Maybe there’s even a bit of us vs. them, because market saturation has made the fight for an active playerbase so cutthroat, people don’t want to see a competing title risk siphoning players away from their preferred game.

This is a really good point, I’ve definitely felt this way over the years.

You’re not wrong about the state of live service games, but this definitely isn’t why they are getting review bombed. That’s happening because the gamer mob are a pack of fickle mush-heads that will randomly get outraged by total non-issues with no regard for the facts.

I mean, the mechanics of Highguard are unique, as far as I’m aware. They’re a mashup of a lot of other games but done in an interesting and new way.

Like, I have no idea whether it’s good or not, but they are trying to do something different.

I call this the Jersey Shore Effect. Something starts out as an object of ridicule but through media saturation people are exposed to it so much, for so long, that it becomes normalised and then aspirational, purely through conditioning; it’s in people’s brain all the time so at some point they decide they like it.

It’s the same way that music worked back in the days of radio: play something enough and undiscerning people just start liking it, because its in their head all the time.