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In case you’ve not been keeping tabs on the live service space in recent years, it’s a bloodbath. A feast or famine venture where developers can either bring home some serious crash (see Helldivers 2), or drown in tumultuous waters like the recently released and often mocked Concord. For every game that succeeds, there are three that do okay, and five that fail. Heading into this space once is risky, but to go again following a failed first attempt? An act of bravery, or perhaps of financial masochism.
This is the position of Sharkmob, a studio founded by various industry professionals including many of the big names behind The Division and Hitman series. A few years ago, the Swedish office presented the world with Vampire the Masquerade: Bloodhunt. An ambitious 3rd-person battle royale, the game placed heavy emphasis on verticality and various distinct vampire powers that set it apart from its peers. The game would cease development just over a year from its release. Now they are back with Exoborne, a sci-fi extraction shooter which clearly has lots of the bones of Bloodhunt transplanted in, alongside some fresh ideas and a neat extreme weather component.
This year at Gamescom, I was able to see a hands-off gameplay demo fro Exoborne alongside other members of the press. The game seemed entertaining enough, hitting all the markers of a good extraction shooter. That weather system offers opportunity for quick movement across the map for smart players, as well as a strong force that pushes players from stationary playstyles. But as good as it looks, the shadow of Bloodhunt looms large. That’s why I asked CMCO and narrative director at Sharkmob Martin Hultberg what the team learned from their first attempt.
“Bloodhunt was a game we all loved, but like you said it sadly didn’t really work out in the long run” states Hultberg, “It’s a very competitive industry, and online games is definitely one of the more competitive spaces. Personally, I think we learned a lot about how to run a live game from doing Bloodhunt. We learned a lot about producing content in a live environment, how to keep a community engaged… So we’re taking all of those learnings, applying them where we can.”
But in reality it’s never really truly just about the game, it’s also everything else going on around it. I’m sure you could look at many games and think about the challenges they had and whatever. But to us, it was lots of lessons to learn. Like the level of community engagement and engaging early! What we’re doing with all these tests so we can respond early, at a stage where we’re already fully committed to development.”
One of the biggest faults with Bloodhunt was content rollout. Sharkmob was working on several seasons at a time, but in terms of what new stuff players could mess around with on a month-by-month basis, it left many wanting. As such I asked about longevity, and what plans there were to ensure Exoborne would keep players around Hultberg provided a glimpse into their plans, and changes from Bloodhunt’s attempt.
“Those are one of the details we’re not talking about right now, but this is a live game and there will be content drops post-release. We have a road-map internally around that, and we’re looking at ways of setting that up. That was also one of the lessons with Bloodhunt – how do you plan that content so you have a sustainable pace for your time. And more – well not more importantly – but as importantly is how to get the community content in a timely fashion. Those two are very hard to marry. But it’s a bit about how you roll the content out, and how you can package your updates. That’s something we’ve looked at a lot – how we can get content without relying on once-a-month big updates. That’s not typically sustainable.”
It’s worth noting one of the more significant changes in strategy this time around – a shift to a premium model. Bloodhunt was free-to-play, and given that the game didn’t quite gain the popularity people hoped for. Exoborne will be a premium game, sold for an upfront price. What price is not up for conversation right now, but given the recent situation around Concord there’s a real debate around whether or not this is a good move or not. Hultberg provided several merits for the approach.
“I’m going to talk about my perspective – there are probably good arguments as well from other developers. There are a couple of reasons. One, what we discovered from Bloodhunt was that Bloodhunt was a free-to-play game. That made it ripe for cheaters. You could ban someone and they’d come back again and again and again. If it’s premium then you have to pay a bit to get it, so if we ban you it hurts. So you lose a lot of cheaters being premium.
Hultberg continued, “Another reason is of course that to be able to sustain development you need cash flow. Free-to-play is cool, it’s great in many ways, but it’s hard to recoup that initial cost with that business model. That’s why we’re going premium – in the end it brings money back to the game dev to create content, it helps with cheating, it’s also a space we’re most used to working with. Almost everyone from our studio comes from a premium game background – making free-to-play games requires a specific skillset, and you have to build that over time.”
I did ask about what the sweet spot for pricing this kind of game, especially when there are free-to-play alternatives already out there. Hultberg was tight lipped, but nonetheless gave an answer.
“I don’t feel comfortable speculating on that, it’s not my forte. But you’re right, it’s something you need to look at because the competition is very fierce, and there are lots of very good free-to-play games working well, as well as premium games that charge standard pricing or some mid-range pricing, whatever. Like you said, it’s about finding that sweet spot.”
We’ve still got a while to go until Exoborne is playable for the average gamer. It’s currently going through closed beta tests, and it’s through these tests that the team at Sharkmob hope the public product will appeal to a vast crowd of eager players. Time will be the test of it, obviously, but it’s reassuring to hear that lessons from the last attempt have been taken to heart. That’s all you can really do, isn’t it? In game development, and life. What a thoughtful way to end an article about a video game with wicked tornadoes!