Hey guys,
We felt it was time to get you guys more involved and release a news update to really let you guys know what’s happening internally at Bulkhead Interactive, and lay bare our plans for the future with the game. After reading this update, you will hopefully see the light of the tunnel in the same way we do - as we aren't going anywhere and neither is Battalion 1944.
Please understand: Anyone who has ‘quit’ playing Battalion 1944, we fully understand the reasons why you feel that way. The most complained about issues include:
1] Bugs/Crashes & Performance
2] Core Gameplay Issues and Not Enough Reasons To Play.
3] Lack of Concurrent Players (A side effect of the above issues)
This good news is that everything in the above list is entirely fixable over this next few months. This update is written as if you guys are partners, not just our players.
Update/Patch Schedule Reasoning
We want to address the reason behind the commital to major updates and less smaller updates/patches.
First of all it's important to understand our infrastructure as an indie company. We’re a small studio with lots of talent that’s being stretched over multiple disciplines. Producing a ‘live operations’ game that’s constantly being updated in a multiplayer space where players are now expecting the level of support of a game such as Fortnite (Epic Games themselves) is a difficult task with a small team size. This means the time of every individual working on the game is at max capacity - unless we chose to go further and sacrifice more of our personal lives to try and cover all bases.
Our core team members did that voluntarily, including weekends and overtime all the way up to and after our Early Access launch because we believe in Battalion 1944. We were also (and still are) doing all of this on sub-optimal build/deployment systems which has brought our update/patch schedule to a complete halt whilst we work on huge new content/features ready for major update 2.
It's no secret we needed to launch the game when we did. We put everything we could, financially and mentally into that launch. Thankfully, we were right to believe in the game and our community. The launch was extremely financially successful when taking into account our studio size, regardless of the mixed reception Battalion 1944 received. We’re now able to start reinvesting those profits back into the game directly, which includes addressing the problems with our infrastructure that has become exposed these past few weeks.
This includes; Hiring new talent, giving our dev team more time to work on polish and testing as well as investing in Bulkhead’s build system tech to test and deploy safe builds much faster. This all sounds great (and it is!) but the downside is that players won’t see the benefit of this reinvestment immediately, as all of this takes time to implement into the studios workflow.
This means Bulkhead Interactive will be able to update & support our games much better in the long term and that the current downtime between updates (which we understand is highly frustrating but cannot be solved overnight) won’t be an issue for us in the future. After Major Update 2, things can start to improve.
Thanks for being understanding and patient with this.
Our Main Areas of Focus
Here’s a quick overview of our main focuses going forwards, which we’ll be showing much more of over the coming weeks. This is our ‘top priorities’ list, so don’t worry if a smaller issue isn’t listed here.
Bug Fixes & Existing Issues
- Wartide 2.0
- Arcade 2.0
- ‘Faceit Arena’
- New competitive maps
- New arcade maps
- Updating existing maps
- Free for all deathmatch (FFA)
- New player models
- Core gameplay adjustments
- Huge new content additions for full release
- Improve the new player experience
- Make the user experience more rewarding & fun for all players
- Add incentives for casual players to return everyday
- Add more incentives for competitive players to compete at the highest level
- New competitive matchmaking system, light years better than before.
- Mapping tools
- Match replay system
- Improving our studio infrastructure for faster testing & releasing of new builds
- Performance optimisations
Better Communication Going Forwards
We’re changing the way we do communication going forwards. We’ve always wanted to be more hands on with the community and the opposite of a AAA studio that ignores its community. Instead of random Reddit comments and private DMs to smaller groups of people - we’re going to communicate in a much more official manor with regularly scheduled news posts yet still retain the accessibility to our Dev team we’ve been aiming to build through our Twitter accounts.
We’re a small team which, unfortunately, means we can’t keep up with the patch/update speed and frequency that players expect, as explained in the ‘Update/Patch Schedule Reasoning’ section of this update.
Over the following weeks we’re going to start by releasing almost weekly development updates to show you guys exactly what we’re working on. These will include preview screenshots and written explanations of why we’re doing everything we’re doing so hopefully you will all feel more involved in our Early Access process.
State of the Playerbase
Despite the chants of 'Dead Game' - Battalion isn't going anywhere. Our team are working full throttle and we will see Battalion 1944 through to release. This isn't blinded stubbornness on our part. We truly believe not only is it right for us to finish what we started but that we can get through this early period in Battalion’s life and use our next Major Update to place the game on an upward trajectory.
Players who joined us in development on Day 1 of Early Access don't realise that our expectations have always been on the lower end of the scale in terms of concurrent players - this game was a love letter to a very small community that has mostly moved on from gaming. The fast paced 'arena shooter' genre isn’t the giant gaming behemoth it used to be and we knew that going into development from the beginning.
This game blew up beyond our expectations at Early Access launch because the people who loved the old school style of FPS games that they grew up with (and actually took skill to play) had a new home to come to. The fact that this genre isn’t as big as it used to be does not mean that Battalion 1944 wasn’t and can't be a viable game for us to run our studio on full time. We believe we’ve been shown you guys that enough demand is there for this style of game and that when we are ready to boost player numbers on a future polished version of the current core game we will be able to have a second coming for Battalion.
This is the reason we're going to continue confidently working on the game, polishing every aspect of the experience taking it all the way to release. It might seem quiet from us for now until then but rest assured that we are working furiously to achieve this goal. This includes new huge new content and features. We have plans to boost the player base at multiple points throughout the game’s future and intend to provide the hardcore experience we set out to make over 2 years ago.
Battalion 1944 will not go down in history as a failure. In a way, it has already been a success from an internal financial standpoint (which unfortunately you must consider even when creating cool things such as video games). Our goal was to sell enough units to be able to continue development for 12 more months. We exceeded that target. Yes, the game has fundamental bugs and issues - but everything about that is fixable over this next year. We intend to leave a legacy that Battalion 1944, our love letter to the games that have been left behind by popular culture in favor of modern design, can provide a home for the players left behind - however big or small that community may be.
In a years time, once that is achieved, I don’t believe Battalion 1944 will be looked upon as a failure (by anyone who actually thinks deeply about these things at least) - as hitting the critical mass of concurrent players that Fortnite and PUBG are hitting was never the realistic goal we had set out to reach. If anything, we’re on the road to succeeding in continuing development for the game we wanted to play whilst laying the studio’s foundations for continued support and future projects in years to come.
Our goal has always been to maintain a player base with enough casual players dropping in and out whilst sustaining a competitive environment outside of the game itself through community hosted tournaments. This was and still is our goal. It’s fully achievable too.
Conclusion
The fact that you're here right now reading this lengthy update during this rocky Early Access period, still playing the game and adding positive and constructive discussion on our Reddit/Discord community is a testament to the better half of Battalion 1944’s community as a whole. We have a lot of new features and content in the works and we can’t wait to share development with you over the next few months as we lead up to our next major update.
We want to thank all of you for your time spent playing and testing Battalion 1944. Please know that we are doing everything we can over this next year to make the game closer to what we would all love it to become.
TL;DR
- We are 100% committed to Battalion 1944. We are going nowhere and neither is this game. We’re reinvesting everything we’ve made back into the project. Bulkhead will grow and improve as a studio as we work on some awesome new content and address Battalion’s core problems. Thank you for being a part of our journey.