While attending Gamescom Asia x Thailand Game Show in Bangkok this week, IGN was given the opportunity to sit down with Rainbow Six Siege X’s creative director Alexander Karpazis to talk about how much the tactical live-service shooter has evolved in the ten years since its launch in 2015, where it might go next, the possibility of a campaign mode and Switch 2 port, the use of generative AI in development, and more. Read on for our full chat below!
IGN: 10 years is a great achievement for a live service game, particularly since we’ve seen so many others come and go in that time. What do you put the longevity of Siege down to?
Alexander Karpazis [AK]: I think one of the big points is just the sheer depth of the game. Like even within 10 years, I don’t think you’ll be able to master a game like Siege and as a gamer that’s incredibly rewarding. It means that you’re on a journey to learn, master and discover new things with a game that’s always changing. And I think because of that, it’s just grown and resonates with so many people.
IGN: Has Siege evolved in ways that you could have never predicted at launch?
AK: Yeah, absolutely. I mean if you look at 2015 when the game first launched, the Bomb game mode wasn’t the number one game mode. It was split between Hostage and Secure Area and Bomb. Back then eSports was something that was very grassroots and new, and now it’s become this entire ecosystem where people make their livelihoods off of it, and that’s something we could have never anticipated when it first launched. And so in these interesting ways it’s built up to be something that is really significant and humbling to be a part of.
IGN: You’ve previously said that Siege X is setting the table for the next 10 years. Do you take it one year at a time? How much of a road map is there for the future? Are there 10 more years worth of ideas in the bank?
AK: When it comes to ideas, we actually sat down and we interviewed the entire team about their ideas for the game, and came up with over 40 pages of concepts that the team still wants to push for. So there is no end in sight when it comes to what we want to do with the game, and it’s a balance of short term and long term. We’re looking at the seasons ahead of us but also because of Siege X, we’re looking at anticipating new technology, new platforms, stuff that’s going to come out and it’s going to affect the game. And so how can we anticipate that too over a longer stretch of time.
IGN: Hitting a 10-year milestone, does that increase the pressure on your team for the future, or do you feel like you’ve mastered it now and you know what you’re doing?
AK: We’re always learning and we’ll never stop learning. There’s so much that goes into building a game like this, and it really comes down to listening to the community. They’ll always be vocal in what they want to see and how things change and so yeah, it’s not a matter of mastering where we are right now. It’s being comfortable and knowing that we still have to listen to our community, we still have to adapt, and we still have to innovate as well. Maybe we’re getting a little bit more comfortable in being uncomfortable, and that’s how we keep on rolling the next 10 years.
IGN: On the topic of listening to the community, how much of a challenge is it to balance your team’s vision for Siege X with the wants, needs, and complaints of the players?
AK: It is a challenge, and it isn’t. Firstly, because this game’s been around for so long I think the DNA is very well understood by players, new and old actually. They know it’s a tactical game that has a lot of unique elements like destruction, like asymmetric attacker-defender characteristics. But it does mean that players do want to see change, and more of it more often, and that’s where we have to anticipate better, adapt even faster. And in a way, that’s sustainable, right? We are humans at the end of the day, the dev team is very human as well, and we want to encourage something that can last another 10 years and not only focus on the short term.
