Shooter Monthly #4: The World's Biggest Shooter May Surprise & The Thing Highguard Needs to Learn

What I had is Mr. Anjos. I don't know. Say say whatever you want to say. Well, I think you should eat some [ __ ] about Call of Duty. I think we should definitely start with that.
So, I'll say this about Call of Duty for those just tuning in. I suggested or predicted, however you want to frame it, that Call of Duty historically has always been the bestselling game of the year. That being said, from at least Sana and also which has been boasted by people at EA themselves, that remains the standing narrative. The reason why that holds some credence is that Activision and even Microsoft have yet to dispute that. Therefore, the bestselling game of the year of last year quite possibly could be not Call of Duty.
No, hold [laughter] on. Say just like put put the gun back in the holster. Um, okay. All right.
Same thing. Oh, 5 hours. Wow. I need a I need a beer, too.
This game is going to ship early next year from Bungie, and this is the first time anybody has ever seen it. It's the first time they've debuted it. [music]
The original Doom was a really significant jump in gaming technology for the time.

There's one more thing we'll bring Battlefields. [music] I had to fight [music] programming mods of building their own levels in unreal for Call of Duty. Call of Duty. Call of Duty. Call of Duty. Entirely new Call of Duty. Call of Duty. Call of Duty. One of the fascinating new additions to your squad is a dog.
Hey, is that about ready? These they take time. [music] Boom. Shooter monthly episode 4. The podcast that is never out of bullets. There's four of us. We're back. We're here. Anjos has arrived to take a double tap into what remains of Call of Duty Black Ops 7, which I'm sure we'll be hearing about. Highguard is something that I think everyone who listens to this podcast is going to know more about. What is the take that we got? How is it doing? And then a very interesting

Matthew Ball tweet with our favorite shooter creator, Mr. Cliff Blazinski. What is the biggest shooter in the world? Is something that I think if you are listening to this podcast right now, I want you to think in your head. What is the shooter that has the highest MAU? I think you're going to be surprised at our answer. But before we get to any of that, let's go around and introduce our wonderful co-hosts. I'm Philip Black. I am former DICE Amazon Games Game Consulting. I am joined today by Mr. Chris Anjos. Well,
hello Christopher Anos here, formerly EA, formerly Activision, formerly 10 cents, currently director of product and strategy at Publish. And handing it off to Mr. Sides.
Yeah, I'm Chris Sides, formerly Bungie, former EA. I think all of us are I think half the industry is former at this point and I do consulting with Seaside's uh uh gaming consulting as well as my own indie company called Greygo Gaming. We have our first game coming out called Jimmy Jumps. It's a throwback to this game called Jump Man uh which was an old Commodore 64 title and we're working on our next one right now.
Link in the episode description.

Yeah, thank you. I'll send it over to Fas.
Thank you. So yeah, I'm Fas Musmar X Dice. So XEA as well like everyone on this podcast. X uh Game Loft around 17 18 years in the industry. Uh worked on mobile AAA games and currently product director at uh TTK games in Sweden.
Let's talk about the thing everyone wants to talk about. Reese release of the week. I don't know, maybe the first big one of 2026. Highguard from Wildlife Entertainment is out. It came out on January 26th. It has had an very interesting intro into the industry with I would say some highs and some lows. Um Mr. Chris Andros, could you talk about what this is? Like what what is High Guard? Why do we care about this?
So we care about Highguard because it is in my opinion one of several games outright, not even out. It's currently in still in beta. I believe it is playable by anyone who has a Steam account and anyone who has a current

generation console. We should care about Highguard because it and another game, Deadlock, represent of a space in shooters that I classify as MOA/ra shooters, meaning they're kind of like hero shooters. They have shooting elements, there's lane control, there's roles, and there's objectives, and there's emergent metagame in every session. The day that High Guard released, which was two days ago, we're filming this on a Wednesday. So on the Monday of this week, a random Monday, High Guard on Steam alone had almost six figures of concurrent players on Steam alone. At the same time, the same window, the another unreleased game, Deadlock, which is only available on early access or closed beta invites, also had nearly 100,000 concurrent players for the release of its character. So that suggests to me strongly that there is a lot of excitement and desire and demand for games like this. And FYI, I know of at

least three games in development right now that are also looking to release games targeting this specific space of again what I describe as mobile/ra shooters. So the rage shooters is identified by high guard by themselves. That's how they classify themselves. For anyone who has not played High Guard, it every session has multiple phases. Uh, think Rainbow 6, think even Fortnite or Rust resource gathering, think capture the flag type game modes, almost like Blood Gulch in Halo, and then think Search and Destroy from either a Call of Duty or a Counterstrike. So, by the way, has everyone here played High Guard?
Yes.
Okay. So, I'm very just just full disclosure, I am very excited about what I've seen from Highguard thus far. There are moments where the fun is very pronounced. There are moments that I

would describe as downtimes. And whatever reviews, negative or positive, that we see on Steam, which are there's a lot of. I am very bullish that whatever we're seeing now is a strong skeleton of what the game can be as it gears up towards launch. I could go deeper if you guys would would care to to hear more.
Well, yeah, I just have a couple of of thoughts there,
please.
Yeah, calling it beta early access is kind of altering the narrative. I feel it's being a little bit too soft. They ever I don't think that they announced that this was the early access version of the title. Granted, it does feel like an early access game. I agree with you there. But I don't think that's the way that the narrative was ran. Do tend to agree that like this genre is becoming something. There's something here, right? I think FPS players um maybe maybe I'm speaking too much about myself, but like we've all played what's kind of feels like similar FPS's over the last I don't know 10 years and so it is nice to see a new genre trying to emerge and trying to do something different. I really appreciate that about Highguard. Um I do think their

execution is is relatively flawed in a few different areas. Um, but this is a launch and I think even the perspective of it being an early access is kind of pointing to some of the issues that it's running into. Um, so yeah, I just kind of wanted to to talk about that cuz I don't think this is being driven as an early access title.
So it's interesting. It's not marked as that on Steam. That's the other thing. It's not like this is their launch.
So go ahead. Yeah, I think this actually adds to a couple of things that make this game unusual. Like I think the way it got released to the market is an interesting one because I I understand why a lot of people will be under the impression that this is an early access or a beta because this game didn't do any uh tech tests or play tests before, which is very unusual in, you know, the last couple of years for any shooter to just drop out like this without having multiple play tests. So, I can understand the uh the perception of it being in early access or beta because it's going to need a lot of balancing to

