“Highly masochistic games.” This is a phrase that has stuck in my head for over a week after talking with the developers over at Distinct Possibility Studios, Inc, about their debut title, the extraction MMOFPS Reaper Actual. It’s a phrase that so perfectly describes an entire genre of shooters that has sprung up over the years, gaining steam thanks to the likes of Escape from Tarkov and its many imitators.
Yet, after an hour chat with DPS CEO John Smedley and chief creative officer Matt Higby, Reaper Actual doesn’t sound like an imitation of Tarkov, but rather an evolution of the extraction shooter genre, blending the elements of what makes that gameplay loop so satisfying for millions with the studio’s experience building persistent, MMO worlds.
What exactly is Reaper Actual, though? It’s a persistent world, extraction shooter MMO that blends the extraction elements of games like Escape from Tarkov and Call of Duty: Warzone DMZ with a persistent, MMO-like world. Drawing upon the studios’ collective decades of experience building MMOs, Reaper Actual drops players in the role of those eponymous Reapers into a large open-world, where they can engage in firefights, vehicular and combined arms combat, complete missions, engage in factional warfare, and more. Each player has their own base to store their hard-earned loot, craft new weapons and gear to sell on the marketplace, and act as a base of operations for your Reapers.
Speaking with the team, it’s a game that sounds like it’s been at the forefront of some of their minds for a while now, with Smedley stating that it’s a game he’s wanted to make for over a decade now.
“This is a game I’ve been wanting to make for ten years,” CEO John Smedley tells MMORPG in an interview earlier this month. “I left Amazon specifically to raise money and make this exact game. And then [I] called Matt up, he was excited about it too, had his own spin on a lot of good ideas. And you know, here we are. We’ve raised 32.5 million dollars, we’ve been busting our asses for two and a half years now, punching way out of our league into the Triple A space because we’ve been able to put together an incredible team. Our team is 125 people total, including our co-development partner at Big Moxie.”
The two have an impressive history in MMO development all their own, with John Smedley working on some of the most pioneering games in the genre, such as EverQuest, as well as leading the team at Sony Online Entertainment, and subsequently Daybreak Games Company, before moving on to new ventures, most recently with Amazon Games San Diego. Higby, who has worked on games such as PlanetSide 2 (where he served as the game’s first creative director), stints at Jagex and IO Interactive, likened some of the inspirations of Reaper Actual to another game he worked on in the interim: The Division.
Higby explained that the types of games he likes to play are super competitive PC titles, so when games like Tarkov, PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds, and Fortnite were really starting to take off, he noticed many of the systems and gameplay elements were similar to the Dark Zone in The Division, the game he was working on at the time.
“This Tarkov game was sort of going on on the side, and it was super interesting to me,” Higby explained. He continued, “Again, I was working on The Division. So, The Division had elements of that type of gameplay in the Dark Zone, but it was much more of a large-scale PvE, open-world Ubisoft game for the most part. But the core PvPvE element of it super appealed to me as the kind of game that I would love to play. I think some of the moment-to-moment gameplay, some of the UX design and stuff for i was like super hardcore. And I remember talking to people at Massive about, ‘Man, if this game had this kind of gameplay loop, but felt something more like a Battlefield or Call of Duty in terms of complexity, I think that could be a monster, gigantic hit game.”
Higby continued, explaining that the dream would be to combine the tech engine that allowed the teams at SOE to create large-scale, persistent MMO worlds with the gameplay and loop of an extraction shooter, it would be “gaming nirvana” for a player like himself. And just a few years later, he now finds himself working on this exact style of game.
Despite only being about two and a half years into development, Reaper Actual looks a lot farther along in the process than most games this early on. Both Smedley and Higby attribute this to the team they have built at Distinct Possibility Studios. Many of the developers working on Reaper Actual have decades of game development experience, and more specifically, experience building large-scale, persistent worlds like MMOs and MMO-like systems. Combining this experience with an engine like Unreal Engine 5 helps to speed up the dev process.
There is a balancing act for the team to play here, though: how do you create both a compelling extraction shooter and a compelling MMO-like experience? For Higby, everything originates from the persistent world: from the reasons you are out exploring the island of Marova in the first place to the moment-to-moment gameplay that creates value in that persistent environment.
“When I think about the game, almost all my thoughts kind of originate from the persistent world. So everything about the player journey. And obviously you want to have moment-to-moment combat feeling really, really solid and really tight. And you can look at other examples of games to sort of understand how much knockback a weapon should have for it to feel really good. You know, there’s a lot of comparisons you can do to make the feeling of the game feel right.
“But for the game systems to actually work and for the systems to work long-term, that persistent world requires a lot of rethinking and a lot of getting back to understanding why these things exist, as opposed to just what they are in other games and they’re for.”
