Asymmetrical horror juggernaut Dead by Daylight has become bigger than ever with massive collaborations with film icons and a steady flow of content. While the game may seem “unstoppable” from the outside looking in, the team behind the game knows that they need to start addressing major issues.
Just like developer Arrowhead is doing with Helldivers 2, DBD creative director Dave Richard explains that Behaviour Interactive needs to find ways to make the multiplayer horror game “more accessible” as it continues to balloon in complexity.
Speaking to PCGamesN in a recent interview, Richard explained that the game is not “unstoppable” despite its continued success with new chapters. As the game releases its most complex killer yet, The Krasue, the team is deliberating where they can go next while also fixing some of the game’s core problems.
“After ten years of DBD, I would like to say that we are unstoppable,” the creative director told the outlet. “The team will find a solution to make [any idea] work, but we definitely do not have everything. We can still [widely] explore different types of Killers and different types of gameplay feeling that we can offer.”
While the team can design “infinite” types of killers, survivors and game modes, that doesn’t mean Jack if the game can’t continue to grow. As much as it may pain core players who already know everything, the onboarding process for a game that has been updated as much as Dead by Daylight needs to be clear or else face dwindling player numbers as newbies fail to latch on. For example, Bungie’s Destiny 2 has struggled with this very same problem to the point where player counts are now dire.
“We are aware that the game has grown in complexity,” Richard explained. “It is becoming dense and difficult to get into for new players, because there’s a lot of content you need to be aware of. And yeah, we know that this is becoming an issue – well, it’s already an issue. We want to review a lot of different things in the game to make it more accessible, more permeable, more porous, so that players can get the information they need, and that the team [at Behavior] can sustain it as well.”
However, this needs to be done without a major break as the diehards expect “every three months” that a new chapter where “new characters will be available and that there’s going to be new things to play with”.
Richard explained that some changes to the chapter release structure could happen as the team experiments more with events and other content. “But Killers are not going away, Survivors are not going away, perks are not going away, either. But they will definitely change in time to something that’s more accessible to our players.”
As a live service game, it’s always going to be complicated. Just like with the ongoing state of Diablo 4, there’s a lot at stake every update, and developer Behavior has done well to keep the torch burning for an entire decade. If the right decisions are made, maybe another decade is on the table.
