The sequel to the beloved, yet short-lived Splitgate has one major focus according to its CEO, which is “fun first” above all else.
While much of the conversation spoke of the developers’ approach tobalancing the meta, Proulx had a lot to say about the main focal point of the sequel compared to its predecessor. This time, fun came first throughout the design process:
“[O]ne of our design pillars is fun first and we emphasize that to everybody on the team. Like, this is important for the art team so that they’re designing to make a fun game, fun maps, not just like beautiful maps. And it’s to the design team and the level design team like hey, we’re trying to make fun maps, not just like super competitive maps to everybody.”
This was emphasized even further when Proulx spoke about the possibility of Splitgate 2 entering the Esports scene in the future and why it wasn’t a huge priority:
“[P]hilosophically, like, that’s not our top priority right now, like the top priority is fun first, we just want to make a fun game. And of course, it’s a PvP shooter so it lends itself well, and its got portals, it’s got a high skill ceiling, so we do think this will be a great Esport one day, but that’s not the focus, the focus is let’s make a fun game.”
While the Splitgate creator then mentioned how gaining feedback from competitive modes was more helpful than feedback from a fun, party mode, the idea of the game becoming an Esport wasn’t a part of the major pillars of this game’s design.
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“What we saw in Splitgate was, super fun game. People would come in, they loved it. They’d play for about three or four weeks.”
Players would drop off after playing for about a month, but then after that, they felt that they “experienced everything there is to experience, and the game hasn’t changed,” Proulx continued.
This meant that the sequel would hopefully have many more opportunities to push out exciting updates compared to the first game.
Anyka Pettigrew was a Games Writer on the US Dexerto team. She specializes in games such as Baldur’s Gate, Diablo, and Valorant, amongst other games in genres such as RPGs, horror games, and farming sims. She was previously a writer for PC Invasion after graduating with a Bachelor of Arts Honors degree.
