Splitgate 2 CEO shares “fun first” approach to game design

The sequel to the beloved, yet short-lived Splitgate has one major focus according to its CEO, which is “fun first” above all else.

Dexerto had the chance to speak with Ian Proulx, CEO of 1047 Games and creator of Splitgate, about the upcoming Splitgate 2, a 4v4 first-person action shooter with portals and factions.

While much of the conversation spoke of the developers’ approach to balancing the meta, Proulx had a lot to say about the main focal point of the sequel compared to its predecessor. This time, fun came first throughout the design process:

“[O]ne of our design pillars is fun first and we emphasize that to everybody on the team. Like, this is important for the art team so that they’re designing to make a fun game, fun maps, not just like beautiful maps. And it’s to the design team and the level design team like hey, we’re trying to make fun maps, not just like super competitive maps to everybody.”

1047 Games

This was emphasized even further when Proulx spoke about the possibility of Splitgate 2 entering the Esports scene in the future and why it wasn’t a huge priority:

“[P]hilosophically, like, that’s not our top priority right now, like the top priority is fun first, we just want to make a fun game. And of course, it’s a PvP shooter so it lends itself well, and its got portals, it’s got a high skill ceiling, so we do think this will be a great Esport one day, but that’s not the focus, the focus is let’s make a fun game.”

While the Splitgate creator then mentioned how gaining feedback from competitive modes was more helpful than feedback from a fun, party mode, the idea of the game becoming an Esport wasn’t a part of the major pillars of this game’s design.

So what went wrong with the first Splitgate in terms of fun factor? Proulx had an answer to this question of what 1047 Games wanted to solve with the first game when approaching the sequel:

“What we saw in Splitgate was, super fun game. People would come in, they loved it. They’d play for about three or four weeks.”

1047 Games

Players would drop off after playing for about a month, but then after that, they felt that they “experienced everything there is to experience, and the game hasn’t changed,” Proulx continued.

He also mentioned that the lack of updates was due to 1047 Games being a small team of around 15-20 people, but luckily Splitgate 2’s development team consists of around 175 people.

This meant that the sequel would hopefully have many more opportunities to push out exciting updates compared to the first game.

Splitgate 2 plans to launch sometime during 2025 on PC, PlayStation, and Xbox. While 1047 Games already held a Closed Alpha, players can hopefully expect future playtests to arrive before launch.