Asmongold TV - This game is truly a piece of sh*t.. | Asmongold TV

Episode Date: February 6, 2026

This game is truly a piece of sh*t..Asmongold podcast for all of his stream highlights, competitions, reactions & more. -------------------- ------------ Keywords: world of warcraft, pc gaming, gaming takes, gaming culture Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This game. I was going to watch this game. And Concord 2. So there's been a lot of controversy surrounding this game regarding as to whether it's Concord 2 or Concord 3. Because Marathon was going to be Concord 2, but now that Marathon got delayed, High Guard is going to come out before Marathon. But is Marathon still Concord 2 because it got announced before High Guard? or is High Guard Concord 2 because it comes out before Marathon? And is Marathon, in fact, Concord 3?

That's the big question. Nobody knows the answer to this. The game awards have come. But they all know the game sucks. And gone, Expedition 33 received its flowers. We watched as indie games, dominated not only in nominations, but also awards. And we were showered. in incredible trailers

from the return of Dune Raider to Larian Studios' next game, Divinity. Man, was that one. Then at the end of the show, Jeff Keeley comes out and really lays it on thick. And he shows us high guard. Wow.

A PVP hero shooter. What were they thinking? Especially following the divinity trailer. It just doesn't make any sense to be. He had all the fanfare, all the anticipation, man, did that guy want to make sure he sold that game? It was the last spot of the night.

Normally where we would typically see a really big heavy hitter, a major reveal, and they just pretended like it was something that we were begging for. I do think that it's a strategic decision that Jeff makes now in order to release the trailers at the beginning of the show that are really good, to get a lot of noise and buzz for the show going in order to get people to watch the show, like as it's happening, like, you know, like immediate. see social media like attention. I think that's what happens.

They make it top heavy. Yeah, exactly. It's front-loaded, I guess you could say. All the while showing us something that we've seen a million times by now. Oh, I don't know about a million. The same music, the same slow motion hero animations showing their powers and all of that good stuff. It was just like Concord's trailer. More ways than you actually think, but we'll talk about that a little bit later.

And I've seen a lot of feedback surrounding this game. people are not very happy. They hate it. Most people are just kind of sick and tired of a lot of this stuff. Yes. I've seen the developers having a really hard time with it on social media. A lot of people also rushing to defend them, trying to create a pillow fort to defend them from all the toxic gamers.

You know, it's just the streamers and the YouTubers that are the problem. These aren't real opinions. It's just manufactured hate more than anything else. Well, if it's manufactured and it works, then it works. That's all there is to it. You got to address it one way or another. Not listening to the players. You know, that's worked out a lot for these guys in the past.

All they are is just protecting a game that is clearly destined for failure. You have to learn from these lessons. So today, I'm talking about why that is. I'm talking about the fate of this game. I'm talking about all the bad decisions that these guys made up to the release of this game, why this game is such a bad idea, why people hate it, why people are defending it and why I don't think this is the last time we're going to see it

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to see your progress reflected in the world. Arknight's Enfield launches on January 22nd, 2026 for PlayStation 5 PC, iOS, and Android. Wow. Pre-registration is live right now. So if you want to check it out early, hit the link in the description or the pin comment. The game awards lives and dies by trailers. Every single year, it's the same cycle, rumors, wish casting, people convince convincing themselves that this is finally the night for Bloodbourne 2 or Half Life 3. And because of that, the final trailer carries extra weight. It's supposed to be the big one. Jeff Keely really leaned into that hard.

He reminded everybody that the last slot is saved for something special, tease that this game was being made in secret, and then dropped the pedigree. Former respawn developers, the people behind Titanfall and Apex Legends breaking away from AAA. Expectations spiked. The room went dark. The trailer rolled.

and what followed was the most aggressively generic reveal we saw the entire night. Aggressively generic. Yeah, that's about right. Highguard is a PVPVE hero-based shooter where you are playing as wardens fighting over territory and raiding enemy strongholds. On paper, honestly, fine, but the problem is that none of that actually comes through in the trailer. What does come through is how completely interchangeable all of this feels. The same abilities, the same pacing, the same presentation that we have seen a dozen times by now.

It's pulling straight from the Valorant playbook right down to the silhouettes and the cool down driven combat. The character that they led with honestly looks like John video game. It is. And beyond that, here's one thing that I would always say that matters a lot. Do you think anybody is going to want to cosplay the characters in this video game? Because if the answer is no, you need to make new characters. If people don't want to be the roles in the game, then why would they want to be the roles in the game? then why would they want to play the game? I actually think that that should be a very, very good benchmark.

If you have good character design, people will cosplay your characters. If you have bad character design, they won't. Zero identity, zero personality, a lot like the whole game. Yeah. The entire time that I was watching this trailer, I had this nagging feeling that I had seen this before, not just like, oh, it's another live service shooter.

No, I mean, like, I've literally seen this before. And it didn't click for me until the ice troll. slammed into the ground and then my brain immediately clicked and said, oh no, this is Concord. That is definitely Concord. So I went, no. Wait, what? I clicked and said, oh, no, this is Ice Troll slammed into the ground. And then my brain immediately clicked and said, oh, no, this is Concord.

