To create a battle royale in this day and age is an arduous and foolhardy venture. The genre is populated with numerous dead games, all built with lofty ambitions in mind. Hyperscape. The Darwin Project. Hell, even Radical Heights. Even games with genuine merit have found themselves shattered against the industry’s biggest titles. Enter Vampire the Masquerade: Bloodhunt. An incredibly fun entry by Sharkmob into a saturated market; yes, with some blemishes but entertaining nonetheless, it built a dedicated community of players and major influencer attention within in just a few weeks.
However, fast-forward a few months and Bloodhunt is teetering perilously close to a similar fate. Thanks to consistent bugs, a perceived lack of content, and other troubles, player interest is waning. In an attempt to get things back on track, a substantial summer update has been announced today which aims to fix these issues and get things back on track. But can Sharkmob succeed? We sat down with producer David Sirland to take us through the studio’s thought process, to examine the major changes coming to Bloodhunt, and chat about the developer’s goals moving forward.
“The biggest change here is we are essentially saying that we’re not going to do seasons anymore in the traditional sense,” explains Sirland. “When we launched the game, we did a 12-week standard season with a Battle Pass of 100 levels and similar value to other competitors out there. We realized, quite quickly into the season, that we can’t really sustain this as the team we are – and it’s also hurting us because the content plan is essentially holding us back from making quicker gameplay updates faster, and fixing the key aspects of the game that our core players are screaming for in some cases.”
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