The developers of Payday want to seek player on their next title, a Dungeons & Dragons live-service project. The title, codenamed Project Baxter, will be set in the familiar world of the D&D universe and feature procedurally generated gameplay elements to provide a replayable experience for fans. Baxter will be a multiplayer live-service title, and it's currently being developed by Starbreeze, the studio behind the latest co-op FPS Payday titles.

In an interim report, as relayed by Game Watchers, Starbreeze CEO Adolf Kristjansson voiced the studio's desire to "involve our player community in development to ensure the best possible player experience." As such, Starbreeze is hoping to open the floor to player soon in the form of a beta test, with the goal of fulfilling the studio's "vision" for the D&D title to "create a unique, immersive, co-op game, where player choice is central.” According to the Project Baxter website, the game is scheduled to release on "all major platforms" sometime next year.

Everything We Know About Starbreeze's D&D Game

A Procedurally Generated Co-Op Adventure

Based on the official website, Project Baxter will be a multiplayer action-adventure game set in the Dungeons & Dragons universe. The game seems set to reinforce the tabletop RPG's focus on storytelling and teamwork, calling itself a "co-op urban crawl through a reactive Dungeons & Dragons-world." Procedurally generated scenarios will allow for the iconic emergent, unscripted gameplay that the tabletop game is known for, though not much detail is known yet about how this will work.

Starbreeze promises to deliver a "lifetime commitment through a Games as a Service-model," with a long-lasting multiplayer experience. The studio certainly has a proven track record of delivering on this promise, with the studio's 12-year-old title Payday 2 still regularly seeing over 20,000 daily players, according to Steam Charts.

Beta Tests Should Help Make D&D Game As Successful As Possible

They May Help Avoid The Doomed Live Service Flop

Many live-service games like Fortnite and Helldivers 2 are still alive and going strong, but the last year has been a tough one for other free multiplayer games. The move away from creating live experiences that rely on maintaining a core player base for a prolonged period of time.

If Starbreeze wants to avoid the same fate of similar titles, opening Project Baxter up to player testing and is the studio's best chance at doing so. Beta testing would allow fans to get their hands on the experience early, weigh in on potential issues, and—if it es muster—build hype for the Dungeons & Dragons game early. Interested fans can sign up to Starbreeze's newsletter service, Nebula, to be notified of news regarding the imminent title.

Source: Game Watchers, Project Baxter, Steam Charts