That is definitely Concord. So I went back and I compared the trailers and once you see it, you can't unsee it. Oh my God. Hero ability introductions. identical. The pacing and the percussion heavy music is just about the same. The rhythm of the cuts, the way the abilities are framed, the timing of, oh, look, how cool this character is moments. It all lines up perfectly. If you start splicing the two trailers together, you genuinely start to lose track of which game you're watching unless you're paying close attention. I don't know if they outsource some of the same

assets. This one's Concord, I think, right? You cannot wash the Concord stink off of this thing. I mean, these guys are already Fall. It's crazy. How bad? This game was so bad. Now it's killing other games. It's not enough that Concord killed itself. It's like a fucking suicide bomber. It kills everybody that's like friendly fire.

...into the exact same trap that buried Concord. This is a hero shooter with completely unremarkable characters. They're not... Nobody's going to want to cosplay. of these characters. They're boring, ugly, and non-rememberable. It's unremarkable, I guess, to say. It's offensively bad this time. They're not hideous, but they're just safe, polished, inoffensive, and instantly forgettable. Not a single character jumps out at you or makes you say,

you know what, I am curious to play them. The abilities are all things that we've seen before. The powers blur together. And yet this trailer has the nerve to say that it is a new breed of shooter, but it looks exactly like 10 other games from the past year. And clearly, players are feeling the same way. It's like a new breed of shooter in the way that, do you ever see like dogs that have been bred selectively for like 100

years? And like 100 years ago, the breed was like a normal animal. And now it's this disfigured fucking freak that if you clap your hands too loud, it's your hands too loud, its heart will explode and their eyes will pop out of their head.

That's what happens. That's where we're at. Action online was immediate. People started calling it Concord 2 almost instantly. Others were people started calling it Concord 2. I wonder who people is. Furious that the game somehow got the final slot of the show. Dead on Arrival has become the default label for the game. It's dead before arrival. They already, it's basically they've already aborted the game. It's going to be a stillbirth. It will be. It's dead. It's done. It's over. It's finished. It's just, that's it. 300,000 views right now with over 40,000 disc likes and barely 4,000 likes. The trailer is getting out, look how bad, like this is like, if somebody said,

oh, yay, this is like, like, they're like, Elon, Elon, look at my video game that I generated with quack. I call it high guard because it's like overwatch, high guard, get it. Look, Elon, can you retweet it? That's it. That's it. Absolutely cooked on social media. Yeah. ratioed in repost, side-by-side comparisons.

That picture was crazy. Everywhere, characters are getting dragged for looking like knock-off versions of existing heroes, like the sniper who is basically just a blonde version of Anna from Overwatch. And then you've got Tomb Raider developers that are getting universal praise right now for revealing that they've been working on the game. While High Guard developers are announcing that they can finally talk about theirs and they are being met with nothing. And they're having an absolute fucking meltdown, bro. Like, they're having such a bad time. But backlash.

To the point that some of them are just straight up going driving. Having a meltdown. So yeah, not a great response and definitely not the one you're hoping for after spending some serious money on putting your trailer on the biggest stage in the entire industry. The Game Awards now reportedly pulls in more viewers than the Super Bowl. And getting your trailer on the show is not cheap. Anywhere from $450,000 to over a million dollars depending on its length. That's before we factor in how much it costs for them to buy out the final slot of the night. the spot that's reserved for the biggest, most anticipated reveals.

That is an insane gamble, and in this case, it is completely blown up in their face. Yeah. Now, I've heard some people say that the trailer placement is the problem, and sure, I guess kind of. I mean, if this thing... No, the trailer placement is only a problem because people thought the game was going to be good. If the trailer was at the beginning, they would have just known it was bad. If it came out, I think that definitely it being at the end made it worse, but it It would have still been terrible.

It's studio shutdown. No, I think this is a pretty big studio. They can afford to fuck up again after this. How do you not know your game sucks? The reason why nobody knows their game sucks is because they live in a culture of toxic positivity. And they ignore opinions of real actual gamers in favor of the opinions of fat, funco, pop millennials. And then also retarded Gen Xers that think that. that it's a cool thing that you can go on the internet still.

Like, that's the real problem. And their personality is the type of beers they like. You need to go and get people involved in your QA process that are attracted to animals that aren't real. You need to get people involved in your creative process that know more than 10 racial slurs for a group of people that is not like the traditional, like black people or Jews.

Like if you know 10 racial slurs for, let's say, like, you know, like Italians or something like that, then maybe this person might have an eye into what gamers really want. Like, you have to, you have to bring in people who, like, if they're... Let me think of a better way to say this. I think that's a good start. Let's just have that. That's good. That's fucked up.

I know. it would work. Wouldn't have been nearly as much anticipation that was riding behind it. And also it probably wouldn't have been directly contrasted to some of the genuinely exciting reveals that we had seen. I mean, how do you follow up that divinity trailer? Yeah, that was nuts. Let's be honest here, regardless of where that trailer was placed, it still would have been

just as forgettable. The backlash here is not some mystery puzzle that the internet needs to solve. The biggest issue that we have is the expectations that this studio set for themselves. This is supposed to be an independent studio, a breakaway team, former E. employees, more importantly, former Titanfall developers branching off to go and do their own thing. And what do they come back with? The safest, most corporate thing imaginable. The kind of live service hero shooter that we have come to expect from erronic and repetitive AAA publishers following the tale of everyone else. Not from a studio that escaped that system. And that's the part

that makes no sense to me. And this is likely what pissed people off the most. You get mad. You are free. You're supposed to be the ones that are making games for us. Not for the fucking machine. Why wouldn't you make something actually different? Something that players clearly want. You fly the flag of Titanfall for the reputation it gives you, but not for the meaning behind it. The audience behind that game did not disappear. It's been ignored.

