Wildlight Entertainment CEO Says “Toxicity Is Challenging” Surrounding ‘Highguard’, Unsure If Skipping The Game Awards Would Have Improved Reception
In reflecting on the current state of Highguard at the end of its first full week of availability, Wildlight Entertainment CEO Dusty Welch says that while he’s well aware of the game’s extremely poor reception, he’s unsure whether the public temperature would have been any different had they chosen to decline Geoff Keighley’s invitation to have their work headline last year’s edition of The Game Awards.
One of the studio’s several ex-Respawn founders, Welch weighed in on the general Highguard discourse during a recent interview given to Bloomberg video game reporter Jason Schreier.
Asked about the near-endless criticism being leveled towards the game, from its gameplay being unsatisfying to its maps feeling completely lifeless, the CEO asserted, “We think the game as it is right now is super fun, super honed for 3v3.”
“But we’ve also designed and play-tested different play counts,” he added. “I would not discount the opportunity to have different things happening in the game very soon.”
To this end, later asked by Schreier as to whether he “regretted announcing Highguard at The Game Awards instead of ‘shadowdropping‘ as they’d originally planned”, Welch admitted that, at the end of the day, he was unable to give a direct answer as he was still mulling over the entire situation, telling his host, “That’s an incredibly fair question, and it’s one I ask myself quite a bit.”
“It’s one that I’m going to continue to ask myself for a period of time. If we are wildly successful, I will still ask myself that because I’m interested in the business side and how we communicate to players and press. And was that the right way? Was there a different way? Was there a better way? And I don’t know the answer to that yet today.
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“The toxicity is challenging, and it’s debatable whether we would’ve had more or less or the same by doing the Game Awards. I don’t know, and we’ll never know the answer to that. But I think that that’s an angle that has to be considered going forward for anyone in game development.”
Drawing his thoughts to a close, Welch ultimately asserted, “You have to be open to both if you’re gonna put yourself out there.”
“So you gotta take that risk if you wanna succeed. And we’re happy to be out here taking that risk. And then there’ll be a case study someday, which I’ll love to be a part of, which is: the Game Awards, why or why not. And I think that’ll be fascinating for all of us to learn.”
Notably, this is not the first time Welch has spoken on Highguard‘s less-than-stellar debut, having previously done so while speaking to PC Gamer as part of the game’s pre-release press tour.
“Look, I wish Highguard had been received better,” he told the outlet. “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.”
Highguard is now available free-to-play on the PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X|S, and Windows platforms.
