How ‘Splitgate 2’ Is Reinventing ‘Capture the Flag’ With Guns and Portals

Amidst the surge in video game sales, the awkward moments of Zoom meetings, and the hurricane of depressing and horrific news during the COVID-19 pandemic, the small team at 1047 Games was busy finishing up its first big shooter, Splitgate. It began life as a project in a college dorm room and combined the arcade action of Halo and Unreal Tournament with the ability to place portals around the map and travel between them. 

After two years of testing in early access on Steam, Splitgate was released in 2021 for PC and consoles, and despite almost no marketing, the game blew up on social media, YouTube, and Twitch to become one of the biggest pandemic-era sensations; it felt like everyone was playing it. At its peak, Splitgate hit 200,000 concurrent players and had surpassed more than 15 million downloads in 2021. It achieved a level of success that the studio “could not have anticipated.”

But, just over a year later, 1047 Games announced it would stop supporting the game with new content, intent on building a bigger, better sequel rather than trying to reshape the original to meet player’s ever-increasing content and quality demands. According to the team at the time, the goal was to turn a “college dorm dream project into a triple-A game that could stand toe-to-toe with shooters from the biggest publishers in the industry,” and “to build it in a way that isn’t trying to retrofit and live-operate an existing product.”

That philosophy hasn’t changed now that 1047 Games is preparing to launch Splitgate 2’s first public alpha on PlayStation, Xbox, and PC on Feb. 27, ahead of its free-to-play release later this year. Rolling Stone recently spoke with Ian Proulx, the CEO and co-founder of 1047 Games, to discuss how new modes like “Splitball” embody the iterative, purposeful approach the team took to making a sequel, and why it’s essential to listen closely to the players who made the game a success in the first place.

What is Splitgate? 

Splitgate 2 is, for the most part, a small-scale 4v4 arena shooter where two teams compete in a variety of game types to win a match. There are classic deathmatch, objective zone control, and bomb defusal modes, but the sequel is also adding a larger 24-player (8v8v8) version of each on top of that. Every player has the ability to place two portals on the map and travel through them, as well as utilize the ones set by others. This means moving between vertical levels of a map or jumping from one side of an area to the other can be done in one smooth fluid motion, creating a high-octane competitive environment. You can even utilize momentum from sliding or dropping into a portal from above to catapult yourself out of the other one at speed. 

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This naturally makes gameplay unpredictable as players aren’t limited by the walls and cover available in front of them. You can leave a portal near an objective and then activate it to surprise someone from behind, while also using them as an escape route when situations get too hairy.

Despite that unpredictability (or perhaps because of it), the formula worked wonderfully in the first game and is even better in Splitgate 2. With Splitgate 2, 1047 Games is looking to experiment more deeply with new and existing modes rather than just tweaking the original. “Splitball” is one of those experimental new modes, and is the prime example of that iterative approach. Splitball started off as a more classic “Capture the Flag” experience in the first game, wherein competitors must breach an enemy spawn point to grab the flag and bring it back to their base, while also defending their own flag from being taken. 

Despite the classic nature of “Capture the Flag,” which has been seen in countless games over the years, from Unreal Tournament to Call of Duty, the traditional mode wasn’t particularly well-received in the first Splitgate. For Proulx, the creation of the Splitball mode is a second chance to put the developers’ mark on the well-worn game type.

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“We tried [variations like], ‘What if it’s attack and defend [rounds]? What if the flag is neutral? Should you be able to portal with the flag? Should you not be able to?’ We tried, letting you portal, but disabled certain portal walls.’ We tried everything, and it just never worked,” Proulx says. “The portals simply broke the flow of the mode. 

But necessity breeds innovation, and Splitball is the result of Proulx and the team staying determined to “make this style of mode work in our game.” Capture the Flag is such a classic mode. “You think of Unreal Tournament, Halo, and that’s one of my favorite modes ever,” he says. “Splitgate has to have something like that. There’s no reason it can’t.”

Instead of flags, Splitball has players scoring points with balls instead. Each team has a podium at their base that can hold them, and the first with three on their podium will win the match. Balls spawn periodically throughout the round, and each team can steal them from their opponent’s podiums. This means that as the match progresses, there are more opportunities to score and also more teamwork needed to protect your own podium. 

