Texas Chain Saw Massacre's Wes Keltner on Black Tower, the Competition, and the Future of the Game
Gun Interactive boss Wes Keltner discusses the future of The Texas Chain Saw Massacre and much more.
The Texas Chain Saw Massacre movie will cross a major milestone in 2024 by celebrating 50 years of the iconic Leatherface, 50 years of movies, books, games, and more, and 50 years of changing how people look at chainsaws. Taking on the same name as the original horror film, The Texas Chain Saw Massacre from Gun Interactive and Sumo Nottingham is a game that's got its own birthday coming up, too, with a one-year anniversary for the asymmetrical multiplayer game happening in August.
Gun Interactive, the publisher of The Texas Chain Saw Massacre, is no stranger to these kinds of games. The same studio also co-created Friday the 13th: The Game, a 2017 game which helped kick off a race to snatch up horror IPs and convert them into multiplayer experiences. With learnings from that game in Gun's arsenal and a far denser genre now compared to what the asymmetrical scene looked like seven years ago, it begs the question: how is The Texas Chain Saw Massacre doing nearly one year out?
"Game's good," Wes Keltner, CEO and president of Gun, said succinctly. "It stays very popular on console. We are not as big on PC, but I think that's also because there's a lot more choice on PC than there is on console."
ComicBook.com spoke to Keltner about the game in a conversation inspired by one big announcement Gun recently shared. Sumo Nottingham, the developer that helped Gun get the game into players' hands last year and has kept it updated with new content since then, is moving on to something new. Black Tower Studios is taking over future work on Texas Chain Saw Massacre, a developer that worked with Gun previously on Friday the 13th: The Game.
Black Tower Studios and Texas Chain Saw Massacre
Black Tower helped develop Friday the 13th: The Game starting in 2018 after Gun's partner, IllFonic, exited the project, but the timing worked against the incoming studio. The game was already a casualty of a much larger legal situation involving the Friday the 13th franchise overall, and plans for future content suffered as a result.
In no way did Friday the 13th: The Game's situation affect The Texas Chain Saw Massacre, but after observing some of the responses to the Black Tower news, it was evident some who followed Gun from one game to the next carried over some concerns about what could mean for Texas Chain Saw. Keltner, assuaging those concerns, said Gun knows Black Tower "very well" after working on Friday the 13th together and explained that this sort of changing of hands is more common than players might think.
"It's very common in video games that you have a team that did the development to bring it to market, and then you have your live-ops team that comes in to facilitate additional content and try to speed things up, move quick, that kind of thing. It is very, very normal in the gaming industry to have that kind of handoff."
Keltner continued by calling the move a "normal transition" and a "natural handoff" given Gun's prior work with Black Tower. Gun could've opted for another developer to partner with this time, but the two studios can basically "speak in shorthand" by now when collaborating, and Keltner said Black Tower understands Gun's drive for authenticity.
Virginia, the newest playable character in The Texas Chain Saw Massacre.
- Gun Media)"If we meet someone new and sat down with them, their eyes would probably get pretty large when they realize how many rocks you're going to have to turn over to get it exactly the way that we want it to be," he said. "But since we've had that relationship with Black Tower for so long, they already know that coming into, when we say something like 'The chainsaw has to do this,' they know you don't cut corners. It's the exact saw, it's the exact sound, it's this kind of thing."
Black Tower devs have already been playing Texas Chain Saw, Keltner said, and are familiar even before this game and Friday the 13th with the process of taking over development like this. Those factors combined with the existing relationship of between the two should lead to faster content drops over time, Keltner said.
"I think it's faster content is what we're going to see, and I think that's a ramp sort of thing where you might not feel it as this handshake is occurring," he said. "But as the months progress, it's going to get faster and faster and faster – more content on an even steadier pace than what was there previously. So I think the playerbase will feel that change."
As for the Gun and its exiting partner, Sumo Nottingham, Keltner said things are all good between the two.
"There's zero bad blood between Gun and Sumo," Keltner said. "We're all very much still homies. We still check in with each other and see what's going on."
Asymmetrical Competition
Texas Chain Saw Massacre always sees a "great uptick in players" when new content like the latest Victim character, Virginia, is released, Keltner said. When combined with things like the free Steam weekend going on now, you get results like those shown in the chart below where the game boasted nearly five times as many concurrent players on PC compared to earlier in the week.
But behind Texas Chain Saw Massacre are games like The Evil Dead: The Game which called it quits last year, ahead of it are games like Killer Klowns from Outer Space: The Game which just got a release date, and somewhere in between are games like Predator: Hunting Grounds which will soon live on with current-gen releases. There's also the ever-present Dead by Daylight which welcomes guest appearances from iconic horror IPs and beyond including Texas Chainsaw itself.
