Offworld Industries has come a long way.
The Vancouver-based game developer started off making the well-known “Project Reality” mod for Battlefield 2 in 2014 and, after a successful crowdfunding campaign, launched the popular team-based shooter Squad in early access one year later.
And now, it’s working on a major cult-classic IP with its latest game, the 16-player co-op shooter Starship Troopers: Extermination, in partnership with Sony Pictures Entertainment. MobileSyrup caught up with the team in Los Angeles ahead of IGN Live, where it would go on to make several big announcements, including an official console and PC launch for Extermination this fall following an early access release last year.
“We’ve grown the team from a scrappy few modders to an actually professional development studio,” reflects Peter Maurice, the project lead on Starship Troopers: Extermination. “Working now with the community, we’re realizing our product to get fully launched, so it’s been an incredible journey.”
Maurice notes that he’s in the “very loyal and very vocal” community Discord every day to listen to feedback and generate ideas to improve the game. Part of that ongoing work, he says, is to set expectations, especially when it comes to the “living roadmap” that Offworld has teased for the game. He cites the signature weakpoints on the iconic Starship Troopers bugs as an example of this.
“If you’re a fan of the movie, the big part is ‘shoot ’em in the stem,’ right? It’s a scene in the movie. But we just didn’t have a way to achieve that that would have gone over well with the community,” he says. “So we moved it off the roadmap, and we worked with the community and asked them, ‘How do you want this system to work?’ To the point where after about eight, nine months, the designers have been hearing their feedback and came back with a really good system.”
Thread on our new Carnage System 🧵@OffworldInd pic.twitter.com/kMyVJJ6YRv
— Offworld Gareth (@TheGarethWoods) June 13, 2024
When coming up with all of this new content for Extermination, Maurice says one question the 30-person team constantly asks itself is “How does it service the brand?” One example of this is the new ‘Carnage’ system, an impressive technological feat that keeps all of the bug carcasses in the map so players have to trudge through — and, in some cases, even scale — them for greater vantage points.
“There’s no shortage of ideas. From my point of view, as a game designer, I’m always like, ‘How can I screw with the player a bit more? How can I make this experience more crazy?’” says Chaz Barker, lead game designer.
“So, for example, the medic has an ability where there’s an area of effect and you heal the players in that area. What if a bombardier bug were to open up and explode in that area? We’ve got chaos, we’ve got fun, we’ve got interest, we’ve got strategies being changed. And that’s how I approach it as a game designer — to always make sure that the player’s always on their feet and having to think.”
Another way the team has listened to fans is by including a dedicated single-player campaign in the full release to appeal to the Starship Troopers faithful who maybe don’t want a 16-player online experience. And once that decision was made, who better to be at the centre of a new Starship Troopers narrative than the lead of Paul Verhoeven’s Starship Troopers himself, Johnny Rico? Naturally, that meant seeking Casper Van Dien to reprise the iconic role, and the actor says he was “thrilled” to get involved.
From left to right: Casper Van Dien (Johnny Rico), Gareth Woods (head of marketing), Chaz Barker (lead game designer) and Peter Maurice (game lead).
“I love being part of this franchise. I love Starship Troopers. I’ve loved every second of being a part of it, the animated movies and everything. I wanted to do more. I mean, I did the voiceover for the pinball machine when it first came out,” says Van Dien with a laugh.
He says he feels a kinship not only with the people he made the film with all those years ago, but the many fans he’s met over the years, and so he’s excited for Extermination to bring even more people into that fold. “It’s still a family for me and now, it feels like the family has been extended. And now that it’s going to invite all the fans in, it’s going to be a bigger family. It’s something the fans get so excited about.”
That family has arguably gotten even bigger this year with the massive success of Helldivers 2, PlayStation’s Starship Troopers-inspired four-player co-op game.
“A rising tide raises all boats,” Barker says to that point. “I think there are so many opportunities opening up for this kind of genre that I want to explore as a game designer, and just push the limits more and more to having an IP like this where we can give a completely different experience from what the regular first-person shooter or other shooters are doing,” he said.