One of the key issues with the original game’s take on Capture the Flag was that once a team scored, points were instantly and permanently granted, meaning you couldn’t lose them. Here they are fluid, making Splitball a tug of war as balls are stolen, scored, and collected between the two teams. Portals are still an essential element of the mode, but feel less overpowered; In the original Splitgate, you could just set up a few portals between your team and return to your home flag in seconds, quickly gaining an advantage. In Splitgate 2, those points can be lost if the balls are stolen back.

Proulx notes that, although there’s some obvious inspirations for the overall Splitgate concept, Splitball itself is informed from a more surprising source: the iconic aerial dogfights from Top Gun. “A little bit of inspiration [as a] Top Gun Maverick fan is the dogfight,” he says. “Offense and defense at the same time. I was like, ‘What if we actually put that into Capture the Flag?’” 

Those scenes showcased a dynamic that involved trying to gain an advantage on your opponents while protecting your own allies, creating an ever-present struggle. “[If we’re playing, you could score and] I could be chasing after you and kill you,” Proulx says. “And, immediately, it doesn’t matter that you just scored. I can take [the ball] back and portal back to my base.”

Splitball’s concept works with Splitgate 2’s mechanics thanks to a deeper layer of thoughtful design and intent have been put into its systems. 1047 Games looked at how the mode’s structure, rules, and limitations caused problems in the first game and how those ailments could be remedied. 

For the team at 1047 Games, Splitball is the truest representation of what they hoped to achieve with the sequel. The mode proves that the developers were right to avoid merely altering the previous Splitgate’s modes that didn’t work, or try to force them to fit into the sequel. Starting fresh, developing the mode with a lot more intentional design, and listening to player feedback helped build it. 

Perfecting the formula

That focus on “intentionality” carries over into almost every other aspect of the game too. After receiving early feedback in closed alpha testing the studio has already made drastic changes to Splitgate 2’s gameplay. During those sessions, players were frustrated by the limited number of spots to place portals on the map and the time it took to kill competitors, which felt far too quick. In a developer update released back in December, the studio detailed how they have added more portal walls and changed the time to kill (TTK) back to how it was in the first game.

“Our thought was we should test the big changes first, because those are the things that we actually really need feedback on,” Proulx says. “We could either play it safe or push the boundaries.” That bold mentality of pushing boundaries and reining in from there ultimately paid off during the early closed tests as it allowed the studio to try outlandish ideas without affecting every active player or disrupting the game’s public perception during public access. 

A terrifying example of what can happen when you make sweeping changes that affect the whole player base can be seen with the recent update for Monster Hunter Wilds-like game Dauntless. In late 2024, the studio behind the game, Phoenix Labs, updated many of its core systems, ripping out content and gutting key aspects players loved. The game subsequently hemorrhaged players, and the studio laid off virtually all of its remaining staff just weeks later. In just a few months Dauntless, which had been popular since its release in 2019, will shut down.

The same could’ve happened with Splitgate 2; making tectonic shifts to game systems after a title is in most players’ hands wasn’t the way to go. Now, as the open tests are set to begin, most users will have never experienced those bigger alterations that play-testers didn’t vibe with. According to Proulx, less portal walls and a faster kill time weren’t implemented to try to limit players; rather, the studio was aiming to encourage more intentional play. 

“I was the level designer on Splitgate and a lot of the maps. I didn’t know what I was doing. I didn’t know how people [were] going to play and use this [wall]. We didn’t know, and so we are just going to put a ton of portal walls, kind of randomly,” Proulx says. “So, what we saw in Splitgate was certain portal walls got a ton of usage and were awesome, and certain portal walls were totally ignored.”

To remedy that, 1047 Games looked at some of the more competitive experiences like Valorant and Counter-Strike, where every angle and sightline is carefully planned and thought out, to better design the maps in Splitgate 2. Proulx says it was about “putting thought into every corner and every pixel [and] taking that approach to portaling,” adding that, “the team were looking at every portal angle, where [you] could portal to, and where you want to be able to portal to,” with the aim of creating a tighter experience. 

