Path of Exile 2: The New AAA
A smash hit fourteen years in the making
It has felt for a few years that New Zealand developer Grinding Gear Games has flown under the radar in the mainstream. Part of the reason for this is their flagship game, Path of Exile, started off as a crowdfunded affair in 2010 before a 1.0 release in 2013, so from its very inception it was surrounded by diehards, making it difficult to break into casually.
For context I invite you to watch what is arguably one of the most brilliant GDC talks ever, where back in 2019 GGG’s Chris Wilson outlined the content strategy they eventually settled on for the game.
This strategy has served them well all the way through to today, December 6th 2024, wherein they are expected to launch the sequel: Path of Exile 2. What also just appeared earlier today is an apologetic “brace yourself” video from the game’s director Jonathan Rogers, and I also invite you to read the comments section on it, because the difference between the rhetoric on this video and other “big” games in recent years is quite remarkable.
Sidenote: this video is also basically GGG saying they’ve already made an eight-figure sum on early access keys alone before their new game is even out the door (even though it will be Free to Play when it hits 1.0). A million people logging on to play PoE2 later today will be at least four times the peak concurrent players they’ve ever had for the first game.
There are a multitude of reasons for this success, some of which Wilson tries to cover in his 2019 GDC talk, but he simply isn’t able to explain everything, and it is impossible for me to do so either. I only came to Path of Exile in late 2018 following scattered recommendations, and have been playing the game on and off the past six years, racking up around 2800+ hours in that time, and I would not consider myself an “expert” on the game and its myriad mechanics, only “experienced”.
Path of Exile and its sequel are live service games that change from league to league. The first game is not perfect - it has had its ups and downs, but the general trend has always been up. It should also be noted that PoE2’s release is coming at the heels of Diablo 4 - a game series that literally created the ARPG genre but which has been met with a lukewarm reception at best.
If the previous PoE leagues are anything to go by, the queue to get into play will probably be absurd, but that’s always been part of the fun of a new release. On a more professional note, my hope is that other game developers big and small will start giving Grinding Gear Games the attention they are long overdue. You don’t retain an increasingly large audience for years without a product that has something very special going on.
To anyone looking to get into game development for literally any reason (design, art, audio, network engineering, production), please watch Chris’ GDC talk linked above, and please play the first game for yourself.
To those expecting Steam to be stable later today, good luck.
[Please forgive both the tardiness and time-sensitive nature of this post: the past few months have been chaotic but things are finally settling just in time for the year to end. So it goes.]