You know what? Who am I kidding? Of course, the only person that clearly sees that need is some random solo developer that's making a Diesel Punk MEC shooter off of Kickstarter money and a YouTube channel. Some random guy. Seriously, go check out Diesel Nights. That guy actually gets us. I went back and actually watched his trailer after watching.

watching the High Guard reveal and it is night and day. It's so distinct. It's so messy and unrefined and raw and it just feels human and watching that back just made it even more obvious how few people in this industry genuinely understand the art anymore or even the audience that they're supposed to be making games for. Well, you have people that spend a lot of time in school and they're like taught in school. You have to do this and that and the other thing. Well, listen, if a lot of these people in school knew how to make a fucking video game, they wouldn't be they're teaching your stupid ass how to do it. They'd be doing it themselves.

So yeah, you've got some people that used to be successful, but for the most part, they're fucking teachers. They don't fucking know what people want. If they did, they'd be millionaires, but they're not. So you should never go and listen to this shit. Absolutely. I don't know what the fuck they're talking about. It's the same with any school.

Like, really, unless you're learning, like, a hard science, like STEM, you don't probably need to go to school for this, okay? Like, I went to business school. Holy fuck, what a waste of time. Jesus Christ, what a bunch of retards over there. Total fucking waste of time. Outside of accounting and finance, there is no reason you need to know any of that.

High Guard takes absolutely no creative risk, none at all. The only thing that they're doing is just gambling with their own financial security at this point. This thing plays it as safe as humanly possible. It's just another PVPVE live service game wearing the skin of past achievements, trading almost entirely on, hey, remember what we used to work on? And it's like I said before, when we first saw Concord. Yeah, this looks good.

When a game introduces itself as from the former developers of, especially from studios like Bungy, Activision, or EA, that's basically... People expect the game to be good. Yeah, they expect it to be good. They're become a red flag for me. Not always.

There are some outliers, Embark Studios is an obvious one. But more often than not, there is a reason that they are former developers. And in this case, they couldn't even spot the warning signs in their own game, let alone stay in step. That's true. Yeah, a lot of these people, just because you worked at the company,

doesn't mean that you were the person that was the reason the company was good. That's true. With what players are actually into right now, or even learn from the pile of failed live service launches that we've already seen just this year. Honestly, the only real risk of this studio took were all the wrong ones. They spent four years developing this game in total secret. No early footage, no test, no public feedback, nothing.

If they had shown anything earlier, and I mean anything, they could have gauged player reaction and course corrected. Well, I mean, like, I think that they made apex, right? And the thing is, like, Apex, they just shadow dropped Apex too. Like, I remember, like, one day I just logged on and I said, why does Shrath and Ninja have a lot of viewers today? Oh, what's the... Wow.

Oh, so it's like Fortnite, but within first... Oh, shit. You know, like, that was it. So I don't think that really... The problem isn't... The strategy isn't the problem. The problem is that the game sucks. Like, that's the issue.

Like, let's not get ourselves. Let's not get a twist here, okay, guys. They went all in on blind confidence. I feel bad for them four years ago. This game was a good idea. No, it wasn't. It was a bad idea then. It sucked then.

It sucks now. It's dropped a reveal trailer. How Realm Royale and Paladans do? Oh, that's right. They're dead. Announced a full release, barely a month out, putting themselves in a completely unnecessary do-or-die-die-die situation. And I'm telling you right now, if you are making a live-service game,

you have to involve the audience as early as possible. you cannot afford to spend years and millions of dollars building something just to find out at the very end that nobody wants it. I mean, Arc Raiders did multiple closed alphas. They ran a beta well before the game even came out. Hell, even Marathon is out here involving players and has made visible changes based on their feedback. When I see studios that are skipping. It's crazy to compare it to Marathon and say Marathon is doing better. That's sad.

Having that step entirely, especially in live service, it tells me exactly who they're, this game is being made for, and it's not the players. I realize that the developers for High Guard are likely combing social media right now, looking for feedback. That's a little bit too late, seeing as though your game's going to be coming out a month from now, looking at social media posts. It's over, guys. It's over. Just amend your resume and tell people that instead of working on this game,

you went to jail for aggravated assault against a pregnant woman, and, you know, just say, like, that's what happened. and it'll probably be better for your career than to say that you worked on High Guard. Just how it is. Obviously, because they're probably a little bit too difficult to ignore at this point. And I hope you're listening right now.

George Floyd Special. This is the feedback. This is the frustration of a real customer. Somebody that was a fan of Titanfall. I want you to know that the expectations set upon you are higher than that than AAA games. We don't expect shit from them anymore. We do expect more from you,

somebody that escaped that. I mean, to me, like, I don't even have like a low, low, nostalgia. I never played Titanfall. Like, to me, it's real simple. The game sucks. Like, I don't want to play that shit. It sucks. It's the end of it.

The fact that you're going to be trying to make something that we're going to actually want. We're expecting more from your freedom to create, not from you just to go and make more of the same. If you're trying to figure out why people are so upset, why they're so quick to just toss your game to the side, that's exactly why. Because it's bad. We know that AAA games,

videos are not looking out for our best interest. We know that they're not trying to make games for us. They're just trying to make games for profit. We have the expectation that those that are operating outside of that system are looking out for our best interests, that are trying to make games that we actually want to play, that are trying to do everything they possibly can. We need that light.

