Episode 603: Tarkov's Nikita Just Changed the FPS Genre Twice in One Show

About this episode

The first FPS Games Show happened, and the two biggest things in it both came from the guy who's had Escape from Tarkov in beta for a decade. Nikita opened the whole showcase with Fragmentary Order — sci-fi, Unreal Engine 5, maps four to five times the size of Tarkov's, and a promise that it'll be "more complex, more punishing, more painful." Then Battlestate turned around and launched a publishing arm for hardcore games nobody else will fund, with devs keeping their full IP. We go deep on both: whether a game more complex than Tarkov is a game anyone actually plays, why Tarkov's bloat (two types of croutons, twenty types of Keter ammo) is the thing a fresh start fixes, and why every extraction shooter after Tarkov has failed for the same reason — they weren't hardcore enough. Also: Bulkhead built this entire showcase because a trailer slot elsewhere runs $300,000 for 60 seconds, then immediately fumbled their own big Wardogs announcement into a clip contest. Plus Tarkov's PvE player base hitting 50%, and Star Wars Zero Company. Timestamps below. Let us know if Fragmentary Order is going to be a bust or a banger. 0:00 - Intro 2:35 - The FPS Games Show 4:21 - The Wardogs