get on the way. Especially that this game um so I was kind of excited for High Guard in a way because I felt it was unfair the way the game was treated. So, I wanted to be on its side when it came out. Uh but after playing it, I think there's a couple of things that they'll need to balance out a bit. I think it's trying a bit uh too many different elements at the same time. So, for example, I was surprised with the amount of weapons that exist, even though you have a lot of different heroes. Versus when you look at a game as Deadlock, they took a lot of the mobile elements, but then simplified it by not having a lot of weapons um being applied to each hero in that game, which made it accessible to I guess uh mobile players versus shooter players. I think this game is trying to take too much of the both elements in in one go. Uh, also for anyone who's played the tutorial, they really focused on the armor so much that made me feel like the armor is going to be the most important thing ever that I forgot every other part of

the the tutorial. This is like a minor one, but I just like cuz playing with my friend and me and him were like just freaking out about like the the armor in that game. But I think two things that I found really unusual about the game is the way it dropped without a lot of uh tech play testing. And then the second pause is uh the amount of design elements it's trying to blend together without testing it with the community. So they took a very very brave move and I think they're going to need some time to balance stuff out. This is my take. But Andrew, you seem to be like more bullish on on this game. So I I want to hear more about like the things you really like about it. So the things I really like about it namely are so again the what I what I would call downtime phases is the first phase where you start defensing up your your base taken from Rainbow Six Siege less in less robust as Rainbow Six Siege but clearly inspired by that part of Rainbow Six Siege. The phase after that is also I would consider a downtime where you're going out in the world. You may be opening chests, resource gathering, maybe you may hit some some geodess for

resources. Another downtime that I wish you I hope they look to condense. By the time you actually start fighting other players, you could be five minutes into the match. So five minutes of downtime into the session. I would like to see that either condensed highly or maybe even removed. I don't think they added much to the overall session engagement. The fun really starts hitting when you're once you're on your mount. You're playing a version of Capture the Flag, which I think is very timeless. I got strong memories and flashbacks from Halo 2 on that on the Warthog with your friends fighting. So, where the game really shines is in combat. So, the more combat you have, the better. perhaps in the those early two phases h adding in PvE elements getting you into using the guns and getting to into the into the action would be a boon and I realized talking to you I just described uh battleorn remember battleorn long live Battlebor baby
battleorn was ahead of its time man so

it's funny like this is this is going to be a fun one so so the fun is there I at least I see the fun as it is it just requires some tuning there's also the makeup of the current iteration of the game which is 3v3 two teams of 3v3 in a huge map. That map is huge. And in those previous phases, you could go through all of that without seeing another player or even finding a gun. That that can and should be adjusted. Can it be adjusted with more teams like 3v3 v3 or bigger teams of 4v4 or 5v4 perhaps? That being said, as you mentioned, Frost, there's only eight characters currently in the game, which means if they do go that direction, they they would have to make the the desired decision of are we okay with having multiple mirror matches of the same characters per session. Also, on top of that, there's also support type class characters in the game. That being said, the three the 3v3 format really pushes players to focus on the meta of DPSers. I don't need support classes. the meta to win the game or or a match is going to be three damage dealing type of characters. So, some

tuning is required there. So, the the later phases from capture the flag type phases to the mounts very strong to the raid to the base raiding sections where you're actually fighting players head-on with quick respawns. The game is very good there. There's something there that can be built upon, but to get there, we have to go through long swaths of downtime which can't be addressed. And also on top of that, an XFactor here for us and everyone here, the team is very good. Everything I'm telling you, I'm sure they know already, but in case they don't know, here's some free work for you guys.
A couple of things there, like I agree on the capture the flag part. My kind of problem there is like capture the flag is a mode, not like a game. And so, you know, you talk about Halo 2, it's like, yeah, it had or Halo, any Halo, it had capture the flag, and that was fun, but that was a mode of many different modes in the multiplayer. And so it's a little bit challenging I feel to really make this an entire game. If this was a mode within something else, I think it would probably have a little bit less kind of pressure put on it. Um the other Wait,

whoa, whoa, hold on, hold on, Chris. Hold on, hold on. I can't let you get away with that. That was the same [ __ ] people said about Battle Royale. I heard that [ __ ] forever. Oh my god. Battle Royale. It's just a It's just It's just a mode. It's not a genre. And then everyone was
When did you hear that? When PUBG like launched to like a million concurrent players. Like what are you talking about? That was one of the early pieces of feedback. People were pushing back against the spread of Battle Royale, saying, "Hey, is this actually a mode or is it a genre?"
I think there's a question if it's a mode or a genre. But I think Capture the Flag is clearly a mode.
But this isn't I would So I think the the thing we touched on at the top of the hour, and I think this is this is really important when we look at the highlevel split in what's happened in first-person shooters is that there's been genre evolution, right? Like no one is building an arena shooter anymore. Uh long long live Splitgate. Um and so we're trying to figure out what is the next evolution after battle royale. And we'll talk about I think the biggest shooters in the world, but it's basically battle royale and tactical shooters. That's the landscape right now. Those are those are two options. That is like what 90% of the market. And

so the the you know the dark horses are extraction shooters, right? We've talked about arc and where that goes. Um arc raers if that goes anywhere and all the bodies along the way. But the the counter thesis to me is that extraction shooters are all about out of round meta. Everything is about you leaving the round, upgrading your gear, and then going back in. This is a counter cyclical thesis to that where everything is about in round progression, right? That's what Andos was talking about is that you have these long Yeah. It you're building up in round currency, right, inside of the game. That's what those buildup phases are about. you're going to an in-game shop to purchase items or upgrades that are used within the context of the round that evaporate at the end of the round, right? It's all about that in round progression and buildup. So, there's power scaling within the round. And that to me is the exact opposite of extraction shooters. And I think that's where Battle Royale actually succeeded in advancing, right? Is when you play, for instance, Apex Legends, there's little there's literal power progression in, for instance, the

