Sometimes a video game launch doesn't go as planned. Critical bugs, server issues, balance issues are all common issues that can ruin any developer's best-laid launch strategy. Splitgate 2This summer's release was much more dramatic. After the PR disaster at the Summer Game Fest, where 1047 Games founder Ian Proulx took to the stage “Let's Make FPS Great Again” Hat among ICE raids in the Los Angeles area around the showThe shooter sequel, released in June, received average reviews from both critics and fans. Just a month later 1047 “launched” the game and went back to the drawing board.
“It was ups and downs,” Proulx told Polygon five months later. “And I think the good news is that we're on the upswing now.”
Proulx has reason to be optimistic, even as he recovers from a disaster of his own making. Today, Splitgate 2 officially restart as Splitgate: Arena: Reloaded. The update hopes to return the shooter to its roots by cutting back on some of the sequel's twists and focusing on the core arena shooting that made Splitgate breakthrough hit. The battle royale mode is frozen for now. Factions disappeared altogether. It's just a good old portal first-person shooter.
Ahead of today's relaunch, Polygon spoke with Ian Proulx and design director Josh Watson (who previously served as game director on Rocket League) on Zoom about the very strange year of Splitgate. Can the shooter get a second chance after the infamous launch? There is hope for Proulx and Watson, but it will all depend on how much faith fans have left in 1047 Games after years of making unusual decisions.
75% of our company said: yes, we would prefer there were no factions in the game.
Splitgate has been a bit of a weird shooter for as long as Splitgate has been around. The series first appeared in early access in 2019. Splitgate: Arena Battlebut then it did not create much of a sensation. It won't have its breakthrough moment until it hits beta in 2021 because Splitgate. It became a multiplayer sensation at the time, prompting 1047 Games to expand the scope of its work and rework the game's visual presentation from the inside out. A few updates later, the studio announced that it would stop supporting the game with new updates and instead focus on a full sequel.
Three years later the studio reappeared with Splitgate 2. The sequel will shake up sales of the Halo-meets-Portal game by adding character factions (a la Halo Rich) and large-scale modes, including battle royale. While the surprise launch of the sequel in June immediately hit a snag due to Proulx's tone-deaf statement on Summer Games Festivalhis hat wasn't the main problem. Fans just weren't clicking Splitgate 2new features that took the emphasis off the main hook of shooting portals. They weren't alone; The game's own developers were also unhappy.
“We do a lot of surveys with our community. We also sometimes do them with our company,” Proulx said. “We asked the company, 'Do you think we should remove the fractions?' Would you like the game more? And I think 75% of our company said: yes, we would prefer not to have factions in the game. This was quite consistent with the community's opinion.”
“I came in after the game went into beta,” Watson added. “Even before I joined the team, I got to experience the game as a fan Splitgate and a fan of arena shooters. I had to see it from the outside. Many of the things players encountered were also my first impressions. A lot of this has to do with the basic expectations of what arena fighting should be like. And it comes down to the modes we choose, the time to kill, just the core gameplay around things like factions and abilities.”
It was clear that Splitgate 2 it needed a rethink, but trying to replicate the game with a live service in real time would be like performing heart surgery on a conscious patient. Pru decided to “launch” Splitgate 2keeping it online, but canceling all plans for live service in the future until the game returns in a new form. The solution came from layoffs at 1047 Games too, which had already released a small batch of developers even before the launch. The move drew its fair share of ridicule, especially after Pru's antics at the Summer Game Fest turned it into a slight punchline. The idea of launch was certainly troubling, but the game's community was more receptive to it than you might imagine.
“Obviously it was controversial,” Proulx said. “I think technically this has been done before, but not many times. We were certainly met with skepticism, but I think there were a lot of players who said this was the right decision. This game should have been a beta and they launched too early, and this game has a lot of strong parts, but there are also missing parts and unfinished parts. Looking back, we see that this is where we were. The players were right about it. So, although this and unconventional, it just felt like the right move given where we were.”
Even if the community agreed that it was the right move, it didn't necessarily mean 1047 Games could easily bring them back. The studio has already spent some of its goodwill on Splitgatetherefore, it will take a lot of effort to fix the shooter in a satisfactory manner.
