Turtle Rock Studios to make a F2P Co-op FPS?

The creators of Left 4 Dead and Evolve have lately announced they are making a co-op FPS similar to the Left 4 Dead series but will be slightly more fantasy based. It will also be free to play on Steam. A year after Evolve's initial release, Turtle Rock Studios switched the game to free to play to help the game bring back it's fan-base by hoping the game would have thousands more players due to this feature change but this new game will be free-to-play from the very beginning that might help both the game and the development team. Turtle Rock Studios haven't mentioned any potential release date and may spend some time making this game so it's safe to assume the game will at least be released during 2018. It seems Turtle Rock Studios haven't given up on their Co-op Games, which may turn out great for the new game they're working on.

"We are developing a new franchise set in an all new universe that leverages the style of gameplay our community loves and expects from Turtle Rock Studios. We're focusing on what we do best - heart-pounding moment-to-moment online co-op FPS action..."

Phil Robb, Co-Founder of Turtle Rock Studios.

It seems Turtle Rock Studios have the publisher Perfect World (Publishers of Star Trek Online and Neverwinter) helping out with this game in it's development. Perhaps Perfect World will turn out to be the publishers of this mystery game? Will Perfect World be helping fund the development of this game? Unfortunately Turtle Rock Studios haven't released much information about this game apart from them announcing it and giving a brief description on it. We'll have to wait for more information to be released by Turtle Rock Studios to be sure on the status of the game.

"What we can say is that we are definitely going back to our moment-to-moment gameplay roots with a huge focus on co-op FPS. There will be plenty of baddies to shoot up, but it is not a 'zombie game' or anything post-apocalyptic. What we can say right now is there's a strong dark fantasy element to it."

A little Teaser left by Turtle Rock Studios.

"We think that the key to making compelling games is to get them into players' hands as quickly as possible and then iterate based on how they experience the game. Working on a product for 4 or 5 years only to then stick it into a box on retail shelves is completely counter to our new process."

Seeing as the game will be permanently free-to-play from the beginning, I wonder how Perfect World will monetize their game. Every free-to-play game you run into on Steam will have some form of monetization. Whether it be cosmetics and skins similar to Team Fortress 2 and Counter Strike: Global Offensive, DLC that costs money or ingame premium currency. Some of these methods can be very off putting and may sway how people think on this game, some may prefer these small transactions on a free-to-play, some might prefer a price tag of £30 and get everything so they don't have to spend more money. Goldenstien mentions how having free-to-play games changes how Turtle Rock Studios make their games.

“With a $60 product, you only know if you are going in a good or bad direction from some focus test groups and then an alpha and a beta. There’s not much room to change course if you see elements that you want to work on based on how players are actually playing your game. At best, you can only hope to make these changes sometime post-launch and at that point, you’re probably knee-deep in DLC, because that’s what a boxed product needs to make a profit these days, given the insanely escalating costs of development, marketing and publishing those products. It’s not a very limber process.”

Goldenstien explains how DLC is made to keep generating profits for games nowadays else companies would end up losing out a substantial amount of profit and Turtle Rock Studios want to change the way they can make games players enjoy and keep generating profit without pumping out DLC. I really do hope that Turtle Rock Studios can deliver this game much better than they did with Evolve. Evolve had a LOT of hype built around it before it was released that was heavily dropped as the game was considered barebones with only one game mode, frequent crashes on the Xbox One and matchmaking taking far too long and was much better to play with friends other than playing online matchmaking. The game lacked backstory, content and was far too repetitive to enjoy. Let's hope this new mystery game does not fall down to Evolve.