[00:03] Gard, all right? The AAA game that should have been, that could have been, that might still be. This is a fascinating story from like a marketing and business perspective, breaking down what happened with this game. I I I kind
[00:15] going to go through like step-by-step what happened, starting with what this was supposed to be. So what happened was the game dropped, and as you'll find out in this video, things didn't go so well. But it actually originally started,
[00:30] according to a Kotaku interview, as a shadow drop. So this is the studio, Wild Light is the studio that made uh Titanfall, and they made Apex Legends. And like Apex Legends was one of those games that they released as like what I
[00:46] like tell anybody about it, they don't do any marketing, and they just show up, the game just shows up. And so you can see that originally with High Gard, you can they said, "Look, we always planned for you to like a surprise
[01:00] release," studio co-founder said. Um but Jeff came in, we'll find out about this something special. And and and special it was indeed. So it it was a shadow it was indeed. So it it was a shadow drop, and it the article goes on to say
[01:15] that "We've known Jeff for a long time. This at which we're going to go into in a second. Let me do something, he said. hindsight, but um we're going to try to
[01:29] take a free-to-play PvP rage shooter and do something with it. So we rushed a had been better, but in hindsight we made a trailer to entertain very quickly and didn't show the gameplay loop. So this is originally supposed to be a
[01:43] shadow drop, but enter The Game Awards. The Game Awards is this like super popular game show that's sort of half like here's the best games that happened this year, and here are the things that um you can
[01:57] expect from like the next year. And so what they did was at at at the end of the Game Awards, like the very last thing you can do at The Game Awards, you can usually there's like a hype trailer. I think like Skyrim 6 or
[02:12] think some like huge game is going to come out. And this dude, this uh Jeff, hyped this game uh and showed this trailer at the end. You can see this this this got 100,000 views, 180,000 views with about 1K
[02:26] likes, so about a 1% like ratio, so not so good. And it goes through a a a pretty pretty uh like kind of hastily put together trailer of High Gard. And this is the first that anybody's ever seen or
[02:38] heard of this. And as we are going to learn, it's the last we actually hear about it from until the game launches. So what ends up happening is Jeff, the the dude you just saw, basically goes to their studio, plays
[02:51] the game, they were going to shadow drop it. He says, "Yo, I think you've got something crazy here. Let me actually give you a free spot on The Game Awards, and we'll announce it there, and then you can like launch it later." And
[03:04] mean, that exposure sounds incredible. Why wouldn't we do something like that?" So they agree to do it. And like notably, industry. There there there was just some crazy kind of things. Um we find
[03:20] out like So this is in December that we find out like from from now to 2026 of this, it's been like 2 months, and there's just nothing. There there's no announcements, there's no game vlogs, there's there's nothing going on. And we
[03:35] find out during that period of time that High Gard actually wasn't even paid for. spot for that trailer that I just showed you, that last announcement thing. This dollars to get into that spot to announce something. Jeff just gives it
[03:50] can do what he wants. And so they figure, "Well, by not turning down like like free exposure, and uh we might make a lot of money off of the like we might get a lot of hype off this, it's going to make us a lot of money later." So um
[04:06] So so this ends up being really bad, right? For a couple reasons. One, like it kind of drops the value of that slot for other people if it just gets given away from a sponsorship perspective, but also
[04:21] from a sponsorship perspective, but also you have to put your entire rep on the game being amazing. Because and so we can see here, so um Game Rant says, silent. To make the story even more head-scratching, High Gard's release
[04:35] any further updates. All the information that's been given is through the one Game Awards. This has raised a lot of questions about whether this game is putting up theories about why it was able to get this spot for free. One is
[04:49] much, which we find out later ended up being what happened. So there's like actually generating like a lot of hype now. So so people are are are talking about this, and they're saying like um wow, like what's going to happen? Like
[05:03] um one of the clips that I watched here was Co Carnage talking about it. High awesome. They've gone completely radio silent, it seems, to avoid criticism. And what it looks like they're going to do is just explode onto the scene and
[05:17] people enjoy it instead of just hate on it until it comes out. This is a bold move, Cotton. If this turns out And this dude like understands game development. Emberville. Like I have like somewhat of high respect for Ben in this in this