armor, right? You have some armor that has one health bar, another has two, another has three, that has four. Remember, they've even pushed this farther with crafting currency, which is another way you can get high tier items. This to me is taking that idea to its maxima point, which is moving more in the MOA direction, similar to Deadlock. Like, that to me is what at a high level, I would argue this represents is still the search for what comes after Battle Royale. And so, that to me feels like there's a whole lot of meat on the bone. And I think it's it's not accurate to say it's just capture the flag. That is one part of the loop, but the in round progression is a dramatic change from for instance playing capture the flag in Halo.
I would agree that it is a change from like Halo or Capture the Flag in typical modes. I find like the in round progression for sure is something different and yeah absolutely extra action shooters are more about the meta progression rather than the in round progression but I don't see how high guard actually provides that real sense of progression because if I'm progressing so is the other team

and so ultimately it is the same level of progression fighting the same level of progression there's not really a clear way like in MOBAs where you have like this whole economy tied to it right like the the economy part of high guard is not nearly as deep as something like a MOA. And so the in round progression in MOBAs is critical. You're you're you know, if you're watching any lead game, it's the you know, the amount of currency per hour or not per hour, but per minute or whatever it is. Um Highguard's depth of progression is relatively shallow. So like I do agree that that is an important part and that's something interesting about uh trying to do something different here, but I don't find that high guard actually hits nearly the level of progression or the economies that you would see in a mobile. You hit on something critical their sides. Everything that High Guard is trying to do and other games do it or execute it better. For example, its build or defense phase is a a more shallow version than what is in Rainbow Six Siege. Its resource gathering phase is an iteration that is not as strong as

you see in Fortnite. But where it does, I think, exceed quote unquote competitors is in the seat is in the capture the flag mode and perhaps in its base rating mode, which again I classify as downtimes versus um stronger positions. And I would also count its immersion progression as mobileesque with with everything you described, but executed in a way that is not as strong in other MOBAs.
I almost feel that's that's kind of like, you know, I'm a selfish gamer. I want High Guard to be good. I love FPS's. I want all of them to be good because I want to play more FPS's. Um, but just looking at it from a from a further perspective, it seems like it is doing a lot of these different things, just none of them very well. You know, it's trying to have an economy. It's trying to have these mobile areas. And even the base defending and stuff, I guess, is fun, but it's not really as deep as something you would see in like a league or a Dota or even a a deadlock.

like it's not there yet. And so it does really feel sanitized in a strange way where the game feels like it's meant to be extremely competitive, yet it also feels extremely sanitized.
And there feels like there's a mismatch there that I it's kind of hard for me to articulate, but it's just like the feeling I have as the player.
Um, one thing I wanted to say too that you were talking about was kind of the future of this game in live services and where it can go. I tend to believe that this concept that like within the FPS space that a game can fix itself over time and improve no longer exists. I think there was an era where that was possible. I mean, we have examples, right? Like Siege is one of the great examples of kind of growing over time.
10-y old game, by the way. But
yeah, right. That's what I'm saying. 10 years old. Um, now in 2026, I just don't find that to be an option. The market's way too competitive. I can go to any other game I want. And so having this sense of like, oh, it'll like get better over time. I don't even know if there's

a runway where they can afford to get better over time anymore. Um, I I I don't find this idea that the FPS game in a live service can actually grow after launch as really any type of strategy or anything to really look at. In my opinion, looking at Highguard and its launch so far is like it's over. Like it is over for them. Like I I don't I don't see how they turn this around. Not only like minus the narrative from like you know the the the really aggressive negative gaming audience minus that part. I don't see how they can actually improve the game to the point where they can bring back even close to getting 100,000 players again. It just I I just don't see it. Chris, I couldn't agree with you more. Like I I love all the ideas here in the in round progression. I I think you know we skipped over the launch a little bit and kind of what is beh like why why we keep talking about this isn't just what it it it means for the genre but the way it got on our radar was that video game awards trailer right that was at the end of the video game awards showcase and

everyone was like what the [ __ ] is this and you're telling me it's coming out next next month oh my god and there was oh my god did they pay for this spot and it turns out Jeff nightly who is the host of the video game awards healy thank you he included it just because he liked it and he wanted to give a smaller studio a boost. There was no money that was changing hands. And so you can imagine, oh my god, we got this, you know, video game awards. And and by the way, just, you know, quick side note, the fact that the video game awards can put a 100,000 players on a game whether or not they retain, but at least out of the gate for on that trailer basically alone, I think is remarkable as a user acquisition source, which is something we're always trying to figure out in HD. You know, in mobile you can just go out and buy ads, but you can't really do that. And so the fact that we have a new tool in the brand marketing tool bag to get games that people haven't heard about through the Steam funnel, I think is really important. But the other piece is that the game also is by the Respawn team, right? And if you remember how Apex launched, and this was Chris Bruo's uh he's he's going to take this one to

the grave. Mr. Starbucks himself, his biggest accomplishment was that Apex launched almost with no fanfare. It just they just dropped it on Steam, [laughter] right? The thing just like they just pooped just pooped it out. People were like, "Oh my god, it came out of nowhere." And I I have to imagine I have to imagine the team was thinking that they could pull off this same thing, a fresh new concept that no one has really experienced. Exciting gameplay mounts, blow them away with a trailer, and then parlay it into a launch like this. You have to imagine that's what's going on in their head. Talking to you now on a Wednesday. Earlier this week, Chad Grenier and Dusty Welsh of Wild Light spoke with Christopher Ding of the game business and they did say as much as what you mentioned where they had a shadow drop for Apex Legends. It did well for them. They wanted to do that route again in 2026. They mentioned the opportunity that came up with Jeff Keley playing the game. And I do agree with you, Philip, where just like can you go back to that chart again where you had the player counts? So, even from the the whatever

