Escape from Tarkov did something few games ever manage: it made a hardcore extraction-shooter loop mainstream. And now its creator, Nikita Buyanov, is trying to do the same kind of genre-shaping move again, except this time he’s taking it into science fiction. Buyanov says Fragmentary Order is designed to be “proper sci-fi,” not just “Tarkov in space,” and he frames the mission as simulating and modeling the future so players will “believe in” it.

Buyanov also sets expectations in a way that reads like a warning label. In his words, Fragmentary Order will be “more complex, more punishing, more painful,” but the rewards will be bigger. He explicitly imagines a “perfect Tarkov” that keeps players motivated by making them feel out of the loop until they earn the right moment of payoff. Then he makes the audience deal clear: it will be “not for everyone,” and the experience is positioned as something players should help “shape up” together.

So what is Fragmentary Order, mechanically? Buyanov says he wants to break the established extraction-shooter pattern. When extraction shooters became a template, he describes the loop as infil, load, shoot, exfil, extraction, “even if you die, we’ll lose everything.” In Fragmentary Order, he says there will be several options for how to survive, and it will not necessarily require “classical” infil/exfil extraction. That matters because it changes the mental model players bring into a match. Instead of optimizing for one exit path, you would be managing multiple routes and outcomes, all while the game tries to stay grounded to its sci-fi lore and visuals.

The other pillar is realism, and Buyanov treats it like more than gun handling and combat animations. He says the goal is to create “the whole concept, the whole world, the whole gaming session,” including systems that tie directly to lore and future-facing game features. In other words, the realism is intended to be global, not cosmetic. He wants the universe to be a “living world,” and he calls it a “passageway to the future” for people who want to experience the future, even though the game is built for “the current gen.” That phrasing is marketing, yes, but it also signals design ambition: a single match is supposed to feel like it belongs to a broader, coherent sci-fi society rather than a collection of missions.

Buyanov’s sci-fi vision is also explicitly a fusion. He says he wants to combine parts of different sci-fi modes: cyberpunk, spaceship combat, “the social element of the future,” and then wrap it all into not just a game project, but “the whole universe.” That’s a high-risk approach because it could balloon scope fast. But in his telling, the studio’s progress is already well underway. He says Rant Gaming is two years into development, has grown to 130 people, is focused on prototyping new mechanics and features, and has “almost built the basic mechanics” and “almost built the first location.” He adds that there are multiplayer builds and that the team is expanding “huge lore being expanded every single day.”

There is also a smart piece of community scaffolding here. An alpha is set to launch later this year, and players can already explore through cor3.gg. Buyanov notes that the team built a browser-based experience to introduce the universe and help players understand its systems. More importantly for decision-makers watching early traction, he says resources earned through the COR3 terminal will carry over into Fragmentary Order at release, giving early participants a head start. That is a retention lever disguised as onboarding: it creates early investment that extends beyond curiosity into progression.

If you zoom out, the industry context is basically screaming why this moment matters. Escape from Tarkov helped define the modern extraction-shooter template that now shows up everywhere, and even Call of Duty is moving in with Modern Warfare 4’s upcoming extraction mode, DMZ. Arc Raiders is also positioned as a more accessible take on Escape from Tarkov. So Buyanov is answering mainstream pressure with a counter-move: not accessibility, but amplified complexity. He says the game will stand out by leaning into suffering and bigger rewards, and he emphasizes that it will not be trying to “earn all” of players’ money.

For founders, investors, and operators, the strategic stakes are clear. If extraction shooters are converging on familiar loops, Fragmentary Order is betting the next differentiation layer is systems realism plus multiple survival routes plus lore-driven future mechanics. The second-order implication for the broader market is that “grounded realism” might become a competitive requirement rather than a niche preference. And for peers in hardcore game development, Buyanov’s pitch suggests a board-level decision on tone and target audience: double down on punishing depth, or compete on accessibility like the genre’s recent outgrowths. Either way, the people building next in this space will be measured not just on whether it’s fun, but whether it’s believable enough to make players “live in” the universe.