There never was (or never will be) another game like Warframe
Earlier last month Bungie had announced that their online first-person shooter title Destiny 2 was having its last content update as it’s expected that the studio will be hurdling towards another round of mass layoffs, and the remaining manpower will be needed for their recent release Marathon as well as other potential projects. Well, more realistically a spontaneous news bulletin made the announcement as most of the development team at Bungie were unaware that the live-service was being unplugged, but if I have to talk about the management shortcomings of that God forsaken video game company I might end up typing a hole into my keyboard.
Almost immediately following the public release of this news was an entourage of (probably) well-meaning but obnoxious social media cretins promoting their own forever game, Warframe, in the mentions of clearly distraught Destiny 2 players. It’s kind of confusing really, because the only apt comparisons you can make between the two games is that they’re both dark sci-fi and are online video games. They’re “competitors” by proxy that, on a given day, you either feel like eating BBQ wings or pizza.
Then, it got me thinking: what is Warframe? I mean, it’s a free-to-play MMO action game where you pilot robot ninjas, but I have confidence in the modern human society to make something to that degree. But once you sink your teeth into it you’ll quickly find out that it is very different to the formulaic game design that is massively multiplayer online. And it’s also immensely successful and just recently celebrated its 13-year anniversary. We’ve seen about a dozen live-service titles this year alone that won’t ever be seeing any anniversary because publishers can’t help but blow millions of dollars on a game that’s projected to make revenue indefinitely. Maybe we can find an answer by going back in time to the earlier days of Warframe, and see--
Oh, old Warframe fucking sucks
Well now I have even more questions!
Warframe has undergone over a decade of changes to a point where early versions of the game almost seem like an alternate reality to what it is nowadays. You’re not going to find lightning-fast movement or whole battalions to blow up here. You have a stamina bar to manage, and even a moderately sized group of enemies is enough to have you on the ropes unless you’re playing someone like Rhino. It’s far more of a spiritual successor to Digital Extreme’s previous title Dark Sector. Which okay, yeah sure, over time there will be a shift in design philosophy as the development team exchange roles or learn what works or what doesn’t (or, what players like or dislike. Remember this is still an online game.) But who thought having revives as a premium consumable was a good idea?
Look, I’ll be honest, as interesting as these older versions seem it’s really no secret that Warframe’s evolution to what it is now isn’t just because the developers got bored of making a stealth game. I don’t think the game would’ve gotten to where it is today if stuff like void keys, planet navigation coordinates, perma-death companions, generally more aggressive monetization, or whatever the fuck was going on with the melee system were still around. But, of course, a game ending up being rough around the edges doesn’t mean it’s Sell Da Company time like what it seems like today. You gather feedback. You figure out what your mistakes were, what to learn from them, and correct them accordingly.
Digital Extremes took it upon themselves to curate Warframe as an ongoing project to make a power fantasy world with diverse gameplay, intricate lore & themes, and something that is just crazy fun to play either by yourself or with a stoned-out buddy who spends most of the game in Grendel’s Pulverize ball. And now there is a giant community willing to travel miles to visit an entire convention themed around the game, with their Warframe branded shirts, buying hot sauces online themed after Ember. If you think older Warframe is better because of the vibes, or the concept of what the game should be, or maybe there was a patch that specifically soured you, then you are absolutely entitled to those opinions. But please never make a video game in your lifetime.
These kinds of rags-to-riches stories in the video game industry has been so few and far between as more releases are buried before people even realize that it even fucking released in the first place. No Man’s Sky clawed out of its mockery into becoming one of the most popular space sandboxes of all time. Cyberpunk 2077 had such a nightmare-scenario launch that some people refuse to give it a second chance even after a "2.0 update," a DLC expansion, and an anime series by friggin’ Studio Trigger. This kind of stuff is practically unheard of nowadays, so much so that “dead game” has become nomenclature in discussions for even single-player titles.
But putting that aside, we still haven’t exactly figured out what makes Warframe so different from anything else. So lets jump ahead to present day and do a bit of casual cross-examination.
Your dopamine will be complete in 5h 34m
Warframe at its core is structured to be centered around the player. There are quest lines to complete, factions to interact with, challenging content to play, and unique rewards to collect, but all of these are done at your own discretion. You could have a thousand hours on the game and still be rank 12 if only because you don’t like farming XP and just want to play at your own pace. As the saying goes: if it sucks, hit da bricks. To that end, it kind of does emulate your typical MMO title. My last experience with the genre was Elder Scrolls Online, and the amount of people on there who only logon to decorate their virtual houses and engage with nothing else in the game kind of took me for surprise. If you present a 'do anything' game to the market, you’re going to end up with a few players who are so out of left-field from the targeted audience you would think they got lost on the way in.
