PUBG changed the scope of Early Access in many ways. Conan Exiles is a different style of game entirely POE currency trade , but has promoting a pre-release game been difficult against PUBG's runaway success?
I dunno. It's interesting. PlayerUnknown's is something we're looking at and asking: What went so right there? You can pull out some elements, but it's hard to say exactly what clicked. Keep in mind this is the third game of that type that's been developed by that developer. He's ironed out the kinks and has built up a player base along the way. There's elements there that make it so successful, but in terms of us I think it's just a matter of us focusing on what we're doing. PUBG is first and foremost more competition to a different type of game, and I think people compare us more with Ark, for example, which is also a huge game. I think that's the harder comparison. It's been around a while, it's got a load of cool features, it's got a big following.
When we were making Age of Conan, the MMO, we were getting compared to World of Warcraft—and that was just a sky-high success story and still is. You just do your thing and make things that are unique and interesting. In terms of press attention, it's always hard to get press attention when there's a pretty girl at the ball. PUBG is definitely the pretty girl at the ball this year.
Last thing about PUBG. Given how popular the battle royale genre has become, do you think Conan Exiles will ever apply a similar mode?
We're 100 percent focused on what we're going to launch the game as and with. I won't rule out, for example, that for DLC we could make a battle royale-style mode. We could even do a standalone game using the assets of Conan Exiles and some of the network code that we've developed for it. I won't rule it out, but it's not on the table at the moment. I'll say this: The session-based nature of PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds, the jump in with your mates, that sort of thing is appealing. When you get to my age and you have a couple of kids, it's hard to find time. If you can get in, play a game, three or four rounds, and back out—that session-based nature of that game is one of the things that's really added to PUBG's appeal.
With session-based games in particular I've sort of noticed that, yeah, a lot of those games are becoming extremely popular. Whether or not we do something session-based with Exiles or whether or next game has some elements like that, for sure, we're looking at it and talking about it buy Path of exile currency .
Talk me through the last 12 months of Conan Exiles in Early Access—what's been the most enjoyable elements, the most exciting, the most challenging?