[05:31] industry. it's going to be kind of awesome. But if it doesn't, it's going understand why they're not doing PR for it, because everyone's kind of talking not defending it. I feel like it's a little weird that the developers didn't
[05:43] come out and actually try to convince people that it's a good game. So it's a agree here, and this is where we get into like the real crux of it, right? So like if if here's a big lesson in marketing from from an agency owner,
[05:58] from a guy that's spent millions of dollars in advertising, okay? If you don't define the narrative for like whatever conversation you're having to the public, the public will be happy to define that narrative for you, okay? And
[06:12] happened. And we there's a really interesting article that they came out today in in this filming, uh which is called um High Gard is yet another symptom and victim of a rapidly decaying internet, which is a pretty doomer take,
[06:25] uh but it's made by um Nathan Grayson, who's a who's a pretty great writer. And uh he kind of goes through what happened here, and he notes that I mean, here, and he notes that I mean, basically High Gard was doomed to fail
[06:38] because um here he writes, "High Gard got hit even harder than it otherwise in games, December constitutes the dead of winter. There wasn't really a next thing for for any kind of cynical, opportunistic content creators to monkey
[06:50] three, and four, and so on. And with each passing week, continued silence additional evidence that something was amiss." And you can see that like there's tens of thousands of views of different
[07:04] creators that making videos where they say, "Look, like this this this is going to suck. It's another Concord. Like it's not going to make it." And this entire time, High Gard isn't producing any kind of dev vlogs, they aren't producing any
[07:16] kind of work to show that this is this is wrong. And what they I I I think um what it seems to me and like what the tweets from like Jeff seemed to be was in the situation that they were like, "We're just going to make such a good
[07:32] game that when it comes out, everybody will be like, 'Oh my god.'" And here's the thing, like now like my marketing gears and everything that I'm thinking about, I just can't see how that is a good idea. Like when you just when you
[07:50] have the opportunity to set the narrative, especially if you see this narrative, especially if you see this sort of stuff um happening. Radio silence in the studio. This was always part of the plan, according to
[08:03] studio. Whether the reception at The Game Awards was positive or negative, the intent was always to go dark until High Gard was playable. We just kept quiet because we know the next thing we did should be the game itself. Hands on
[08:15] Gard is now available, blah blah blah, right? So like okay, um but this is like where where the problem starts, because as Nathan notes in his article, I mean,
[08:27] they really lose the narrative between December and uh and and now. And it almost doesn't matter if the game is good, because what ended up happening um
[08:41] And that's what we're going to talk about next, and kind of go over what I think should have happened and like what some of the marketing lessons. So I'm going to do a a very quick CTA for people. We're 8 minutes and 54 seconds
[08:55] into the video. So if you're here still on a Devin Nash video, please uh leave a comment 8:54. And uh I appreciate you all. Hey, um if you guys want uh I just really quick you get to support me or watch more videos, you can go to my
[09:09] link in the description down below. I just made a video today, 47 minutes long, on how to build unbeatable offers. This is like business, self-improvement stuff that I don't put on my main YouTube channel. Um I I do videos here
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[09:48] me you don't like them, and I'll do do I won't listen, but um I'll read it. Yeah. [laughter] it. I also do consulting if you want um it's down in the link down consulting and stuff like that. So, what ends up happening on launch day?
[10:01] Well, it doesn't go so well guys. So, so basically let's let's take a look at the at the Steam DB. >> And so first of all actually like the most interesting thing I think from like
[10:13] a from a marketing perspective is this. So, like within I was watching really closely and within 30 minutes of the game coming out game coming out the reviews on the game were like just
[10:25] so negative. So, this was this this screenshot here was taken like about like a couple hours after the game came out. So, the vast majority of people that just blasted this game they didn't play it. And the game at the time on
[10:42] play it. And the game at the time on Steam DB had about 100,000 concurrents. So, you can see from here that the all-time player count was right? So, you could have million players try it out. And they had about
[10:56] And then you can just see like through this chart it's like bam like oh my goodness what happened to the point where there's now 20,000 people playing recording is like a day later right now.
