Interview with publisher of Laser League 505 Games
We interviewed awesome upcoming Laser League’s publisher 505 Games.
From developer Roll7 and publisher 505 Games, Laser League is a futuristic team based extreme sport which is won or lost by activating laser nodes on the arena. And, in case you missed it, you can join in soon as Laser League is getting an open beta this week. We recently wrote our list of our Top 10 most anticipated indie games of 2018. Read on for our interview with Global Brand Manager for 505 Games, Rodrigo de la Pedraja.
Indie Game Website: How did you originally come up with the concept of Laser League?
505 Games: Back in 2015, Roll7 was still developing Ollie Ollie, and had their own prototype of a basic arcade game for their own pleasure. It was an empty space, with a pink dot, a green dot, and other dots and lines. It was very fun with ultra-neon colours. They brought it to 505 Games for us to review internally, and it definitely had the “I want another go” factor. We thought it was very interesting and agreed that if enough resources were put into it, they could make a AAA arcade competition game.
What’s the best advice you can give to new players?
Play play play! The learning curve is quite fast in Laser League. The first few games you should concentrate on surviving as it can be hard to place yourself on the field. Then you’ll start to understand lasers, and after a few more games you’ll start to know what you need to be doing and what your partners are doing. By the tenth game you should be able to understand what your enemies are doing, if they are charged and can use their special ability and foresee what they’re going to do.
It seems that Laser League will be suited for e-sports, did you have that in mind from early on in development?
We did notice the competitive element straight away, and we have spoken ESL and the community, and to us it’s clear that you cannot build an e-sport. We are concentrating on making the best game that the community will enjoy, and if they stream, if it becomes popular it could become an e-sport, but for now we just want to build the best game that we can.
What’s the most popular class so far?
It depends on the moment that you’re in, but Blade is played the most, especially by aggressive players. Shock is easy to use and be effective with, but for players who are aware of the whole game ghost, the service class can be very useful, as well as the tactical thief class. The least popular at the moment is Snipe. It’s hard to master, but people who have can become massive killers.
How will we earn the in-game cosmetic options, and will they be cosmetic only?
By playing and winning the game you’ll earn experience, and more so if you are the MVP. This will give you access to items such as new kits, emojis, portraits, and also patterns for laser walls. These will change the laser to your pattern when triggered, so you can see that it’s yours and who eliminated the opponent. At this stage all items will be cosmetic only, as we want the game to be skill-based. We are considering other options but don’t want to break the skill-based concept.
What did you learn from the previous beta test?
We mainly refined the gameplay. The community said that some abilities and modifiers felt too powerful, so some timings were changed. We also refined some of the maps.
What do you have planned for the future of Laser League?
We have lots of ideas, but it depends on the feedback we receive from the community. We love to play the game ourselves, so we think we have a pretty good idea of what our players will like. We’ll ask the community what they would like now, whether it’s more classes or modifiers, a spectator mode, new stadiums, and we’ll be bringing more content to the game for sure.
That was our interview with 505 Games, hopefully you found it interesting. If you’re eager to play, you’ll be able to join the Laser League open Beta on Steam from Friday the 26th of January until Sunday the 28th.