“The first step was to look at and identify the problems,” Proulx said. “We came up with eight things that we wanted to improve on at a high level, based on community feedback, based on our own intuition, based on what we saw in the data. Just all the problems with this game: where does it fall short? And then let's put pen to paper. We did it as a company. We brainstormed as a company as a whole on these problems. What are the things that you want to see that you think will help solve these problems?”
These discussions led to some major changes in Splitgate: Arena: Reloaded. The most significant difference is that character factions have been completely removed from the game, despite the fact that they were originally the main selling point of the sequel. The 60-player Battle Royale mode is gone, as is the 24-player Rush mode. Both will return to Arena: Reboot Moving forward, Proulx said, but Watson said the team is focused on “what the players have told us is the core experience and making sure we get it right.”
Even with familiar features like the return of the map creator Arena: Reboot At launch, the team felt like they were releasing a completely new game. Community members who were aware of the reboot told 1047 Games that this was not entirely true. Splitgate 3but it was clearly not the same game that came out in June. This is what led to the complete name change that the first Splitgate game also received during its existence.
“Is this really Splitgate 2 still at this stage? Pru thought about it. “For us, the name change reflects, yes, it's a completely different experience, but we're not going to call it Splitgate 3. We just want to emphasize that this is different. We think it's much better, but we also wanted to emphasize that Arena is our top priority. Having that explicit in the game's title symbolizes where we are.”
As useful as a name change may be for rebranding a problematic product, it is just a small band-aid on a larger reputational wound. If players think you're a disaster, changing the narrative can be difficult. Games like Warner Bros. Multiverse learned this lesson the hard way as the fighting game failed to bring players back after going offline and restart in retooled form. Arena: Reboot could suffer the same fate, especially since his problems are still very fresh in players' rearview mirrors. But comeback stories are possible, and Watson understands this very well.
“We see the incredible work that teams like Hello Games have done with their community, or you look at things like Warframe and how they were able to create this incredible community around them,” Watson said. “These are inspiring teams, there is no doubt about that. What all these teams have in common is their complete dedication to their players and meeting their expectations. The path forward will always be clear to us. It feels like it will always be rooted in that.”
Watson is particularly keen to watch evolving views on live-streamed games. He worked with Psyonix for almost ten years, overseeing the studio's hit success. Rocket League took several forms during its heyday. Watson says there are a lot of similarities between 1047 Games and Psyonix in the way the studios operate, which has helped him naturally apply some of the lessons to the new team.
“One of the things that helped me in joining the team is that Rocket League “It's such a beast of a machine,” Watson said. “We've learned over the years a lot of processes and hard-learned lessons that you can bring to the team and hopefully be able to give them that knowledge without us having to deal with those problems ourselves… Let's look at the package Splitgate 2 and try to bring it back to what we consider basic. We often did this in Rocket League. What's happened Rocket League? Over time this started to expand and I think this game is a perfect example of that. Essentially, what does Splitgate do and how do we sharpen it and make it the best version of itself?”
I hope I never need to run Splitgate 3and this will be the last for many years to come.
There are desires, but Arena: RebootSuccess will depend directly on whether 1047 Games can regain the trust of its community. Proulx and Watson say they're committed to this, reading every comment they can find on Discord, Reddit and social media platforms – even if it means taking the harshest criticism.
“I don’t think you can put your head down,” Proulx said. “You just have to learn to embrace it and go online and listen to your players. Even if they tell you things you don't want to hear, you have to listen. You just have to build trust over time. If you make a great game and listen to your community, I like to think that it works… We hope the players appreciate the hard work the team put into this and that we've had these difficult conversations. We listened to our community and we're going to continue to do that.”
We'll soon find out if the work 1047 Games has been doing behind the scenes over the past few months is enough. After everything Splitgate: Arena: Reloaded enters a much more saturated shooter market than Splitgate 2 did it in June. Now he competes with Call of Duty: Black Ops 7, Battlefield 6and the phenomenon of multiplayer gaming Arc Raiders. (Recently announced Highgard is also just around the corner in January.) There is a real possibility that 1047 Games has already burned the last vestiges of its goodwill and that Arena: Reboot will be pronounced dead on arrival. No matter which way it happens, you can be sure of one thing: Splitgate 3 won't happen anytime soon.
“Every time you release an update or launch a product, you learn something. And we learned a lot,” Proulx said. “I definitely feel more prepared if I have to run Splitgate 3but hopefully I'll never need to run Splitgate 3and this will be the last for many years.”
