Villordsutch talks with Rebecca Ford, Live Operations & Community Producer at Digital Extremes, about Warframe: The War Within…
Rebecca Ford is the Live Operations and Community Producer at Digital Extremes and with the recent release of the rather massive update for Warframe titled The War Within arriving on the PS4 and Xbox One, Villordsutch got the chance to speak with Rebecca about the latest expansion to this internationally adored free-to-play game.
Villordsutch: First thing can I just say the visuals of Warframe: The War Within are truly stunning, watching the footage I was in awe at what was being delivered within the latest update, for this free-to-play game. What are gaming history résumé’s for some of your graphic designers and programmers for Warframe: The War Within? Where did you find these people!?
Rebecca Ford: Haha, we’re certainly lucky to have a group of developers who pride themselves on one of the best visual experiences in gaming… for free. We use our proprietary engine, The Evolution Engine, and collectively our team has decades of experience with the tool. It’s all made in-house, and we’ve been adapting year after year to things like PBR (Physically Based Rendering), Volumetric Lighting, and general graphics improvements. We know our game has many years left in it and to keep it at the graphic cutting edge everyone needs to be on board to iterate our tech. Luckily, our team is always ready to push things forward. Many of them are long-timers at Digital Extremes, with many games under their belts reaching back to our Unreal and Unreal Tournament days. We have long winters in Canada, more time for staying inside and developing amazing things!
Unreal Tournament “Facing Worlds” Map. Many a gamer has lost many an hour here.V: When you initially sat down at the Warframe round table, many moons back, did you ever see yourselves actually expanding it [Warframe] to further deepen the story; really expanding the Lore of the game?
RF: We still pinch ourselves. How can this be happening? People actually like our game? They want more? We took a risk with Warframe as a free-to-play player-funded title, and it paid off. To be honest, we had some (many) ideas of where we wanted (and still want) to take Warframe but as it grew with our players, we realized the players were helping guide its future as well. It’s also become clear that more story offers that much more immersion into the universe of Warframe.
V: The War Within comes with a cluster of new weaponry, including the rather fabulously named Kesheg. Now we all love wielding in-game death, but were there any weapons that never quite made the grade, that you personally would have liked to have seen dropped in the game?
RF: We’ve had concept art for a ‘ninja fan’ style melee weapon for years now that we’ve just never got around to do. I think we should revisit it though. In fact, we must. We’ve also wanted to release a ‘Javelin’ style weapon for ages and we finally did with the Glast Gambit update on PC at the end of December (coming in January to consoles). Warframe is distinct because of the spin we put on classic weapons. The Javelin got a very fun treatment as a ‘Spear Gun’ with two modes of fire: It shoots fireballs, but you can also launch the Javelin itself which explodes on impact… intense.
Lining up a shotV: Bringing in the Assault mission not only looks rather beautiful, but also gives us – the players – numerous ways to approach the final outcome of the mission. Have you planned more maps taking advantage of this playstyle and is there something we all should be keeping our eyes open for?
RF: I think the reception to these types of experiences pushes us in the direction of adding more like it. I was blown away when I first ran through it to see how the mission played out. I got to see my actions change the course of the mission in real time. I got to fire a space-cannon into a bad Grineer ship… that felt awesome! We rely on data to see just how that excitement plays out over time and how we can increase the replayability of these moments.
Preparing to launch into a full on assault.V: Was there a point where Digital Extremes considered asking the Warframe community to perhaps place their collective hands in their pockets, and cough up some hard cash for The War Within update? As this isn’t just a handful of cosmetic enhancements and the odd virtual pet, you’re looking at a full on cinematic lore driven quest, new enemies, new weapons, a new mission type and character customisations too…all free-to-play!
RF: Haha, to be perfectly blunt, no. There was never a moment like that. Our free-to-play model is often regarded as one of the fairest, and it’s probably because we don’t think that way while making the content. We often present players with the option to ‘earn’ their playable gear for free, or access it right away with Platinum. If those moments create any tension, we do often have to remind ourselves and our community that this is the way we need to include the business side of Warframe.
I may have made a messV: The War Within was released a few months ago on the PC, before the PS4 and Xbox One, going by the feedback of those PC users did you alter any significant parts of this latest console update?
RF: Yes, the War Within update was released on PC on November 11. We make sure console players get all the cutting edge fixes and feedback changes before we send the build to be certified. Riven Mods stand out as something console players got that were ‘better,’ given the reaction to the PC release, and due to the rapid changes made to this surprise system.
V: Part of the latest Warframe “Tennobaum Gifting Extravaganza” saw Digital Extremes donate $50,000 dollars to Boys and Girls Club of London of Ontario, due to the collective in-game gift giving of the Warframe This was clearly a worthwhile, fantastic event, do you think you’ll be running this again next year?
RF: We hope so! We spent a lot of time putting this together and our community responded with a tremendous amount of generosity and good feeling, which wasn’t surprising. Building a positive, passionate, good-willed community has been a top priority next to the development of the game and it’s a two-way street. Being transparent, humble, charitable, and personable helps grow that relationship between us. If we ever lose that connection, we’ve failed.
V: Finally as a small sneak preview what’s next in line for Warframe? Has a title been decided on for the next update? Will we see Warframe appear on the upcoming Nintendo Switch? Are you going to occupy the Steam Top Three again anytime soon?
RF: Great questions here. On the Steam question, while Warframe has been out for more than 3.5 years now, it’s regularly in the Top 10 most played games on Steam (see http://steamcharts.com/). We’re hoping to hit new heights with each new update.
There are no plans for the Nintendo Switch right now, but 2017 will be another big year of updates for Warframe. Luckily, we got some good rest over the holidays to get right back into the swing of working on the next Update!
Not to sound too salesy, but do keep your eyes on our weekly DevStreams Twitch show here, https://www.twitch.tv/warframe, where our design team talks about all of the coolest new stuff (that we can talk about, that is!).
Should be delivering death, but stood here admiring the view.Villordsutch and Flickering Myth would like to thank Rebecca for taking the time out of her day for the interview, and to Kris & Lucy for helping to secure the interview.
To keep up-to-date with all the latest Warframe news there are numerous sources you can tap into that include Twitter, Youtube, Twitch and of course their main website.