marketing route they went to uh using Jeff Keley and and writing on the Game Awards, it still got almost six figures worth of players through the door concurrently. So, what we're seeing now that the the the its peak versus how many people are playing now on a Wednesday morning, at that point, this is not a marketing issue. At this point, this is now a game issue, if that makes sense. Retention wise,
the team seems to have wanted to shadow drop it. And as you guys mentioned, the team is obviously competent because the it's a good game at heart with some uh challenges they need to address. But I I just want to go back to my original point. I think that if if their strategy is not to grow it over time, then it's going to be really interesting why they didn't uh do any tech play tests before. Like that's the thing. If you look at Arc Raiders for example, it's it's had an amazing success. But I think one of the key reasons was that they had at least like five or six stick play tests for slams, etc. And that's what I'm thinking. I I don't think dropping shadow dropping a shooter now is the

right way to go. Maybe it was right for Apex for
that time. We're talking like what 2018 or 2018 19. Yeah, I think that time has has gone like as you said uh Chris the studios have to think about like runways, keeping the the cerebas running, building gradually the community. The only exception to that is like Valve right now with Deadlock, but Valve is obviously I don't think you should model your strategy against a company.
Small independent developer that have his own platform.
Exactly. Yeah.
Yeah. And has infinite money. Valve is like Nintendo. It's like you can't they're their own monster. Don't look to them for strategies.
Exactly. And and I think actually like with with enough proper uh like look at even Marathon, they delayed the game multiple times because of the Instctus. And I think if high guard did this instead of shadow dropping, maybe they would have had a stronger launch. That that is I think the the biggest thing and this is why when I actually liked what they did that they were receiving a lot of negative media since the launch.

So they didn't talk much. They let like the internet deal and they were like the game will speak for itself is kind of what it seemed for me from the outside. But then I think the problem I think that the game is not tested enough on on the community to to address key issues and know especially when you're doing something like this. You're trying, as you guys mentioned, elements from MOBAs, but there is no PBE elements. There is a bit of elements of in-game economy that involves buying weapons, a little bit of gear, but doesn't go to the depth of MOBAs, but at the same time, it's not like hero shooters or you're looting weapons. It's a little bit of capture the flag, but it's more about attacking the base. You need to be aware of two bases at the same time without even being able to move on the map from an isometric view. I think it's it's an interesting set of challenges that I think you need a lot of user data to to address and I think that's my take. So I hope they are able to maintain the game long enough to address the issues with user real user data but I'm I'm with you Chris sides it's going to be a bit of a interesting challenge for them for for a

while. I don't see this like spiking up anytime soon unless they do a major update and they're actually planning a major user acquisition beat because actually a lot of people haven't heard anecdotally speaking a lot of people that I've been speaking to haven't heard that it actually released. They just remember the event at the VGA more than the actual release date of the game as well. So maybe they're planning on doing extra use requisition down the line. No, the the thing for us you and I have talked about and I'm curious to get the panel's views on is that there's this question that seems to be persisting in PC console which is how how you actually figure out if you can launch your game, if you should launch your game, right? What is the right way to do that? In mobile, the path is very clear. It it's it's go to Philippines, go to a tier 2 country. The soft launch KPIs are predictive of global launch. Don't get out of there until you're comfortable with the KPIs. Your CPIs and your LTV are in a good place. All those things are highly predictive. HD does not does not work like that. Or at least I don't know. People don't seem to think it works like that. Like you can still do regional launches on Steam. Almost no,

no one no one does this, but it feels like there's so much brand marketing. Oh my god, it's going to get leaked on Reddit. They're just the way people get acquired to games in PC console is different than the way people get acquired to mobile. And so what is a PC console developer to do? And the answer seems to be early access. By early access, just launch. Who cares? Who cares what the label is? Um, so I I don't I don't know how you solve this problem. I don't know what if if you guys have different perspectives here or if they're there are just bad answers.
Can I give you my quick takes on that? Includes your um queries along with what Ross mentioned, Philip. So is this is an overall go to market challenge? Every game is different. Every market is different. Every game is different. What So I mentioned the positives of going through the Jeff Keelley route for announcing your game. The positives is that 100 million people saw the game. there's an activation there. The con of that is you now have outsourced your ability to control the narrative to somebody else. Okay. And I think you

mentioned this for us where they from from people were more aware of the VTG announcements versus the game's release date itself. That is that that's what happens when you outsource your go to market to somebody else. What I would have liked to see is a studio having a conversation from day one or once once the trailer launched with the community saying, "Let's build this together. Let's continue the conversations on areas or or on or on forms that we control that we could really give you and show you what you want to see and show you what we want you to see." Because in my opinion, a function of marketing is the ability to tell your side of the story in your own way. They kind of relish control of that and for a month nothingness. And I'm going to quote Gabe Newell here. If you don't talk to people, if you don't talk to prospects or potential customers, they are inadvertently narcissistically damaged by that lack of communication. And it's so you have to claw your way back on multiple fronts. So to address what Philip mentioned is how do you do that? That's a go-to market strategy.

That could be from community management or or building a community or or or multiple multitude of ways which I can't fill in right now at the moment. But something is better than nothing.
When I look back at like Marathon's announcement and I look at like Highguards, you know, Highguards was a marketing trailer, not a marketing strategy and I think that really harmed them. When we launched, when we announced Marathon, we knew we were years away from launch. And so there was a lot of like concern about like how do we control that narrative? And so the strategy for Marathon was launch the trailer, launch a a vi of us talking about what the game is, which Highgard didn't do until the launch date. Um, I feel like if that video or that live stream happened like right after the live stream, that could have helped them a bit.
Um, and then we said, "We're going dark." So, like there was like a three-step solution there of like how do we control this? And of course, the Vidok is like heavily, you know, heavily scripted to specifically speak to the information we got from user research about what players would want to know or

players would want to think about. like that was like an overall strategy in order to not create this negative sentiment around marathons announce and then us not talking about it for years. High guard and to their like I think in hindsight they probably wouldn't want to have they probably would have gone down the route they did with the shadow drop. I mean I feel like that's kind of obvious but I also think it would be a little bit challenging if I was the game director of a studio and and Jeff Keelley is like hey we want to put you at the end of this you know massive audience. I think it would be very challenging to say like no, we're sticking to our guns. And so I don't like necessarily think it was a bad decision at the time. I think in hindsight you can argue it was a bad decision, but I I think the real point is like there was no marketing strategy. I mean their strategy was to shadow drop. So there was obviously no marketing strategy on their side in the first place. And then putting that trailer out like 6 weeks before launch, it just really really harmed their ability to manage what players expectations were.
Mr. Andros, I think you had a very interesting insight there, which is developing the game with a community, but on platforms you control.

