Deceit 2 interview – a chat with the CEO of World Makers about the social deduction horror sequel

This article is sponsored by World Makers. 

We sat down with James Thompson, the CEO of World Makers, about the studio’s new title Deceit 2. The hotly anticipated social horror sequel has been a long time coming. We wanted to hear all the gory details and share them with you here. Let’s get into it.

1. The first Deceit released back in 2017 had a free-to-play model. What was the decision behind making Deceit 2 a paid experience and how did that impact the development?

It was a hotly debated topic within the studio!  Throughout the development of Deceit 2 we decided we wanted to move away from the F2P model. One of the major reasons for this was the fact that free-to-play makes it much harder to build a positive and respectful community. We knew this was something that we wanted to create for Deceit 2, and whilst we have work left to do there, we think it’s turned out well. The other key factor was the level of fidelity; the detail in our maps, characters and animations alongside an extensive roadmap of maps, roles and items, we’re confident that we’re offering a lot at our price point.

2. Deceit 2 is once again built upon Unreal Engine 5. How did you find developing a sequel inside of the game engine after five years? What has changed? What was learned?

When we first created Deceit, we made use of CryEngine’s impressive capabilities, which played a vital role in bringing our initial vision to life back in 2017. Having that foundation of a AAA engine aligned well with our aspirations of creating an innovative immersive experience. However, in recent years we’ve all witnessed some remarkable advancements in Unreal Engine, especially in terms of functionality and tools for artists due to an immense level of investment from Epic.

Deciding to shift to Unreal Engine for Deceit 2 was a strategic move heavily influenced by these improvements. The extensive investment in tooling allows our smaller team to achieve more in less time, and the improvements introduced by Lumen and certain other key systems that came with UE5 specifically brought the engine in-line with our ‘real-time all-the-time’ philosophy towards content creation.

Re-writing the entire game from scratch in the new engine came with a huge level of up-front investment, with a lot of learnings along the way. Now that we’ve completed that transition we’re confident that our adoption of UE5 will bring immense value as we look to impress with our 2024 content roadmap.

3. Deceit had several successful expansions throughout its lifespan as we’ve seen from some big horror online titles such as Dead By Daylight. What’s the plan for the future of Deceit 2 and how has that shaped its development?

We’ve always set out to innovate with Deceit, with its unique take on atmospheric social gameplay. We made hundreds of updates to the original game based on playtests and data from millions of games.

With Deceit 2, we’ve taken the opportunity to distil all of those learnings into a refined gameplay loop. However, the need to rebuild from scratch means we still have more content to deliver, and a whole host of improvements to act on from our initial Steam-only launch feedback.

Starting in 2024 – and we’ve not spoken about this publicly before – we are moving to a seasons model for Deceit 2. This will kick-off alongside the launch on consoles with “Season One” early next year. Each season will be themed, and bring new roles and other content for players to master, as well as keeping the balancing and overall experience fresh each month.  We’ll also be releasing multiple new maps and Terror-themed DLCs over the course of the year.

4. Take us through the Dynamic Social Sandbox. What does this mean for Deceit 2 and how will we get to interact with this system?

One of the things we focus on as a studio is allowing players to craft and tell their own stories within the universe we’ve built.  We really want to focus on empowering these player stories, and seeing players sharing their craftiest games of Deceit 2, or most unlikely escapes and that’s really one of the driving motivations for us! Players can choose from a large selection of in-game Items to vary up their strategies each game, as they contend with the roles that have been randomly allocated amongst all the players.

5. There’s been a huge leap in graphical fidelity between the original title and Deceit 2. A lot has changed in the world of PC gaming hardware with three GPU generations releasing between games. The recommended specs for the game ask for an RTX 3060 GPU which is capable of ray tracing, how is Deceit 2 using its technological advancements to immerse us in the world?

With improvements with graphics hardware since the original, we have more latitude to include higher-fidelity lighting, textures, animations and effects. These are all key components in creating the spooky, tense atmosphere that’s essential for Deceit 2. In the highest settings this also includes raytraced lighting, which further enhances the fidelity and variety of visual effects we can deliver, and we’re still exploring these.

Furthermore, Deceit 2 takes full advantage of the AI features of modern graphics cards by utilising features like DLSS (Deep Learning Super Sampling). DLSS allows players to experience higher frame rates without compromising on the visual quality, ensuring that even the most graphically intense scenes run smoothly. 

However, we’ve also heard feedback that players want to be able to join in on older hardware, and recently we’ve been working hard to ensure that almost any DX12-compatible device from the last decade is capable of running Deceit in the lowest settings.

6. Deceit 2 features a newly streamlined UI. How important was user feedback when designing a sequel to the original game?

We are actually still working on the UI, based on user feedback since launch. We are releasing the new interface style in December.

User feedback has been incredibly important both pre and post launch for Deceit 2.  If anything, we would have liked to have done more!  We tested the game regularly with a local college, and held numerous community playtests and betas.  

As we move forward with Deceit 2 and future projects, this is an area we will be devoting more time to. We are an iterative development studio, and part of our culture is to listen to feedback from our players at every opportunity.  

7. The coverage roadmap outlines console and Linux build plans with the Xbox and PlayStation consoles in the works. How will Deceit 2 be designed differently for the Xbox Series X and PS5 should these ports be approved?

The key feature we’re prioritising for these versions is cross-play functionality. This is in line with our commitment to unify players across different platforms, allowing friends to play together irrespective of whether they are on PC, Xbox Series X, or PlayStation 5. 

For the Xbox Series X and PS5 specifically we have worked to ensure we can match the visual fidelity of our High settings on PC. We’ve also needed to standardise some game mechanics to conform with the certification requirements across all platforms. For example, we’ve ensured all players have a unique colour of chalk when they write on the in-game blackboard, so as to comply with UGC requirements, though this is an update that made sense for moderation purposes anyway!

Essentially our goal is for the core gameplay of Deceit 2 to remain consistent across all platforms, and we’ll continue to explore how we can bring the game to as many devices as possible. You can check the game out on Steam right now and keep up with the latest news on the blogs on the official Deceit website and @deceitgg on TikTok.