“From the first minute we became a joke”
In a long message posted on social networks, Josh Sobel first returns to the night of the game’s announcement during the Game Awards, when there was a climate of trust within the studio where everyone was excited at the idea of presenting Highguard. An enthusiasm which was quickly tarnished by the reception of the announcement by the public, and by content creators who directly attacked the artists behind the project :
“ But then the trailer came out, and everything went downhill. […] The hatred started immediately. In addition to the outpouring of criticism against the trailer, I was personally targeted for my naivety on Twitter, a social network that almost all of my former colleagues had learned to avoid during their previous game launches. After making my Twitter account private to preserve my sanity, numerous content creators posted videos and messages about me and my alleged cowardice, racking up millions of views and unintentionally triggering the avalanche of messages from hundreds of angry players. They made fun of me for being proud of the game, told me to apply to McDonald’s, and taunted me for mentioning my autism in my bio, which they seemed to take as proof that the game was “woke shit.” This was all very emotionally taxing. »
The former Wildlight developer acknowledges that there are a lot of negative but constructive comments to make about the game, whether it’s its promotional campaign or its gameplay. But the fact of being immediately mocked at the Game Awards clearly hurt the game’s launch:
“ From minute one, we became a joke, mostly because of false assumptions about a million-dollar ad placement that even influential journalists quickly took as fact. In a few minutes, it was decided: the game was doomed to failure, and the creators now had enough material to create controversial videos throughout the month. All our videos on social media were massively rejected. Comment sections were flooded with copy-pasted memes like “Concord 2” and “Titanfall 3 died for this.” At launch, we received over 14,000 negative reviews from users who had played for less than an hour. Many hadn’t even completed the tutorial. »
A speech which once again reminds us to what extent social networks encourage this kind of nauseating behavior. He ends his message by wishing good luck to his former studio colleagues and those still present, who will have a lot to do in the coming weeks.