In the end, Proulx admits that the team initially “overthought” and “over-designed” the game. “It doesn’t mean that we’re going to start bringing back some of the crazy, pointless portal walls, but it does mean let’s not overthink it,” he says. “If there’s a portal wall just because it’s cool, do it. Like, it doesn’t matter, and it doesn’t take away from the experience.” With all the maps featured in this weekend’s open alpha, more portal walls have been added. The same applies to maps that have yet to be revealed, all of which Proulx insists play better now.

It shows some flexibility that we often don’t see in online games these days. While Splitgate 2 development was focused on building everything with a purpose, the studio was more than happy to gut those changes if they didn’t click with players. “It shouldn’t be that crazy of a concept, right? We’re making a game for our customers and for our players,” Proulx says. “And, when our players ask for something, well, we’re making this for them, so we probably should listen to them.”

Overcoming live-service saturation

When Splitgate blew up unexpectedly in 2021, 1047 Games didn’t have the team or ability to create updates and post-launch content consistently. As a result, a large chunk of players that jumped into the game during the surge in popularity hopped off just as fast because the demand for new content wasn’t being met. Proulx believes that inconsistency in content won’t happen again, adding that the studio’s approach to live-service updates is paramount to the game’s longevity and continued interest with players. 

“If there’s one thing I think we’ve improved more than anything, it is going to be our live ops. I really have so much confidence in our post-launch content,” he says. “It’s not just going to be lots of seasons with new maps and guns. It’s going to be every week that there is new content.” 

In the current gaming landscape, content updates are just as important as a game’s day-one release, as the live-service market is built on top of a graveyard littered with the corpses of games that hemorrhaged players because of poor post-launch content planning or a lack of variety within those updates. 

Almost four years after entering that online live-service market, 1047 Games is facing an imposing arena where every game is vying for players’ attention. But Proulx believes that “now is a better time than ever”.

Yet, Proulx questions if the market has actually changed that much: “We’re still playing Apex Legends. We’re still playing Call of Duty. We’re still playing Fortnite. We’re still playing Valorant, right? Okay, Marvel Rivals is a new addition to the pool of top shooters, but I look at these games, and I’m getting bored. I know a lot of people, my friend group outside of work [are all] kind of in the same boat. We still play these games because they’re fun, but we are looking for something new and different.” 

This shift can be seen happening as more fresh takes on classic shooters are starting to emerge. Broadly speaking, the genre has seen very little innovation since Call of Duty defined its current look, feel, and pacing in the late 2000s. The remedy to that stagnation might have arrived, as people who grew up with those games are now the ones making them. 

Developers who were weaned on the last two decades of first-person shooters are now putting their own twists on the formula, like Mountaintop Studios, whose game Spectre Divide takes Counter-Strike’s structure and allows players to hop between two bodies on the map. Fragpunk is another Counter-Strike-like experience from Bad Guitar Studio that gives players ability cards they can activate to break the “rules” of the genre and swing rounds in their team’s favor in ways that feel like using old school cheat codes from a bygone era.

Splitgate does something similar by tearing up the rubric Call of Duty put in place and tweaking Halo’s gameplay style to allow for a much faster-paced and flexible shooter thanks to its portal mechanics. By working on a sequel, 1047 Games has been able to build a more impactful experience than their first attempt, while remaining true to the dorm room experimentation that initially became their vision. Splitball is the perfect encapsulation of that philosophy. 

The team seems to genuinely understand and not take for granted that Splitgate wouldn’t be what it is without the players that discovered it, stuck by it, and supported them. As the sequel prepares for its launch later this year, that iteration and evolution of the experience isn’t going away, and 1047 Games is set on continuing to listen to players and make the game for them. 

“People are going to try [Splitgate 2] because everybody tries the ‘new thing.’” Proloux says. “And, I think this time we’re going to have what we need to make sure that they stick around.” 

Splitgate 2’s closed alpha runs from Feb. 27 to March 2, and will be available for PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X|S, and PC. The full game is due out later this year.