We need that because it's our last threat of trust that a lot of people have in this industry right now. And if you betray that, that is a very real betrayal, especially in the eyes of a lot of players right now. People are pissed. And if we start seeing a lot of studios to break off from AAA just to go out

and essentially continue to just feed the same. The new boss, same as the old boss. Exactly. Yeah, like if you're going to leave and make a new studio, get everybody excited and then just make a sloppier version of what you were already making, yeah, it's not really going to make people too happy.

In the system, well, you're now betraying the trust that other studios deserve. Mm-hmm. How did you think that, these TEMU designs would somehow draw in players. I'm blown away by that. How do you not learn from any of the live service failures that we've seen not only just

this year, but just over the past five years? And how do you guys go into secrecy developing a game for four years and then just drop it into the market and hope it succeeds? I don't think that's, I think they did that with Apex. It was great. Like the problem is that it sucks. And they should have known that it sucks because, again, Like when Apex came out, it was the perfect response to the current gaming market.

Fortnite was third party. It was too unrealistic. Sorry, third person. It was too unrealistic. Apex came in and it had the fluidity and the, you know, the, what's the better word for it? Like the game flow of Fortnite, like it played as well as Fortnite. It had a more serious aesthetic kind of closer to PubG. the movement was really good

the graphics were amazing like at the time they were they were amazing it was a perfect game for the current market it was apex was perfect for the current market and this is the exact opposite this is perfect for the current market of video

YouTube video essays of why a game failed that's the market that this game is good for this reminds me of split not a good market What is it? Splitgate.

Yeah. It reminds me a split gate. They had a really cool concept. They had their, you know, arena shooter. People really enjoyed it. And then these guys sold out and wanted to be just like AAA, killed their original game. And then Witton made a live service battle royale. Oh, we haven't seen those before.

We know what you want. We can smell you a mile away. We don't want to have anything to do with it. I've seen a lot of people already rushing to come and defend this developer and all the different developers that are working for them. try to say that it's all fake outrage. It's just streamers and YouTubers that are feeding people their opinions based, by the way, as long as you're getting those opinions from the right people. Me.

That it's all just hate for the sake of hate. And what that ignores is that this outrage, or maybe not the outrage. Even if it's hate for the sake of hate, it's still hate and it's still valid. Like, you can say that something doesn't exist, but that doesn't make it go away. You can say something's fake and like, oh, it's astroturfed, but if enough people believe it, it becomes real. like you eventually you have to address why people think something itself but the frustration is not manufactured it's not artificial it is very real and you have to be listening to it and if this industry continues to dismiss it if people

continue to protect these developers we're going to keep seeing this happen over and over again and I think that's going to keep happening it will it's actually kind of wild right now developers get insulated by journalists and other developers that tell them, oh no, it's just baldy that's being mean. His toxic community. Oh, no. The problem is that people watch this. You're not mad at me. You're mad at the fact that people are watching me. That's the real problem.

Looking around and seeing that most of games media is more or less in agreement on this, not defending the game, not running interference, just documenting what's happening. And honestly, that is refreshing. They know. They know it's over, bro. It's starting to remember who it actually serves. The players, not itself. But on social media, it is a completely different story. You have people that are rushing to gas up these developers,

telling them to just ignore the criticism, dismissing all the backlash outright. And once again, this feels eerily similar to Concord. I really started to notice it when I saw a post from one of the developers. Well, they also, the other reason why is that they also feel that way because they see the attacks and like the negativity, and they see it coming from the, quote, wrong people, me. And so, and people that agree with me, too.

And so they try to go against it, like, categorically because they don't want to see people like me score a W. But we always score Ws and we never score L's. Every single one of these games that has a massive negative sentiment coming out, really it's a failure when it releases, every single one, basically. I mean, maybe you can come up with one exception, but you can come up with 50 rules. Unprotected. Constantly retweeting praise, amplifying a handful of positive takes, feeding into this idea that the outrage isn't real, that people just need to calm down,

stop reacting, and that none of this is justified. And then you've got a handful of pundits that are out there that are piling on, openly patronizing players for just having opinions. One example that really stuck out to me was a former IGN writer, Fran Mirabella, who had posted a video criticizing the reaction. to Highguard first writing and opening saying unscripted vent exhausted by predictable drama gamer reactions over Highgard you got to be pretty dumb to compare this this sounds like a video i should react to i think we might have to react to this video now somebody got to link this to me on my

reddit just to Concord and think that the game also what i think is funny predictable drama gamer reactions i'm sorry but if you work in gaming and you use the word gamer as a pejorative you need to find a new job. You do. This is insane. In no other industry and community is it just as like is accepted to just demonize your own audience. These are these are the people that are trying to watch you. These are your consumers and you're getting mad at them. What are we doing? Is anything like it? Can we go back to playing games before we place 50-50 bets on their doom and trashing the art? It's not a 50-50. Yeah, that's, it's. It's, It's not 50-50.

It's vision. My favorite part about this high guard stuff is that everybody talking about this nonsense with Concord has, like, clearly never played Concord and doesn't even understand the gameplay that they're seeing. There's a bit of hyperbole there. People are just overreacting. But like, nobody played Concord, right? I did, by the way. But now they just want to listen to their favorite streamers and whine about, oh, man, this looks like trash, bro. It does look like trash.

It does. Too bad. So like unoriginal. What are you talking about? Yes, I definitely think you can see a lot of these. Oh, that's a good argument. What are you talking about? No, it doesn't.

