John Smedley unveils Distinct Possibility Studios’ open-world extraction game: Reaper Actual

John Smedley‘s Distinct Possibility Studios unveiled its new game, Reaper Actual, an open-world extraction shooter.

The company has been working on the title for a couple of years. In an interview with GamesBeat, Smedley said the PC game will start testing soon.

“I like to make big games, and the game is a open world extraction shooter with quite a few twists. I would probably position it as this. If Call of Duty: DMZ and Rainbow Six Siege had a baby, it would be our game set in an open world,” Smedley said.

There are a lot of extraction shooters out there where the object is to insert a team into a hot zone, grab some loot or intel, and then go to an extraction zone for removal. In this case, the missions and extractions take place within an open world.

Matt Higby, chief creative officer, said in a statement, “We are moving toward the next level of persistent FPS combat. Players want a world they can live in and build upon. Having a solid base is only the start in Reaper Actual. Once faction missions interweave with PvP combat, the world becomes a swirling battleground of options for players. Mix that with a full crafting system and Reapers will grow every time you log in to play.”

Smedley said Distinct Possibility Studios has raised $30.5 million to date, with Bitkraft Ventures leading the investment. And based on this briefing, the studio has been busy with that stash. This is the kind of game I would expect from John Smedley, who has built some very big games over time.

Smedley has worked in games for a long time — since the 1990s. He was heavily involved in the development of the massively multiplayer online game EverQuest. He was cofounder of Verant interactive, which became Sony Online Entertainment after Sony Pictures bought it in 2000.

Among he worked on were Planetside and H1Z1. Smedley led Daybreak Games, moved on and returned with a startup, Pixelmage Games. That company tried a Kickstarter for a game called Hero’s Song, but it failed and closed. He then became a manager of Amazon Game Studios San Diego.

He left that studio in January 2023 and then began work on the new company and game. Seasoned veterans among the founders include Smedley, Higby, Trammel Isaac, Michael Hunley and Tammy McDonald.

“Our studio has been working hard for two years on Reaper Actual. We like to make big games, and our goal is to build a dynamic world where every battle matters. Our team is excited to show what we have built to the fans who have been with us for decades,” Smedley said.

He added, “Ours is differentiated as an open-world persistent game. We make the persistence meaningful. We tell our story via missions and lore.”

This looks like triple-A material, based on the realistic graphics of the trailer.

A full description

The company said this fast-paced FPS throws players into a relentless, ever-evolving battlefield fueled by dynamic faction warfare. As an elite Reaper on the war-torn island of Marova, survival demands more than just firepower. It is a brutal test of strategy and skill. Build your base, forge alliances, and lead high-risk raids against rival factions in a world where every bullet fired is a tactical gamble.

Reaper Actual delivers a shifting battle where players fight each other as well as embedded factions who are constantly at odds. Keep an eye over your shoulder as the next firefight could come from anywhere. Built with the open world persistence and the progression of an online game, Reaper Actual hosts an ever-evolving battlefield where Reapers grow, trade, and form lasting bonds in warfare.

There’s a lot of ambitious action in this game. You can start out at a base, grab a mission for your team, execute the insertion into the battlefield, and then leave after you get the loot. But you then have to face the wrath of other factions on the island. They will come to your base and try to take the prize back. You have to defend your base for a time.

The bases will be “cool looking” and have to be defended. You can set up defenses in your base. Other players can follow you to your base and raid if you have high enough heat level,” Smedley said.

As for the map, Smedley said it is four times the size of the large Call of Duty: Warzone map, Al-Mazrah. It measures about 16 kilometers by 12 kilometers. The world will be fully traversible, thanks to vehicles on air, land and sea.

“It’s so freaking massive,” Smedley said.

As you can see in the trailer, Marova is a beautiful island in the middle of the Mediterranean Sea. The details look very polished in the trailer.

In the narrative, there are five factions on the island, including criminal factions. They’re taking over an island that had a civil war, where there aren’t many civilians left. Smedley, who plays a lot of shooters, said the target for the gunplay was Call of Duty, as the weapons feel realistic and responsive. Like a massively multiplayer online game, the game has progression ladders and it’s a persistent open world.

“It’s a very different game than any other FPS that’s out there. We’re really hoping that this is the start of a new genre where the persistence matters,” Smedley said.

Roughly 200 players can fit in a server now, and they perform missions and raids. If they do much, they draw heat from the authorities and other factions. There will also be “massive numbers of NPCs,” he said. Those non-player characters may even raid your base.

While the players are off on their adventures, the AI, dubbed Cerberus, is always at work, causing player-versus-player conflicts to happen. For instance, your team may be available as a party, and they’re assigned a high-value target mission. Your job is to take out the HVT. Another player gets a mission to defend the HVT. And so two squads of human players have to square off in this mission.

“This is a very new way of running a game,” Smedley said.

If your team takes out the target or captures the target, then a new mission is spawned to stop your team from bringing the HVT back to your base. A bounty is placed on your team, spurring more enemies to come after you.

“Cerberus forces players into conflict at all time,” Smedley said. “You can rove and be a death squad. But almost all of the missions can be spawned against you.”

The world has a full day/night cycle, vehicles like helicopters, cars and boats. It’s on an island. Smedley said that many Planetside 2 developers are on the team.

Smedley said the game will be on Steam and the Epic Games Store at launch. An alpha test will happen in the near future. Streamers will be able to mod the game rules, and players can rent servers from the studio to get as low latency as possible.

Optional Web3 elements

There are Web3 elements.

“We have an ecosystem outside the game that we also want to create. When we launch the game, we’re going to allow players to rent servers directly from us. We’re going to be able to mod those servers and so streamers will actually be able to let only their subscribers in and monetize that if they want to. They’ll also be able to mod the rules, and we will have servers that we provide, and then they’ll have community servers.”

It’s not unlike the game Rust, but players can rent them directly from the company.

Players can sell things in the Steam community market that are rare. Or they can sell it on the company’s site, taking advantage of Web3 features. Players can buy and sell items on the company website. And players will be able to create the same kinds of things that the company’s developers create and then sell them (except for season passes).

“Our goal is actually to have a really vibrant economy. The approach that we’re taking with Web3 is different. Web3 doesn’t always have the best name in our business, but we wanted to approach it this way, with an ecosystem outside the game, and we hope that players can participate in it,” Smedley said.

He added, “None of the items for sale represent power in the game. You won’t be able to buy a rare gun. Rather, they are all cosmetics. There is no pay to win. With Steam and Epic [stores], there will be no crypto whatsoever. Only on our site. You can buy and sell. It doesn’t impact gameplay. That’s the most ethical way to do this. There is no gambling. No loot box mechanics. The token will be the currency that can be used on Web3 side. You buy the token and use crypto.”

Distinct Possibility Studios is using the Etherlink blockchain, which is part of Tezos. The team has 125 people. It also had co-development help from Big Moxi Games, one of Latin America’s premier studios in Brazil.

Investors include Bitkraft and Brevan Howard Digital, with participation from the Tezos Foundation, Hashed, Delphi Ventures, Shima Capital, North Island Ventures, Decasonic, and others.

“We believe that often in games the magic happens at the intersection of two genres. We think Distinct Possibility Studios is a great example of this thesis,” said Carlos Pereira, general partner at Bitkraft Ventures, in a statement. “We see that magic happening with their open-world persistent shooter Reaper Actual which mixes the MMORPG and FPS genres in a truly unique way. We couldn’t be more excited than to back veterans of franchises like EverQuest, PlanetSide and H1Z1.”