The Implications of Stop Killing Games’ Victory: Insights from Anthem, SpaceCraft, and Warframe Developers on Reverse Engineering Always-Online Games
Sci-fantasy shooter Warframe is the sexy cyborg fruit of 13 years of updates and expansions, encompassing scores upon scores of quests, areas, plotlines, systems and characters, together with a huge quantity of player-made art. Much of Warframe’s original design still exists within the game, however tweaked and refreshed: the developers have removed a few larger chunks, including the underloved PvP raids, but they’ve mostly sought to polish up aspects that have lost their lustre, while playing out stories that range from spacey self-referentiality to commentary on indentured work. Currently, the studio are reworking Banshee, a sonic avenger who formed part of the Warframe launch roster way back in 2013.
“I know the Warframe team has been talking about bringing back raids, and doing stuff with that,” the game’s original design director Scott McGregor told me, at this year’s Tennocon expo. “But overall, there’s a lot of stuff from Warframe that’s been in there for a long, long time. For better or for worse. I think, as a team, instead of mostly turning it off, we either improve it, or we replace it with something better.”