Spellbreak's Goal From Conception: To Be "Watchable, Streamable, And Shareable"

While any video game goes through some changes during its development cycle, Proletariat's initial vision for free-to-play battle royale Spellbreak has remained largely unaltered. CEO Seth Sivak recently sat down with GamesIndustry.biz to talk about the game's origins and early development, which included the primary goal of being "very watchable, streamable, and sharable."

To that end, Sivak knew that he wanted a battle royale, all the way back in 2016, before Fortnite and Player Unknown's BattleGrounds came on the scene. H1Z1 served as more of an inspiration, though Sivak knew that he wanted a more fantasy-style take on the genre. The team combined a pair of prototypes, one a Dota 2 mod and one with a more Viking theme, and Spellbreak was born.

The game naturally went through several iterations, some with more of a ranged/shooter or melee focus, finally coming together as what Sivak called a "magic spellcasting game," as opposed to a "bullet simulator shooter" like PUBG or "builder-shooter" like Fortnite. Sivak also wanted to ensure that the game would be available on all platforms. That's been "not as easy as I wish it was" but he believes "very strongly that every multiplayer game should be cross-platform with cross-progression."

As for the game's watchability, Sivak talked about the game's early attempts at publicization, which included "trying to write contracts with these 16-year-olds to get them to make videos for the game." This was less than half a decade ago, when "none of the infrastructure existed" regarding influencer marketing existed. That seems like ancient times, now that we live in an age where every game of any repute will get at least a few [Sponsored] streams or videos from popular content creators.