Bulkhead Checks Steam Histories for FPS Passion When Hiring Wardogs Developers

Bulkhead is making genre familiarity a visible part of how it builds the team behind Wardogs. Executive director Joe Brammer and senior producer Kane Allard say prospective hires are asked to provide their Steam hours, with the studio reviewing those records for evidence that an applicant is genuinely engaged with first-person shooters.

The stated purpose is not to treat one genre preference as a measure of someone’s overall talent. Rather, the studio says it wants people who care about the particulars of the kind of game it is making. Brammer’s blunt comparison was that he would not be the right person to make Final Fantasy, because he would not have the required familiarity with that genre. In Bulkhead’s view, the broad label “games industry” can obscure how different a large FPS and a role-playing game can be in practice.

That distinction matters because Wardogs is not simply a game where a gun appears on screen. A first-person shooter, or FPS, is a genre built around a player seeing the action through the character’s viewpoint, usually with moment-to-moment movement, aiming and combat at its center. The details players notice can be extremely specific: the pace of an encounter, the clarity of information during a fight, the feel of movement, and whether a competitive environment seems trustworthy. Bulkhead’s argument is that people who spend time with shooters may recognize those expectations more readily.

Steam hours are being used as an interest signal

Allard said the company checks applicants’ Steam records to establish whether they are passionate about FPS games before joining a team making a major shooter. Steam is a PC platform and store that can display time spent in games. In this context, those hours are being used as a rough indicator of firsthand exposure to the genre—not as a claim that hours alone establish professional ability.

That is an important limitation. Time played can show that someone has spent meaningful time around a category of games, but it cannot, by itself, explain what they learned from it. It does not reveal whether a candidate can build systems, communicate with a team, solve technical problems, create art, manage production or perform any of the many jobs required to ship a game. Bulkhead’s comments frame the Steam check more narrowly: it is one way to identify people who may already understand and care about the design details the studio prioritizes.

Brammer explicitly said that playing games outside the shooter space does not make a person a worse developer. That caveat is significant. A specialist hiring policy can easily be interpreted as genre gatekeeping if it suggests only one kind of player belongs on a project. Bulkhead instead presents its preference as a question of fit: its current focus is FPS development, so it prioritizes developers with FPS knowledge and enthusiasm.

Why a shooter studio may value player perspective

There is a practical logic to the approach, even if a public Steam history is necessarily an imperfect shortcut. Developers who actively play a genre can share a vocabulary for what players are likely to notice. They may be more alert to small decisions that change the experience, and more able to explain why a particular choice feels right or wrong to an established audience.

For an FPS, that shared perspective can be especially relevant because the genre’s central loop is immediate. Players are repeatedly moving, looking, aiming and reacting. Minor changes to how those actions are presented can be felt constantly rather than only at a menu screen or a major story beat. A team that is deeply familiar with shooters may be better positioned to spot when a decision clashes with audience expectations—though familiarity is not a guarantee that every decision will land.

Bulkhead itself acknowledges that it will not always get everything right. That is a more useful standard than treating fandom as infallibility. Genre knowledge can sharpen questions and help a team understand what is at stake in a choice. It cannot remove the need for careful production, testing, feedback or revision.

The studio’s position also puts a premium on specificity. “Game developer” is a broad description covering many disciplines and types of games. Someone can be excellent in that broad field and still have little direct grounding in a particular genre’s conventions. Brammer’s Final Fantasy example makes that point in reverse: being experienced with FPS games does not automatically prepare a person to lead a very different kind of project.

Anti-cheat is part of the studio’s pitch to FPS players

Bulkhead’s hiring comments came alongside Brammer’s discussion of anti-cheat work. He described the studio’s anti-cheat efforts as expensive and risky, and argued that a studio should be rewarded for making that investment. The connection to the FPS-focused hiring stance is straightforward: the company is presenting itself as a developer trying to serve a shooter audience through both its team makeup and its technical priorities.

Anti-cheat refers to measures intended to detect, deter or limit cheating in a game. Bulkhead did not detail the particular systems being implemented, so it would be premature to infer specific features or judge their effectiveness. What is clear is the studio’s emphasis on the cost and risk of taking on that work. For an FPS audience, the issue is likely to be highly visible because cheating can undermine confidence in the competitive experience.

There is no simple technical fix implied by the comments. Anti-cheat work can be expensive, and a studio’s willingness to invest in it does not mean that unwanted behavior will disappear. Bulkhead’s message is instead about priorities: it wants FPS players to see that the studio understands those concerns and is committing resources to them.

That broader theme—showing players where their money goes and what the studio values—is central to Brammer’s remarks. He said Bulkhead wants players who share its values to understand the kind of company they are supporting. It is a deliberately audience-facing identity: a shooter studio staffed by people who play shooters, making investments it believes shooter players care about.

The potential upside and the necessary caution

Analysis: Bulkhead’s policy has a clear upside. It could help align the studio internally around a common frame of reference. On a project where the team is trying to satisfy FPS fans, employees who already follow and play the genre may be well placed to raise useful questions early. That alignment may also make the company’s public messaging more credible to players who want a studio to demonstrate that it understands the audience rather than merely targets it.

But the same policy needs careful application. Steam playtime is evidence of engagement, not a complete account of a candidate’s perspective or capability. Different professional disciplines contribute in different ways, and a successful game team benefits from people who can identify blind spots as well as people who recognize conventions. Bulkhead’s own clarification that non-shooter players are not inferior developers leaves room for that distinction.

The most charitable reading, based on the studio’s explanation, is not that every employee must be defined by one library of games. It is that Bulkhead wants applicants working on Wardogs to be able to speak seriously about the specific audience the project serves. That is a tighter and more defensible claim than saying only FPS fans can make games.

It also creates a standard players can use when evaluating the studio’s future work. If Bulkhead is asking for support on the basis of shooter expertise, audience alignment and anti-cheat investment, players will reasonably look for that commitment in the game’s direction over time. The studio has said Wardogs is seeing what it considers a perfectly acceptable decline, while its leadership is also seeking player input on potential changes and stressing that the studio retains the creative vision.

That balance is familiar to ongoing game development: player feedback can inform decisions, but it does not replace a developer’s responsibility to make them. Bulkhead’s comments suggest it wants its FPS experience to be part of how it weighs that feedback. For another look at a PC game pursuing a very different competitive structure, see Project Zeta’s multi-team MOBA ambitions.

What the policy does—and does not—say

It does say: Bulkhead asks applicants for Steam hours and uses Steam records to look for passion for FPS games.
It does say: The studio prioritizes hiring FPS developers for its FPS work.
It does say: Bulkhead considers anti-cheat work costly and risky, but important enough to pursue.
It does not say: Playing other genres makes an applicant a worse developer.
It does not say: Steam hours alone determine whether someone is qualified for a job.
It does not say: Which specific anti-cheat systems are being used or how they operate.

For now, Bulkhead is being unusually direct about the kind of specialization it wants: a studio for FPS players, built in part by developers who are FPS players themselves. Whether that philosophy translates into lasting player trust will depend less on the existence of a Steam-hours field and more on the decisions the team makes in Wardogs after the hiring process is over.