The open-ended nature of Warframe has given it some notoriety for having poor on-boarding for new players, which is a valid critique that has no real good solution for it within the current state of the game. It is so terribly niche as both a normal video game and a live-service title that, as much as I am glazing it throughout this post, I can only cautiously recommend playing unless you already have extensive interest in it. You’re either going to love it or hate it, and as a result Warframe gets a lot of leverage out of its free-to-play model. Pretty much every bit of the game is accessible for free, most uses of the premium currency it uses is strictly for cosmetics, reducing grinding, or skipping crafting timers. Every aspect of a live-service multiplayer game has a bit more thought put into it outside of its monetization, which is a stark reflection of the game’s ‘do at your own pace’ gameplay loop.
Warframe seems to do everything different from your usual video game which is both a blessing in that boy all this talk of anti-consumerism in the medium sure gets tiring after a while, and a curse in that someone will see that it takes three-and-a-half days to make one warframe and immediately run away like they’ve seen a ghost. As much as this post is an endorsement of the game, I’m not going to be offended that much if you decide I’m a dumb sellout for something that only exasperates what is wrong with the games industry and then find my socials to threaten my life on. I like Warframe, and there’s a lot of talk about it right now in our current world of “We are excited to announce a brand new online multiplayer game that we’ll shut down in 6-12 months.”
All free and no play makes Jack a dull boy
The success Warframe has garnered over its long & storied development history has recently started catching the eyes of everyone, from veteran MMO players looking for a reason to escape their Stockholm syndrome, to prospective publishers staring agape at its player count and revenue stream. Of course the immediate comparison is the Destiny franchise, who ended live service for their original title in 2017 and then spent all the years afterwards working on a sequel that went from blatant marketing cash-grab to “yeah I guess it’s fun when you don’t have a bitch in your ear complaining about it all the time.”
But like I said, Warframe & Destiny had merely only co-existed each other and the only reason there was any competition in the first place was because people didn’t seem to understand their fundamental differences in game design. One could argue Destiny is much closer to a stereotypical MMORPG than Warframe ever will be. But that doesn’t mean that no one ever tried to emulate Warframe’s design into their own visions.
The first of these games that advertised themselves in the same genre as Warframe (third-person action RPG looty-shooty) was The First Descendant, made by Korean gacha specialists Nexon. This game got on people’s radars as the eldritch abomination that is 21st century political discourse made its way to Warframe as a result of Digital Extreme’s outspoken support for progressive values. People wanted their entire personality to be about how often they masturbate, so when you put Eve from Stellar Blade in a cloning vat and bolt combat armor to all the non-suggestive body parts it’s a natural attraction to Nexon’s preexisting audience.
I know I’m being really crass here but the truth is that maybe I would be a lot nicer if it wasn’t also just terrible to play. The developers of The First Descendant fell into the classic game design trap of “Computers have no feelings. If it’s PVE, then why do we need to nerf anything?” The end result is game balance that have power crept so bad that the developers have resorted to making the game annoying to play and calling it difficulty tweaking, an issue that even occasionally affects Warframe from time to time! If you’re going to try to bring competition into a genre you need to figure out exactly what does or does not work in order to capitalize on those strengths and mitigate the weaknesses. Copying someone’s homework will only get you the same grade as the work you’re copying.
And then there’s Duet Night Abyss, who is somehow fairing worse due to sheer negligence. Pick your poison: trying to mesh Genshin Impact gacha systems into a Warframe-like which is like mayonnaise to peanut butter, terrible performance optimization, a game that despises its free-to-play players, security concerns that the developers brushed under the rug and is just now in the ‘find out’ phase, or some other sinister things I’m not aware of because I don’t feel like risking malware infection thank you very much.
Is Warframe just “bottled lightning?”
Yes? But that mentality has never stopped the video game industry before.
You want a really fucked comparison? Okay: Fallout New Vegas. Over the past decade since it’s release it has became a cult classic in the western RPG world. Something I had coined as “the best Bethesda game they never made.” Of course, when Obsidian Entertainment were given the greenlight by new publishers to make a spiritual successor to it, they turned up with The Outer Worlds. And no one seems to like it! But they made a sequel anyway?!
Games like Warframe (and by extension Destiny) will continue seeing “inspired” titles in the foreseeable future because success is a virtue that must be replicated in the video games industry otherwise all the money it has sucked up over the half-century it’s been around would’ve been all for naught. Trend-setters have always been a more rare commodity than trend-chasers. But I sincerely believe that the only death Warframe may experience would be purely self-inflicted because, ironically, no one wants to make a game actually like Warframe to begin with. It is virtually incomparable to most live service titles currently on the market. If they want Warframe’s success, they need that secret sauce. It’s too bad they’re allergic to it!
This has been my monthly plea to find an active Warframe clan. Now if you'll excuse me, I need to finish my Breaking Bad binge.
Lozzy is a gaming enthusiast who is going to lose his mind if this Voruna Prime blueprint doesn't drop. You can find me on Bluesky.