"It is crowded," Keltner said when asked about the state of the asymmetrical genre. "There's a lot of titles like that, and I am proud to be one of the few at the beginning to reintroduce asymmetrical multiplayer back into gaming."
Kelter said Gun got a lot of "no" responses from publishers when pitching Friday the 13th because it didn't "fit into the little buckets" one publisher or another had. While publishers have obviously found some more buckets considering how many asymmetrical games there are now, Keltner said he looks at the space not so much as a competition between which game is better but as an opportunity for innovation.
"As long as each one of those games that comes out isn't copying something that already existed, if they're trying to push the boundaries and keep spreading out what asymmetry can mean, if they're doing that, then I'm like, 'I want all the games,'" he said. "I'm fine with seeing a busy marketplace with a lot of that because again, it breeds more innovation. It pushes other teams to try."
Players may see it very much as an us vs. them situation, but that's to be expected since we're "tribal by nature," Keltner said. Unsurprisingly, Keltner has played some of these other games himself such as Evil Dead: The Game, Dead by Daylight, and Video Horror Society (known previously as VHS), and he's excited for Killer Klowns from Outer Space: The Game since it's being made by IllFonic. He praised ideas in Video Horror Society as well as Evil Dead's handling of the IP with specific kudos offered to Dead by Daylight's meta.
"I will say that I think Dead by Daylight probably has one of the best meta games still in asymmetry," he said. "I think that the Bloodweb and how you use your points and move through the system and unlock things is probably the best in asymmetry. I don't know who their meta designer is, but give 'em a raise because again, just my opinion, but I think that's the strongest part of that title. Not that there's a weakness within DBD, but when I look at that game, I think, 'Man, their meta is good. It's really good.'"
Interacting with Players on Socials
Keltner engages frequently with fans on social media. Some fans have questions about the game, some offer praise, and some come looking for a fight. Interacting with those first two types of fans makes sense since you're reciprocating their interest in Texas Chain Saw and fostering a community, but Keltner even responds to people coming in hot, too. Considering how draining the latter must be, why not just ignore them?
"Most of them, they actually like what I make and they're frustrated about something," he said. "And I think sometimes, it's sort of yelling into the void. "It's the equivalent of almost wanting to throw your controller. 'I'm mad about this thing.' And so I think there's that lash out that they just kind of want to go, 'Blah!' and I can understand that. I think it's a relatable feeling that people have."
Keltner acknowledged that the anonymity of social media means people can be more hyperbolic and "put a little more stank on it, if you will," which can make it difficult to engage with people. Some are consoled and more amicable if they get a response that sees through to their problem. Others, not so much. Those in the latter category get shorter responses.
"You get a lot of thumbs up from me," he said.
— WesKeltner 🎃 (@weskeltner) March 14, 2024
From being in the industry for around 19 years now, Keltner did say that he's seen the most dramatic shift in online interactions post-Covid.
"I'm sure there's mental health professionals and sociologists that specialize in social media that would know far more about the reasons people do what they do," he said. "I will say that I think post-Covid, it's worse than it was pre[-Covid]. As someone who's been in the game industry now since 2005, and seeing the introduction of social media and how it was used and how it's changed, I felt the biggest change post-Covid."
After online interactions were fostered and encouraged amid Covid lockdowns, Keltner said he feels some people found it more comforting to continue their online habits afterwards, though he doesn't know if that's "the healthiest outlet for how to create true human connection." While it was previously easier to read between the lines and make connections, he said that's not quite the same anymore as it was pre-Covid.
Despite those evolving challenges on socials, Keltner said he'll be sticking around to continue interacting with fans.
"I still think there's genuinely good people out there that want to use those platforms as an extension of their real-life tribe," he said. "They just want to pop in and say, 'Hey.' And it doesn't mean I always need to hear positive things. It's fine to come and tell me, 'I think this thing's broken in your game.' Okay, that's alright. We will talk about that. It's the limiting the time of people that don't have anything necessarily constructive to say, or they want to say something mean and flip it, and they think that's being constructive when it's not what that is."
For those players who stick around after the free weekend and the existing playerbase that's looking forward to what comes next with Black Tower and The Texas Chain Saw Massacre, Keltner says to expect some exciting content and more frequent interactions.
"I think the future's pretty bright for Texas," Keltner said. "We've got a strong lineup of content that's going to be coming out that I think people are going to enjoy. We're speeding those things up, and we're going to be talking about those things more frequently. I think people are going to be excited for what we've got in store."
