Rather, Buyanov created the new Rant Gaming Studios But when the audience for Escape From Tarkov — which has been played by at least 54 million people — quickly figured out that the game was coming from Buyanov, he couldn’t help himself and confirmed his involvement much sooner than he had planned. After a detailed trailer with a backstory on the game debuted exclusively on GamesBeat last week, players called it “Starkov,” and then Buyanov confirmed in a tweet that he was behind it. And now he’s telling more in an exclusive interview with GamesBeat.

We’re glad to be the first to reveal his thinking in moving on from Tarkov to “FragOrder.” But speculators were wrong about one thing. Battlestate Games, Buyanov’s earlier 400-person company, is still focused on just making Escape From Tarkov content. And the 130 or so developers working on Fragmentary Order are part of a brand new studio called Rant Gaming Studios and the publisher is the new firm Cor3, Buyanov said.

He told us the game has been in the works four a couple of years, starting from its conceptualization stage and it’s been in production for a year or so. It’s not the same extraction game set in space. Buyanov doesn’t call it an “extraction shooter,” like Tarkov.

It will have extraction mechanics, but he sees it as a “combat simulator.” Buyanov was pleased most of the response to the new trailer was good, but he knew it would be “polarized” because Tarkov fans would want to protect their community but the company needed to reach a balance between those who wanted the old and those who want something new. “I felt I needed to say it out straight that is is another invention,” he told me. “People should not treat this as the next thing, changing current priorities to the next thing.” Buyanov said he was “tired” from the work on Tarkov and needed to make something new.

And while Tarkov is still evolving after 10 years, Buyanov said he wants to make the new game much faster than that by two or three times. But he knows that won’t be easy because gamers now are “super demanding.” Buyanov thinks of it as “hard science fiction,” which could happen in the next couple of hundred years as a straight line from the current events. The trailer describes the “order” brought to society by the AI-based Core organization, but that order fragments in the future, and that’s where the name and the conflict in the story comes from.

As far as answers go, Buyanov is giving some. You aren’t fighting aliens. It’s more like combat against other humans controlling their own clones or drones.

There are vehicles and maps that can be four or five times the size of Tarkov maps. The game looks more realistic in part because it’s built with Epic Games’ Unreal Engine. There are lots of things Buyanov isn’t talking about yet, such as funding sources.

The company has not yet said when it will get the game out. But it’s in relatively early stages in terms of testing, as the firm will have closed alpha testing soon. Buyanov has said the team is international, with offices in Abu Dhabi, Dubai and elsewhere.

But the primary mode of operating is remote. Buyanov isn’t trying to make everyone happy. He just wants to make a game that he likes.

The game is very challenging to make, he acknowledged. “So it’s not a walk in the park. Sometimes it’s unbearable, even.

But I need to take this shot. I have a lot of people who believe in me and who are helping me. Hopefully we’ll succeed,” Buyanov said.

Here’s an edited transcript of our interview. GamesBeat: What’s the reaction that you’ve absorbed from the announcement? Nikita Buyanov: It was basically polarized.

The bigger part of the responses were really good. Some of them were opposite – people shared their opinions like we should not do it this way, started to tell us what to do, or what not to do. But in general, it was great.

Later, I made a post about my involvement in the project, cause It would be hard for me to protect both communities – Tarkov’s and Frago’s. I felt I needed to say it straight out that this is another invention, another adventure. People should not treat this as a replacement for Tarkov.

It’s very hard for me to live and work with these two current projects simultaneously. But this is why I’m taking the risk. I want to make something new.

I don’t believe I’ll have the energy to do that later. Tarkov has been in production for more than 10 years, and I really want the new project to be made faster than that. That’s one of the goals – we need to make it much faster, and that requires a lot of