“You are overwhelmed in this game in a good way, and that’s something I haven’t seen in any other game. One of the first things I noticed when I was playing it for the first time was just that this feeling is infectious, and it’s fun, and it’s different. It’s this improvisational style that Offworld brings, which I just really love to be a part of.”
Meanwhile, Van Dien praised Offword for the level of care and attention to detail it’s brought to Starship Troopers.
“They’re passionate, they love the film, they get the sense of humour. I can’t tell you the things, but there are details that only I know about, and then I talked to them, and they’re like, ‘Oh, we’re putting that in,’” he says. “Little things that I did in the movie, they’re like, ‘Okay, we’re going to put that in.’ And I’m like, ‘But nobody even knows about that!’ And they go, ‘Yeah, but the real fans will.’ [It’s great] when you get people that honour the whole movie and the process like that and know how much it means to the fans.”
While Offword remains coy about Johnny’s exact role in the campaign, Van Dien teases that Extermination will explore a more mature version of the athlete-turned-general a couple of decades after the events of the original film.
Van Dien visiting Offworld.
“There is a huge arc for Johnny Rico, and you’ll see it in this. And I think he’s more likable and, in some ways, more terrifying, and, in some ways, more fatherly,” says Van Dien. “So I think you have all that. But he has the troopers in his heart more than he has what their intentions are.”
“It was important for us to make sure that he wasn’t a token person in our single-player experience. I can tell you this: he leads the journey for the player — he’s there,” adds Maurice, teasing that Van Dien has more lines than he does in the movies. “And it’s very meaty and very funny. We made him laugh in the studio a few times with what we had him saying, but it was true to the character, which was important.”
In addition to Johnny himself being older, Van Dien says a modern game like Extermination presents the opportunity for fans to truly experience what he only acted out in the film. He points to a scene playing on a TV in which the troopers are on a platform and blasting away hordes of bugs.
“When you see us up here on the ramparts and we’re shooting down at the bugs, and you see them all coming, when we did it in Starship Troopers, we were shooting dirt. So all we had was dirt and they’d throw up tennis balls and they’d go, ‘You’re going to go here and aim here and aim lower and higher, and then ahh, the bugs are going come!’ and there’s going to be millions of them coming,” he says.
“But here, you get to see it. When Paul Verhoeven was describing it to me, this is what I saw. And when I saw the movie, that’s what I saw. And this is the movie now on steroids.”
To that point, Gareth Woods, head of marketing at Offworld, says the team has seen many people in the early access period actually role-playing as the troopers.
“One of the best features of the game are the other people you play with and the lines they’re throwing. They’re shouting ‘for Buenos Aires!’ and all of that, and you honestly feel like you’re on set. And so to get to watch Casper come to the studio and play it and experience that, it honestly felt like watching a kid watch the commercials before Christmas of, ‘ah, all the new toys, I want that!’ he says.
“The first thing out of your mouth should be, “Come on, you apes — you wanna live forever?” says Barker with a laugh, referring to one of the classic Starship Troopers lines from squad leader Jean Rasczak (played by Toronto’s own Michael Ironside).
The fact that this small Canadian team that once messed around with mods is now working on a beloved IP like Starship Troopers isn’t lost on Offworld. Woods hopes that story can help inspire other Canadian developers, especially given the size of the Canadian gaming industry.
“We want Offworld to become a company that’s aspirational for young Canadians or international people. If I speak to myself, I’ve only been in Canada for two years, and just moving to Canada was a thing about wanting to be in the games industry. I’m from South Africa originally and we don’t have a huge industry there,” says Woods.
And while Offword isn’t (yet) committing to adding any Canadian weapons to Extermination, it did tease what such a thing might look like.
“They would definitely have a shotgun that shoots maple bullets and stuff like that,” says Maurice with a laugh, noting they’d be wearing the red serge of the Mounties after Van Dien gives them a shoutout. “And their melee weapon would be a Beavertail!”
This interview was edited for language and clarity.
Starship Troopers: Extermination is now available on Steam in early access, while the full version of the game, which includes the Johnny Rico single-player content, will launch on October 11 on PC, PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X/S.
Image credit: Offworld Industries/Sony Pictures Entertainment
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