Indie Game Veteran Claims Highguard’s Failure Was Inevitable, Critiques Developer’s Denial of Its Flaws

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Adrian Chmielarz, creative director at The Astronauts, known for RPG shooter Witchfire and the first-person adventure The Vanishing of Ethan Carter, has criticized Wildlight Studios’ Highguard, calling it “bad” and suggesting it had “no chance” in a fiercely competitive market.

In response to a post from former Highguard tech artist Josh Sobel, who noted that pre-launch sentiments were optimistic, Chmielarz reflects on the puzzling phenomenon of games that undergo years of development yet fail to resonate.

Sobel offered a measured critique of Highguard’s gameplay and launch strategy, acknowledging that even without the surrounding negativity, success wouldn’t have been guaranteed. “I’m not saying our failure is purely the fault of gamer culture and that the game would have thrived without the negative discourse, but it absolutely played a role,” he stated.

Chmielarz, however, is more blunt in his assessment. “Now you have a developer still unable to believe they made a bad game,” he remarks. “No, it’s ‘the gamer culture’ that killed it. And The Game Awards. And the rage-baiting YouTubers.”

Sobel also mentioned, “I don’t think there’s any way to know whether the launch would have fared better or worse without the massive spotlight that was thrown onto us in response to The Game Awards’ trailer placement.”

Chmielarz adds, “Not the boring, artificial world. Not the pseudo-edgy yet generic characters. Not the corpo-style UI. Not the tired genre.”

It’s important to consider Sobel’s point: “All products are at the whims of the consumers, and the consumers put absurd amounts of effort into slandering Highguard. And it worked.”

Chmielarz expresses his disbelief, stating, “The [post from Sobel] starts with quotes about how the game was received internally, yet all it took was one trailer for an average gamer to understand this was doomed to fail.

“Highguard, Concord, the Painkiller reboot, and more – hundreds of people worked on these games for years. How does it happen that they ever see the light of day in the form they do? What is this? Is this the legendary ‘toxic positivity’? Something else? Tell me,” he concludes. Chmielarz previously served as creative director at People Can Fly, the studio behind Painkiller and Bulletstorm.

There are multiple truths at play. Highguard faced some unjust and off-topic criticism, and some players had already formed negative opinions before even trying the game. However, it also struggled as a subpar title in a landscape where even exceptional games can falter. While it’s unclear if anyone at Wildlight raised concerns about the game’s direction or strategy, it seems those voices went unheard, as evidenced by the layoffs that followed.

The CEO of Highguard acknowledges that “the toxicity is challenging” and questions whether the reveal at The Game Awards was the right move: “I’m going to continue to ask myself.”