One example given was the screen usually put up at the end of a run, showing a player a summary of what they accomplished (or, in my case, usually how fast I was taken out trying to extract). However, for a game like Reaper Actual that isn’t session-based, but instead the world you inhabit continues to turn after you return to your base, throwing a basic summary screen could spell the end of a player’s overall session, not just a brief respite.
“We need to be careful about how we put that kind of screen into the game, because what we don’t want to do is make you feel like you just finished a play session.”
All of the design decisions feel in service to the MMO-style elements the DPS team is bringing to Reaper Actual. From the player bases that can be set up to be bastions of industry with high-end crafting stations to the sheer fact that you can seek revenge on the player or group of players who killed you and looted your gear in your last run, Reaper Actual sounds like more than your standard extraction shooter fare.
This revenge system is compelling to me, especially as someone who bounces off these “highly masochistic games,” as Higby put it, quite quickly when things don’t go my way. I’m not averse to full-loot environments – I play EVE Online after all – but in EVE I can seek revenge on the person who killed me, either by tracking them down myself to enact justice or by hiring a player on a contract to do it for me.
Being able not only to go see if your corpse is still there in the world, recover your loot from it if it was left alone, or assault your killer either in the field or by attacking their base is a compelling reason to keep playing, in my book.
Base fights themselves also sound pretty compelling, especially as large player Outfits (Reaper’s version of player guilds) assault one another. These spaces can house battles featuring up to 200 players, as well as the base’s own roster of Reapers, which can be assigned ot defend the base on behalf of the owner, with one side assaulting the other.
However, as compelling as some of the prospects of intense moment-to-moment gunplay, extraction elements and the way its living open-world enhances those gameplay loops can be, Reaper Actual has a major hurdle to overcome in the mindshare of many gamers nowadays: its use of blockchain.
MMO players are no strangers to user-sold content, from gold farming in World of Warcraft to players selling accounts and items in games like Ultima Online, EverQuest, and more over the years. It’s not a secret that this type of stuff exists, whether it’s against a game’s Terms of Service to participate in a secondary market for it or not. Players will buy gold, items, and accounts from other players, regardless.
We see this in other games nowadays as well, such as Counter-Strike, Pay Day 2, and Subnautica, with these transactions facilitated by the Steam marketplace. It’s not just skins that are sold there, but knives and more as well.
Reaper Actual will launch with two clients for players to choose from: a version that doesn’t interact with a crypto market or Web3, instead using the Steam Marketplace to facilitate sales of in-game items, and a Web3 version using blockchain and crypto. Whichever version you choose, you’ll still be able to play the same game with people from either version.
“What we are really trying to do is give players choices about what they want to do with their stuff,” Smedley explains when asked why Web3 and blockchain was a direction they took Reaper Actual, despite the backlash and concerns around the technology. He continued, stating that, at its core, it’s about giving players a “platform for other people’s creativity.”
“The ecosystem that we’re trying to grow is a long-term play for us. So, for example, we are going to let players rent servers from us, both on our sort of normal versions of our game on Steam and Epic, but also in the Web3 version, but we’re going to take it a step further. At launch, we’ll just have server rentals, but longer term, we are going to let players mod the game. We’re actually even going to let them charge for servers if they want to, we’ll let them control access to those things. We believe that using this awesome game that we’re making, and very importantly, the world we’re making as a platform for people’s creativity is huge. What Web3 enables is simple payments, you know, easy access being able to buy and sell stuff to one another, but it’s going to be exactly the same on Steam, and nothing we’re selling is going to be game-impacting.”
Smedley acknowledges that there is a lot of grift out there as well, which has soured the mood on Web3 games in particular, but he stresses that Reaper Actual is not those games.
“We’re just not those games. We have our own take on this and, from our standpoint, we think making a large ecosystem that supports both players that want crypto and players that don’t work for the game design we have.”
Smedley also offers an example of what Web3 enables players themselves to do, including reselling a copy of their game if it turns out that Reaper Actual just isn’t for them, something that isn’t supported on Steam or Epic (though it should be noted that, depending on the time played, you can simply refund it on Steam).
In terms of safeguarding Reaper Actual from becoming a marketplace for crypto bros to dump their NFTs and cryptocurrency, Smedley believes it’s up to the developers to decide what players can buy and sell. From being able to resell your copy of the game to selling off Reapers you’ve earned throughout your gameplay, weapons and more – but even then, owning these items doesn’t confer a gameplay advantage over someone who never interacts with the NFT or Steam Marketplace markets.
“First of all, this is a skill-based shooter; nothing changes that. If Shroud picks up a stock AK12 in our game and I have an AK12 that I bought off an NFT marketplace, he is going to shoot me in the head, and there’s not anything I can do about it.”
