Ex Highguard dev pins its failure on being "the sweatiest version" of a team shooter

Former Highguard senior level designer Alex Graner admits his “biggest fear” came true when the squad shooter failed to keep players around due to what he saw as too much focus on the competitive scene. In a highly competitive space where multiplayer games like Counter-Strike 2, PUBG, Apex Legends, and Arc Raiders dominate the Steam charts, Highguard was going to have to hit hard to make any impression. That didn’t happen, and within just a few weeks Graner and many of his co-workers had already been laid off.

Speaking on the Quad Damage podcast, Graner discusses his concerns during the development of Highguard. “I can only speak to my side of it as a level designer, but when I joined [Wildlight], it was trying to figure out this new, ambitious game, and this team is always pushing the boundaries,” he says. “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, who previously worked as a level designer on both Apex Legends and Battlefield 6 before joining Wildlight in 2024, says Highguard’s core mode “constantly evolved” during the development process. However, he maintains that “Highguard’s biggest issue was just that it leaned too far into the competitive scene. That was always my biggest fear when we decided to go full-in on 3v3.” You can listen to his comments below, starting from the six-minute mark.

“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 points to the “really big spotlight” put on Highguard by its Game Awards showing, saying that put extra pressure to sell people on it immediately. “You need to hook people [in] game one. Apex had this big success because battle royales were kind of an up-and-coming mode. It was really easy to understand after you played one game, and it’s really easy to explain to your friend, ‘Hey, just be the last squad surviving, that’s it.”

Conversely, Highguard is a lot more complicated. “Highguard has all these different rules and stages, it’s like, ‘Oh, you want to loot, now we’ve got to chase this objective, now we have to plant this objective, now it’s overtime… It has all these rules, which I think works at a really high level, but when players are first coming in it’s a lot to grasp.” Wildlight’s new Raid Rush mode might be the answer to that complexity, but for many of its devs it’s too little, too late.

“On top of all that, because it was 3v3, that kind of game just requires high-skill movement and shooting, which is already a pretty high [bar to] entry as well,” Graner continues. “So 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. It’s all designed to be a team-based shooter,” he concludes. “I think that was the biggest thing. People just kind of turned it off because they didn’t have the team.”

Graner, who was at The Game Awards, says he didn’t know that the game was going on last, only that Highguard would be announced “at some point during the show.” He adds, “A lot of the team was there and celebrating, and people were like, ‘Don’t look at the comments online.’ I was like, ‘Oh, is it bad?'” He compares it to the initial reveal of the first Titanfall, which got a somewhat lukewarm reception due to its multiplayer-only nature and low map count.

“I heard about Respawn ’cause I loved the Infinity War team, so when I found out that was the core of that group, that immediately had my attention and I didn’t really pay much attention to the online sense of it.” He says he bought an Xbox One just to play it, and immediately fell in love. “I just ignored all the sentiment, I just kind of formed my own opinion. Obviously that’s much harder these days. Everyone’s chronically online, it’s hard to escape those echo chambers, so it can be brutal out there.”