If you haven’t been paying attention to the live service space in recent years, it’s a bloodbath. It’s a feast or famine venture where developers can either have serious crashes (see Helldivers 2 ) or drown in the turbulent waters like the recently released and often-mocked Concord . For every game that succeeds, there are three that are okay and five that fail. Entering this space once is risky, but re-entering after a failed first attempt? It’s either a brave move, or perhaps financial masochism.
This is the position of Sharkmob, a studio founded by a variety of industry professionals, including many of the luminaries of The Division and the Hitman series. A few years ago, the Swedish office introduced the world to Vampire the Masquerade: Bloodhunt, an ambitious third-person battle royale game that set itself apart from the rest by emphasizing verticality and a variety of vampire abilities. The game was discontinued less than a year after its release. Now they’re back with Exoborne, a sci-fi extraction shooter that’s built on the bones of Bloodhunt, with fresh ideas and a cool extreme weather component.
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At Gamescom this year, I was able to get a hands-on gameplay demo of Exoborne with other journalists. The game looked fun enough, and had all the hallmarks of a good escape shooter. Its weather system offers smart players the opportunity to move quickly across the map, and it’s a powerful force that pushes players out of their fixed playstyle. But no matter how good it looks, the shadow of Bloodhunt looms large. So I asked CMCO and Sharkmob’s narrative director Martin Hultberg what the team learned from their first attempt.
“Bloodhunt was a game that we all loved, but as you said, it didn’t work out well in the long run, unfortunately,” Hultberg said. “It’s a very competitive industry, and online gaming is definitely one of the most competitive. Personally, I think I learned a lot about how to run a live game from working on Bloodhunt. I learned a lot about how to create content in a live environment, how to keep the community engaged… So we’re applying all of those learnings.”
But it’s not really about the game itself, it’s about everything that’s happening around the game. You can look at a lot of games and think about the challenges they’ve had and everything else. But there were a lot of lessons for us to learn, like the level of community engagement and early engagement! It’s from the stage when we’re already fully committed to development that we’re able to react early with all this testing.”
One of the biggest drawbacks of Bloodhunt was the content release. Sharkmob had multiple seasons going at once, but many people didn’t want to see something new for players to touch each month. So I asked about longevity, and what Exoborne plans are for keeping players around. Hultberg gave us a glimpse into their plans and what’s changed in Bloodhunt’s attempt.
“One of the details we’re not talking about right now, but this is a live game and there will be content drops post-launch. We have a roadmap for that internally and are exploring how to set that up. That was also one of the lessons we learned from Bloodhunt: how do we plan out content to maintain a sustainable pace? And more importantly, how do we deliver community content in a timely manner? Those are two things that are very hard to combine. But it’s about how we release content and how we package our updates. That’s something we’ve looked at a lot: how do we deliver content without relying on one big update every month. That’s generally not sustainable.”
One of the most significant changes in strategy this time around is the move to a freemium model. Bloodhunt was free-to-play, and given that the game didn’t catch on as well as people had hoped, Exoborne will be sold as a freemium game with an up-front price. Pricing isn’t something we can discuss right now, but given the recent events surrounding Concord, there’s a real debate about whether this is a good move or not. Hultberg offered some pros to this approach.
“I’m going to talk about my perspective. Other developers might have good arguments. There are a few reasons. First, what we found with Bloodhunt is that Bloodhunt is a free-to-play game. That’s why it’s easy for cheaters to come in. If you ban someone, they keep coming back. If it’s premium, you have to pay a little bit to get it, so if we ban you, we lose. So it’s premium, and you lose a lot of cheaters.
“The other reason, of course, is that we need cash flow to continue development,” Hultberg added. “Free-to-play is cool and great in many ways, but it’s hard to recoup our initial costs with that business model. That’s why we go premium. Ultimately, it gives game developers back the money they need to make content, it helps prevent cheating, and it’s something we’re most familiar with. Almost everyone in our studio comes from a freemium gaming background. It takes a certain skill set to make free-to-play games, and you build that over time.”
I asked Hultberg what the right price point would be for a game like this, especially when there are already free-to-play alternatives. Hultberg was tight-lipped, but he did give an answer.
“I’m not comfortable speculating on that. It’s not my strong suit. But you’re right. There’s a lot of competition, and there are a lot of really good free-to-play games that are doing well, and there are also premium games that are standard-priced or mid-priced, so it’s something to look at. As you said, it’s about finding that sweet spot.”
Exoborne is still some time away from being playable by the general public. It is currently in closed beta testing, and the team at Sharkmob hope that this testing will help the public product appeal to a large and dedicated audience. Time will tell, but it is reassuring to hear that you have taken the lessons learned from your last attempt to heart. Isn’t that all you can do? In game development and in life. What a thoughtful way to end an article about video games with a wicked tornado!