You used to make a lot of money in this industry by having the prettiest game on the market. Not anymore.
Crytek is a studio best known for graphically intensive games like Crysis and Ryse: Son of Rome, but the developer is now working on a multiplayer online battle arena game for PC and consoles, Arena of Fate.
Crytek Black Sea is handling development of Arena of Fate. Formerly Black Sea Studios, that developer previously worked on real-time strategy games Knights of Honor and WorldShift. The MOBA genre actually got its start as a mod for another real-time strategy game, Warcraft III, so Black Sea’s involvement makes sense.
MOBAs are insanely popular, with games like Dota 2 and League of Legends consistently among the most-played lists on PC every month (and adding millions of dollars in revenues to their publishers’ earnings reports). However, MOBAs usually aren’t high-end showcases for stunning graphics. Instead, they focus on intense competition and coordinated teamwork.
Arena of Fate will pit classic characters, fictional and historical, against one other. “Imagine Joan of Arc and Robin Hood cooperating to hunt down Little Red Riding Hood,” managing director of Crytek Black Sea and game director of Arena of Fate Vesselin Handjiev said in a press release sent to GamesBeat. “Wouldn’t that be terrific? But besides the game’s iconic heroes, which everyone in the team really loves, we are also challenging ourselves to carefully craft a streamlined player experience that allows for both greater accessibility, and rich, deep, action-packed gameplay.”
Arena of Fate will enter an early access beta on PC this summer. If it can find a fraction of the success of games like League of Legends and Dota 2 have had with free-to-play models and e-sports viewership, Crytek could find itself with a nice revenue stream. Of course, the MOBA market is always growing. Blizzard’s Heroes of the Storm and the DC Comics-themed Infinite Crisis are already conducting beta tests. Arena of Fate might be late to the arena.