Rainbow Six Mobile Q&A with Olivier Albarracin and Justin Swan: Delivering the Siege Experience in Your Palm

As the Rainbow Six Mobile closed beta comes to a close, we had the opportunity to have an email Q&A with Olivier Albarracin, Lead Game Designer, and Justin Swan, Creative Director, about this addition to the Rainbow Six series.

While we don’t have a definitive release date at time of writing, there should be plenty of you who have tried out the closed beta. If you were one of those who haven’t, check out our impressions here!

Without further ado, let’s see what the devs had to say.

A MOBILE RAINBOW SIX

Why decide on developing a mobile Siege instead of say, a single-player story experience or even any other genre?

We wanted to bring the Rainbow Six universe to mobile in a big way with Rainbow Six Mobile, and to us this means a game that millions of players will play, and will be able to enjoy for thousands of hours.  The competitive gameplay of Siege and high skill cap provides an experience that players can continue to enjoy and improve at for years.

Could you talk in detail the allowances you made to bring R6S to mobile form?

The Siege recipe is a very special mix of operator abilities, how the interact with each other, and how they interact with the maps.  Because of this, it was incredibly important for us to bring the full feature set from Siege to Rainbow Six Mobile.  This means the player will have nearly all the capabilities they would have in Siege, and our maps are very true to the Siege versions.  Two interactions that we have removed from Siege to Rainbow Six Mobile is Inverted Rappelling and the ability to climb ladders, which we’ve replaced with other ways to traverse the area.

What was the thought process behind the change in character design from Rainbow Six Siege to Rainbow Six Mobile? Is there a reason behind the change?

The Rainbow Six brand has evolved a lot since the original cast of Operators, and we felt that Rainbow Six Mobile presented a great opportunity to refresh some of our favorite operator looks while also exposing more of their character and history through their default looks.  We redesigned some of the operator visuals, took a close look at the lore behind each character and what type of content really resonated with the Siege community, and used this to fashion compelling new looks.

MONETIZATION

Could you break down the monetization systems?

Our biggest focus was recreating the iconic core gameplay of Rainbow Six Siege, and with so much of our efforts being put toward the core gameplay we chose not to reinvent the wheel around monetization.  You will see classic systems such as a premium battle pass and really great cosmetics available.

I found it interesting that you could permanently unlock Operators once you try them often enough. Why not the option of simply obtaining them?

In future releases of the game players will have the option to simply purchase any operator immediately with in-game currency.  We feel that the “try before you buy” approach, and the ability to unlock an operator permanently with enough tries, is a great new way for players to experience the full breadth of the game with no need to monetize.

COMING SOON

Is there any other mode that will come to the mobile version?

While we can’t comment on any potential future modes for Rainbow Six Mobile we certainly are watching Siege closely as they roll out interesting new game modes and the community seems to really appreciate these special events.

Will there be any content exclusive to Rainbow Six Mobile that will not be in Rainbow Six Siege such as maps, operators and others?

We cannot comment on exact details but our goal is always to delight and surprise our players, and what we know is that new content such as maps and operators are always a major point of exciting for the community.

In terms of game controls, will joypads and controllers be supported in Rainbow Six Mobile?

It’s important for us that as many players can enjoy Rainbow Six Mobile as possible, and that they can play the way they want.  This means that we will have support for joypads and controllers and the ability for a player to fully customize their entire control layout.

What has been the most common feedback you’ve gotten thus far? What’s been the most useful for you?

The community response has been amazing!  We’ve put many years of passionate work into making the best game experience possible and seeing this dedication appreciated by our players has been incredibly rewarding.  The most useful feedback we’ve received comes from our most engaged players around what they are enjoying or would like to see come to the game.  Because of this we’ve already been able to deliver a very appreciated special game mode we call “Veteran Mode” where combat is less forgiving than the classic balancing.

Have you tried Rainbow Six Mobile for yourself? Has anything you’ve seen thus far excited you? Be sure to let the devs know, and stay up to date via their official Twitter, Discord and website!