What are you talking about? Wow. Oh, fuck. I wish I had considered that. Jesus. Apex inspirations and all that stuff. But like, this is clearly, you know, a PVP game with these PVE elements. Right.

You got- No way. No way! All of these PVE elements going on, and it looks like what it's going to be, right. You can have these PVP clash points. You're trying to make it to the end, but you're doing stuff like, you know, blowing up buildings, setting off like reactors, you have powers or you're like smashing through stuff. You've got to get keys maybe to get through next sections, like... What a fucking retard.

Oh my god. This is embarrassing. It's not a bad idea. So like, I don't know what everybody's whining about without playing it, but I'm just so exhausted with, you know, that part of the gaming discussion at this point. How do you know it's shit? It hasn't even come out yet. It's just, it's ridiculous, man. I don't know if it's going to be any good, but, you know, maybe we should. Oh, you don't know. Okay.

I didn't hear about people playing it first before we start calling it Concord. And again, I think that I totally disagree with this. I judge a book by its cover because if you can't even figure out how to put together a good cover how the hell can you write a book you can't even figure out how to make the trailer look good

and we're supposed to expect the whole game's gonna be what are you fucking retarded oh my god what is it's so delusional like you gotta be pretty dumb if you think that this game is anything like the gameplay in Concord I've said that

I love how fast all criticism gets dismissed. You're dumb. You're dumb. What are you talking about? It's not just the trailer, but the audience itself. Just blame the streamers, blame the YouTubers, problem solved. And also, yeah, no shit the people that are comparing the game to Concord, never played Concord. Nobody played that game.

Less than 20- That's why they're comparing it, yeah. 5,000 people even bought it and it was shut down in under a week. That should have been the lesson right there. When players decide that they don't like what they're seeing, they just don't show up. up. They didn't give Concord a chance. And if they're reacting the exact same way right now, the ending is... It's actually a really good point that he's making is that even if you think that it's ridiculous, the results are undeniable. That whenever you bring a product to market

and then the consumer reaction is so negative that they don't even give it a chance, then your product's dead in the water. Already written unless you change it. And nobody played Concord. I did, by the way. What a line that is. Incredibly pretentious, by the way, as if that gives you any higher understanding of the reveal. This is a criticism about what was shown. And instead of just dealing with that, you immediately start jumping to talking about mechanics that the trailer never even explained. Keys, PVEs, PVEs. Yeah, you're just making, yeah, he's making up extra stuff. He's like, yeah, so they're going to have all this other cool stuff. I haven't played the game before, but I bet it's going to be cool. Like, uh-huh. Yeah, sure, man. The reason why I think

a lot of these journalists have like a resentment towards streamers and YouTubers is because streamers and YouTubers do what they can't. The reality is that if a streamer or a YouTuber wanted to get into writing articles for a game, a video game website, they could easily get into doing that. But one of these video game website people can't easily get into being a streamer or a YouTube creator. So I think that's really the issue. And that's why they have so much animosity towards YouTube and Twitch creators is because these people are vastly infinitely more successful than they are. And the only people that they have to blame for it is themselves.

That's it. Stems clash points, stuff that you're just filling in yourself because you feel like it needs to be there to be able to justify your point. Then you turn around and tell the players that they need to wait and give the game a chance. No, we don't need to wait. This was the chance. This was the moment where you got to show the people what the trailer is the chance. The game was and they honestly reacted in the way that you saw in treating that reaction.

anything else, treating it like it's illegitimate in some way, is exactly how we get games like Concord. Yep. Game developers, if you are watching this right now, do not under any circumstances ever listen to people like this. Any of these journalists are retarded. You shouldn't listen to any of them. None of them know what they're talking about.

They're just stupid. They're stupid and they're not good at their job. If they were good at their job, they would be able to compete in the free market, which is YouTube and Twitch. they can't compete in the free market. So they have to go inside of these different reservations that they exist in where their ideas and their stupidity can be protected. The fact is that really YouTube and Twitch,

that's where you should look at where the opinions are. Because those are the real people they're going to play and talk about your game. Not on IGN, not on Eurogamer, not on PC gamer, not on Kotaku. None of these websites matter. All the people that are writing for these websites are, doing so because they can't cut it making YouTube videos or streaming. That's the reality. They can't. And so keep that in mind every time that you want to listen to one of these retards. Not listen to the people that are trying to protect you. Listen to the people that are trying to

criticize you. Gamers do not always articulate their criticisms. Well, sometimes it's going to come out cynical, hostile, even ugly at times, but it is your job to extract the signal from the noise instead of getting offended by it. I'm going to hit you guys with some pretty heavy truth. You are not just making art. You are making consumer products, something that is meant to be sold, played, monetize, and sustained. When feedback at this scale is so overwhelmingly negative, people that are telling you that it's fine or that the players are wrong are not helping you. They're not trying to save your studio. They are setting you up for failure.

The people... They are. They're telling you this because your video game somehow aligns with some world view they have or the people that they don't like, don't like your video game. so they want to defend it because of that reason. But for whatever reason they have, it's not actually something that has to do with your game. That are rushing to defend you right now are not doing it because they care about your games.