Yes.
Or you control the messing. What do you What do you mean by that? Is there a material example we could point to of this?
So, Discord mind. So, Discord is, I think, the the go-to or at least one on top of mind for me where that gives you the ability to have a server, have a channel, have people there, players there, having events on Discord, like an example I'm going to give to you right now is that Deadlock Discord, you you're going to hear a lot about Deadlock for me if you allow me to. So, FYI, is currently not officially announced by Valve at all. The only real existence or acknowledgement that Valve gives to Deadlock is in its Discord channel, which is may or may not be official, but Valve and Deadlock developers are on that Discord channel. There are tens of thousands of people, players on that Discord channel. And from there, his name is or her name is Yoshi. I don't know if it's a person or not, but that is most likely a Valve employee giving out information, tidbits, and patch notes within that Discord. And the key

takeaway there, the value there of having something that massive is you have the ability to not just control the narrative, not just get the word out at essentially free. People are doing the work for you. People aren't just making content for you. Wonderful works of art, fan fan art. At the same time, and this is the key thing here, at the same time, having a server of thousands of players and people to mobilize for you, as in number one, play the game. Tell people to play the game. make Tik Toks, make content advertising or marketing my game, getting your friends to download the game and repeating that process again. So, the ability to mobilize a community of players, convert them over to to another level of the player upsell value chain and and getting them to convert their friends list and the flywheel effect that is like chef's kiss. That is the that is an example that I urge everyone to look into and study very hard. There's one more I'd like to add into the pile here, which I think actually did exactly what you're talking about, Mr. Anjos, which is Mountaintop Studios. Anyone remember

Spectre Divide?
Also, X Respawn, Lee Horn, brilliant individual.
Yes, big fan.
Big fan of what they were trying to accomplish. You remember they were trying to go after tactical shooters, and this is one where you had ghosts of yourself that you kind of
prev3, by the way, tactical shooter.
3v3 tactical shooter. And they went through those phases of having closed invite only. They had additional beta launches. They really went through the phases of what you would want them to do in building a relationship with the community and getting feedback. So it it felt like they executed against the playbook and yet the game bombed. And I think really I would encourage people to listen to what they have to say, which is that they did follow the process, but by their own admission they weren't good students of the process. They mentioned that the feedback was basically the same across all the different waves and that they weren't reacting to the feedback. They weren't analyzing the feedback in the proper way. So it's not just I would argue about going through these phases. It's also an analytical component of what am I trying to get out of these phases? What do I need to I mean we talk

about gates a lot. What do I need to show here? What do I need to show here? What do I need to show here? And the whole point of these feedback phases is to basically get outside your own head, right? Because when you're working on these games, all of us, this is why they hire consultants, right? This is why they hire us, is that we're not in this team's head every single day. And so it gives us a clarity of thought that others don't. And this team, I think, had that and they just ignored the science by their own feedback. And I'm not trying to bash them at all. I think they're very smart group of individuals. But they point to things like low social reinvites, right? Like if the game is really good, you know, people should be inviting it to their friends. They should be retaining. So I agree like we need a new playbook. I think I think the early chapters of that playbook are being written, but it's not just a series of bullet points. There's there's this whole analytical piece I think people need to really think about as they're going through these phases. Like I I really don't want to play my own book here, but like yeah, like bring in a consultant to do a [ __ ] play test. Like this is the one thing I wish people called me more for was doing build reviews, right? I don't need to do a consulting sprint with you, but after you launch a big build, like hire

someone for like 3 hours. It's not that expensive just to play your game and be like, "Hey, is this [ __ ] or not?" like get a diversity of opinions. I hope that team speaks more about their experience too. Um they're they're a very smart group of people.
Mountain Top.
Yes. So, real quick comment on Mountaintop and I'm glad you brought that up. I also had analoges to Mountaintop as I was playing High Guard. Pv3 in a shooter is I haven't seen really seen that succeed. Pv3 that's very popular in mobile. You have that in Dota. That being said, the the hook for Spectre Divide was I think they even said who doesn't have two friends. The challenge with that is if one of those people leave the match, it is a huge deficit. A huge deficit that you can't crawl away back from. I think that applies too to Higgar, like one player gets killed, it's a huge advantage for the other team. And it's funny the the I don't know how the three player group thing became so popular because I remember talking to like a social designer and they were talking about how like three players is almost like a couple in a third wheel and I

tend to agree with that. Like it is it is weird how we got here where three like is becoming a team. Like Arc Raiders does it, Apex kind of, you know, really was I mean probably not the first but the one that first comes to my head about doing this. But it really is a couple and and a third wheel compared to squads is like two couples, you know, something like that. And you can kind of
it changes the dynamic a bit. Yeah. I don't know how we got here. It does why three became the number.
It does like 3v3 versus another 3v3 is risk. High risk. That's spectum divide. That's high guard. 3v3 versus 3v3 versus another 3v3. That's where I think opportunities for fun could happen. That's what our graders does. So just throwing that out there. It's just,
you know what I what I think when I hear that it's it's when I like when BRS started to be popular. I remember game designers were discussing it quite a bit about like it's really weird that one person gets to be the winner from 100 or a squad of three gets the be the winner out of 100 players cuz from a game design perspective designers back then were optimizing towards winning and I

think what's happening in the last 10 years or so even when you look at indie games there's a lot of strong push from players towards the concept of dying is really okay and I think that's maybe one of the challenges we Like if you look at rogue likes, rogue lights, etc., the concept of you dying repeatedly, every time you go into a session, you're expecting not to succeed. And these genres of games are quite popular with this generation and even I'm sounding a bit old, but also our generation. BRs are about you most likely not succeeding, but it's really fine if you succeed. Extraction shooters are you want to do your thing and leave, but it's kind of okay if you die. And I think maybe this is what like shooters struggle when they make the games a bit too much about victory. these days. I think maybe the at least the more recent successful shooters, the goal is not really about winning those games. And then when you get the three versus three shooter, the goal is to win and to beat the other players, etc. The the the type of shooter player that's really interested in this fantasy is either

