Every time a game developer implements the democratization of game development, it is hailed as a novel, innovative idea. It’s been done countless times over many years, from daily public builds to frequently updated Early Access editions. What distinguishes Dr. “Herschel Beahm IV” Disrespect’s upcoming FPS project from his Midnight Society studio, a battle royale-cum-extraction shooter? To play it, you need to buy a fucking NFT.
The objective of Midnight Society, currently known as “Project Moon,” is to develop “the next AAA competitive PvPvE first-person shooter,” which they promise to do “openly and transparently” by making available what they are dubbed “Snapshots.”
These are essentially vertical slice builds of a game, which are more frequently produced by developers during pre-alpha in an effort to land a publishing deal or to showcase at conferences like E3. Such previews of a game’s features give an idea of the developer’s goals, but in this case, it appears that they will be used to allow backers—sorry, “Founders Action Pass holders”—to provide feedback and vote for features they would like to see added or removed. which is also known as “playtesting,” a task that developers or publishers pay people to complete, frequently ineffectively.
With Robert Bowling, a founding member of Infinity Ward and executive producer of Cat Girl Without Salad: Amuse-Bouche, money-man Sumit Gupta, and Beahm himself, a former community manager at Call of Duty studio Sledgehammer Games, Midnight Society describes itself as a group of “ambitious game industry veterans.” It also boasts Quinn Delhoyo, who is the lead designer for the sandbox in Halo: Infinite and who previously had the honor of designing levels for Duke Nukem Forever. Quinn has also worked on multiplayer for previous Halo games and Gears Of War III.
They have already assembled a second team of 12 non-development employees, some of whom have the word “crypto” written across their resumes, in addition to a third team of 10 experienced developers.
It takes a small team to put together what seems to be a battle royale-meets-extraction shooter (imagine Hunt: Showdown meets Plunkbat), the genres through which Beahm first found success on streaming services. But since they plan to give those who have invested in the project a playable build every six weeks, it’ll be very easy to see how they’re doing.
According to the most recent blog post from Midnight Society, “Our high-level gameplay goals are to capture the essence of arena shooter level design with the scale and scope of battle royale player counts, and the session-to-session gameplay mechanics of extraction-based shooters.”
The development studio had previously made an effort to attract attention a few weeks prior by purchasing an expensive Times Square billboard. On it, only the studio’s name and the hints that an announcement is expected on July 29 were teased. This appears to be the first “Founders Event,” where those who invested before the game was released will have the opportunity to gather in Los Angeles to, er, “discuss the first Snapshot of the game.” What a period.
10,000 NFTs, which stand for these Founders Active Passes, were sold by Beahm and company in March for a not insignificant $50 each. The 400,000 applications Midnight Society claims to have received make it clear that more sales of these passes are an intended source of income. The salaries of the current team cannot be paid with half a million dollars for that first round.
It’s interesting to note that no mention of additional cryptoshit appears in any of the hazy descriptions of what Project Moon will actually be. Uncertain whether that is clever marketing to try to avoid the enormous amount of negativity the topic justifiably generates. However, given the hiring of crypto experts, it wouldn’t be surprising to start hearing about some “Web3” BS in the future.
We’ll get a fascinating perspective on the project as it progresses, of course, given the promises of transparency and the fact that backers are permitted to make public video content from the six-weekly builds. We appreciate those who made the curious decision to pay for a typically compensated development role.
