[STEAM] 'We've Sportified Steam Charts' — Warframe Creative Director Rebecca Ford Reveals How Digital Extremes Is Keeping the Live Service Dream Alive

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turns 13 years old this week. Digital Extremes' free-to-play online action game has proven itself to be remarkably resilient over the years, establishing a loyal fanbase while staying relevant even when its competitors falter. And there have been plenty who have faltered in recent years. The live service space is littered with the corpses of failed video games.

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. These are just a few of the high profile games that have tried and failed to carve out a piece of that lucrative live service pie. And with each big new live service release comes an obsession with Steam player numbers. Valve's is the only gaming platform to make concurrents public, and in lieu of sales and revenue data from the vast majority of game companies, Steam has become a lightning rod for the dreaded 'dead game' debate.

All the while, Warframe has thrived. It is still here, adding more content, keeping its community interested, and keeping its developers at Digital Extremes in a job. Warframe creative director Rebecca Ford is at the heart of that effort. She admits Warframe got lucky, launching as it did at a time when there were far fewer competitors on Steam, at a time when this whole live service thing wasn't really a thing at all. In the interview with IGN, below, Ford explains how Digital Extremes has managed to keep Warframe going, offers her take on our Steam charts obsession, and teases what's to come.

IGN: This month marks the 13th anniversary of Warframe, a big achievement for an online game. How has it been looking back on the game, and looking to where things are going next?

Rebecca Ford: Yeah, it's our 13th anniversary since we launched on Steam in 2013, which was indicative of when things took off for us. It's been great, we've done some stuff this year, so far, but our first major update, the Shadowgrapher, launches on March 25, and then we go right to PAX East to talk about what's next, and then we're already working on what's next after that. The worst part of the job is when you can't say anything [beyond that].

I wish I could say everything we are working on, but it would ruin our entire plan for the year. I'm excited for our update to go out, which includes the Switch 2 launch. But I'm working on something right now that I've been wanting to work on for years, but what can you do? You gotta keep your mouth shut, because it's too hype.

IGN: The new Shadowgrapher update, which is a horror-themed update for Warframe, is coming up as well. It continues with Warframe's focus on trying new things and putting a very 'Warframe' spin on familiar game modes. How has it been seeing that one evolve into what you have now?

Rebecca Ford: It's shaping up well. This update has changed a lot since its original inception. We always wanted to go back to something a little more on the unconventional horror side. We've dabbled with that as a theme and a topic for our Chains of Harrow content. Back in 2017, we actually wanted those [horror] pieces there. We didn't know what the puzzle would be as we were putting all the pieces together, but we absolutely knew we wanted something that dealt with the dead relay from so long ago. And then, on top of that, the game mode we were trying to figure out what would be the most fun to play is you being chased.

We had a sort of hide-and-seek prototype, and now it's a bit of all of that, in terms of gameplay iteration, to give players a game mode. This one went through a lot of churn, and what we've ended up with is the best of both worlds. The actual character itself – Follie, the 64th playable Warframe – is sort of the gasoline that makes the engine run, because she's meant to be a little spooky, but also a little whimsical. If a player likes that flavor, they're going to get a little bit of a backstory about why this is important, based on characters that they'll be meeting for the first time. So I'm very happy with all that. And then there are tons of quality-of-life stuff that we've just been waiting to ship as part of this update, cosmetics, events, all that good stuff.

IGN: We're also seeing the release of the Switch 2 version of Warframe this week, developed internally this time. It would be fair to say that the Switch 1 version was more successful than anticipated, so what sort of lessons were learned from that when making the newest one?

Rebecca Ford: Our original Switch 1 journey was helped by developer Panic Button, who co-developed it with us. They were the experts on that hardware at the time, and we were looking to that platform as a future for Warframe. We didn't even know if it was possible, and then when it shipped, we saw it could be done, which was really important for us to make decisions about which hardware to support for the future of Warframe. Now we have the Nintendo Switch 2 release, which, yes, we did in-house entirely, and it is crazy.

I just reviewed the launch trailer for it, and it shows the differences in load times and texture resolutions. It's unbelievable to think we are once again on Nintendo hardware, with a performance and optimization level that is even more compelling for people with a Switch 2 to give Warframe a try. There's not much like it on the Nintendo Switch hardware, it's a mature game that gives you a really good sci-fi MMO experience at this point, and it's going to be incredibly impressive for anyone who has a Nintendo Switch 2 to see a game like this on the hardware. [ …] And we have Switch 2 mouse support as well; there was a lot of joy from the QA team that we were able to make that happen.

