Show Notes
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 beta and what's coming at launch
7:03 - Fragmentary Order: first impressions
9:03 - Tarkov's three real problems
10:52 - It's not Battlestate — Nikita's new studio
12:50 - "More complex, more punishing, more painful"
18:33 - Tarkov's bloat problem
20:09 - How sci-fi is this actually going to be?
25:55 - "Not an extraction shooter" — Nikita's combat simulator
30:18 - Why Unreal Engine 5
37:41 - Is there a release date?
43:14 - When will Fragmentary Order actually be playable?
45:21 - Tarkov is old and it looks it
48:47 - Battlestate Games is a publisher now
58:09 - What does a game publisher actually do?
1:02:04 - "Make hardcore live forever" — mission or marketing?
1:04:27 - Extraction shooters aren't dead, arcade shooters are
1:08:00 - Does this change the Tarkov roadmap?
1:12:44 - $300,000 for 60 seconds
1:14:42 - Genre showcases vs. the big generic ones
1:19:28 - Bulkhead's Wardogs announcement flops
1:23:15 - Who actually wins the $100K?
1:25:18 - Everything else from the show
1:26:39 - Road to Vostok, Ready or Not, Hell Let Loose
1:28:30 - Beautiful Light
1:32:49 - Gray Zone Warfare is "entering alpha"
1:34:50 - Tarkov PvE is 50% of the player base
1:40:05 - Is seasonal PvP actually worse?
1:47:11 - Star Wars Zero Company
1:53:50 - Grievous vs. Darth Maul
1:55:21 - Outro
_Note: timestamps may be slightly misaligned on podcast apps (but not on YouTube) due to dynamic ads._
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