'We don't need [player counts] to be super huge in order to be successful': Highguard devs respond to posters declaring it dead on arrival

The developers of Highguard will be the first to tell you the reveal of their debut FPS could have gone down better. The trailer shown at the end of The Game Awards in December failed to distinguish Highguard from any other free-to-play hero shooter, and prompted a wave of cynical social media posts declaring it "cooked" before anyone had played it.

"That's on us,' Wildlight Entertainment CEO Dusty Welch told PC Gamer at a hands-on event in Los Angeles last week. "We could have made something that did a better job of highlighting the unique loop of the game."

In anticipation of Highguard launch, I asked Wildlight what it makes of the internet's propensity to judge a game's health using the only metric available to the public: Steam concurrent players. What if Highguard doesn't immediately have a lot of players—is that an immediate problem for the studio's future?

"Honestly, we don't need [player counts] to be super huge in order to be successful," lead designer Mohammad Alavi told press in a group interview.

"We're a small team. A six-player match [Highguard's max player count at launch] is not hard to find. What we're really hoping for is a core group of fans that love us. That will allow us to grow. Being the ire of the internet hate machine sucks, but at the same time, I try to just focus on making the best game I can and getting that game into people's hands. At the end of the day, that's all that really matters."

Over four years of development, Wildlight Entertainment has grown to ~100 people—of which around 60 previously worked at Respawn on the Titanfall series and Apex Legends. The studio is backed by private investors and is self-publishing Highguard.

"Internet's gonna internet," Jason Torfin, VP of product and publishing, chimed in. "If you're gonna be good at live service, you have to listen to the note behind the note. Yeah, there are indications that there's fatigue, that they're confused, that they don't know these things. So it's on us to make sure we respond to that, and we're gonna do that."

I also asked founder and CEO Dusty Welch what he makes of the FPS scene and releasing Highguard into a crowded genre, and he offered a compelling counterpoint.

"There's this narrative that it's a crowded space. There's so much fatigue in it. That's true, but if you look at what's actually happening and transpiring it's that there's more players playing, more engagement, more games, and so and so. We have a great opportunity to find our audience with Highguard," Welch told PC Gamer.

"The shooter space has only continued to get larger. It's the rocket fuel that continues to propel the entire gaming segment. Shooters are five out of the top 10 games in terms of MAU [monthly active users] on PC. So all the metrics and the KPIs, the CAGR [compound annual growth rate] in the five and three year category—growth in shooters is incredible. It continues to go at a 5% pace, et cetera."

It's true that, despite the small number of games eating up a majority of players, there are simply way more people playing multiplayer shooters today than a generation ago (even the less popular ones). If Highguard doesn't find an audience stable enough to stick around, it probably won't be because it's yet another hero shooter. After all, Marvel Rivals came out just over a year ago and was an instant hit.

Having played a few hours of Highguard with other press, my doubts are specific to the unique game mode that the whole game is built around: a multi-phase, 3v3 tug of war where teams fight over the right to raid each other's bases and blow up generators. It's got complexity and depth, but I didn't go home jazzed to play it again.

We'll have more Highguard coverage in the coming days as we play more.