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'That's one thing I learned for sure: players always want more.'
In many respects, portal-infused shooter Splitgate was an irrefutable success. The freemium title surpassed 13 million downloads when it was still in open beta and delivered an all-time peak of around 68,000 concurrent players on Steam roughly three years ago.
As interest in the project surged, developer 1047 Games secured over $100 million in funding via an investment that valued the studio at $1.5 billion. The company openly admitted that Splitgate "achieved a level of success that we could not have anticipated and that few indie games are fortunate to reach."
That acknowledgement, however, was bundled into a statement that confirmed the studio would no longer be supporting the shooter. Why? It had simply become too successful, too quickly. "We are, in a way, bailing water while also trying to keep everyone who bought a ticket to board our ship happy, while also trying to turn our boat into a rocket ship," added the company, back in 2022.
At the time, 1047 Games said it was saying "see you soon" to the title rather than "farewell." Now, the company has returned with Splitgate 2, a full-blooded sequel that features a new faction system, four versus four gameplay, and (quite naturally) loads of bloody portals.
Speaking to Game Developer about how 1047 Games will ensure the sequel can go the distance, studio founder, CEO, and Splitgate 2 creative director Ian Proulx says the company is now fully aware that "content is king."
"I want [Splitgate 2] to be a game that people are playing in 10 years from now, on a much larger scale of course," says Proulx. "I think we had 200,000 concurrent players in Splitgate at our peak. Success to me would be more than that—and more than that in years from now."
Proulx feels there wasn't a lot the studio could have done to sustain the original title because it ran out of runway. "We didn't have the resources [to support Splitgate]. We didn't have the tech," he says. "Our thought was 'we're going to have a bump in players. We're going to have have slow and steady growth over time.'
"Even if we knew [that wasn't going to be the case], there wasn't a whole lot we could have done about it. We were a very tiny team [of under 20 people]. So we were just fighting to keep the lights on with Splitgate."
To avoid a repeat, Proulx has been "obsessing" over what goes into delivering a "world class" live ops experience. The key, he feels, is making sure 1047 Games is ahead of the curve when launch day arrives. "[We have to be] ready technically, in terms of the servers. But also we need to be ready from a content perspective and make sure we have plenty of stuff to come," he continues.
We ask Proulx about his admission that developing Splitgate was akin to bailing water out of a sinking ship. Elaborating, he explains 1047 Games struggled to convince Splitgate players to stick around for more than a month—piling more pressure on a team that was already gasping for breath. The interest was there, but players didn't have a reason to properly engage with the shooter.
"Content is king," says Proulx. "That's one thing I learned for sure: players always want more. I'll put it this way: in Splitgate we saw players come in and play for around three to four weeks—and they'd have an amazing time and leave a good review—but after [that period] most players would run out of things to do.
"It took us around seven months to deliver a new season that had content. The way I'm looking at it this time is, step one, I need to make sure that Splitgate 2 has enough content. Instead of three to four weeks being a typical play pattern, I need to extend that. Hopefully, to six, eight, twelve, twenty, thirty weeks. Whatever it is—I need that to be longer.
"That's to give the team more time [to develop new content]. Then, by the time that number hits—because inevitably, it doesn't matter if you have the best game on the planet—by the time that happens we need to have delivered a major content update."
Proulx explains the development team is putting a lot of "care" into how it defines small updates, medium updates, and large updates. He says those varying additions will provide a sense of momentum and notes a small update might be a "featured game" while a medium update could be a "new map." He envisions larger updates as full-blown seasons, but reiterates the team is still figuring out the details.
On a technical level, Proulx is adamant Splitgate 2 must be infinitely more scalable than its forebear, and says 1047 Games now has the personnel to make that happen. "Once we did get the funding [for Splitgate], it forced us to think 'wow, there's a lot we could do if we could do it all over again,'" he says, comparing the original to a "school project" that was pushed beyond its limitations.
"[We thought] wouldn't it be nice to redo these things? Wouldn't it be nice to redo the code and make it more scalable. And when I say scalable—I mean scalable both in terms of handling more players but also in having more people work on it. Our code base in Splitgate was fine for 20 people to work on, but with 175 people it was very easy to step on each other's toes. So, we restructured a lot of the code so that if somebody's working on a gun, for example, they don't break a character.
"We thought about the [prospect of a redo] very early on, but ultimately said 'that's not a good idea because we're still learning a ton. We've got a big playerbase. People love this thing. We've got to keep doing this.' I'm a big believer in 'you've got to be a student of the game,' but just over year [later] we made the decision that it was time to move on. At that point, we felt like we'd made everything we needed to learn to make the game of our dreams."
Proulx expects to remain a student following the launch of Splitgate 2 in 2025, but explains 1047 now has the ability and foresight to adapt more effectively. "We have a plan—and by the way, the plan is totally bogus and is absolutely going to change. But at least we have an approximate plan that is good on paper. We have the resources to build towards [that], but we've structured it in a way so there's not a lot of red tape," he continues.
"We know the second we launch we're going to learn a bunch and that plan is going out the window. That's part of the [learning curve]. Another part is having content in your back pocket, so if there are fires of any kind we'll be ahead of schedule instead of always playing catch up. We also have redundancy on the team itself, so if somebody gets hit by a bus we've got a number two in place."
1047 Games has already enlisted the help of outsourcing partners, who aren't doing much yet but can provide assistance if (or perhaps when) things kick into overdrive. Proulx says those structures have been put in place because he's an out-and-out optimist that feels you need to plan for success.
"[I ask] 'what will happen in the best case scenario?'" he says. "I'm very confident in the game. We're giving [our outsourcing partners] a little bit of everything [across art, animation, and audio] so that if and when this game takes off, we've already got the contract. We've got the relationship, and now we just crank it out."
Proulx's sense of optimism extends to the wider game industry. When asked how developers can thrive in an environment that seems ready to crush all but the biggest success stories, he suggests adversity is an opportunity for growth. "I think we're a couple of years away from coming out of this [situation]," he says. "There's definitely a hole that has been dug and an overcorrection, [but] I'm still an optimist. I think you're going to see a lot of very cool games being announced.
"I think we're going to see more hits. The best companies are going to come out of the dark times, because they're the ones who face adversity and keep going, just like we have. Those are going to be the ones who learn the most—to find a way to win when it's difficult. If they get through this, when things bounce back they're going to do an amazing job."
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