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Making a live service game these days feels like trying to shoot an arrow at a flea while blindfolded. Striking gold with a hot new shooter or other team-based multiplayer game with a quirky twist seems like an exercise in futility, but that isn’t stopping developers and publishers from trying to be the next big thing.
Personally, if I was trying to enter an already-volatile market, I’d probably be steering well clear of MOBAs. They’re finicky, have a high barrier to entry, and require a ridiculous amount of time commitment to ever be remotely good at them. Even then, dragging a League or Dota player away from their game to try another one is a big ask. Hell, I’m still shocked Deadlock has managed to do it.
So I don’t know whether to applaud developer Nirvanana for giving it a go with Project Zeta, or grab the team by the shoulders and give them a good old shake for doing something I perceive to be utterly reckless.
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Though, as Nirvanana will maintain, Project Zeta isn’t quite a MOBA. As the developer tells me, it’s actually a 4v4 multi-team tactical arena battle. Not battle royale, just battle. “We tried not to be tied down to those traditional things,” Nirvanana tells me as I sit down to try Project Zeta at Gamescom, though admits the game did start out as a more traditional battle royale.
But from there, it’s evolved into a sort of battle royale-MOBA-hero shooter hybrid, pitting four teams against each other as they fight across a sprawling map for victory. I’m shown flashy footage of Twitch streamers popping off after winning teamfights, proclaiming how good it feels to win in Project Zeta—emerging victorious from a teamfight refreshes cooldowns for the winners, as well as resurrecting any teammates who fell in the scuffle.
It seemed all well and good, but I couldn’t help but wonder how it felt to be on the other side. Making a victory feel amazing for the winners usually means making the loss feel particularly bad on the other side of things. “In the last test, that was actually the biggest feedback we received,” Nirvanana admits to me.
Recent tweaks have apparently made it so that there’s “bigger risk” for the winning team. “The more you’re ahead, the more you have to seek out other teams and wipe them out … there’s a higher chance of you making mistakes, and that’s a bigger risk for the winning team.” It’s something I’m still not entirely convinced of, but it does at least seem like Nirvanana is doing its best to iron out any kinks as it continues to drip-feed playtests to its core audience.
How that core audience will eventually translate into playercounts with the full release, however? Nirvanana knows it’s a tough ask. “You have to have a clear message,” the developer tells me. “And you have to take the players that agree with that message, and you have to build a community before launch with those players. And I think that’s the only way to secure success once the game launches.
“And so, through these continuous player tests, we want to bring in those players that agree with Zeta’s message to our team. These people will be the evangelists, basically, that promote the game for us. One thing I can say with confidence is that Zeta is a game that doesn’t exist in a genre that doesn’t exist, and it has a very clear message. And so we’re going to continue to put up the message that this is what Zeta is. It’s about team fights, dense team fights, and those who agree with that will be able to come into our community and we will continue to engage with them.”
It all seems like a very hopecore way of looking at things, though Nirvanana does cap it all off by admitting: “Games like us failed a lot. The track record isn’t good.” Well, for Project Zeta’s sake, I hope it can carve out a slice of success in an increasingly difficult landscape.
If you’re interested in checking out Zeta for yourself, there’s a playtest running right now until 12am on September 7. You can sign up on the Project Zeta website.
