Digital Extremes is the Canadian video game developer responsible for developing the game WARFRAME.
The Team
- Main article: Development Team
Digital Extremes (often shorted to DE) has over 200 employees actively developing Warframe. Many members of the team have an active online presence communicating to players, particularly the Community staff.
Official Site
If you wish to find news published by DE, the main page of the main site includes articles they've written about various topics revolving around Warframe. These are blog posts that can include a wide variety of content, such as an analysis of player habits, an announcement of a Warframe-related contest, a Q&A with producers of fan-made content, or a sneak preview of upcoming features.
Official Forums
For formal interaction with the development team, there is no better avenue than the official forums for Warframe. Many of the community outreach staff as well as developers read and write posts there, and it is the central source of qualitative feedback for the development team.
Guides of the Lotus
- Main article: Guides of the Lotus
Guides of the Lotus formerly consisted of community moderators and guides that were handpicked by Digital Extremes to assist in their community development, and to help players get started and with any inquiries or issues they may have. On April 6th, 2019 it was announced that the Guides of the Lotus would be retired; former participants kept the Mantle of the Lotus Shoulder Armor & Guides of the Lotus Sigil but their profile accolade was removed.
In-Game Chat
When not in a mission, your chat window will have a Region tab to be able to broadcast messages to all players on your region server. Oftentimes, you will be able to see a few players in the tab with the prefix "[DE]" to their names; these are administration accounts used by the DE team to communicate to players.
Redtext
Aside from individual accounts, DE has a method of broadcasting messages to all players online regardless of mission instance or active chat tab. This is commonly known as Redtext, due to the red text color used. Redtext is most frequently used to announce live updating of the game, counting down each minute from five minutes until an update to let players know when it is being deployed, and when they can restart the game to install the update.
Except in the cases of hotfixes (unscheduled updates released with urgency to fix high-priority issues, usually related to game crashes), Redtext usually accompanies humorous (and sometimes crude) quips about the coming changes.
KickBot
- Main article: KickBot
KickBot is a bot deployed by Digital Extremes to monitor and moderate chat activity in Warframe, used mainly to kick offenders from the chat. Though at most times there is no one at the helm while it interacts with players, occasionally it is manually used by a Digital Extremes developer to speak to players informally. Even without that consideration, many players treat KickBot as a member of the community in its own right.
Developer Videos
- Main article: Developer Videos
DE makes many videos to advertise, showcase, or explain features of the game. These can all be found at their official YouTube channel.
Podcasts
DE also produced podcasts that delve into the WARFRAME community and behind-the-scenes in the making of the game. These can be found on their official Soundcloud account, with the last podcast being released on September 3rd, 2019.
Development
Music
WARFRAME contains both scored and procedurally shifting music created by Digital Extremes' composer, Keith Power. The music procedurally shifts in real time based on the player's actions, particularly the player's current situation with enemies present in the tileset: stealth, aware and combat theme, with each respective score increasing in intensity and complexity.
Keith Power also provided scores for the different factions and Syndicates, as well as unique scores for each of the Assassins.
Assets
Games
DE has worked on roughly a score of games since the company was founded, including several Unreal Tournament titles, BioShock, The Darkness II and Dark Sector.
Dark Sector in particular has been treated as a spiritual ancestor to Warframe, being the source of many ideas implemented in Warframe. This includes the very word 'Tenno', the weapon design and name of the Glaive, the layout of the Excalibur Proto-Armor Skin, and the Lotus symbol. The entire list of references can be found here. However, it has been officially confirmed by DE that this is in fact false, and the two games are separate universes.
Evolution Engine
Evolution Engine is a proprietary game engine developed by DE for Dark Sector, The Darkness II and WARFRAME, featuring modern rendering techniques such as PBR and Deferred Rendering. A list of engine upgrades can be found here.