168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Splitgate 2 creator and 1047 Games CEO Ian Proulx says the best way to think about the transition from Splitgate to Splitgate 2 is to think about the jump from Destiny to . “Destiny was a great game,” Proulx says. “But [Bungie] didn’t quite nail live service. There was a lot t🌜o learn [for Destiny 2].” With Splitgate 2, Proulx is🐎 taking the lessons learned from the original Splitgate to deliver on a vision he’s always had for the game, but wasn’t able to achieve until now.

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Splitgate 2 Creative Director On Making The Game 𓂃Easier For Newcomers

We sit down with creative director and 1047 Games CEO Ian Proulx to speak a🤡bout what Splitgate’s sequel is bringing to the competitiv♈e shooters table.

I spoke with Proulx at PAX East last weekend while watching him expertly click heads in Splitgate 2 at the 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Lenovo Legion booth, and being there, it was remarkable to see how far he and Split🌌gate have come. The first Splitgate was demoed at PAX East 2018 at a tiny booth in the back left corner of the expo hall, and now the sequel is one of the most anticipated shooters🐭 of the year. If you’ve ever aspired to make a video game, Proulx’s success is a great source of inspiration.

A Student Project Turned Gaming Phenomenon

Two players of the same team shooting through a portal at an enemy showing its back.

There’s a major🐽 leap in quality from the first Splitgate to the second - certainly more so than from Destiny to Destiny 2 🍰- which is easy to understand when you know how both games were made. Proulx developed the original Splitgate while studying computer science at Stanford. “I took the intro class and like the third assignment was to build Brick Breaker,” he explains. “And I was like ‘Wow, I’m making video games already!’”

Stanford didn’t offer an actual game design program, but for his senior project, Proulx says he was allowed to choose any project he wanted. “I figured I ought to learn how to do the thing that I’m passionate about,” he says. Proulx taught himself how to code and started building a game he’d first imagined making in high school; the combination of his two favorite things: Halo and Portal.

“I never thought I’d turn it into anything,” he says. “I just didn’t think it was practical or possible, so I just thought I’ll do it for a school project.🎃 It’ll be fun.” Proulx wasn’t sure at that point if he’d even end up working in the game industry after college, but after he started showing his prototype for Splitgate to friends, he saw how much they loved it and realized he was onto sometಌhing special. “I gotta do this,” he remembers thinking. “I can’t sit around and wait for someone else to build my dream game.”

The Splitgate team was made up of just 15 developers, most of whom are still part of the Splitgate 2 team. Proulx calls that original team “scrappy” and says they learned a l💟ot from that project that has been applied to Splitgate 2. One of those lessons was that players will support games they believe in. “Splitgate did not have the best skins,” he explains. “But it still made a lot of money because people want to support developers that they like. I f🔥undamentally believe if you have a brand that people like and you’re actually community first, people will support you.”

Building A Community First Game

splitgate players in combat

With 22 million downloads, Splitgate had a lot of support from players. Proulx attributes much of that success to his focus on communicating with the community. “It’s not just for show,” he says. “This is how we built the game and it works. The reason it was successful is because we got people playing, we 𒁃listened to their feedbac𒐪k, and we made improvements accordingly.”

The origin🥂al launch of Splitgate in 2019 “didn’t go very well”, Proulx says. But by listening and working with the community, he says they were able to raise the Steam review score from 67 percent positive to 95 percent in 2021.

That ethos is something Proulx has held on to as the studio has grown rapidly from 15 to 200 people to make Splitgate 2. As you might imagine, that kind of growth comes with its own challenges. “It’s easy to see why so many companies fail when they grow too quickly,” he says. “Candidly, we have made some hiring mistakes along the way, but I’m really proud of the team that we’ve built because we’ve managed to preserve [our values]. At the scale of 200 people, it feels exactly the same. It’s the same passio👍n, the same community focus. It feels like the same studio, and we’re still having fun.”

A Bigger, Better Splitgate

Splitgate Olympus Race In Game

With time, resources, and lots of new talent (including Halo𝓰 and Call of Duty veterans), Splitgate 2 is built from the ground up to fully realize the original’s potential. The sequel introduces a 24-player mode with multiple giant maps (Spli🅷tgate 2’s take on Halo’s Big Team Battle), new weapons, new arenas, and a level of polish players expect to see from the world’s biggest shooters. “When I started 1047 I never thought I was going to make a triple-A game,” Proulx says. “I always thought I’d make a fun game, and the art would be okay, but we’re never going to look like Halo or Call of Duty.” Now, Proulx thinks Splitgate 2 competes with any triple-A game out there. “I’m quite proud of it,” he says. “Gameplay is everything, but to have that level of fidelity on top of it really is awesome.”

Competing with the big shooters like Call of Duty, Apex Legends, and Fortnite has proven to be difficult for recentꩲ shooters, but Proulx doesn’t think entering Splitgate 2 into a crowded market is an issue. “My hot take is I don’t think it’s a crowded market, I think it’s a stale market,” he says. “There’s a lot of great games, but gamers are craving something new.” Proulx believes there’s a void in the arcade/arena shooter niche that Splitgate 2 can fill. While the industry has been chasing trends like battle royal꧋es, extraction shooters, and hero shooters, the Halos and Quakes of the past have been left by the wayside. “I think this fills that void,” he says. “And it’s been built with live service in mind, so I think it’s going to actually stick around.”

“You gotta have a sh*t ton of content ready to pump out in your back pocket, and we have that,” Proulx says. “That's something we learned the hard w༺ay with Splitgate 1. It's really hard, having a super fun game is not enough.”

Proulx has an ambitious plan for content updates in Splitgate 2. Along with quarterly seasons the game will have monthly updates with monthly battle passes, events, and new maps. Season Two and Season Three are currently well into production, while Season Four is currently in the early planning stages. Proulx says if you look at the pace and the amount of content Marvel Riva🌱ls is putting out, his team is aiming to do the same thing.

“We’re very much trying to operate like a live service game today with monthly external playtests so that when we go live, it’s just business as usual,” he says. “So✱ many games operate like a $60 game going into a box, and then they launch, and it’s like, guys, that’s the starting line, that’s not the finish line. It’s about getting ahead, but it’s also about structuring things in a way that allows us to do it sustainably.”

Splitgate 2’s open beta launches today.

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Your Rating

168澳洲幸运5开奖网: Splitgate 2
FPS
Action
Systems
Top Critic Avg: 70/100 Critics Rec: 44%
Released
June 6, 2025
ESRB
⛄ Teen // Blood, Violence
Developer(s)
🍸 1047 Games
Publisher(s)
💮 ♐ 1047 Games
Engine
Unreal Engine 5

WHERE TO PLAY

SUBSCRIPTION
DIGITAL