already hooked on CS:GO for the last 10 years and good luck acquiring that user. And then you have like some of them in maybe in Overwatch, some of them in Battlefield and COD, etc. But I just I'm not sure what is the if that is what recent players are after. I think they're more looking after games where it is okay to win, but it's not the most important thing. Obviously, you can argue with there's ranked modes in the majority of the games that I'm talking about. Like Apex is a BR, but the rank mode's quite successful, has a lot of retention, etc. So, I'm not saying winning doesn't matter anymore, but I'm seeing players are going towards more experiential shooters rather than skill-based focus on winning shooters. Attention app and game developers. Are you ready to unlock the secrets behind the world's top performing apps and games? With Sensor Tower, you get the ultimate competitive edge, whether it's breaking into new markets, fine-tuning your UA strategies or boosting monetization. Dive into data like never before. Track

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Games, and he drives around a lot of sports cars. Uh you can very much see where he is. uh at any one time. And so he tweeted out, "Funny how the extraction shooters have surpassed battle royale as the top shooter genre." And Mr. Metverse himself, Matthew Ball, tweeted back, "Garina reports 700 million, I'm going to say that one more time. 700 million quarterly users of Garina Free Fire, excluding China. PUBG does over 100 million DAU. while the most current estimates for Fortnite and COD Mobile/roarzone at another 150 million MAU. And Matthew concludes by saying, I guess BR dailies clear extraction easily by MAU. And so I think this raises a very interesting question for all of us, which what is the most popular shooters and shooter genres globally?
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So, I'm going to I'm going to I'm going to answer or respond to you, Philip. I'll at the same time I will respond to what for us touch upon as well which is uh the meta topic we should all be looking at and what is the thing to chase. If you look at any breakout genre from battle royale or moa is my go-to they they share a similar space a similar history. MOBAs in my opinion are in some some forms a translation of RTS's. BRS, battle royale are in some

way a translation or distillation of arena shooters. 30 years ago RTS's and arena shooters are what I are or what's called or as the kids say boomer shooters were the leading genres in their categories. Now they're not so much. They've been eclipsed by MOBAs and battle royale. Why? My thesis to that is they similar shape of both easy to learn, easy to identify the loop and with with leagues and miles of mastery in each. So I as an extraction fan myself, extraction I don't think will ever ever eclipse battle royale in terms of overall breakout success. What what I see here from Matthew Ball is very accurate just because the ent accessibility at battle royale is almost universal. Not one person who sees or plays a battle royale after one session will will not understand the game mode and and not and not and be able to see the fun similar to MOBAs as well if you're into that.
Yeah, I would I would agree because I

mean at the end of the day battle royals as as Fas was talking about earlier from a rogike perspective, they are kind of just rogike FPS's. you know, you start with nothing, you build your way up, you die, you start with nothing, you build, etc., and then you you have a chance to win or not. And so, I do agree there. Just to defend Cliffy B a bit, uh, I completely disagree with his his thought here, although I wish it was true. I I disagree with it, but I will say I fall into this trap as well. I think Cliffy B is too PC, console, westernrained to actually know what uh, the largest genre is. I think a lot of times, you know, I worked, you know, I work in, you know, the west and so a lot of my opinions or data perspective is often tied to western audiences. Um, and when I look at, you know, the genres, I don't even think about like free fire. Like that's not even in my brain to come up. Although it's mass, I mean, it's incredibly massive, but it's just not something there. So, I I think his perspective is a little bit missing kind of a lot of the genre. Um, Cliffy B made

Real Royale, right? As well. Not Rome Royale. Uh, Radical Heights.
Yeah, the the desperate.
Yeah, I loved Radical Heights. I loved Radical Heights. So, I got to defend Cliffy B here for just a little bit, but that's it.
So, we're going to we're about to show a graph here. It's one of the first graphs I think uh you know, the world the world hasn't seen this graph before. World premiere of a graph that combines sensor tower data, which covers mobile games, and video game insights, which covers PC console. And this crew in particular cross-pollinates in both genres. There's no PC master race. There's only just games. And I think that is something that's very important to keep in mind. And we're looking at the top games by MAU in the last month, merging those two together. And by far the one that has the most MAU, and it's not even close, is FreeFire. Freefire is reporting around 240 million MAU, which easily clears the next biggest game, which is PUBG Mobile. Now, there's a little bit

of shenanigans here because PUBG Mobile actually has another skew that's specific for India. You can see it. It's a just below Fortnite. So, if you combine both of them, PUBG Mobile gets a little bit of a boost. And then, of course, there's what happens. Should we merge franchises together? There's all of those interesting questions. But after you get past FreeFire and PUBG Mobile, it is straight HD. And of course, again, remember Sensor Tower, you don't have China Android numbers. So, there's always some asterisks we got to put here. But by and large, I think this helps provide a refreshing view of the top shooters. Counterstrike 2 top game on PC console. Then it's or excuse me, Fortnite is above Counter-Strike, Counter-Strike below it. Call of Duty, PUBG HD, Apex, Battlefield, Rainbow Six Siege X, Marvel Rivals. It's the games that you would expect. Crossfire Legends almost certainly is much popular once we include China, Android, and then Valerant Mobile is not reporting a lot of monthly active users, but again, I think that's a data error uh more than it is anything else. But I found this chart to be really refreshing and help give a new perspective. The thing it does highlight though they were talking about earlier, there's two genres in the

world, ladies and gentlemen. It is battle royale and is tactical shooters. That's it. That's all that's all that's on this chart basically. And there's there's a couple a couple Battlefield games. War Thunder, I don't know if we consider that it is a shooter. It's not a first-person shooter and Battlefield, but but by and large like it shooters uh a battle royale flavor and tactical. I don't know. Is anyone else getting anything interesting out of this chart?
I think nope. My only issue with this uh chart is that um so obviously um as Chris mentioned like all of us in the west as soon as we see figures that comes from the east you get mind blown like there's games that we even like for example if you think of Crossfire um it used to be the most played game in history until League of Legends took over but I never even like played this game in the west you don't talk a lot of people that played it I think was developed by Smilegate so I'm not really surprised is that at the end of the day, any given genre of any video game, the biggest market, biggest number of players is going to be something that's big in the east, most probably China,

