World Boss, PlaySide’s new FPS, has had some massive names attached to it: LazarBeam, an Australian YouTuber, alongside fellow Aussie YouTuber Fresh.
The game is still in its early stages and is only fresh out of the playtest stages and reaching the early access mode, so there’s room for the title to grow and be influenced by new ideas changing the fundamentals of the game itself.
The title uses mechanics from successful games in the FPS genre and uses it to create a new, casual experience that provides a surprising amount of depth in each game.
And PlaySide wants YouTubers and Twitch creators to give suggestions.
Dot Esports spoke to Natassha Roberts, Steven Yeakey, and Bobby Lever, members of the PlaySide development team in charge of World Boss, and explored the possibility of a bigger list of heavy hitter influencers that could help the game reach its own celebrity status.
LazarBeam and Fresh’s contributions
Lever called the relationship between the developers and Fresh and LazarBeam “very organic”, with the YouTubers being hands-on in the early stages of the title.
“Their contribution was kind of from day one, we were regularly playtesting with them, getting feedback, you know, a lot of early development was very focused on exploring like a bunch of different concepts, and really trying to understand what the good stuff was, and try to throw away the bad stuff,” Lever said.
The YouTubers were “instrumental in helping us understand what the [issues] were.”
They assisted in honing the “shooting mechanics” and gave feedback about “hit registration,” even going as far as to provide help with the “stability of our network in general.”
The more content creators, the better
The team couldn’t talk about the “specifics” regarding the implementation of new influencers in assisting the development of the title, however, shared that they are “super open” to the idea of celebrities coming into the fold.
“Putting content creators is an absolute, like cornerstone to being successful in the current games market,” Lever said.
He added: “We are talking to a lot of people and in the initial announcement and gameplay saw a lot of interest from other creators out there, and I would not be surprised if you see something like that in the future.”
There will be battle passes and skins, don’t worry
The title is free-to-play, paired with microtransactions to help keep the game running. Yeakey shared that “we’ve got 90 tiers of unlockable content, there’s both a free track and a premium track.”
The skins will provide modifications to characters, weapons, “and a lot of other sorts of personalization options in terms of like the players banner that incorporates loads of different logos, backgrounds, stat trackers” that are customizable as you progress through the title.
While monetization will be a way to help bring funds into the game, the PlaySide team has ensured they deliver on “value” when it comes to these microtransactions.
