Brent Friedman on Force Multiplier Studios, making Karnivus in Fortnite, and why AAA talent is now working on smaller projects

Vince Pavey speaks to Brent Friedman, co-founder and Chief Creative Officer at Force Multiplier Studios about his team’s new tournament game, building a community, and why they decided to do it all within Fortnite Creative

You’re relatively new, so for those who might not know — who is Force Multiplier Studios?

Force Multiplier is a team of accomplished developers from top studios like Activision Blizzard, Respawn and Sony, who have come together to apply the lessons we learned from working at the highest levels of narrative and design on multiple blockbuster franchises.

We want to put narrative at the heart of game development from the very start, and create what we call ‘Universes Worthy of Devotion’. Our goal is twofold: first, to give our narrative and design the same reverence and integration from the beginning of development; and second, to make our own IP that rewards player engagement by providing value through a storyverse offering deep, ever-expanding lore, multiple POVs on the storyverse to invite in-world identity forging, and limitless opportunities for player collaboration, creation, and social sharing. We believe that delivering on these two goals will lay the foundation for 50 year franchises.

We are also committed to building community from the very beginning. That means the earliest possible exposure of our IP to players, constant communication with our community, and a consistent feedback and iteration cycle. In order for us to make an interactive universe that resonates, first and foremost the core gameplay needs to be irresistible — and that can’t happen without our growing base of players. To that end, we’ve built the prototype of our first game, Karnivus, in Fortnite Creative, which allows us instant access to a large, thriving community that aligns with our target audience.

What is Karnivus, then?

Karnivus: Rooftop Rumble is the culmination of our community-based development strategy. We made our prototype, Karnivus: Tournament Zero, in Fortnite Creative, listened to and studied the metrics from our 40k players, and based on that information made refinements that resulted in our standalone Karnivus experience, Karnivus: Rooftop Rumble. And that is an ongoing process. We not only continue to refine Karnivus: Rooftop Rumble based on the community and streamer feedback we get from our bi-weekly play sessions, we’ve also completely overhauled our tournament experience based on that feedback to make our most ambitious iteration of Karnivus yet, Karnivus: Tournament of Champions.

To enter the tournament, we found — based on feedback from our players — that turning Karnivus: Rooftop Rumble into a qualifier event gave it an extra layer of stakes that increased its stickiness. Here’s how it works: 12 winners who get a rare win animation (based on earning the most ‘Knockout Coins’ within a round) move on to the three round tournament hosted by gaming creator RockyNoHands, who will be giving out 50k V-Bucks and one-of-a-kind swag to the winner. The whole process of getting to Karnivus: Tournament of Champions was based on feedback from our community.