right? But I think in terms of scale, like let's look at the why did Cliff tweet what he tweeted and I think it's because of the amount of volume that's being generated by commentary from the players and the amount of commentary from the media etc. about a game such as like Arc Raiders. So if we just want to look at MAUs to measure how big a game is, then you'll never see any of those games there. It's impossible. But I actually think we should not also ignore the impact that goes beyond just MUS. I just wanted to mention that because like Cliff most probably tweeted that because he's seeing Arc Raiders everywhere. Last year we saw Hell Divers everywhere. Will these games ever have an MAU of BR that is big in China? No way. There's not enough players in all of the West to to match that, right? But but but I think there's like a very solid big games that do not hit high MUS. The second thing is you might have high MUS but most probably your games free to play. Uh a lot of games aren't free to play will never hit those numbers but most probably will generate very high

revenues like Battlefield made a huge amount of money last year but I don't think we'll ever hit an MU for a game that's as big in China unless becomes as big in China. I'm using that as an example. Our grade is the same. Hell divers etc. So I just wanted to point that out. Whenever you look at graphs that has MAU, they will favor freeto play but not necessarily total revenues will ignore box revenue etc.
Yeah.
Yes.
And maybe the the other point to uh to double down on that for us is that free fire is in some degree PUBG is kind of a paper tiger because a lot of those MAU are in India and Brazil actually which do not monetize anywhere close to the other titles we're talking about like not even in the stratosphere. That doesn't take away from Freefire, by the way, which has increasing revenue as a time series. Its growth is impressive. And the other thing that I think there, you know, we're talking about battle royale, we're talking about tactical shooter there, there's kind of like this dark horse, which is UGC, which is something that, you know, we know Fortnite is pivoting their platform. Freefire is doing a lot of this. If you

guys have been playing any bit of FreeFree Fire, they're doing a lot more sandboxy stuff. Let us play with the rule sets. Like, don't move geometry, but play with the rule sets. And we know Battlefield Portal, which I logged back finally back into Battlefield 6. I got in my PC crapped out. Battlefield Portal actually took a step back in my view pretty significantly from where it was previously, but there's this idea of kind of UGC in shooters basically making shooter a platform which has kind of been floating around. I'm not quite sure what I mean, we know Halo's the forge. There's been like kind of like this other idea that I just I'm not quite sure what to do with it, but it seems like it continues to persist.
I think there's something there for sure with UGC. I think the challenge when we talk about that is in my opinion it's the players come first and then UGC comes after like you need that massive player base cuz you know only 1% of them are going to be building stuff and so in order to get 1% to build stuff or 99% you need a lot of people um and so I do agree that UGC is like an important aspect here and and definitely these games that's this massive that want to kind of in a negative way like offload

some of the development to to the player base is really really strong, but I don't find it to be like a launch feature that actually shows any kind of positive impact on the overall product. Have you guys played Hightail at all? [laughter]
Hightail? Yeah. One of the most popular mods is a is a shooter mod, FYI.
Can you tell us can you tell us more about Hightail
real fast? Hightail is from germinated from a server in Minecraft. It was a company started making a game called Hightail. It was acquired by Riot Games and was then disacquired by Riot Games. The founder created his own launcher, launched the game with his own launcher. So therefore, bypassing Steam's 30% cut at that scale, it matters a lot. The game is doing great. And there's a very vibrant modding community, a modding community that any other game would would spend years to get that passionate level of modders making content for it now. Doing very well, by the way. A lot of mods are out there and the most popular ones are shooters. So give people tools, they'll make shooters. I

mean, the core of the genre to me, like the reason that it's it's been so successful is that it has a very easy mastery hook, which is that you have to control basically different planes of axis. You have to aim and you have to move. You have to control in that that space that I think works really well on both PC and on console with the dual analog sticks. And it's also one of the things, by the way, if you give a controller to someone who hasn't played video games before, that's the thing they struggle with the most, particularly with first-person shooters, is navigating and that those those different XYZ planes using the analog sticks. But that's something like if we just talk about why is why does anyone give a [ __ ] about shooters, it's that fundamentally trying to aim and hit something has a high degree of mastery. Like I I think that to me is very different than hacking and slashing or like clicking, you know, the the one or two button on a toolbar in World of Warcraft to summon a spell. Like that core Twitch element has has been the fuel for the last what 30 years for us. Like that fundamental loop of like aim, shoot, miss, try again, or hit. Not to

mention it's very intuitive, right? Like you move your cursor around whenever you use your computer. If you're playing a shooter, just move around. As an said, you give the players mods, they're going to make shooters or they're going to make swords. Like the same with kids, you give them a stick, they're just going to start hitting each other with it. Like it's it's it's it's very very straightforward in my opinion.
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the '9s, the early 2000s, etc. And something that I'm finding kind of more annoying over time is as the industry grows, there are becoming more and more people who are ex Apex, who are ex Grand Theft Auto, who are ex these massive titles. And so whenever I see games that it's like, hey, this is made by the exapp devs. I don't actually know much about them. So I'm using that as an example, but this isn't meant to be really targeted towards them. Is that in my experience, I've worked with a lot of ex, you know, great game here. And a lot of them are really good and some of them are really bad. And so I don't really understand this kind of marketing narrative of using it and also suggesting that it actually means that they're going to be successful again in the future. You know, a lot of people made games in the early 2000s that are massive successes that would flop today. And I just kind of wanted to throw that narrative out there that I see all the time. The Highguard one made me think about it, but you there's a million of examples. Actually, watching the game

