![]() Rather, they would prefer a more organic process whereby “a friend disappears and you wonder where they are. It is also a commitment to let the game speak for itself that has stopped Grinding Gear from embarking on refer-a-friend programs and similar marketing techniques to attract players. “Eventually the inevitability worked and it passed a quality threshold where people were willing to tell their friends,” says Wilson. This slow-burn was frustrating, but the belief in the core product remained resolute. “Now 2,000 people is nice, but nowadays you get that by just tweeting something,” says Wilson. Though the alpha period had generated an engaged community, building beyond that was a struggle with a traditional press tour resulting in positive plaudits and feedback, but only 2,000 additional people hitting the forums. Given all this work, it shouldn’t be too much of a surprise that it took until 2013 before the game was officially in full release. Wilson also revealed that it’s only this year that the team has investigated middleware options to help with new features like adding video into the game.Ībove: Maps built using the procedural generation system ensures a different experience every time. So, we looked at how other games architected and came up with a hybrid that we would build,” says Wilson.Īs a result, every system was custom built for the requirements of this game. ![]() We needed the game to support tens of thousands of players online simultaneously. “At the time, there were no off-the-shelf online game back ends that you could just purchase. For the Grinding Gear team, there were no shortcuts. And we already have players who are entering their sixth year, so that’s working well,” says Wilson.Īs developers everywhere know, building technology while you’re building a game is far from easy. “We want people to play the game for ten years. These pieces would lead to an important goal. In addition, staples of the genre like visceral combat that was also responsive and, as Wilson described, “punchy,” were the kind of standards that the Diablo crowd would both recognize and feel was core to their enjoyment. “It’s important for replayability that the levels are procedurally generated so that when you play through, it feels different,” says Wilson. The next pillar dealt with requiring random levels and items to help retain players for the long haul. ![]() These games thrive on the fact that they have items that are incredibly hard to obtain online, and players are willing to spend a long time to attain them,” says Wilson.Ībove: Building a game with an absorbing item economy was key to Path of Exile’s design and success. “We knew to be successful it had to be an online game and that items had to be stored on the servers. ![]() “We knew it was the right product to make, we just didn’t know if we were capable of making it,” he adds.įrom a design perspective, the team established pillars that would have to be adhered to for this game to be a success. It’s a survivor story, really, as we had to learn how to make games, scale a studio up to 100 people, but it was successful and it all came from a desire to fill a hole in the market,” says Wilson. “We pooled our life savings, set up in a garage, and three of us started to make Path of Exile. That concept of identifying a hole in the market that evidently had a fan base but wasn’t being satisfactorily served is a core concept that would prove vital in allowing Path of Exile to be a success. “There was a hole in the market, tens of millions of players were looking for something to play, and we felt like we can do that,” adds Wilson. There was method in the apparent madness since none of these friends had ever put together a game studio before. “We felt that Diablo 2 players were looking for something newer and we thought, somewhat naively, why don’t we make that game?” says Wilson. Above: Path of Exile springs epic visual moments into the action-RPG gameplay.
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