Some brave souls play Phasmophobia all on their lonesome, but that could never be me. I'm more in it for the shared, community-driven haunts, so when I noticed the new Twitch Drop section of the ghost hunting game's UI during a Summer Game Fest demo, I asked the team if they had plans to expand on other community activities, like seasonal events.
"I think one of the key things is we don't want to walk into the live service area," said lead social and community manager Tom Dent. "We're very much like, the game is the game, and we have those events to sort of bring our year together. We want to steer clear of that kind of vibe. But also our community is so active, so excited. So to continue to engage them is super important."
I talked to Kinetic's CEO and lead developer, Daniel Knight, a little more about that in a follow-up interview. Curious about where they draw the line with online activities and long-term plans, I asked Knight what his vision for supporting Phasmophobia through its 1.0 milestone looks like. They want to keep the haunt going for a while, but there's a limit.
"We don't want people to have the expectation that we would carry on forever," said Knight. "We're going to be doing it for the foreseeable future, but we have our own set plan for the game.
"We have the roadmap out to 1.0, and that is the main thing as to why we're doing this regular content fix and overhauling everything to get to that [Version 1.0]. After 1.0, we're still gonna be doing content updates, but it won't be overhauling stuff."
Knight and the team left the door open for "potentially new ghost types," and additional content like maps, but these big overhauls we're seeing now aren't part of the post-1.0 plan. And while we've seen Kinetic iterate on the online event formula over the years, they seem more focused on perfecting Phas without leaning too hard into its online components.
"The game can be played offline, and we don't want to rely on people having an internet connection to play the seasonal events or something, which is why we're trying not to go down that road. I think the three seasonal events we have at the moment is enough of the live service kind of content we have."
I do love any ole excuse for more holiday-themed haunts, but respect Kinetic's clear goals and boundaries on where they want to take Phas. They've got a core setup for weekly challenges, three yearly events, and one more online activity through Twitch Drops. I'm a little sad I can't have a possessed Turkey or a demonic Valentine, but it's nice to see a game just happy to have its moment without turning into another always online nightmare.