awards, there was some game that was announced and it was like from ex lead designer of Red Dead Redemption. And I'm like, dude, that game probably had a hundred lead designers on it for like every category. Like, what does that even mean anymore? Like, why is that actually a value from a marketing perspective? And actually, is it a value? Is that kind of like an old thing that we used to say that no longer provides much value from a marketing side? Cuz I think it alters players expectations and puts a lot of pressure on the game itself while also being like, look, we've all worked in this industry with names that people would know and some of them are really good and some of them are bad. You know, it's just how it is. There's a mix of game developers at all levels.
I'll I'll bite it. It's a very interesting question cuz I Here's my view on it. I think for people that are working in the industry obviously like we've we've all shipped games that had 600 or a thousand people on it and you know there's very skilled developers and not so skilled mix in between there's even very big names when you work with them you learn that like it was most probably the team around

them that helped them succeed etc. So I I fully agree that just the name doesn't drive much but I'm just looking at it from the perspective of the players. I'm going to use uh usually people don't like that when you use movies as an allergy when we talk about games but for me for example uh I'm not like so much into movies these days but whenever I go and like want to watch something I check like is there a Cohen brothers movie that I haven't watched and they just like pick that out or is there a Wiz Anderson movie that I haven't watched and I watch that and the reason is because I feel specific directors will give me a specific vibe or an experience and I think leaving the marketing beat on the side maybe that's what people are after by saying this game is made by the exdevelopers of this. So like even when we when I played High Guard, the shooting did feel like okay this the game feels a little bit Apexy and I think maybe that's what warrants using the names or of the games that the team came from. Not from the marketing beat but to tell the players like these guys

this team if they work together on a game it will feel a little bit like this. Then the other side is obviously the marketing beat, right? This only works, I feel, and maybe doesn't still work on PC, on console, like on mobile. Like you release a game and you tell them this is from creators of Candy Crush. They don't care. You didn't even name the name of the company. They they don't care.
I care. I care. You made My Little Pony for us.
When are you going to talk about your My Little Pony freetoplay game? I care.
Hey, I made Minions Paradise. All right. It's such a good game, but I think on um on PC it still matters a little bit from uh and console still matters from an equivalent. Uh it has its weight. But I think the more it's being used, it's dropping a bit and at the end of the day, even if you use it as a marketing beat, the players are going to play the game and decide for for themselves. Uh so it can create unrealistic expectations in some stuff. Like maybe for example for high guard it's a totally different game than Titanfall and maybe players expected another Titanfall and now they're

disappointed. I don't know that right now. So it's a very interesting question. Uh Chris
and it's an important question too and if I can just give you like this very quickly. A lot of it is branding. A lot of it is marketing. A lot of it is brand equity. So you everyone here I would call hardcore gamers. We are, I think, up the chain of what you would call hardcore gamers, but the money is in the casual gamers. And the casual gamers will know about may know about Call of Duty. They may know about Apex Legends. And if you're marketing a new game, you need something emotional to to hook them in. So, there's a val there's value. I'm not saying I agree with it, but there's value to why developers and marketers will do that. Yeah, it's a good point, too, because I, you know, when I would tell people I worked at Bungie, they'd be like, "Oh, Halo." And I'm like, bro, Bungie hasn't owned the Halo IP for how many years now? Like, they didn't think Destiny. You know, there were some people that of course thought Destiny, but the casual audience would always think about Halo. That's where the money is, man.
Yeah, that's that's an interesting that's an interesting thought.
But, but there's something I think that you that that there's an insight here

and it's something that I combined with something that um Gabe Leen, who's the founder of Machine Zone, pointed out, and he was on Twitter one day, and he was trying to figure out like who are the best game designers, right? And no one can answer that question because there's like 500 people that work on a game and you're not quite sure who is responsible for what. Like a director has a very singular point of view. Exactly. You know who Westes West Anderson is the brand. You know, Cojima is like the closest we can get. Cliffy B was there for a hot moment, but even he didn't have much of a brand, right? Like after he left Gears, I don't think anything he did I'd be like, "Oh man, that's a Cliffy B game." And so it's very hard to figure out in these organizations who's good and who's bad, who's responsible. I mean, we were going through this whole VC phase, right, of all these ex Riot, ex Blizzard people raising funds, and it's like, oh yeah, I was, you know, I was the QA manager. And not to take anything away from QA, but like, you know, that's different than being the creative director on a product. And I think it's very hard to figure that out. And I think I think we need to figure out how we can figure that out because it would benefit everyone to know who's responsible for what. And it's always not a clear site.

It never is in movies either, by the way. But I think that's just a labor problem that that remains to be solved. the fact we don't know who the best designers are outside of a couple broad voices like Ben Broad you know Mark Rosewater over at um you know at Wizards of the Coast I I you know Vince of course uh rest in peace good Vince I mean we didn't get a chance to talk about Vince last podcast and his legacy which I mean hopefully we'll get a chance to do that next cast fact let's do that next cast but I you know Vince going and starting Respawn I mean there was very clear straight line between Call of Duty Modern Warfare 4 and Titanfall I mean just straight line it's because he brought the whole [ __ ] studio with him to start Respawn. But I agree with you. Like, what is the lead designer of Red Dead Redemption mean? That doesn't mean [ __ ] Does it mean I'm getting a cowboy game with like a billion dollar budget and shark cards? I don't know.
Yeah, it's one person of like thousands of people. It is weird. I don't know. I think I just started to get I mean I mean I working in the industry, maybe I'm just more sensitive to it, but it is just kind of frustrating when we use these like ex you know this major game person. Like it feels like it takes away

from a lot of the the rest of the team. I don't know. It It bothers me a bit. Not only from a marketing perspective, but also just like a sentiment perspective.
Agreed. Okay. Shooter monthly episode 4 in the can. Boom. Boom. [ __ ] Woohoo. You did it. [music] You made it to the end of the episode. As a fan of the show, it would help us out if you'd subscribe and leave us a review on the podcast service of your choice. Those stars and likes, while a small action on your [music] part, mean a lot to us and help to grow the show. More importantly, are you a member of the Deconstructor of [music] Fun Slack group? If you have 5 years or more of games industry experience, go [music] to deconstructorof fun.com/slack and apply to join. Join the games [music] industry best professional community filled with peers always willing to lend a hand. Or subscribe to our newsletter to get all the latest insights [music] from the Deconstructor of Fun content creators. Thanks for listening.