A few years ago, it’s entirely possible that Highguard isn’t the current talk of a town called Didn’t Work. But now, when everyone wants a piece of the live service pie, it’s not so easy to come in and claim some for yourself. We could spend an eternity figuring out what went wrong, but perhaps the words of former senior level designer on the shooter Alex Graner will provide a particular insight that the comment section of an annoying YouTuber won’t.

Graner recently made an appearance on the Quad Damage podcast (ta, PCGamesN), where he explained that when he joined developed Wildlight, they were “trying to figure out this new, ambitious game, and this team is always pushing the boundaries. You don’t strive to create something that doesn’t work out, but it happens, unfortunately. Throughout development, we really leaned into the competitive side of it, and that was always one of my biggest fears as a player.”

Graner specifically said he felt that the game “leaned too far into the competitive scene,” particularly when development shifted the game towards a 3v3 format. “3v3 duos is always the sweatiest version of anything like battle royale, objective modes, wingman, you know it, you name it. It requires such a high intensity of communication with your team, and team play, that it doesn’t leave much room for casualness. I think that was the biggest thing that turned a lot of players off Highguard.”

He did, of course, point to that “spotlight” placed upon it at Geoff’s Night of Statues and Trailers, adding a lot more pressure for it to do well. But, Graner notes, where Apex Legends came out at a time where battle royales were still fresh and new, Highguard instead arrived with some tough to learn rules and a high skill floor. “If you just have a few bad games or your teammates aren’t sticking together, you’re just going to get rolled, and it’s very hard to 1v2 in our game… I think that was the biggest thing. People just kind of turned it off because they didn’t have the team.”

Quite honestly, I think Graner is at least partially correct here. I haven’t bothered with Highguard myself, just not my vibe, but the little I’ve experimented with Marathon has me feeling similarly. I’m just not good at shooters and people are ruthless! In any case, the 3v3 mode certainly isn’t the only problem, as based on a recent report, it sounds like leadership needs to shoulder a heavy load of the blame too.