released the game and each of the
expansions we released did OK, and
sometimes went up and sometimes
went down. The money was great,
and it was awesome to have made a
successful game. But at the same
time, it wasn’t growing.”
Grinding Gear’s angel investors,
who had helped fund the game,
weren’t applying any pressure. And
so it became a question for the studio
itself to answer – did they want to
try and be the next League of Legends,
and how would they achieve that
if they did?
If you’ve logged into Steam
anytime in the last three years, you’ll
know that not only did Grinding Gear
decide to take over the world, but
that it’s succeeding. Since the team
adopted a rigid 13-week schedule,
they’ve seen a 20 per cent increase in
players with the release of each
league – Path of Exile’s take on
Diablo’s seasons. It’s a reversal of the
industry standard, in defiance of the
trajectory that even the likes of Wo rl d
of Warcraft has suffered.
“Path of Exile’s been out for about
six years and we’re still seeing new
records,” Wilson says. “Our highest
month was December. We’re
expecting to see more records broken
in the next couple of years, especially
“People talk about how it feels
satisfying to shatter a whole screen
of enemies at once,” Wilson says.
“But a lot of our core designers want
the real satisfaction, deep down, to
be that you found something
awesome that you can then go home
and load up on your screen and look
at. You’re able to trade it to someone
else if you want to, but you don’t
want to because it’s yours, but you
could give it to them, but you’re not
going to. Path of Exile players are
heavily, heavily encouraged to care
very deeply about the things they’ve
accomplished on the game.”
It’s a tribute to Path of Exile’s
uniquely enduring success that its
studio is having to worry about
where its players aren’t grinding
elsewhere in their lives – and
testament to Grinding Gear that the
studio takes the problem seriously.
It didn’t have to. But in Wraeclast,
the only justice is the one exiles
make for themselves.BELOW: There’s no
mistaking it, this is
dark fantasy.EXILES ON FILE PC gaming’s most punishing banishments
PYRE
If your path to redemption is a
game that basically
resembles Quidditch, is it
even exile at all?BANISHED
Made bearable by the number
of exiles in one place. They’re
your resources, but don’t let
them hear you say that.MORROWIND
You’re technically freed from
prison, but into a realm where
the only colour you’ll ever see
again is brown.DISHONORED 2
Occasional queen Emily
Kaldwin spends less time on
her throne than fighting to
get back to it.CONAN EXILES
The original barbarian saves
every player character in this
game, but fails to provide
aftercare in a harsh world.with the massive 4.0.0 coming out
next year.”
The swift turnover on expansions
has helped, paradoxically, with
keeping hold of the staff the studio so
desperately needs – Grinding Gear is
still something of an island as a PC
game developer in New Zealand.
“We want people to be constantly
working on varied stuff,” Wilson says.
“We make sure they have mobility
within the company, and that every
moment of overtime that’s asked for
is both paid at a higher rate, and also
seen as a management failure so that
we can make sure to minimise that as
much as possible.”PLAYERS’ HEALTH
Perhaps it shouldn’t be a surprise that
an action-RPG developer can see the
benefits of a commitment to staff
welfare, eyeing the long-term reward
beyond the immediate grind of the
next expansion milestone. It’s
heartening to learn that several of
Grinding Gear’s staff have been
around for more than a decade, and
that all of its founders are still with
the company. “People are seeing it as
a lifelong commitment,” Wilson says.
What is surprising – in that I’ve
never heard a game developer ever
mention the concept before – is that
the studio is starting to consider the
long-term impact of the game on
their players’ lives as well.
“Some of our players put in a lot
of hours each day – eight, ten, 12
hours,” Wilson says. “And that often
comes at the expense of their
real-world progress, right? Because of
this, they’re potentially even unhappy
about their achievements in the real
world. So it’s very important that
they can feel incredibly good about
the fact they’ve achieved so much
cool stuff within our game.”
It’s for that reason you don’t see as
much power inflation in Path of Exile
as in some comparable MMOs –
where you might find a beginner
weapon in a new expansion that
makes the one you spent hundreds of
hours raiding for look a bit silly.Path of Exile
FEATURE