‘Highguard’ Headlined The Game Awards Because Founder Geoff Keighley “Loved It”, Devs Originally Wanted “To Drop Everything As A Surprise”
Though many assumed Highguard‘s position as The Game Awards’ closing announcement had been bought and paid for, its developers at Wildlight Entertainment have revealed that the honor was instead offered to them directly by event founder Geoff Keighley, who did so because he just genuinely “loved” the game.
This detail regarding the fantasy hero shooter’s eye-brow raising premiere was brought to light courtesy of its lead writer Jason Torfin and lead designer Mohammad Alavi, who provided their insight during a pre-release interview given to Japanese video game news outlet 4Gamer.
Per a machine translation of their discussion provided by DeepL, asked as to its former Apex Legends dev team chose to go completely dark and drop not so much as a YouTube short or tweet for the six weeks between the Highguard‘s initial TGA announcement and its January 26th release date, Torfin took the lead and explained, “Our initial plan was to do exactly what we did with Apex Legends. Drop everything as a surprise. But late in development, Geoff (Keighley) came by, played it, and absolutely loved the game. That’s when we got the opportunity to be at the TGAs.”
“So we made the decision to show a fragment of the game. But at the same time, we didn’t want to change what we always do… which is letting the game speak for itself at launch. We didn’t expect this level of reaction, but we wanted to be true to ourselves. We chose to stay silent and listen to what people were saying. Then, at the moment of launch, we’d deliver all the information and the game at once.
“That’s what we’re doing now. We hope people will actually come and experience the game for themselves.”
“Yes, as you’ve probably noticed, it’s the same as The Matrix,” playfully added Alavi. “The only way to truly understand this game is to play it.”
“It wasn’t something I had planned all along, it was an opportunity,” concluded Torfin. “I’m really grateful to Geoff for giving me that opportunity.”
Interestingly, though its dev team is appreciative of their TGA spotlight, they are not completely ignorant to Highguard‘s poor reception among players.
Speaking in a separate interview with PC Gamer, Wildlight Entertainment CEO and founder Dusty Welch admitted, “”Look, I wish Highguard had been received better. I wish the feedback had been better.”
“Part of that’s on us, right? We didn’t put our heads in the sand. We, as a team, saw the feedback. We’re gamers ourselves. We’re online ourselves reading the feedback.
“I think, ultimately, we could have made a different trailer—a better trailer that wasn’t about entertaining, which is what we think [The Game Awards] was about. We could have made something that did a better job of highlighting the unique loop of the game. So that’s on us. We take that, but the team is resilient.”
As noted above, for better or worse, Highguard is now available free-to-play on the PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X|S, and Windows platforms.
