Despite being a new studio, Midwinter Entertainment knows a thing or two about making multiplayer games. Staffed with former 343 Industries talent and veterans who have worked on the likes of Call of Duty, Battlefield, and Halo, the studio leadership has been experimenting with how players interact and compete with each other for years. Most notably, as one of the architects behind Halo 5's Warzone mode, Josh Holmes is no stranger to mixing up player-on-player action with objectives that can let anyone contribute to their team. With its first game, Scavengers, Midwinter and Holmes hope to further blur the line between cooperation and competition.
Speaking with me at Midwinter's office located in Kirkland, Washington, Holmes bills Scavengers as a third-person "survival shooter co-opetition," set in a near-future apocalypse in which a massive asteroid collides with the moon, shattering it and causing a new ice age. Years after the collision, you take control one of eight teenagers (across four classes, each with a male and female character to match), left to forage for weapons and resources.
