Steel Hunters' seasons will last around 12 weeks each

Next week, on April 2, Wargaming will debut its upcoming live games-as-a-service title Steel Hunters into Early Access on PC, a project that while sharing some similarities to the developer's World of Tanks/Warships titles, is vastly different in many other metrics and areas. We got to tell you about many of these in our recent preview of the game, which you can read here.

But, since Steel Hunters will have a live setup, albeit one without monetisation at the start of its Early Access run, what will this mean for players? Recently, we spoke with creative director Sergey Titarenko and narrative designer Ed Gentry to learn all about this and more.

When initially asked about the live plans, Titarenko told us: "Well, we will experiment with the formula. Of course, what we are releasing as a core mode is something that we will not stop upon. We have a few more things we are testing and researching. It's too soon to reveal this, but expect maybe an increase in number of players in the squad or maybe even playing side versus side. We are hearing a lot of feedback from our players and we're trying to conceive something that will be of interest to them."

Titarenko then went a step further to chat about the timing of each content update. "Yeah, there will be a cadence every 12 weeks. There will be something. This game will be driven by Battle Pass releases and good value proposition in each Battle Pass, so a combination of characters, skins, additional content, sometimes maybe new modes."

Following this, Titarenko and Gentry had a back and forth where they added some further colour to this topic.

"But yes, we want to have periodic updates and frequent releases," said Titarenko. "Each season contains two Battle Passes and continue moving on and forward."

"There's a real focus, I would say, on player feedback," Gentry continued. "So if the players think it's ready, you know, then that's going to be motivation, I think."

"And as you can say about the story arc in each season," added Titarenko. "Yeah, so we're going to have definitive story arcs in each season."

"Yeah, so we're going to have definitive story arcs in each season as well," Gentry capped off with. "So, we hope to sort of time the big release with something sort of more explosive at that point. A little time to build up and then really go."

You can see the full interview with the pair below, to hear more about the narrative structure of Steel Hunters, what goes into creating a Hunter character, why they went down the Early Access route, and more.