First of all, we’re excited today to announce four pretty big things for us :

Our strategic partnership with NetEase for China Our upcoming PC and Mac Vainglory. Get the “Vox on Ice” skin free by participating in the PC alpha [here] Our commitment to cross-platform competitive parity with all esports going cross-platform in 2019. Our intent for Vainglory to launch on console by the end of 2019.

[See press release for details]

In this (long!) post I want to share the post-platform vision we have been working toward over the past years, and why this announcement is a significant milestone not just for Vainglory but for Super Evil Megacorp as a game studio and (perhaps) even the industry.

While on the surface being a studio creating AAA multiplayer games for touch, we at Super Evil Megacorp have been quietly working away on a vision where players deserve not just cross-platform play across the widest range of devices, but also cross-platform competitive parity where skill is never defined by the platform or input mechanism but rather by how good you are. So as gamers we will be able to play together, truly, without thinking about who is on what platform. We think of this as a post-platform world for gamers.

Today we’re excited to finally announce this to the world and outline our new mission to create the very best AAA multiplayer experiences across all platforms and how we’re working toward it. If this sounds interesting, or provokes questions, grab a coffee and read on! If not - just go play the Vainglory PC alpha, it’s ok - just remember to tell us what you think and how we can make it better. :P

SOME BACKGROUND

Since my start in the game industry in 2001, new growth opportunities have mostly been defined by new platforms; A new console, a new mobile device, a new social network, a new VR headset, the list goes on. From an industry point of view this has meant a stark division between game development for “red ocean” existing platforms, game categories and markets driven by large existing publishers with strong distribution and slowly evolving franchise sequels, and game development for “blue ocean” new platforms driven by fast moving startups building entirely new types of gaming experiences and business models.

This in turn has contributed to very different player experiences and expectations across platforms. While gaming culture in aggregate has grown explosively everywhere, it has also subdivided into entirely different tribes defined by what hardware we play on.

Today’s PC gamers, mobile gamers and console gamers largely play different games with different control inputs, expecting different quality standards, different business models and price points.

And - perhaps most importantly - we’ve existed in separate communities that almost never play with each other. Who we play with has been defined by who happens to own the same game device as we do. As players we seek friends online when we can’t convince our IRL friends to buy into our game platform. We may be used to it, but it’s still a little sad.

Only now, as multiplayer gaming has become the dominant form of gaming on all platforms, are these barriers slowly beginning to crumble. Fortnite in particular has been a frontrunner in pioneering cross-platform multiplayer play. By (almost) anyone being able to play with (almost) anyone, even with a pretty big disparity between platform experiences, Fortnite has been able to become a much larger cultural phenomenon than it would otherwise have been. To the point where it is forcing long standing practices in the industry to prevent cross platform play to start receding [see Sony story on cross-platform play].

Much like mass market movies and music stopped being platform specific a long time ago, so will most multiplayer games. This is not to say platform doesn’t matter. For watching a video, cinema is still a vastly different experience from YouTube with different native content. However most content is good to view on all screens. Likewise, while there will be a rich set of platform specific games even in the future, games designed for friends to play together real-time, will not just be cross-platform, they will be post-platform.

POST-PLATFORM GAMES? WUT? o_O

In the coming 10 years, we believe that it will not be VR, AR, wearables or some other specific new platform that will be the primary driver of the game industry. We believe instead that the next big evolutionary leap will rather be driven by us as game creators figuring out how to make awesome experiences that everyone can play together regardless of their native device or control input. This doesn’t just mean enabling cross platform play technically. It also means tackling hard problems around parity of control input design, UI design, business model design, social systems design and elevate game design as a whole to a level where we can offer truly delightful, crafted, responsive experiences that feel fun to play together, that feel native to your device, and whose business model is fair and understandable across the broadest set of devices.

We think this is not just cross-platform, it is truly post-platform and we’re working hard for Vainglory to be the first title to get there.