They are doing it because it makes them feel better. That's right. Because it feeds their sense of moral superiority. You can hear the contempt in the way that these people are saying they are sick of the outrage or the way that they blame it on content creators instead of just engaging with the criticism itself. That is pure dismissal. And it is something that we have seen over and over again.

dismiss criticism, people will dismiss your product. This industry. That's how it is. Content creators do not create taste. We do not manufacture opinions. We amplify what is already there. We are a lightning rod for public sentiment, not a source of it. I think that there's a little bit of like a symbiotic relationship where like as a content

creator, you can shift public sentiment to a degree. But you can't turn like a yes into a no. You can kind of maybe draw awareness to something or maybe shift people's sentiment a little bit. But you can't convince players that a good game is bad or that a bad game is good. You can't do that. People are going to make up their own mind. Yeah, especially common in games journalism that outrage content is what makes people popular. It's just wrong.

It always has been. That stuff never lasts. I do not tell people what to think. People do not take my word as gospel. They watch because something I am saying is lining up with what they already feel. That resonance is what creates that audience, not manipulation, not outrage farming, just recognition and pretending otherwise is a convenient way for you to avoid dealing with why so many people are reacting the same way at the same time.

This is just what modern customer feedback looks like. It's loud, it's messy, it's uncomfortable, and if you don't learn how to deal with it honestly, if you hide from it or if you just let other people explain it away for you, your game is going to fail and your studio is going to follow. The real danger here is not the players. It's listening to platforms and pundits that do not carry any of the wrist, that don't ship the game, that don't rely. That's another really big factor is that all these people that are giving you advice on like, oh,

your game is good. And this is also with people that are saying the game is bad, too, keep in mind that like whenever you're making something and people give you advice, and this is just in life, people give you advice, they never have to live with the consequences of following that advice. So they can say, oh, follow your heart, do what you like to do, push this and do it because it's the right thing to do. But they don't have to live with the bankruptcy.

They don't have to live with the harassment. they don't have to live with the failure. They don't have to live with the fact that you waste four years to make something not happen. So every time that you listen to somebody who's trying to give you advice, always keep in the back of your mind, really, the front of your mind, that they don't have to actually deal with the consequences of this advice. And if you do that, you're going to be in a better spot.

On the retention, that don't eat the consequences when the players walk away. It doesn't matter to them. And we already have the evidence of this. There is a growing pile of failed games in shuttered studios that follow that exact advice. ignoring the backlash, dismissing the criticism, trusting these narrative managers instead of the audience. These people that gave the advice, they're just fine. The studios weren't. So if you're a developer right now, understand this clearly.

Listening to players might be uncomfortable, but listening to pundits who do not suffer from your games fallout is how your games die. Yeah. I've talked about this in a lot of other videos, but live service right now is an incredibly dangerous space to step into. It always is. I understand why studios are chasing it. Live service is really dangerous because you're going to double down on a win or you're going to double down on a loss. The video games that are live service take a ridiculous amount of money to make. And if your video game hits a critical mass, you win big.

But you can also not hit that critical mass and then lose big. It's a huge risk. The money, the visibility, the upside when it all works. But as this industry continues to get more crowded, as more teams step in to keep copy and pasting the same designs as attention and spending, get tighter. These games are going to come under harsher and harsher scrutiny and far more visceral backlash, and

these guys are earning it. We have watched this exact thing. Well, we're already seeing a lot of these Western companies that are going out of business because they're just getting out competed by European companies and also Chinese companies and Japanese companies to a lesser extent. Is that really, I mean, if you can't compete in the market

and you can't make a good game, people are going to go where somebody can. And that's just what's happening right now. happen in open world games. They were sold as the future of the industry. Every single publisher needed to have one. Then everyone also needed to have several of them at one point in time for some odd reason. And over time, the ideas dried up.

The world's got bigger than the actual games deserved. Everything started to just feel like busy work. And players just checked out of it entirely. Not because open. The problem is that open world games are generally like it just makes it's the same reward, but it takes longer. And live service games generally like it's, hard to play multiple live service games at the same time because of just how much of a time

investment they take. So whenever somebody gets to a live service game and they're enjoying it, maybe let's say, oh, they like this game. Well, they don't want to go and invest themselves in another game because now that's two set of daily quests. Now that's two battle passes they have to do. So the problem is that live service games are a great idea in a vacuum. But whenever you put them inside of an ecosystem with 50 other live service games, now people, don't have as much attention for it because they've already seen this game 50 other times and they're already locked in to playing like let's say warframe or i mean i don't know like 50 other games right like genshin impact or wuthering waves worlds were bad but because the industry wouldn't

stop flooding the market with hollow versions of the exact same thing yeah that's where live service is right now players are tired yes there are successes i'm not denying that marvel rivals art graders battlefield field six, but look at where most players are spending their time right now, older games, familiar games, things that they can trust because the rest of the market is just imitation piled on top of imitation. And players can tell when something is actually being made out of the love for the genre or the audience, they know when that game is being made for their wallet. Everybody can tell.

It's so obvious when something is boring or it seems like it's corporate slop. And High Guard is the pinnacle of corporate slop. Once they clock that, they're gone. There is such an insane desire for players to be wrong today, and I find it so disgusting, because it's coming from a place of pure entitlement and nar- For the reason why the journalists and these media personalities want gamers to be wrong and they want the audience to be wrong,

because if the audience is right, there's no need for them to exist. So you have to keep in mind that many people, what they advocate for and what they push for, is in fact something that is, like, you have to do is figure out what the incentive is. What is the incentive that a person has to push this narrative? Well, it's simple. It's because if they can invalidate the idea of players' opinions, then they can instead insert their own. ...from an industry that has largely not had to deal with feedback or pushback at this scale.

