All developers wish for the kind of reception Wardogs is enjoying right now. The FPS exploded onto Steam early access just shy of two weeks ago, attracting hundreds of thousands of players. Good innings, but they come with the drawback of a lot of pressure and demand on the devs for the game’s future.
Joe Brammer, the executive director on Wardogs and CEO of developer Bulkhead, spoke to us about the mountain that now lays before his team in sustaining the shooter. “We weren’t making it for this size audience,” he tells GamesRadar+, candidly. “It just so happens that a lot of the audience seem to agree with our way of thinking right now, and what they want to see in an FPS game. We’re really happy about that, but would have been happy with less, right?”
He openly admits Bulkhead isn’t going to be able to please everyone here, because the developers have to pick their battles in keeping turnover efficient, especially in terms of bringing 1.0 into view. “We managed our expectations and other people’s expectations,” he adds.
“We’re not going to have enough content for people, and we’re not going to be able to keep up with the demand,” he admits. “That’s going to happen, but that doesn’t mean people won’t have a lot of fun, and then we’ll deliver a great 1.0, and that’s where our focus really is. It’s growing the game for the 1.0 launch on console.”
The pragmatism is encouraging. He’s likely right that a certain amount of the community will fall away in the months ahead if the cadence of changes and additions isn’t to their liking, but there’s an element of that for every popular game.
Arc Raiders suffered the same thing – peaking early, before settling into a smaller but no less dedicated community. That Bulkhead is anticipating this and has already accepted it is good, it’ll make the road to 1.0 that much easier.
Brammer’s already mentioned that balancing updates are high on the to-do list. I suspect there’ll be plenty of tweaking in that area before people are happy, at least for the moment.