IGN: I learned back when the Switch 1 version came out that the optimization went so well that it led to discoveries on how to improve the PC and console versions of the game, too. Did any new technical improvement come about after the work on the Switch 2 version?

Rebecca Ford: What has been really interesting is the way the entire ecosystem of platforms Warframe runs on is feeding off each other's tech gains. We just launched an Android version, and now Switch 2 is about to launch, which took everything optimized for those hardware limitations, but now we get to turn it up even more. We had some really impressive gains with mesh streaming for open worlds and with general load-time optimizations. We have had a very fruitful cross-pollination hybrid between the platforms. There are different tricks across the board that have cross-pollinated to create a ridiculously optimized experience for load times on the Nintendo Switch 2. So it's been really, really good for that.

IGN: With Warframe's anniversary coming up, it's been pretty neat to see how much the game has changed since its original launch, and how Digital Extremes has stuck with the game. What's been important for you all to ensure that the game keeps going?

Rebecca Ford: Our longevity is certainly just a function of our raw elemental volatility. Here I go with the analogies: if you picture the games industry as the Periodic Table of Elements, with your super stable elements on one side. These noble gases are like your neon, and there's not a lot of volatility there. But we are very active and very quick to bond with other combinations to make something new, something that has never really been introduced into the chemical entropy of the games industry. Our first chemical bond was like, "Ok, we're going free-to-play, live service, but do it super ****ing fast." Which we did, and then we haven't lost that. That's still part of the elemental composition of the Digital Extremes molecule, which thrives on speed. It thrives on new combinations, and like adding enough heat to create new structural bonds for what makes us and those structural bonds what they are.

We've become an industry meme for how small our game download sizes are despite being 13 years old, and for how little server downtime we have, all despite being a live service game. As I said, we do things, and we do them fast, and we do them in a very Warframe method that allows us, I think, a lot of grace from the games industry, because people can be very particular about what defines success, or like what should be a game killer, so to speak. And yeah, at this point, we're not just a raw element. We are a molecule, but that molecule is, well, everything I just said.

IGN: Another thing I think has helped Warframe succeed is its strong focus on building community and outreach with players. In addition to being reactive and steady with updates, there are TennoCon fan events, the livestream shows, and just generally trying different things with new content. That's something that many other live-service games that fail to make it into the circle of player interest miss the mark on.

Rebecca Ford: Yes, we take the community very seriously. So it's all fun and games until it isn't from the community side, and you know, we take the good with the bad we have. We're like an institution at this point, where we've been doing it for so long, and just luckily it comes naturally as a priority for us, and it took us 13 years to build even a day of goodwill that we would get today – and it only takes you one day to lose it all. So you know, we have to be very cognizant of what we say and how we say it about our game, our community, and our devs. It is a really impossible thing, I think, now to even speculate on how to do community if you're aspiring to do a live service game these days. If you've built a team that is meant to shepherd and caretake a large live-service game, there is no right answer. A lot of games do things very differently; for example, PVP game community management is a completely different ball game than PvE.

There's also a generational thing happening now, too. If you are going to get the next generation of gamers, what they've been exposed to in their time online is very, very different from what many of us have had. I'm not saying it in a problematic way, but what do people expect when you're 18 and going to college on campus? What have you seen online at this point? That is the type of community that you'd be managing if you're making an 18-plus game and stuff, and there's a very psychological gap now, in a good way, of like, what the next generation of gamers expects. Many people have only really seen one console generation, and in that generation, they weren't exposed to the same IPs that you and I were when we grew up. So it's a very different kind of person you're hoping will join your community. And if you're not prepared to deal with that, you won't get the deal. So for sure, online literacy.

IGN: You actually talked on social media recently that a big reason for Warframe's success early on was that the game had drastically fewer games to compete with – in recent years, there are several thousand every year. There's a constant challenge to get attention, so do you feel Warframe today is still focusing on ensuring players get what they want out of it on their time?

Rebecca Ford: Yeah, we are very careful with what it means for players to have a Warframe account. Like it's yours, and nothing in it will ever be taken from you, right? But that post and stuff I wrote took on a life of its own that I didn't necessarily predict. It fit a lot of narratives that people were already having, so it got absorbed into those, even though that wasn't really my intention. Yes, I play Warframe, and that has something to say about what's happening in the industry. So I get it all, and it's so important to use your time wisely when making a game and do what you know is achievable. Like, you need to be super literate about what launching a game right now looks like and can feel like because you don't control the internet. You only control your game, and I speak from a place where I work with a group of people about to launch a game in this same climate with Soulframe.