And I've seen people talk about how gaming discourse never used to be like this, that it's all just Twitch streamers and YouTubers. That is such a lie. Well, it's also, like, even if it didn't used to be like this, that's the way it is now and it's not going to change. So you better get used to it or you pack up your fucking bags and go do something else. Like, that's the way it is. Like, streaming wasn't the way it is now five years ago, 10 years ago, but that's what's happened. Like, things change. Like, if you can't adapt and change with the market and meet consumers' needs where they're at,

then you're just going to fail in the market. You can talk about how it's not fair. You can talk about how the business model was ridiculous. You can complain about it and you can be right about everything, but you're still going to run out of money and you're still going to fail. So unless you want to actually address things for what they are, you're just going to keep failing. That's it.

I worked at GameStop many years ago for like four years. I can guarantee you that these conversations have always been happening. They were just happening in private conversation and also in forums. But now they're on a public stage. They're plastered in front of everyone in glorious harmony in unison. And these guys just don't know how to be able to deal with. with that. You have to understand that players today will do anything they possibly

can. They will say anything they can to make sure that the games they want to play come out and the games that they don't want to play disappear. I do my best to try to communicate. And I do absolutely try to like I mean I don't like I mean I don't really try to kill

games in a way but like if there's a video game that I think is dog shit I will put it I will I will say negative things about it for sure. Like because I don't want to see bad games succeed. I don't. And the reason why I don't want to see bad games succeed is because if you do that, well, then, okay, now you're going to have all these shitty games coming out and they're awful. So I think that's the big reason. Give everything a fair shake. Yeah, generally I can. But just game

studios. Yeah, I mean, obviously, like, there are some game studios. I do, I honestly, I do want to see fail. But it's because they make bad games, right? Like, if they make good games, I wouldn't think that. So it's just that simple. They fail so much. It's like a humiliation fetish. Yeah, it is, right? But yeah, that's it. Now you've created a profit incentive for bad games. I have. And that's the thing is that, you know, for me, it's a perfect world. Because I can either, a video game comes out, and if a video game is garbage, then I make content

about how garbage the game is. And if a video game comes out and it's great, then I make content about how great it is. So it doesn't matter what happens. I'm still going to be farming whatever the game is. That's just the way it is. Videos that any of the topics that I discuss or how I even discuss them is, never coming from a place of spite usually. What I'm trying to do is make sure that the games industry understands. This is just the nature of discourse today. This is the nature of

customer discourse today. And they have to get it through their thick skulls. Deal with that. Too bad. You need to be able to just face this, understand it, listen to it. Yep. And then turn that into valuable feedback for you to be able to make games that people actually want to play. Absolutely. These are consumer products. If you're trying to make these things for just the sake of the art, that's fine. Don't expect to be able to make a profit off of it. Yeah, exactly. I'm not saying that the art can't exist. Obviously, I want the art to exist. I'm somebody that appreciates the art side of a lot of these games. But if you're just purely making it for the art, do not expect to make a profit. And definitely do not prop it up with a

live service model where you need constant engagement for your game to be able to stay up and for your studio to be able to stay open. I'm sorry, but looking at a game like, I almost said Concord, at a game like High Guard. What's the difference? They sound the same. Yeah, they do. That is a game that's being made for profit. Pure and simple.

Everybody can see it. You do not make a free-to-play game if that's not your aim. Everybody knows that. And artistry is definitely not the aim for these guys. Otherwise, they wouldn't have made the characters look like they do. So I don't know what you're talking about there. My best advice for Highguard is...

Delay the game for a year. Delay the game for a year. Say, we've listened to your few. We're going to try to renovate the game to make it something that you want to see. Delay the game for a year. You know, post a trailer like in six months and say this is what we've been doing. Like that's what they have to do. That's their best case scenario right now.

When this game goes to its release, make that a beta instead and then push the release indefinitely. Until you can get a handle. I don't think they should beta because as soon as you beta, people make a decision. As soon as people can play the game, that's what the game is. you cannot make a first impression twice. Don't let anybody play the game unless it's good. You can say that it's incomplete. That's fine.

Incomplete is fine. Bad is not fine. On what player feedback is, on what players are actually looking for, until you can actually get some heroes that people are actually going to be interested in. Now, I could be wrong. For some odd reason,

this could have come to release and it ends up being the best game ever because these guys somehow found the perfect mix of mechanics and gameplay, I guess. I'm not really too sure, but looking at the state of the discourse, the feeling that I got from watching that trailer, this is looking like another game where I'm going to make more money off of it than the game is. Anyway, I hope you guys enjoyed the video. You guys did enjoy the video.

Subscribe to the channel. Like the video. Share the video. Share the video with game developers. No, I'm kidding. I mean, you can. Just don't be malicious about it. Yeah. Thanks.

Depends on who they are. Stay cool. Stay right. Just stay safe. Follow me on Twitch. Follow me on Twitter. Follow me on kick. I'll catch you guys in the next one. Oops.

Well, there it is. Family. By the way, I totally agree with what he's saying here. And also, like, I don't think they should do a beta. I really don't think so. And the reason why they shouldn't do a beta, this is a legendary drops video. I've watched his videos a million fucking times. Go ahead and give it a like.

Give him a sub if you haven't already. He has almost half a million subscribers. That is crazy. I'm done with shooters, to be honest. I think that it's not really about shooters or anything like that for me. I think to me, there's the video right there, give it a like. And so to me, I just don't like the fact that it's just boring. Like, it's not an interesting game.

