Scott Youngblood has built his career on creating genre-defining shooters. While most famous for his work as lead designer on Starsiege: Tribes and Tribes 2, he also had a hand in the underrated PlayStation series Syphon Filter. So when Blizzard veterans Mark Kern and William Petras founded a studio with the intention of taking first-person shooters to the next level, they knew they had to get this veritable Willy Wonka of game design on board. As Youngblood told us, they achieved this by slipping him a Golden Ticket. “The golden ticket was an iPod with a personalised recorded message from Mark Kern to me that went through previous titles I had worked on, why they thought those games were influential and that they were interested in talking to me about joining the Tribe. I was so intrigued that I decided to give Red 5 a shot and after meeting the team, learning about the project, I couldn’t pass up the opportunity to work on Firefall. It has been the most fun I’ve had working on a game to date and we can’t wait to share it with everyone!”
Youngblood isn’t exaggerating, there – Firefall will be a free-to-play online shooter. It’s a successful and highly profitable business model, and not just in the pirate-infested Far East. Free-to-play works; the problem is that just because something is true, it doesn’t mean people will believe it. “Most large publishers are afraid to give up the model of boxed copies and $60 price tags. Losing out on that guaranteed money for every player is tough to do. They can’t get rid of the mentality that every player must pay something. This not only means that they are unable to release quality games on the F2P model, but that when they do, they do it in such a way that nickel and dimes players and creates the stigma that is associated with F2P gaming. Our hope with Firefall is to destroy that stigma. The latest wave of F2P titles has helped a lot and we really want to push the cart forward for gamers.”
Red 5 has put a great deal of effort into researching how to make Firefall appeal to global markets with myriad tastes and spending habits. Yet while Youngblood and his crew are accommodating, they are uncompromising – this will not be a game where golden bullets rule. “It was very clear to us during development of Firefall that we wanted to create a skill-based shooter. With that comes the fact that we don’t want players to simply buy their way to the top of the ladders. It is very important to us to keep Firefall focused on the skill of the player behind the controls rather than just the equipment that he wears. That being said we are still adamant about not being able to pay to win. Even if you do decide to purchase items, you still need to do the work to rank up your characters and advance your gear.” Gear will be central to the Firefall experience, for the ‘Battleframe’ you choose to wear will determine your class; further customisation will stem from your choice of weapon and special ability-powering backpack. These choices will be informed by your tolerance for ‘twitch’; mellow gamers may prefer the turret-plonking Engineer, while red cordial fiends will enjoy sniping away in a Recon frame.
As for Youngblood, he’s extracted profound, primeval satisfaction from play-testing the Assault class. “Nothing beats firing off afterburner to get yourself high above your opponents and unleashing a crater from ludicrous height for extra damage. Makes me smile when you get a multi-shot kill with a skill manoeuvre like that. We want players to really play all of the battleframes, but you can start with one that is comfortable for you then branch out from there. For more cooperative-focused players there will be plenty to do in the open world. Saving towns from chosen invasion or hunting down those precious resources that you need to craft that new epic backpack that you’ve been working towards for the last week…”
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