The DPS team is also trying to encourage user-generated content, with the goal of players creating this content and then making money off their labor. However, even with the safeguards in place, Smedley recognizes that there are many players out there who just don’t want to interact with this stuff, which is why there is a Steam and Epic Web2 version where they just will never run into it.
Higby adds that part of what this facilitates is a utility value for these NFTs, as opposed to the speculative value that many NFTs have. There’s no real rhyme or reason why an NFT is worth as much as it is, it just happens sometimes.
However, in Reaper Actual’s case, many of the items, and even the deed to bases, have utility value purely because of the time spent on them, whether it’s crafting an awesome sniper rifle, or upgrading your base to be a kick-ass Helicopter factory. That valuation is there thanks to the time spent upgrading and working on the thing you’re eventually selling.
“I think we’re trying to imbue a lot of utility value into this stuff. So, an example of this is one of the things that you could sell is the deed to your base. Like John mentioned, if you don’t like the game anymore and you want to just sell the base that you bought, cool, you can sell it to another player. But you, similarly, if I were going to go look at an open house down the street from me right now, I might find that this guy was a professional chef and he’s upgraded the range to a Viking range, he has a super expensive fridge, and a walk-in pantry – the kitchen is done up. There would be an additional value to the cost of the house versus one that didn’t have all these upgrades, right?
“I think the way we’re doing our deed system, the way that Web3 works is again from a utility value point of view. It works really complimentary with this sort of stuff where I sell my house with the upgrades. If I’ve upgraded this place to be a helicopter factory, where it could have taken me dozens of hours and tons of resources to upgrade the crafting stations in this place to be able to produce an attack helicopter, for example. When I sell my base, I can sell it with all those upgrades in it too, right?”
This idea of encouraging player creativity using their Web3 platform isn’t really anything new to the gaming space – we saw it as one of the major reasons why EVE Frontier, CCP Games’ EVE Online-inspired survival game is using blockchain technology and Web3 to facilitate player-fueld content. However, I do appreciate that the team is trying to cater to both types of players: those who don’t want to ever engage with anything crypto (like myself, if I can help it), and those who do enjoy these types of Web3 hooks.
Despite not having Web3 in the non-crypto version, though, Reaper Actual on Steam will allow players to buy and sell in-game items on the Steam Marketplace, so while it’s not technically using blockchain or Web3, those avenues for buying and selling between players is still there.
However, Smedley stresses to me that, after the initial purchase price of Reaper Actual, you needn’t ever spend another dime on the game.
The team will be launching what it calls its Foundation Alpha soon (no exact date was given just yet), and the cheapest edition, according to John, will be $29.99. However, when it fully launches 1.0 next year, it will be free-to-play.
“After that, you don’t need to spend another dime in our game. You can earn bases, you can earn base upgrades with in-game currency. You can earn Reapers; in fact, you can recruit them with in-game currency. We’re going out of our way to make sure that our crafting system is the thing that makes all the cool guns. And we’re not trying to make it some crazy grind game either, we want this to be accessible.”
One way to keep things balanced is that no base is inherently better than another, according to John. There might be differences, but there isn’t one that is hands down better. Some of the larger bases are harder to defend, simply because of the additional points of egress, while others are super easy to defend and “hard as shit to attack.”
“Our goal is to give players options, but not make one thing better than another thing.”
As far as why the team is selling alpha access, it’s pretty simple: it’s a small team trying to punch above its weight class – and that can get expensive.
“We’re a small company,” Smedley says. “We’re not going to shy away from that fact, and punching in the Triple A weight class means we need resources. So part of the reason that we’re going to be selling alpha is, frankly speaking, to give us an additional boost in development and give us more options and more things we can put into the game more quickly.
“But I always want to mention is [that] we’re limiting the access for a very simple reason. Our goal is to let in a small number each month as we gradually test the game and make it better. So the experience that people are going to have at launch is called Foundation Alpha for a reason: this is a foundation. This isn’t a finished game. You know, we’re going to be playing Ark Raiders too, and we’re going to be playing Battlefield 6. But we’re going into the teeth of those things, but what we’re trying to build is a ground-level community as we look toward the launch of our game early next year, we need people that are committed to testing this thing with us and giving us feedback.”
It’ll be interesting to see how this all pans out, especially long-term. The DPS team certainly has a vision, and the talent working on Reaper Actual is there. One lingering question I had was why this game couldn’t be made at Amazon Games San Diego, where John was working before leaving and starting his studio. While Smedley says that this type of game “probably could have been made at Amazon,” this was more about “running a company” and working with the “stone cold development team” he and Higby have assembled.
“The Amazon thing, really nothing to do with it. For me, it’s about running a company and working with people that I really like working with.”
