Team Fortress 2 first launched in 2007 and grew to become on of the most popular team shooter games for a PC, and Valve is long overdue a sequel.
Diverse Classes, Great Weapons, Endless Fun
To say that Team Fortress 2 was popular is a major understatement. Even thirteen years after its release, there have been over 130,000 concurrent players having an absolute blast. With several modes to choose from, as well as coveted golden weapons always available from completing PvE content with Mann vs Machine, seasonal events, and a vibrant trading economy, it is no surprise that players are still drawn to the game.
Now more than ever it feels like the right time to build on the brand power to make Team Fortress 3. If Blizzard can upgrade graphics and add PvE to charge you full price for Overwatch 2, think of how Team Fortress would fare from over a decade of graphical improvements, new classes, and of course, new cosmetics.
Getting A Slice Of That Esports Pie
Team Fortress 2 has always had a competitive side to it, but Valve never took the initiative to do much with the mode outside of a few in-game cosmetics that mark players as having competed or won certain events.
And yet, this is counterintuitive to the direction of esports around the world. Professional gaming remains on track to generate expected revenues of $1.8 billion by the year 2022, and Fortnite, Overwatch, League of Legends, DOTA 2, and others have shifted towards grabbing as much attention as possible.
If you have ever watched competitive Team Fortress 2, you know how insane and skilled its plays can be, as seen in the highlight video below. If Valve were to make a sequel and announce support for competitive play, or even if it treated it similarly to DOTA 2, with fans purchasing battle passes to fund prize pools, there is no doubt that players would flock to prove themselves as the best of the best.
Team Fortress 2 Has The Best Cosmetics
At its peak, Team Fortress 2 enjoyed a level of popularity unrivaled by other team shooters, both for its gameplay and its broad range of collectible, tradeable cosmetics. As the game is owned by Valve, it was easy to cross-promote Team Fortress 2 on Steam every time a hit new game was released. There were so many outstanding promotional cosmetic items from games like Portal 2, Left 4 Dead 2, Alien: Isolation, and Assassin’s Creed, to name only a few, but there were over one hundred games in total to feature crossover cosmetics.
Fall Guys is treading down a similar path now with its cosmetic skins based on other titles and characters, and Team Fortress 3 could return to that trend. There is even a Scout skin in Fall Guys, so the potential for cross-promotion is clearly there, and Valve is wasting a perfect opportunity here by not releasing a sequel.
What About My Old $2000 Hat?
You cannot talk about Team Fortress 3 without mentioning the economy of Team Fortress 2. What would happen to the thousands of Unusual hats and taunts, Golden weapons, Killstreak weapons, and more if a sequel were made? One option would be to do as Overwatch is doing by bringing over the entire collection.
On the other hand, the argument could be made to simply wipe the board and start clean. By starting the game with no “rare” cosmetics and slowly adding them in the same way as Team Fortress 2, which is to say with the option to buy loot boxes or the cosmetic outright from the in-game store, a new economy could form with brand new Unusual effects and updated versions of the classics.
This is probably the best way to proceed, putting everyone on an equal footing from the start, and leaving the old economy intact. This is especially true since Valve has not always managed the current economy properly when problems arise, as seen with last year’s Unusual unboxing fiasco that tanked the market.
For now, we can only hope that Valve will develop Team Fortress 3, but the developer may simply be happy with the revenue that comes from the current game which requires basically nothing to keep going.
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The Fantastic, Science-Fiction, and Horror are Patricio’s go-to genres for literature, film, and gaming. Dead by Daylight is his daily bread and butter as he writes for TheGamer. He teaches Spanish at McGill by day and writes next to his Staffy x Boxer rescue from the SPCA by night.
Patricio graduated from the University of Alberta in 2006, 2012, and will have one more degree in hand by 2020. Innovation in game development, the economics of making games profitable, and the downward, decadent spiral of former great gaming companies fuels his soul to write daily. Will Blizzard Entertainment do something controversial often enough to keep this reference relevant? Patrick certainly believes they will.
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