Vampire: The Masquerade Bloodhunt may be a game about the undead, but developer Sharkmob doesn’t want a tombstone in the Battle Royale Graveyard.
Developer Sharkmob doesn’t want Vampire: The Masquerade Bloodhunt to have its own tombstone in the Battle Royale graveyard – even if the game is about the undead. With that in mind, Bloodhunt’s live service model will be completely overhauled and a team deathmatch game mode will be introduced to attract new players and, most importantly, to respond to player feedback. All of this is to ensure the game has enduring potential – especially given that it took five years of development to get into the hands of PC and PS5 gamers. In an oversaturated battle royale genre, Sharkmob knows that Bloodhunt must evolve to stay alive.
No more cookie cutters
Bloodhunt’s major update, due out on July 14th, is based entirely on three months’ worth of player feedback and developer experience. Product director David Sirland tells me that Sharkmob realized that the “cookie-cutter” live service approach of a 12-week, 100-rank battle pass wasn’t right for the team — and not for the reason you might think think. Rather than the live-service model causing unnecessary crunch, Sirland says it’s quite the opposite.
“[The cookie-cutter approach] doesn’t really fit our team and the way we want to work. We need to revise that… with that comes the separation of gameplay updates and content. If you do a 12 week season, it’s a huge package that includes everything. But when something goes wrong, everything is delayed too,” he explains. “We realized that if we missed the seasonal update with a major fix, the turnaround time was essentially 12+ weeks. That doesn’t really cut it.” Instead, Sharkmob wants faster response times for necessary bug fixes that will help build a base of players that Sirland says are “happy and hopefully growing”.
We found that when we missed the seasonal update with a major fix, the turnaround time was essentially 12+ weeks. That doesn’t really cut it.
Product Director David Sirland
Because of this, Bloodhunt is dropping a Season 2 in favor of the upcoming “Summer Update” that will include an all-new, discounted Battle Pass ($5.99 down from $9.99), an 8v8 team deathmatch mode and will include several Quality of Life updates. The update will also make player more skill-segregated in matchmaking (but not so much that it increases wait times) to hopefully avoid new players getting beat up by vets. And there are some major gameplay updates coming, including a controller settings overhaul and fixes for what Sharkmob call “Hydra” bugs, like the persistent reload bug. “Reload bugs, I should say, because there really are 12 of them,” Sirland admits. “We knocked off a head that registered in that early pre-start test, that’s when we had the real problem.”
Because Sharkmob initially followed a 12-week seasonal cadence for any type of major update, bugs lingered longer than both developers and players would have liked. “We actually had several times where we had a fix done or a feature done or a new thing done, but there was an outfit that was delayed for the seasonal release, so everything was delayed. This has happened a couple of times. So we want to decouple that,” explains Sirland.
Small and fast
I think it’s fair enough that live players are demanding, that’s kind of the point, isn’t it?
Communications Director, Martin Hultberg
According to Sharkmob, Bloodhunt has had over six million installs since its release in April. It’s unclear what the level of retention is, although given the changes on the horizon we can assume it may not be as high as the studio would like. But the game’s dedicated player base is active and passionate, both in-game and in-game Bloodhunt Reddit (opens in new tab) and discord (opens in new tab)point out bugs in a dedicated channel and provide extensive feedback on Season 1 (including frequent references to the Reload Hydra bug).
I’m asking if the team found the demands of the live service players a little overwhelming, but communications director Martin Hultberg sees things a little differently. “I think it’s fair enough that live players are demanding, that’s kind of the point, isn’t it? Because you have a closer relationship with the developer, and that’s what we’ve wanted all along,” he points out. “We’ve said from the beginning that we see the live phase as a second step in development, where we take a basic platform and then evolve and change it together with whoever is playing it. I think going from a 12 week season to a shorter one, faster updates definitely reflects what the community wants and needs right now. If the community needs changes and if the way they play the game changes, then you should respond. So you should be challenging in that sense because that guides us and helps us to make a better game. As long as they are polite about it, they can ask whatever they want.”
Hultberg and Sirland both come from major AAA developers (Ubisoft and DICE respectively) and they recognize that such established studios have certain advantages when it comes to working on live service games. “I think one of the biggest advantages and also one of the biggest challenges is that we’re a new studio, we don’t have a lot of baggage in terms of processes and legacy,” says Hultberg. “But you have to relate to everything else that’s going on at this company and how things work and what other products do and how you set up your online strategy and whatever. And to a certain extent, I think that makes you less flexible in certain areas. While we – I think it’s wrong to say we can do what we want, we can’t – but we have a lot of leeway to come up with how we want to work with live service games.”
I point out examples of big studios still working to implement a successful live services model after a game’s launch, like 343 Industries and its struggle with Halo Infinite’s cadence. “If you can’t be big and strong, you have to be small and fast,” says Hultberg. “But if there was a simple formula for it, everyone would be hitting home runs all the time. So there is a degree of luck, a degree of skill and then a degree of, as we say in Swedish. jävlar anamma’, which basically means just being stubborn.”
Swedish backbone
Sharkmob’s jävlar anamma and flexibility will help create a live service model that can be applied to the other two and as yet unannounced live service games it is currently working on. Whatever the developers working on Bloodhunt learn from release rhythms, bug fixes, and player feedback, they’re sharing it with the other game teams, Hultberg assures me. Think of it as a live-service science experiment with insights that will shape the future of the studio.
In the near future, the team hopes that more frequent updates will reinvigorate both players and developers. “This monthly refresh rate is super addictive and super creative, it’s so much fun. It’s the most fun I’ve ever had in a game,” says Sirland. “If you have a stable game and you have an audience doing things they like and you can figure out what they like next, you can try stuff too. You can run into a wall. And it’s fine because you have 10 other things coming.” Hultberg jumps in, saying, “It goes both ways. It’s one thing engaging with the community, but we’ve got to wait 12 weeks for it see the changes, but when they can see the changes monthly, they know what they’re talking about is actually being heard.”
The team’s flexibility and respect for its player base doesn’t necessarily mean that Bloodhunt will end up being a hugely successful battle royale with a lifecycle stretching years into the future – but they hope it will be. “We want that, of course – this is our baby, our first game, it’s very important for us – we want it to happen. And I think the best way to make it a success is to be very flexible and figure out who wants to play our game,” says Sirland. In the battle for battle royale supremacy, it will be interesting to see how a new studio poised to morph into new forms will fare.
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