[11:09] So, this game like came on with like a bunch of hype and then X and at formerly bunch of hype and then X and at formerly Twitter just started exploding with like tons of people commenting on some of the issues in the game. Like here's one that
[11:24] I I uh kind of thought was pretty funny uh by Thump. The developers of High Guard released a game with forced motion blur, no hold to crouch, horrible massive. Whoever hyped this game just up should be deported
[11:39] 2.0. So, people started commenting on like this game not being um very good. And other people like so so so a really interesting like kind of side note here was there were actually massive
[11:54] sponsorships paid for this game. So, at the time that this game released um yesterday as of the time of this recording there was sponsored, Lyric was sponsored on Twitch like most of the major broadcasters on
[12:08] Twitch were sponsored. And um that that that cost a lot of money. Like a lot of those people. And so, they planned to do marketing like around the launch of the of the game. And for whatever reason they just
[12:22] decided that they were just going to let the public decide it like the the entire direction and narrative of this game, which is crazy. That's insane. And I which is crazy. That's insane. And I agree like there are some
[12:35] there are some definite you know, I probably should It's a pretty crazy >> Oh my god. I I haven't used this app. I'm I'm a notepad I'm a notepad fanatic. And I do all of these things I do all of
[12:50] these videos in one take unless I accidentally sling ass on on YouTube. I of the time I don't open that cursed program but I just start record stop record. So, sometimes things go a little bit haywire. All right? So, everybody
[13:04] played the game. And like most people had like like there was some people had like pretty measured takes on it and it was like okay. Um but but like a lot of the maps are too big. It's kind of just not like another generic shooter or
[13:17] not like another generic shooter or whatever. I actually don't think that High Guard is that bad. And and and and I also think that um get better. But but the but the problem is like when
[13:33] should say this this sort of lack of marketing and you just go totally silent after releasing a video like you let all of releasing a video like you let all of these people who posted these videos
[13:46] fight back that's what they're going to believe for the months leading up to this thing. So, it was kind of a crazy marketing thing
[13:58] these people had just already intended to like most of the people that were going to leave the reviews at this point in time they hadn't like really given the game a fair shot. But they were just going to latch on and they were going to
[14:11] with like whatever the kind of narrative was going to be. And as a result like most people are kind of just like followers. And so, they read it. And now now I'm I want to look at the game now like I'm just like pulling it up live.
[14:26] And where we're at we're at 17,839 reviews and they're basically mostly 35% negative. And you'll see like if you look through like a lot of the reviews that um
[14:41] they're just sort of going over the same sort of stuff that everybody else kind of said on other social media platforms. Now, I don't I'm not saying that these of the game and I'm not defending the game at all. Like I
[14:54] I'm kind of think it's pretty funny what what they did. I would have done it way exposure anyway through Twitch. So, why not do dev vlogs? Why not do like why not do like announcements? Or the
[15:06] absolute best thing they could have done it like if you're really going to try to do this is like why not do focus groups or like say this is and then like once of people are going to tell you like hey, I don't know about this. This is
[15:21] like this 3v3 stuff and maybe the maps are a little bit too large. Like why have the hubris just because you made Titanfall or you made any of these other games to like think we can release a complete game and it's going to be
[15:36] complete game and it's going to be awesome no matter what people think. traditional like marketing stuff to do that but we're still going to pay streamers like hundreds of thousands of dollars to hype our game
[15:48] there no matter what on High Guard launch? Yeah, of course, right? Summit like all these people. So, they ended up spending their entire marketing budget on Twitch streamers without actually doing any kind of like dev vlogs or
[16:01] stuff like that. So, they like think about how this would have gone if the if the tone of the of the conversation was like like like during that December to now-ish time was like we're really hoping to make this game like it's an
[16:16] iterative process. We've got a road map. Like we're really planning to do it but hiccups like we're going to change stuff and like you got to know the studio. the most successful marketing campaigns of all time, which was Arc Raiders. Very
[16:30] very similar to that. You have an idea of like you're giving the people an idea still be these people that are like yeah, the game is going to suck, see? And like okay, sure. But like you have dev vlogs, you have resources, you have
[16:42] stuff that will that will at least say otherwise and give fans something to to to go around. But when you set the narrative up to be like like just wait and see wink wink like you'll you'll never expect how great this game is
