If you were to look at Warframe now, it’s hard to even imagine that Digital Extremes’ free-to-play mega-hit ever had humbler origins. Even harder to believe that its very existence was a desperate last-ditch plan to keep the lights on at a struggling studio that had been turned away by every major publisher.
In the latest in their oft-excellent series of candid interview-heavy documentaries, YouTube outfit NoClip went and pinned down the core staff behind Warframe’s success, and have managed to extract an hour of surprisingly candid history from them, equally educational and emotionally resonant. Worth a watch.
I’ve been watching the evolution of free-to-play space-ninja shooter Warframe on and off for thirteen years now. Back at E3, 2005, it first saw the light of day as Dark Sector, a high-concept sci-fi action RPG years before its time. Rejected by publishers, Digital Extremes settled on reworking it into a Gears of War clone while they kept the dream alive.
When the concept later resurfaced as Warframe, many wrote it off. Admittedly, it was threadbare in those early days, with limited depth and only a single environment to play in, but it grew. Oh my, how it grew. Five years from its original Steam debut, it’s celebrating by showering players with goodies, including a complete set of mid-tier weaponry, with a themed character skin to match.