We got incredibly lucky. We were broke. There were less than 500 other games released the year Warframe released. Every day people care about Warframe is a gift and we’re only as good as our last update.

— rebb ford (@rebbford)

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We're very aware and very cautious about what success looks like for us, and how we're going to navigate any conversations where someone might label our launch as unsuccessful by using other launches as the only metric. But at the same time, this type of conversation people are having about live-service games is not new. The music industry, for instance, puts out an album that doesn't even chart, which leads to conversations. There's a movie that gets released, and it's considered a box-office bomb. The games industry was due for this type of empirical reckoning, quantifying success beyond just Metacritic ratings.

You can be a critical darling and not sell, and you can sell a ton and be a critical failure. There is no meaning other than what that means to you as a consumer. Like, none of those things matter to you at all, but there are others where that might matter the most, who would never dare buy something that didn't break over 100,000 concurrent players on Steam. That's always up to you, and it should always remain up to the person at the other end of the computer or whatever device they want. If we want any person to be interested in what we're making, we have to make it look interesting to them. That means knowing your target audience, and knowing what makes this team excited. But I'm already dreading this year, because when we release our Tau update, if it's not ******* than last year's update, does that mean it was a failure? Some people may say so, but as you know, we have to decide what success is to us, and at this stage in the industry, that is having a job.

IGN: I imagine as a developer, it can be a bit frustrating to hear online commentary about Steam concurrent players and how they translate into success or failure.

Rebecca Ford: Well, for gamers – which I proudly identify with in all the tongue-in-cheek ways possible – we don't have Super Bowls, we have The Game Awards, which does exactly what it needs to do to recognize great games of the year. But it's almost like we've sportified Steam charts and other metrics. Every time I see Steam chart discourse, it's like people are voting for their teams in a way that reminds me of checking a MLB player's batting average. They're like, well, Warframe’s batting at about 50k CCU with one spike, and as you can tell, if all of us were into sports, this same rhetoric would be used for your favorite sports team.

So there's nothing inherently wrong with these conversations, and they do define studios' success in ways relevant to the pockets and genres they're in. So I always just interpret them as like batting averages, sports records, and home run streaks, and I deal with a lot of baseball freaks in my life, so I know how they handle baseball stats. So to me, it's always just felt like that, and it's just a conversation. But from the gamer lens, and that of gamers who often don't give a hoot about sports, it's very much a similar conversation that sports fans have.

IGN: Digital Extremes has been continuing on the live-service path for some time, and with both Warframe and Soulframe, it's clear that you all have found your particular corner of the live-service space. How are you feeling about this particular path ahead that you all have built?

Rebecca Ford: For us, the future is always a mystery. But I feel personally responsible for making things clear for everyone involved, whether you're a player or on the dev team. We need clarity in why we're going the way we're going, and I learned everything from the crew that are still here at our side, many of whom are working on Soulframe now. They still help immensely with just sitting and having a coffee and talking about what's next, and "does this feel right?" Luckily, they trust me to organize any of those creative threads that we tug at to turn them into something that we can actually ship out.

This year, even though the Tau update won't be too much of a surprise since we teased it, I think the way the shape it will take will be very, very exciting, and obviously a lot of risk involved, and if players like the way things end up looking or feeling. But there's one other update that I have been working on for almost, I don't even know, like in a doc, in a notepad, in life, just like, there's this little project that is going to see the light of day this year. I don't know that I've ever been more personally excited about a little Warframe update as I am with this one.

So I'm really hoping that that excitement doesn't turn into trauma when people don't feel the same way, which is fine. I'll learn from that. But for me, I think that this year is probably one I love every year of Warframe. So I can't pick favorites, but I just think it's important that one particular chapter for this year's Warframe that no one knows about is possibly my most anticipated ever. I can't say much more, because I'm going to be executed if I spoil anything. But should the question simply be, what do you feel about Warframes future? The answer is the most exciting I've ever been because of what I know and what you don't know, but you will know sooner than you think, too. Not PAX, but like, you'll know soon.

Wesley is Director, News at IGN. Find him on

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at @wyp100. You can reach Wesley at [email protected] or confidentially at *****@*****.tld.

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