[16:55] unless you like slammed this is the best game ever made you're you're just not going to make it. And yeah, I think even if you do like there's it's obvious that a lot of time and energy has gone into this game and I feel bad for the
[17:09] developers that the marketing team did this because and and they decided like I mean obviously like if you had done the shadow drop and and then just released it I think you still would have had a
[17:22] like a lot of the negative. But at the very least like you would have like you wouldn't have like created this two-month period of narrative that allows YouTubers and Twitch streamers to like potentially go after it. But even
[17:37] though I like that happened I mean I'm not sure I agree completely with with with with the take in this article that said like it was as a like I don't want to like paraphrase. You should read the article. But um
[17:52] the slop tubers have repeatedly harnessed the energy to feed like cultural lores can and and this is like like High Guard is um provided a perfect seedbed for these kind of tales to take hold. And I like I
[18:06] agree with that conceptually. I think that ultimately though what destroyed ready. It's not it's not a good enough game yet. And what and so if we're going through like that is reality, right? Then we might as well have actually done
[18:23] the the work to to set people up for that, right? Um we could have communicated a lot better here the money on production internally
[18:39] to get people interested because that does really well. That builds like fans times even if the game is good it's going to make it even more good. I think like studios like Larian did this very well for stuff like
[18:51] for stuff like uh uh BG3. Arc Raiders studio did very well. Embark did very well in the beginning on this. And then for whatever reason they just like really slow well, I know what reason. They they slowed
[19:04] updates are coming too slow. So, High Guard could have is now doing like all these road maps and they're planning all like all this like future content. So, like they did IGN Most articles that IGN does are paid. Not all
[19:18] of them but a lot of them. And so, they do kind of this uh article that came out today. And they show like okay, well the launch wasn't like kind of what we expected but like hey, here's our road map. We've got all these new wardens
[19:31] coming in and things like that. And I think there's a decent amount of players because this game does have the potential to be quite good. But this would have been so avoidable. Like we could have avoided this There's so many
[19:44] game, uninstall it and just never look back. didn't give it a chance because of the narrative and I just think it's so interesting in marketing how um you can make a great game. Not saying
[19:57] this is, but you can make a very high quality game and the the the period of quality game and the the the period of time of like communication between when you release the game and what you say about it is is is critical. And it's one
[20:09] of the reasons why like I get that game creation is an art, but it's also a business, man, right? Like it's all it's all it's also a a it's a business. You you're you're trying to get players and a big part of that is building an
[20:22] ongoing community around your players. And I I I think there's a level of trust that you need to have when you you know, it's like a progress bar. And when you um sometimes like when you fill that bar
[20:37] and you you you you you like you know, you could you could build like trust in that bar and it fills up. And I think a game like Arc Raiders for example the community when it came out cuz people couldn't believe like how high
[20:51] quality it was. But because Embark is like a pretty small studio and they're of dollars, like that progress bar is starting to go down. The problem is that the High Guards literally had its progress bar at zero cuz it didn't set
[21:05] expectations. And now they're working they have to work their way all the way with content that they could have started doing months and months and months ago. I'm a real not a fan of shadow drops. I understand like Apex
[21:17] Legends did okay relative to but but I like my argument would always be that it marketing behind it. It's just an interesting story about how this happened and it's so crazy that like you have this whole vision of like your
[21:30] from The Game Awards comes in and says, "Hey, I'll give you a million dollar yeah, sure. Like let's go. Like let's see what happens." And then boom, like like one of the first times that I've ever seen like a potential triple A game
[21:45] come out and then have so many negative reviews in just the first few minutes of really goes to show that like the narrative matters. And I just thought perspective that stuff happens like
[21:58] on this and hey, maybe it will be a very playable game if the if the studio keeps producing it. Um I like these days I have absolute faith that any game can happened with like No Man's Sky where and also just to see like a lot of the
[22:12] developed like Terraria and stuff like that just did like like Stardew Valley consistently put out stuff. Um you can come back from anything. If No Man's Sky back from anything. So if they put the work in and they and they show up, like
[22:26] maybe this game is good one day. Um but we should probably do a few more developer vlogs between now and then. Okay, see you guys again next time. Let Okay, see you guys again next time. Let me know what you think. Bye.