Digital Extreme’s popular free-to-play looter shooter Warframe is currently experiencing a state of “massive growth”, reveals studio president Sheldon Carter.
After Bungie’s move to put Destiny 2 on life support, Warframe is currently on its lonesome in a genre teeming with fans looking for new content. While Digital Extremes employees have expressed upset at Bungie’s decision to abandon Destiny, the move is seemingly working out well for Warframe.
In an interview with The Game Business, Carter explained that the original Destiny’s launch “really hit us”, pushing the team to “aggressively” compete for Warframe’s first few years. Digital Extremes saw Destiny and its sequel as a worthy rival, and both games learned from each other.
“At out studio, it was kind of a bit of mourning when they released that news [of ending],” he said. “The mood in our studio was pretty dour because of all the connections you end up having.”
Carter explained that the start of development for Soulframe came as they believed Warframe had hit its peak. However, every time something bad happened for Destiny, such as a poor update or expansion, it resulted in growth for Warframe, and the end of Destiny 2 is resulting in even more players jumping ion board.
“We changed our focus on how we were developing the game, how we were promoting the game,” Carter said. “And now we’ve had a few years of straight, just massive growth … Now we’re in this happy position where Warframe’s really thriving, and that gives us the ability to give Soulframe a ton of rope [and] time to really try stuff out and connect.”
While Warframe is currently bigger than ever, especially now, Carter explained that the team is still working hard on Soulframe. Currently in private testing, Carter says that Digital Extremes is “relearning” aspects of early development that have been forgotten so many years into Warframe as they work to flesh out the successor with heaps of content for launch.
“That’s been the journey of Soulframe—relearning a few of the things that we forgot after so many years, but at the same time using that core [audience], which is just establishing communication, building trust with the audience, and taking our time to get it to a point where we feel like there’s enough content, enough story, enough gameplay that when we release it to a wider audience, um it’s going to have its core,” he said.
Right now, there’s no release date for Soulframe, but Warframe is still available as a free-to-play experience on pretty much everything, even the original Nintendo Switch and your phone. It’s an absolutely immense game, and heaps of fun.
