AI Summary
5 min readThe trailer for Highguard, a new PvPvE hero shooter from a studio founded by former Respawn developers, closed out The Game Awards in the slot reserved for the biggest reveals of the night. The response was immediate and brutal. Viewers called it "Concord 2," a reference to Sony's infamous live-service flop that was shut down in under two weeks. The YouTube trailer has over 40,000 dislikes and barely 4,000 likes. The episode's central argument is that this backlash is not manufactured outrage from streamers, but a predictable and legitimate market signal that the studio ignored—and that the industry keeps ignoring at its own peril.
The Concord Comparison Is Not an Accident
The strongest evidence in the episode is a side-by-side structural comparison of the Highguard and Concord reveal trailers. The pacing, the percussion-heavy music, the rhythm of the cuts, and the way each hero's abilities are framed in isolation are "damn near identical." As the host puts it, "If you start splicing the two trailers together, you genuinely start to lose track of which game you're watching unless you're paying close attention."
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What you'll learn
- 1 (01:56) **Highgard Reveal and Immediate Backlash** - Asmongold introduces the controversy around Highgard, a new PvPvE hero shooter revealed at The Game Awards, and its immediate comparison to the failed game Concord.
- 2 (03:17) **The Problem with the Game Awards Final Slot** - The hosts discuss the strategic failure of placing Highgard's generic trailer as the final, most anticipated reveal of the night.
- 3 (05:10) **Highgard's Core Failure: It's a Corporate Product, Not a Passion Project** - Asmongold argues that the game's biggest sin is that it's a safe, corporate product from a studio that was supposed to be free from AAA constraints.
- 4 (06:49) **The "Cosplay" Benchmark for Character Design** - Asmongold introduces a simple metric for judging a game's character design.
- 5 (09:09) **Direct Visual Comparison: Highgard is Concord** - Asmongold and his co-host perform a side-by-side comparison of the Highgard and Concord trailers.
- 6 (10:56) **The Danger of Toxic Positivity and Insulation** - The hosts criticize the culture of "toxic positivity" within the industry that prevents developers from hearing real criticism.
- 7 (13:36) **The Cost of Failure and the "From the Developers of..." Red Flag** - Asmongold analyzes the financial risk of the Game Awards slot and the warning sign of the "former developers of" label.
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Show Notes
This game is truly a piece of sh*t..Asmongold podcast for all of his stream highlights, competitions, reactions & more.
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------------ Keywords: world of warcraft, pc gaming, gaming takes, gaming culture
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