Turtle Rock working on new free-to-play AAA FPS for Perfect World Entertainment

Did you think the failure of Evolve could leave developer Turtle Rock Studios in a bad position? Luckily, the Left 4 Dead developer seems to have bounced back and has just revealed in an interview with GamesIndustry.biz the development of a new AAA IP to be published by Perfect World Entertainment, of Star Trek Online and Neverwinter fame. This upcoming game is going to be a first-person shooter and free-to-play from the start, unlike Evolve which began shelf life as a retail title.

Turtle Rock believes in free-to-play and that's why the studio chose Perfect World Entertainment to publish: “To us, boxed product is like a speech, a developer is telling something to its audience and they have to listen. With free-to-play, it's a conversation and we love that dialog with our players.” Phil Robb, Co-founder of Turtle Rock Studios also added “If I was going to boil down our key learnings into one thing, it's that the AAA boxed product is just not a welcome home for independent developers. It's now a nearly impossible proposition, actually.”

As for the game, it's being built on Unreal Engine (4, most likely) and won't be available until at least 2018. It will have a huge focus on co-op FPS and plenty of baddies to shoot, but it won't have zombies or feature a post-apocalyptic setting, instead going for a “strong dark fantasy element.”

“This one is going to be huge,” said Yoon IM, SVP, Global Publishing at Perfect World Entertainment. “We've been growing Perfect World Entertainment for about a decade now, always looking for strong developers to make cool games. We're proud to work with developers like Cryptic, Tuque, Runic and Unknown Worlds. Partnering with Turtle Rock and adding its new IP to our portfolio is great. We look forward to fully supporting Turtle Rock as a publishing partner and can't wait to show off their new game.”

The FPS genre is a very competitive one, with games such as Paladins and even Blizzard's B2P Overwatch taking a lot of space, so we're curious to learn more about this project. What do you think it will look like, maybe a The Elder Scrolls kind of setting?