The history of BattleState Games studio: from browser to AAA
The idea of creating a hardcore and ultra-realistic project came from Nikita Buyanov, the current head of BattleState Games, back in the late 2000s. Inspired by such projects as EVE Online STALKER, Dead Space, Nikita reflected in his work the ideas of an alternative and highly detailed world, creating sketches for the future universe. These were drawings, music and even modifications for other games.
Later, already holding the post of art director at Indee Interactive, Nikita still decides to try developing games and gathers enthusiasts like himself, who are tired of just producing advertising banners. Together they begin to develop the game “Squeeze Mobile 3” for VKontakte to earn money and gain experience, and a few months later they separate from Indee Interactive, founding their own studio called AbsolutSoft.
It is now that young developers are fired up with the idea of creating something bigger, a truly large-scale and hardcore project. The development of the Russia 2028 universe begins, which Nikita periodically reports on in her LiveJournal and Polycount. At the same time, the release of “Squeeze Mobile 3” will take place and later the project is renamed “Street Wars”, after which the company releases another game called “Funny Cars Market”. These two games allow developers to begin creating that same project and finding a publisher.
The choice of engine fell on CryEngine 2, and the game itself depicted events in post-apocalyptic Russia. It was planned that Russia 2028 would be an open-world game, where the player would explore the territory of the fictional Norvinsk region with an area of about 100 square kilometers, interact with many factions, improve combat and social skills, and conduct his own investigation through a story campaign. Such statements even now sound very bold, and 10 years ago, even from a company that has absolutely no experience in this field… only a crazy person could believe it.
A miracle did not happen, and after demonstrating the pre-alpha version, the publishers refused. After all, there were hundreds of similar beginning developers, and the days of easy money, when you could easily end up under the wing of a large publisher, are gone. And the version of the game shown was still very, very far from Nikita’s plans.
This refusal became a decisive event in www.betti-casino-online.uk the history of AbsolutSoft. The project had to be frozen, giving life to a smaller project, which would become an independent step towards the dream for which they gathered.
On November 9, 2010, five team members begin work on a new game – Contract Wars. Everything is the same for social networks, but in a completely new direction, not only for ourselves, but for the entire industry of browser games. It was AbsolutSoft that was the first to create a high-quality shooter that only needed a simple plugin in the browser to work. No downloads and just meager system requirements. This was achieved using the Unity engine and Unity Web Player. Of course, it all started small, the game didn’t even have an online mode, and the gameplay at first consisted of shooting targets at the training ground. But the goal of the developers was exclusivity, and after a while all their hard work allowed the game at that time to compete even with some well-known standalone projects, and no alternatives to Contract Wars appeared within the browser. AbsolutSoft even received awards in the categories “Best Startup Project” and “Best Game Without a Publisher KRI-2011” (Computer Game Developers Conference, since 2014 – Igromir)
Having achieved enormous success, with the support of millions of fans around the world and all this without an advertising budget, AbsolutSoft decided that it was time for the standalone version of Contract Wars that players had been asking for and where developers would not be constrained by the browser confines. Another advantage will be the opportunity to start everything from scratch, because being still inexperienced, the authors incorrectly laid out the architecture of the game and even the release version had many problems.
At the same time, work continued on the universe and a certain secret project. In 2014, on one of the official streams about the game, Nikita reported that the book “Russia 2024” had been written, and a photo from the studio was leaked online, where the “Factory” location was shown on the monitor. Old players will remember with tears the phrase “The plant is 99% ready”, which never appeared in Contract Wars, but was the first location you already know where.
A new test for AbsolutSoft was disabling the NPAPI plugin, which ensured the game worked. It was necessary to do something urgently, because the Steam version of the game was not ready yet, and browsers, one after another, refused to support the plugin. At first, the developers advised not to update browsers, then they agreed with some of them to extend the work of the plugin. But in any case, the game began to lose its audience, because there was almost no influx of new players, and the old ones gradually left for other projects.
If we talk about Contract Wars 2, in fact, the game should have had the basis of the first game, but with corrections for gameplay errors, balance, player progression and without such aggressive donation. In 2015, Nikita Buyanov attended the DevGamm conference, where he showed screenshots of the game and mentioned another, not yet announced project.
In the summer of the same year, the first and only video demonstrating gameplay on the pre-alpha version of Contract Wars Standalone was released on Nikita’s channel. The game has significantly improved graphics, sprint, high-quality ragdolls and overall the game has grown noticeably. For some reason, from that moment on, rumors about the game stopped.
But already in the fall, a certain group called “countdown to reveal” appeared on VKontakte, where a post was published containing a link to the site of the same name. At first glance, it seemed that this was a simple site with a timer, for some reason set for a whole month and some strange code above it. In fact, everything was planned in advance. The code was only the first step towards solving what was probably a brilliant quest. The first thing the developers told us is that the quest is not related to Contract Wars Standalone. Then came the riddles that, step by step, brought closer to what no one expected from the studio.
Numerous ciphers led to the same site, where, by finding and using the terminal, one could find audio and video recordings related to the plot of the universe. Many players assumed that this was an announcement of Russia 2028, but… no. This was the announcement of Escape from Tarkov. Interestingly, the game’s logo was discovered several weeks before the release of the game’s trailer. The most cunning fans simply checked Nikita Buyanov’s patents. Fortunately, then no one attached much importance to this and the announcement was really loud and unexpected. As it turned out, passive development of the game started back in 2012, and by 2015 most of the studio’s key employees were completely focused on Escape from Tarkov, now calling themselves BattleState Games.
As for Contract Wars Standalone, there were still no rumors about it for a long time. The first news about the game appeared at the end of 2016: the project changed its name to Hired Ops – now the game promised to be larger and more interesting. But, as they say, that’s a completely different story.
