly wasn’t with the devs. They were genuinely doing their best.
The problem is the economics of the industry and the toxicity of so-called “gamers”.
This game took 2.5 years to make. From the moment it was announced at the Game Awards, they got a dogpile of hate—for a game that was unreleased and free-to-play. And within 16 days of its release, lay-offs ensued because 2.5K daily concurrent users is supposedly not enough to sustain devs.
I don’t understand why someone’s livelihood has to live or die based on the assumption it will pull in 100,000s of users instantly. I also don’t understand why gamers put so much energy into hate instead of celebrating the things they love.
Personally, I didn’t play Highguard because it’s unplayable on Linux. Oh well, there’s 1,000s more games for me to play. I’m not wanting for titles.
@atomicpoet I feel for the developers, but making a free-to-play life service hero shooter is equivalent to jumping in a tank full of sharks shouting "I'm tasty!"
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@atomicpoet I feel for the developers, but making a free-to-play life service hero shooter is equivalent to jumping in a tank full of sharks shouting "I'm tasty!"
@j_bertolotti But why spend time and energy on hate? Why harass developers? -
@j_bertolotti But why spend time and energy on hate? Why harass developers?
A lot of gamers seem to think that everything that’s released needs to be for them, specifically, and if there’s something about a game that makes them feel like they aren’t the only person in the room, it needs to be destroyed. Even the suggestion that a game might be trying to treat women or people of colour as anything but objects must be met with violence, because otherwise it might mean having to accept a world where they’re not Player 1.
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A lot of gamers seem to think that everything that’s released needs to be for them, specifically, and if there’s something about a game that makes them feel like they aren’t the only person in the room, it needs to be destroyed. Even the suggestion that a game might be trying to treat women or people of colour as anything but objects must be met with violence, because otherwise it might mean having to accept a world where they’re not Player 1.
@kichae I’ve noticed that so many games that appeal to women have to be re-branded as “cosy” simply because they have to be non-threatening to men’s fragile egos.
Because in terms of mechanics, so many of these games are actually more complex than your basic ball and gun game. So many cosy games are basically strategy games, not that different from Civilization or Europa Universalis. -
@kichae I’ve noticed that so many games that appeal to women have to be re-branded as “cosy” simply because they have to be non-threatening to men’s fragile egos.
Because in terms of mechanics, so many of these games are actually more complex than your basic ball and gun game. So many cosy games are basically strategy games, not that different from Civilization or Europa Universalis.Exactly. Anything that doesn’t directly serve the egos or desires of young, white men needs to be sufficiently OTHER to “real gaming” in order for it to be allowed to exist. Anything introducing women as a real avatar – not just a high polygon wiggling ass to stare at – is automatically a threat, because it means someone is trying to make them see the world from someone else’s point of view.
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Exactly. Anything that doesn’t directly serve the egos or desires of young, white men needs to be sufficiently OTHER to “real gaming” in order for it to be allowed to exist. Anything introducing women as a real avatar – not just a high polygon wiggling ass to stare at – is automatically a threat, because it means someone is trying to make them see the world from someone else’s point of view.
@kichae That’s the other problem: why are protagonists seen as avatars and not characters? Why do they have to represent you? Why can’t, for one second, you view the world through a lens that’s not your own?
One of my favourite games ever is Mirror’s Edge. It wouldn’t be what it is if you weren’t playing an Asian woman who’s performing parkour. And yet the blowback upon release was that she was just a regular girl, not some eye candy.
Yeah, dude, that’s the point of the game. She’s no one special but she’s stuck in this dystopian world where she must literally navigate the margins of society.
Also, I love Immortals Fenyx Rising. But it annoys me that Ubisoft had the option to change the avatar to a dude. Some random dude is not Fenyx. Make gamers experience the world as a woman for a change.
