dupreeh on his new game Skyward Masters: "We're trying to create this new genre of arena shooter"

Peter "dupreeh" Rasmussen has recently hung up his mouse and joined the development team of Skyward Masters, a "fast-paced arena shooter" created by Trinor Entertainment that puts four teams to the test.

The five-time CS:GO Major champion isn't the first pro to follow this pathway, as Michael "shroud" Grzesiek recently invested and helped to develop Spectre Divide, a 3v3 tactical shooter.

Given the difficulty that making a game from scratch, especially one like Skyward Masters, that aims to compete against established titles like CS2, League of Legends, and Fortnite, Dust2.us asked dupreeh what he brings to the project and how much money he invested in it.

You can read dupreeh's answers below. This interview was arranged in cooperation with British news outlet Esports News UK.

It's hard for new games to stand out nowadays, as there's just a lot of competition. Not so long ago, we saw Spectre Divide, the game that shroud invested in, shut down after just six months. What did you see in Skyward Masters as a project that made you want to join? And how do you think you can help them develop a great FPS that will last for years to come?

I think the first thing that sparked my interest was my natural interest in wanting to try and create and develop games. I've played video games for as long as I can remember, and I've always been fascinated by how you actually make them, like how do you get things to work? Not coming from the whole coding part, but also all the art and how do you make things, the animations, and everything go together? How do you create an atmosphere that people can actually dwell in?

And I think it's something that's been popularized a lot over the last couple of years. And I saw this opportunity when I was contacted by Frederick Byskov, who was one of the guys who also helped establish the Astralis brand back in the day. And I'm very new to this; this is my first ever case of me investing in a company and trying to do a startup.

So it's also like a learning process for me, but the case was just a pretty good match for him and me. So we decided to join this one together. So he would be taking care of the whole investment and, you know, trying to get the money and getting a business plan going and working around all these, you know, the hard numbers where I would actually go into the actual development of making a game because I also have a name where I hope I can tell people that, I'm the one that's also helped to develop how the game should actually feel, and I hope that that will bring some kind of credibility to the game as well.

And sure, I'm still very new and it's still something... I'm not expecting myself to just snag it off the get-go. I'm still in a very big learning process, but it's also been interesting to join it because I feel like we have something unique here. We're kind of trying to create this new genre of arena shooter where we try, I at least try to take all the good things from multiple big titles and then combine them and drag them into our universe, and then you know make it our own.

So I'm trying to think of what the great thing is, what makes Counter-Strike a good game, what makes League of Legends a good game, what made PUBG, Fortnite, and Apex Legends, what's the standard of things in those games, what is actually that people enjoy. And then we try and bring that in and then try to create something very unique and something new. And I hope that is what we eventually will end up with as a final product, but only time will tell.

You've mentioned on your socials that you're also investing in the game. Would you mind telling us how much you are investing?

I think I'll keep the numbers safe just for now. I'm not 100% entitled to what I can share, actually, so I'll just play it safe and not leave any numbers. But obviously, investing in something and putting my own money into a company is putting myself in a position where I obviously don't get any salary. I don't get any salary for doing this. I have to do it out of my own free will, but I also have a... If the company and the game actually succeed, that's where I'm gonna get my gold, right? So for me, it's basically not about hope.

Of course, I hope to make a really competitive title and a really cool game that can go on like all the other big titles out there. I think right now, apart from it being something that I hope is gonna happen, I also just think it's fun. I think that is probably what I think is the most important thing for me right now. I'm actually invested in it because I actually think it's a fun project.

It's something that I have some ambitions for, and I can feel like there is a... My ambitions for the project are really big, and I think that's what keeps me going. That's also why I want to sit down every day and talk to developers, help them develop the game, and talk with them and think we should do this and this better because I actually believe that there is a cause that it can be really good.

Earlier this week, we published the first part of our interview with dupreeh, in which we discussed what his favorite teams are to win the StarLadder Budapest Major, and his opinion on Danny "zonic" Sørensen, who has been criticized for the lack of titles with Falcons.

You can read that article below.