( - SOE) - Bullet Run – May Producer’s Letter - 05-22-2012 11:46 AM

By:*Jan-Eric Lauble -*Creative Director: Acony Games



Hello all, my name is Jan-Eric Lauble and I’m the Creative Director at Acony Games, the team bringing you Bullet Run. You’ve probably never heard of us or our game before, so I’d like to give you an idea of what you can expect and what it’s all about.



Bullet Run is a free-to-play, multiplayer, first person shooter. It’s a game we’ve been putting a lot of effort into over the last couple of years, under the working title Hedone. We’re a small, independent developer and this is our first published game, so we were naturally very excited when Sony Online Entertainment said that they wanted to work with us on it. One thing we definitely agree with Sony on is that free-to-play doesn’t have to mean lower quality. Sony have a lot of experience with AAA, free-to-play games and we’re proud to have our game in that line-up.

Bullet Run TV is an entertainment network in the near future that shows real combat between real people in arena matches – we like to think of it as ‘reality TV with guns’. The network is hugely popular and the top contestants are major celebrities. Our game is all about fame and what people will do to do to achieve it.

We’ve put the focus firmly on entertainment, not just maximum killing efficiency. The audience wants to see you put on a show, so you progress faster for playing in a more spectacular way. This is tracked through a system called Heat which is a measure of how much the audience is loving your performance so far. Shooting someone gets you Heat, but sliding on your knees down a corridor while popping headshots with dual pistols earns you a whole lot of Heat. In Bullet Run, it isn’t enough just to be good. You have to look good doing it.

Heat does a bunch of things for you. During the match, you’ll unlock new abilities as you gain Heat – more about those in a moment – and the amount of Heat you end the match with will determine how many new Fans you gain and how many Credits you earn. Fans measure your progression – the more you have, the more famous you are and the more options you have open to you. Credits can be used to buy new outfits, upgrade your gear and get new weapons. There are thousands of different clothing and accessory combinations to make your character stand out for the cameras. You can customise your weapons with a wide range of modifications and skins. Decals too. If you really like the way a particular gun handles but wish it did just a little bit more damage, you can fix that. Love your AK47 but want it to be gold-plated with hot-rod flames? No problem. How about a sniper rifle with a full auto trigger and an extended magazine? You can build that too.

We’ve created some awesome arenas for you to fight over. You might be on an oilrig one match and in an abandoned shanty-town the next. You can play a classic Team Deathmatch or a territory-holding Dominion game mode.* Whichever you choose, you’ll find that the action is fast, furious and constantly changing. As you earn more Heat, you’ll unlock progressively more powerful abilities to use during the match. Choose from, say, a heal injector, a flying drone, a mortar strike or a sentry turret. Each of them gives you new ways to use the terrain and different options in combat. The enemy will never know what’s waiting for him around the next corner!

So that’s Bullet Run right now but what about the future? Well our team here in the Black Forest in Germany is working hard on making new features, more weapons, extra arenas, different game modes and a whole bunch of cool items. We’ll be working in partnership with SOE to add content to the game all the time, keeping things fresh and making sure that Bullet Run stays exciting no matter how many matches you’ve played. Be sure to keep an eye on the official site and follow us on Facebook and Twitter so that you’ll be the first to hear the news.

We’re excited to be launching this game with Sony Online Entertainment very soon. I hope you’ll enjoy playing it as much as we enjoyed making it!

See you all in Bullet Run.

Jan-Eric Lauble

Creative Director




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