Later last month, Mega Publisher EA fired 300 workers. This includes around 100 people from the developer Respawn. Founded by former Duty Developers Cole, the studio was responsible for Apex Legends and Star Wars Jedi Games, and reportedly worked on the third game in the beloved Titanfall series before the staff roster was cut. The cancelled rumours suggest that this Titanfall project is an extraction shooter. But the extract shooter set in the legendary world of Titanfall and Apex could have been a ticket to the genre to the big leagues. Without EA, who would bring “Talkov-like” into the mainstream beyond that enthusiastic niche? The answer may be just a few months away.
“As part of a continuing focus on long-term strategic priorities, we made changes to our choices to align our teams more effectively within our organization and allocate resources to drive future growth,” an sentiment that employees have heard before. The move includes downsizing rashes for other segments of EA’s portfolio, including developers’ Codemaster and Bioware, and 670 company-wide employees, which became more common in March last year. This trend has accused many of us of unsustainable state of the gaming industry and seeking unionization.
But what about the rumored Titanfall extraction shooter? Naturally, many fans are disappointed by the obvious cancellation. The presence of the new Titanfall Game (and lack of public appearance) has become a joke in recent years. Additionally, rumors about a new extraction shooter from Triple-A studios have highlighted the style of the game that has struggled to attract significant audiences. And more people are debating the potential of genres that are in their early stages, whether or not the cancelled respawn title was actually a extract shooter.
“This is a genre of enthusiasts that has not been significantly divided into mass market players so far,” says Matt Piscaterra, Circana’s video game industry advisor.
Last month, developer Bungie finally revealed gameplay footage from the marathon. This is a extract shooter that predicts that Marathon, the upcoming extract shooter, will start mainstream. It’s a game that has already been accused of being a hottie and charming arts asset. But there are ethical issues with marathon production, but the reaction to the game itself after the press has become practical, seems almost positive. Perhaps this is something you’d expect from studios that have a reputation for great first-person shooter experiences like Halo and Destiny. However, coming in September, the marathons depart to a very different market, with the extraction shooter being a relatively untested genre. Are pedigree and tight FPS design enough to make the game a success? Analysts say: Probably.
“If you bet on a developer who can bring this genre to the mass market, it’s going to be bungee,” Piscaterra says.
For those unfamiliar, the extraction shooter tends to consist of a combination of player-player and player-environment gameplay loops. A small team of players is dropped into the world, where they fight against AI enemies and sometimes other players’ management teams, reaching goals, gathering resources, and fleeing the map. This genre was popular from escape. Tarkov is an incredibly ruthless take on the formula, featuring a high-risk, highly-rewarded shootout that has attracted a respectable audience during the Covid-19 lockdown.
Since then, many other developers have tried their hand in this genre with varying degrees of success. One of the most notable is last year’s Helldivers 2, developed by Arrowhead Game Studios and published by Sony. It has become a standout among habitual shooters, and therefore leaning heavily towards habit shooting, community engagement and in-game events. Also, perhaps most importantly, it is only cooperatives, and there are no tense PVP encounters that make games like escape from Tarkov very challenging. According to Piscatella data, Helldivers 2 was the eighth highest game on Steam in April and ranked 34th on the PlayStation.
“Helldivers 2 is an outlier success among this group,” explains Piscatella. “In April, around 9% of US active steam users played Helldivers 2, while around 3% of PS5 players engaged in the game at least once. They never reached more than 2.3% of active players on the platform on which that particular game is being played.”
It is immediately clear that these statistics are small when compared to popular genres like Battle Royale and Multiplayer FPS games. The owners of very popular PlayStation like Helldivers 2 have gained much larger audiences, with mainstream being Fortnite, Call of Duty and EA’s FC. However, Piscatella quickly points out that extraction shooters are a burgeoning genre with so many possibilities, facing the same challenges as other early genres.
“When one game does, it often gets bigger in genres,” he says. “The dance/music genre was a rather small niche until guitar heroes appeared. Console FPS games were not usually sold very well until Hello. MMOS made up a relatively small part of the market until World of Warcraft became the world’s largest.
Other popular games in the Extract Shooter genre include Deep Rock Galactic, Hunt: Showdown 1896, and Delta Force. The latter is a free-to-play title released late last year and has been steadily popular over the past few months. At the time of this writing, there are around 135,000 players at the peak. This is a respectable number, but there is no near the numbers placed consistently by the Battle Royale genre and its Titan. Let’s face it. Executives are exhibiting a fixed amount of tunnel vision chasing high monetization bars set by Fortnites, Warzones and Pubgs around the world.
There is a debate that this kind of fixation leads to some degree of creative stagnation in the development space, and studio heads are unable to get opportunities for unproven genres such as extraction shooters (perhaps Call of Duty’s attempts convey that it is not supported. In that way, the marathon represents the first important triple-A effort to bring this genre to the masses, and you’ll need all the help it gets along the way.
“Bungie, the developer, certainly doesn’t guarantee a successful marathon,” says Piscatella. “To break through (it) it certainly helps if the game can beat the genre’s dedicated fans and defend the game between family and friends.”
Beyond word-of-mouth, Bungee needs to ensure smooth onboarding for future players. In particular, converting core players familiar with first-person shooters could potentially appear in Bungie’s deployment strategies, but all long-term retention is summed up in gameplay.
“The marathon will help those familiar with big FPS titles like Call of Duty to have a ramping pass for those who help in the initiation of trials and conversion,” explains Piscaterra. “We also need to nail the whole ‘easy to pick up and hard to master’ tricks that many mass market hits can pull apart. ”
In reality, these are all the same issues facing new titles, and the market is the real decision-maker of success or failure, and as Piscatella points out, it is very unwelcome.
“It’s a very whimsical market at the moment. People have their favorite long-time games that are constantly updated, familiar and have important social and financial hooks. Many of these titles are accessible for free without a prepaid purchase price.
Despite the whimsical market, the biggest challenge facing marathons is the untested nature of the entire genre of extraction shooters. While Escape from the Escape enjoys praise, the game has benefited from viewers bulging by the pandemic lockdown and from a gameplay loop that appealed to the core gamer segment. Since the titles afterwards only saw intermediate performances (Helldivers 2 is an outlier), it’s easy to understand why the studio remains silent about dedicating important resources to such projects, especially when the Battle Royale genre proves its advantage.
In that way, marathons should prove to be a useful litmus test for other industries. It’s amazing to see a Bungee-like studio all-in in this environment with a extraction shooter. If you receive a strong reception, you can expect other developers and publishers to take the lead. Of course, there are many factors to explain – things like monetization and market trends – and no one can predict how things will unfold. But Bungee certainly has the influence and design chops to make something special. And to shoot the genre of extraction shooters from the niche to the mainstream, there’s something special to take. Coming in September, we can be sure the industry is eager to watch the launch of the marathon.
