UIBuzz - Software and game development

Peter: 00:00

What's up everybody? Welcome to another episode of the UIBuzz podcast. I'm your host Peter Witham. You can find myself in this podcast at peterwitham.com. In this episode, I'm gonna talk about Warframe.

Peter: 00:10

Now, Warframe is a game if you've not heard of it, I'm gonna do my best to explain it. But the point I wanna make here is that it's a free to play game that absolutely does it right. Now, I know what you're all thinking. Free to play? Yeah.

Peter: 00:26

There's always a catch. Well, no, there isn't in warframe is what it comes down to. You don't have to pay anything to play the entire game. You can choose to spend money on it if you want to and I encourage you to do that if you are a player. Support these folks because they have now the way to do this.

Peter: 00:46

And they you can tell they absolutely love the game. TennoCon 24 was recently just wrapped up. And you can tell these are folks who absolutely love making and playing the game that they do. But I'm not here to give you the sales pitch. I really want to talk about how it works and why it works and why you see so many of these other triple a studios completely messing this up and missing the point.

Peter: 01:14

And that's what I'm going to dive into in this episode. Warframe is a game. It works on iPad and iPhone and gaming consoles. And I play it on the PC, personally. That's where I like to do it, and it's all cross platform, cross save, cross play, so it works out great.

Peter: 01:30

You could be playing multiplayer with other players from other platforms or you can choose to do everything yourself. It's entirely up to you. However, I would say a lot of the fun is playing it with other people. Let me just put that in there. And I'm not gonna try to explain sort of the lore of the game because truthfully, I I don't understand a lot of Warframe.

Peter: 01:53

It fuses me no end. But it is a fun game to play, and it's a massive game. And it's been going a long time. I think it's at least 10 years at this point, probably more. Correct me if I'm wrong.

Peter: 02:05

Let me know. Reach out to me. Anyway, you can do everything in the game and don't have to pay a penny. You can earn all the weapons in the game or the warframes. Basically, everything you need in the game.

Peter: 02:18

There's 2 ways you can do this. You can just grind it and work it and play the game and enjoy the game and get them that way. And then, yes, there is the option that if you wanna go purchase some things, you purchase in game credit and you can go to their in game store and get some of those items. But all you're really doing is saving yourself some time by doing that, I guess, is the way to look at this. Because like I say, you can earn all these things in the game if you're patient and you work with it.

Peter: 02:50

Now, there is an exclusive. If you are a prime supporter of Warframe, there are a few things that you can get that nobody else can, and that's the only way to get them. But in no way do they hinder you playing the game, unlike a lot of those other games that we know with micropayments that just we all know how that goes, and we all know who they are. Now, like I say, Warframe does it right right because you don't have to get involved in any of that and still enjoy the game and progress as far as you want just like everybody else. For example, this week, I did the Prelude quest ready for the big I hesitate to call it an expansion, but Warframe 1999 that comes out later in the year.

Peter: 03:36

A lot of folks call it kind of call it Warframe 2, and there's some prerequisite missions if you like some quests that you have to do. I took care of those this week. They came out. They were a lot of fun. I don't know that I completely understood a lot of the lore behind it, but either way, it was a lot of fun to do it.

Peter: 03:54

And now I'm ready to go on that. And again, you you don't have to spend a penny for any of that. It's all just go play the game and you'll get there, if you want to. Now, that said, of course, I do think that you should support these folks because they put a lot of effort into this. Warframe is, if you've never seen it, go check it out.

Peter: 04:15

It is spectacular to look at. The animations and the visuals alone are worth just watching someone on Twitch, for example, play the game for a while. It is fascinating and it is so responsive as well on all the systems I've played it, including my M4 iPad that frankly, you just wouldn't expect that, like, how does this game even operate so smoothly or at all on an iPad? But it does. And on an iPhone and so on.

Peter: 04:43

It really is they they spend a lot of time getting this right, and they have a massive community. And more importantly, it seems like everybody in the company gets involved in the community. A couple of times a week, they do some live streams and there's always, different people on there and they play the game, they have a lot of fun with it. And also, all of these people clearly know the game. They're not just high level reps there to sell you on something and they've never played the game.

Peter: 05:14

You can tell they've played the game because they know the lore. They know the details. And they played the game and they know how to play it. And this is really what makes, you know, Digital Extreme stand out. Head and shoulders above all of these other companies that just don't get it.

Peter: 05:33

Because they they they do it because clearly they love it and they love celebrating the game with us, the players. Unlike these other triple a studios, which is half the time these people, the PR folks, they don't know the first thing about it. All that they've got is the script they're given, go sell that thing, and then micro payment players to death. Now, again, this is why I've been playing War frame for years on and off, and that's the other part of it too. You can walk away from this game and come back and just pick it up where you left off.

Peter: 06:06

It's no problem. There are seasons for different things, but, again, you can choose to do whatever you want in the game or not. It's not technically open world, but there are some open spaces is how I would frame it. But the point that I really wanted to drill into the message in this episode is, if you ever want to see how free to play games with a with a premium level on top, if you choose to, and how that works and and a perfect model of doing it right and having the community support. And and like myself, there are people who pay for stuff just to say thank you to the company.

Peter: 06:46

Just because it's one of those you're like these people these folks deserve something. We want to see this keep going and go check out Warframe. This is the perfect example of this And that's the message that I wanna get across in this episode. I'd love to hear your thoughts about this though because I know it's a very contentious subject in both from game players and game developers and game studios. But every so often you find one that's they just get it and this is one of those folks.

Peter: 07:14

I'd love to hear your thoughts on this. Go to peterwitham.com/contact or you can reach out to me at uibuzz on x. You'll also find me in Warframe. You know, my my character name is grfx graphics. Hey, you know what drop by say hi.

Peter: 07:29

Love playing that game with folks. That's it folks. Just wanted to share this experience and these thoughts with you and I will speak to you in the next episode.