Tech artist Josh Sobel, one of the many Highguard developers recently laid off amid deep cuts at Wildlight Studios, has published a lengthy post-mortem of sorts evaluating the still-kicking game's launch, marketing, and broader reception. Sobel affirms the utmost confidence in the game pre-release, but describes a wave of harassment that hit him and the team after Highguard's Game Awards reveal trailer, and attributes part of the negativity around the game to "absurd amounts of effort" put into "slandering Highguard."
"Reflecting On Shipping My First Game," Sobel says, "everyone I knew who had any connection to the team or project had the same sentiments." Offering quoted examples of such sentiments, Sobel says folks thought "this is lightning in a bottle" and "there's no way this will flop." The confidence is perhaps clearest here: "If there's one project nobody in the industry is worried will fail, it's yours."