It doesn't look cool. Like, why would I really want to play this or spend time doing this? Like, there's so many other video games out. there right now that are great. And I think this is the big problem is that a lot of these games, who is this retard who made the video, by the way? Fran Mirabella, who is this? It's a two-minute video. All right, we're going to, we'll watch it real quick. I'll watch it. We'll see what he's saying. My favorite part about this high guard stuff is that everybody talking about this nonsense with Concord has like clearly never played Concord and doesn't even understand the gameplay that they're

There's a bit of hyperbole there. People are just overreacting. But like, nobody played Concord, right? I did, by the way. But now they just want to listen to their favorite streamers and what about. Oh, man, this looks like trash, bro. It looks so like unoriginal. What are you talking about?

Yeah, it does. I definitely think you can see a lot of these apex inspirations and all that stuff. And I'll see how it makes any sense. Like, if it looks original, then how are you going to say that it was inspired? It's obviously inspired by another game. Like this is clearly It's like the opposite You know

A PVP game With these PVE elements right You've got all of these PVE elements going on And it looks like what it's going to be right You can have these PVE... I don't see any PVE element at all by the way There's no PVE element

Except for destroying buildings Like destroying walls You had this in red faction too Like 30 years ago 20 years ago Clash points You're trying to make it to the end But you're doing stuff like

You know Blowing up buildings Setting off like reactors You have powers or you're like smashing through stuff. You've got to get keys maybe to get through next section. Fan fiction, by the way. They never said this.

It's like, it's not a bad idea. So like, I don't know what everybody's whining about without playing it, but I'm just so exhausted with, you know, that part of the gaming discussion at this point. It's just, it's ridiculous, man. Like, you can get into the details about, oh, this, you know, shouldn't have ended the game awards as the final thing. Sure, we all want Bloodbord, too, or like something like, absolutely massive that, you know, we already know what it is.

But, you know, this is an inspired team. They wanted to break off and do something original. It looks like that's what they're doing. I know that there's fears around free to play and, you know, the model that Apex created almost of this, like, quick launch, you know, coming out of nowhere. And that is all pretty old at this point. So, you know, yeah, if this was a Titanfall trailer, you know, everybody would have been, like, so excited. Then why didn't they just do that?

Why would they make something that's bad that nobody wants? It's very clear that the public sentiment has been that they're tired of hero shooters for at least the last two years. Why would you continue doubling down on something that people clearly don't want to play? They're not interested in. It doesn't make sense. EA owns it. Well, okay, they could make the same as like a Blood of the Dawn Walker is basically Witcher 3, but with a different theme. But you really think that you can't make a meck game anymore?

Just make another mek game. But, you know, it's from a lot of these people who get really good games. They get really good shooters. So I don't know if it's going to be any good. But, you know, maybe we should play it and hear about people playing it first before we start calling it Concord. And again, I don't agree with this. I think that, again, if a game looks bad, it's going to be bad.

That's just how it is. Like, anything that looks like trash probably is trash. There's a few exceptions, but this is a general rule. Like, you've got to be pretty dumb if you think. that this game is anything like the gameplay in Concord. Like, anyone can see that if you just take a moment to look at what's in front is. So, yeah, I mean, I'm looking to see what happens with it. I want to see more.

I think they could have done a better job or really just made a better decision, like how they reveal it. But I'm looking forward to seeing it. So, you know, I guess we'll see what's up in the future. Or if it's just going to, you know, drop on January 26 and it's like, well, I guess we all play it together. It's dead. It's dead. it's finished. I'm sorry.

Like this is it. Add Mori Free to Junk on a Game Visual. I don't like free to play games. Rindy games. What's the conversation about this? Yeah, I don't know about this. And also like based on gameplay and substance, the thing is that this is another big issue

that a lot of people don't understand is they want to gatekeep conversation. The fact is that you can't gatekeep this conversation. If somebody thinks that the game is bad because the characters look bad, then the game is bad because the characters look bad. The consumer is always right in matters of taste. And I think that's exactly what's happening here, is that people are giving their taste, they're showing their opinion, and they don't like it.

So whether you want to agree with that or not, it doesn't matter whether you agree with it or not because they were not asking you your approval for their opinion. The fact is that other people, you can say it's the most invalid, brain-dead, dumb fucking reason, but if they want to grade it based off of that, it's like a game isn't woke enough or a game is too woke.

Both of these opinions are totally valid and everybody should be able to provide a review and give their opinion off of it. But the problem really is whenever people gatekeep, oh, well, you shouldn't be able to care about this, you shouldn't be able to care about that, that's it. Do you think everything in gaming has been invented already? No.

That's ridiculous. You think that until something new comes out. I mean, you could say there is no original text, right? you could always go and, you know, play something like that. But I think in a general sense, no, I don't think so at all. And, yeah, that's what I would say. And, yeah, I want to Ace Ventura free-round game. That would be funny.

It definitely would be. But, yeah, Marvel's is Capcom Infinite. Did not do well with the FGC because it's ugly visuals, despite great gameplay mechanics. Yeah. I mean, again, the way a game looks and that being visually appealing is massively important. And I will go back to what I said a minute ago, which is if you don't, don't have people that want to cosplay the characters, you have bad characters. It's that simple. There's people cosplaying Verso and Mayel from, you know, Expedition 33, people cosplaying the Marvel

rivals characters like crazy. So if you don't have characters that look good that people want to be, then maybe you should be asking yourself why that is.