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The story of Splitgate – an arena shooter that mixes the best parts of Halo and Portal – has been an interesting one. After spending two years in Early Access with sometimes less than 1,000 concurrent players, the game has exploded on Steam’s list of best free games in recent weeks and now has an average of tens of thousands of players with some 10 million. downloads in July alone. .
These numbers are a huge accomplishment for the 10-person team at developer 1047 Games – but, according to team co-founder and CEO Ian Proulx, it’s only just getting started.
Earlier this week, in a series of interviews with TechCrunch and GamesBeat, Proulx explained where the game is heading, how far it is already, and what the company is going to do with the $ 100 million it comes with. to receive investors.
Here’s what you can look forward to.
Splitgate is essentially Halo and Portal… and Rocket League
While Splitgate borrows seasonality from games like Apex Legends and Fortnite, it plays as a combination of Portal and Halo. You’ll find near-exact replicas of weapons from Bungie’s famous first-person shooter scattered around the map (yes, there’s both a combat rifle and an extremely powerful pistol) but to browse the map you’ll use portals and a rocket-powered Double Jump.
On the surface and in practice, the results are quite spectacular.
According to Proulx, however, these games weren’t the only inspirations for Splitgate. In the interview, Proulx describes taking the free-to-play model like Rocket League and wrapping it around Splitgate. Instead of offering better additional weapons and gear like Call of Duty, the only extras are cosmetic skins that don’t impact gameplay. It’s fair from day one – and it stays that way for the duration of the game.
Free-to-play players can still earn cosmetic gear by completing daily missions and ranking in occasional matches. You might not get this golden armor on day one, but the fact that it can be earned with enough matches is appealing enough to keep players coming back.
Season zero is just the start (obviously)
Currently the game is in its season zero. Some players have been playing since Early Access and have a little advantage, but most of the people who come in now all start around the same time with the same experience.
The game has over a dozen cards counting its sterilized arena spaces that are only used for competitive matches, although you will likely be playing the same five or six of the more popular cards in the casual game where everyone else is playing. world can vote on the chosen map. .
This is all pretty impressive considering that Splitgate only has about ten full-time developers working there. That will all change when that $ 100 million is invested.
“The reach of what we can do now is through the roof,” Proulx said in the interview. “There are so many things we couldn’t think of because we were a small team on a tight budget, but now it’s all on the table. We are focusing on the long term – I consider the game 25% over. We don’t need to be Fortnite tomorrow, but now it’s really about building the next Riot Games, the next big games company.
According to Proulx’s interview with Dean Takahashi of GamesBeat, some of this funding will be used to hire artists to produce skins, characters and maps, as well as other game designers to create new game modes.
But can it go hand in hand with Halo Infinite and Call of Duty Vanguard?
One of the most telling points from Proulx’s interview was when he explained why Splitgate succeeds in a crowded market: “Nobody moved the needle because there wasn’t a lot of innovation, and there is accessible to the masses. Quake Arena is great, but it’s extremely difficult. No 12-year-old Fortnite kid is going to play it. We are really filling that void.
It’s an interesting look – and explains how Proulx sees Splitgate fit into the current crop of first-person shooters – but this holiday season alone, we’re going to see a ton of games that can be found in or next to it. The arena shooting space that Splitgate occupies.
One of the biggest of these games, Call of Duty: Vanguard, a WWII shooter, will be released in early November and will come with updates for its free-to-play counterpart Warzone, soon to be followed by Halo Infinite which will be released in early December. Both games offer a similar frenetic pace and high skill cap that fans love about Splitgate, but in a more familiar package.
Further on the horizon is Overwatch 2 – a hero shooter that has an incredible amount of hype behind it – the next expansion for Rainbow Six Extraction and Destiny 2, which only adds to the vast reserve of shooters available to play.
How Splitgate grows and evolves to counter these games and make a name for itself will be interesting to watch – but with its newly won financial backing, we hope it finds a way to thrive among the seasoned staples of the genre.
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