Splitgate is certainly one of the good surprises of the past year. This FPS halfway between Halo and Portal landed on console last summer and managed to count more than 17 million downloads to date while raising 100 million dollars .
We summarized the success of Splitgate in a dedicated article at the very end of the year and the objectives of 1047 Games were already clear: maintain this momentum, expand the studio teams and make Splitgate a major and unique FPS on the market. 1047 Games is wasting no time and announces the launch of Beta Season 1 for the end of the month.
An ambitious studio that intends to feed on the success encountered in 2021
1047 Games revealed the main information of this first season in a press release, but we also had the chance to discover this Beta Season 1 during a press conference in the presence of Ian Proulx, the CEO and founder of 1047 Games. The latter gave us his feelings about the past year, told us about his ambitions for 2022 and the content of this first season , and he also answered some of our questions.
First of all, Proulx confessed that he never thought he would achieve such success in such a short time with Splitgate. The development team has grown from 6 employees to 27 and they don’t intend to stop so early. They are proud of the work done so far and their goal now is to offer a unique formula and different from other FPS in the sector while trying to achieve this “AAA” status.
comparisons made with Halo are logical according to him, but 1047 Games relies heavily on the development of a unique artistic direction that will allow players to identify Splitgate as a singular license. Investing in better servers will become essential to anticipate the arrival of new players. Finally, Ian Proulx remained quite evasive on the issue of esports, but things are surely brewing behind the scenes and we shouldn’t be long in getting something new on this point.
Nevertheless, these aspirations will be confirmed in the long term and at the moment, Ian Proulx wanted to focus on the release of this Beta Season 1 which is the first concrete step in the evolution of Splitgate towards a AAA format.
Splitgate Beta Season 1: some content do you want some here
Scheduled for 27 next January, this first season of the free-to-play Splitgate will bring its share of new content. Ian Proulx presented the planned features to us in person, including one that particularly caught our attention.
First of all, the Foregone Destruction map will be redesigned and benefit from the first new features in terms of direction artistic, an important point for 1047 Games on which the opinion of the players will be essential. A new map called Hotel will also land as part of this first season.
Two new modes will also make their appearance: the classic capture the flag as well as the new Evolution mode which is to say the least innovative. In the latter, two teams compete with identical loadouts and the team winning the round retains this loadout while the losing team benefits from a better loadout. Thus, it rebalances the forces with each new round and it is the most talented team that will be able to take the upper hand. These two new features bring the total number of game modes to in Splitgate.
In addition, new cosmetic elements will be available, with complete sets (outfits, weapons, emotes, etc.) accessible via the store or the battle pass which will integrate 236 levels. The formula of this battle pass will be similar to what is commonly done on the market: free elements and others accessible by paying the battle pass up to 9,99 €.
Nevertheless, the major novelty of this Beta Season 1 is an excellent surprise on which Ian Proulx has extended at the press conference: a map creator and editor accessible to everyone. It may seem surprising, but the teams of 1047 Games will integrate a map creator so that all players can create unique environments intuitively and then share them with the community. This arrival gives a whole new scope to Splitgate with the opening of almost unlimited possibilities. Ian Proulx notably says this about the map creator:
“Our map creation tool will continue to evolve as than the rest of the game. We see this feature as an evolving community-driven tool. This is one more thing for fans to experience when Season 1 launches, and we look forward to getting feedback from the community on the new features and tools they want to see. »
2022