Splash Damage Devs Had To Adjust To "Games As Service" Model For Dirty Bomb

The team at Splash Damage is keeping busy these days. They've still got Dirty Bomb to work on, of course, and they've got something cooking with Wargaming.

Fortunately, the team is now prepared to offer "games as service," something that was a foreign concept a decade ago. In an interview with PCGamesN, Creative Director Neil Alphonso admits that was a difficult adjustment for Dirty Bomb's developers, many of whom who were more accustomed to creating new content than polishing and upgrading existing games.

Alphonso says that, while players might see a game as "abandoned" if it doesn't receive significant updates for long stretches of time, maintaining the "hygiene of the game" is just as important, even if it can be mostly invisible to players. It stands in stark contrast to the "fire and forget" model that Splash Damage was accustomed to from its time working on AAA titles.

"We've probably done a hundred updates to Dirty Bomb since it's been in open beta and previously, for me, the game which had had the most updates maybe had five after going live. With a live game you're learning for the next week, the next month, the next release, essentially. It's much quicker, you have to improve very quickly and fail very quickly, honestly. You have to be able to do new things and not be afraid of it."

Alphonso also says that the new model of content creation helps things move at a more controlled pace, allowing time for holidays and other breaks for employees. Just don't take too long to push out that next content update, all right?