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How a London, Ontario game maker has taken the world by storm

Unpacking TennoCon 2024, a one-of-a-kind fan-focused Warframe event from Canadian developer Digital Extremes

Bradly Shankar
Jul 24, 202412:31 PM EDT 0 comments
Warframe 1999 Arthur vs. tank

I’ve been fortunate enough to attend many global gaming events in my relatively nascent career as a journalist, and I can honestly say I’ve never seen anything quite like TennoCon.

Hosted in London, Ontario every year, the convention is a celebration of all things Warframe, the popular free-to-play third-person shooter multiplayer game from local developer Digital Extremes (DE). This year’s two-day event, which sold out in just a few days, saw around 3,000 fans descending last weekend to the southwestern Ontario city’s RBC Place convention centre and adjacent 13,400-square-foot tent. Filling the show floor were attendees adorned in striking armour sets, bringing to life the game’s ancient “Tenno” warriors as they made their way to panels, photo ops, meet & greets and more.

TennoCon 2024

Thousands of TennoCon attendees wait for a live presentation about the future of Warframe.

As I tour the venue with fellow media, some of whom are also Warframe newcomers, we reflect on the fact that this sort of show is pretty rare. Most high-profile consumer gaming events, like the U.S.’ PAX, Germany’s Gamescom and Japan’s Tokyo Game Show, feature all kinds of games and developers from around the world. Otherwise, only a select few are focused around a single game; the most notable example is Square Enix’s Final Fantasy XIV Fan Fest, which benefits from being part of an iconic, nearly 40-year-old franchise.

TennoCon, by contrast, is put on by a London, Ontario-based team of about 300 in its hometown, resulting in many fans from the U.S., Europe and even Singapore and Australia making the journey to RBC Place. That there are otherwise practically no dedicated gaming events in Canada while shows like Fan Expo Canada have de-emphasized much of their game-related programming makes TennoCon’s Canadian presence all the more notable.

Warframe Megan Everett

Megan Everett. (Image credit: Digital Extremes)

For Megan Everett, Warframe‘s director of community and live ops, having TennoCon be a local event presents an opportunity to give back to her hometown.

“The logistics of having the convention centre of London right beside our work building — you can’t get anything better than that. Having it in London does feel special because this is where DE has always been. And it gives back to the community a little bit — it boosts London for hotels and travel and just people learning about London. And as we’re doing TennoCon, we let people know the best restaurants to go to, bars to go to, libraries to go to, so we’re trying to give back to London as they’ve given us this space,” she says.

“So it’s special to us. And it also is really nice for the employees here to be able to bring their family and their friends to it, because most of us are local. So we’re able to have one big celebration, and you just can’t beat being at home. It’s very comfortable, and logistically, it just makes sense.”

It isn’t lost on Everett how unique it is to be able to host such a global event in her hometown.

“Every single year, I’m still bewildered that people want to come and hang out with us because we’re just normal people,” she says. “We go home, we hang out with our family, watch anime or whatever. But there are people who will fly from Malaysia, Japan, all over the world, to come to London, Ontario, and hang out with us for six hours a day and want to just say hi to us. That, to me, is so wild.” (Since 2020, Digital Extremes has been owned by Chinese conglomerate Tencent, but it still primarily operates out of London and remote workers around the world.)

She notes that because she’s been with DE for 11 years, she’s gotten a particular enjoyment out of connecting with the same fans with whom she’s regularly interacted online. “I still see people that I saw eight years ago come to the first TennoCon ever, or a creator, or just someone who played the game — people just keep coming back […] That means more to me than anything.”

Fostering a global community

Clearly, Warframe means a lot to its fanbase as well. All too often, we see online games fail nowadays, including, even, those based on Marvel and DC properties, and yet, Warframe has been going strong since 2013. What was originally a last-ditch effort by DE to remain in business has blossomed into one of the most popular ongoing multiplayer titles with over 80 million registered players.

Put another way: at the time of writing, Warframe was the 19th most-played game on Steam with about 54,000 players, and that’s a figure DE tends to maintain even outside of hype-filled TennoCon periods. That’s no small feat considering there are tens of thousands of games available on Steam in total. And that’s just the PC player base; Warframe is also available on PlayStation, Xbox and Nintendo consoles, as well as, most recently, iOS. (At TennoCon 2024, DE revealed that Warframe‘s Apple port has already surpassed 700,000 downloads, with an Android version coming “soon.”)

Even as an outsider, it quickly became apparent to me that Warframe‘s enduring popularity in no small part comes from the community that DE has built. Indeed, in a day and age of online toxicity, especially in gaming, the Warframe fanbase is renowned for being a positive one on the whole, especially for neurodivergent and LGBTQ+ fans. DE also does charity work, donating $100,000 each to SickKids and the AbleGamers accessibility group this year in addition to partnering with Make A Wish to cast James Conlin, a 16-year-old with spina bifida, as a new character in the upcoming Warframe: 1999 update.

And where many studios are rather secretive, DE has a refreshingly candid and open dialogue with its fans, especially through regular developer streams featuring the likes of creative director Rebecca Ford, Everett and even DE CEO Steve Sinclair. Seldom will you see a video game executive be so front-facing.

“It wasn’t always sunshine and roses; we still have our ups and downs, don’t get me wrong,” admits Everett. “But I feel like from the very get-go, when we put out Warframe and we knew our last-ditch effort to save this company was Warframe, we were like, ‘We’re gonna put everything into it, we’re gonna be super transparent, we’re gonna get the players to tell us what they want from this game that we’re making, and we’re gonna do it.’ So from day one, it was a very one-to-one conversation with our players, and it’s been that way ever since — trying our best to do what they would like to see in the game.”

There’s no better example of this open dialogue than Ford, who was affectionately dubbed “Space Mom” by fans during her tenure as community director before Everett. Developers don’t often have anything resembling a celebrity status, outside of a select few that includes Metal Gear auteur Hideo Kojima and Mario creator Shigeru Miyamoto. But at TennoCon, both in person and in the Twitch stream, fans ecstatically cheered the name of each DE developer as they took to the main stage for the big ‘TennoLive’ showcase to present Warframe updates. That enthusiastic reception extended to the show floor between panels, where Ford, Everett, Sinclair and co. could be seen having impromptu chats and doing signings and photos with fans, even outside of dedicated meet & greet sessions. And at other events, like PAX East, Ford can be seen leading karaoke sessions with fans at afterparties. TennoCon also became a two-day event this year to provide a similar experience: a preceding ‘TennoVIP’ night during which fans could play arcade games, get custom-made shirts and hang out with the developers.

At the same time, Everett says DE’s “willingness to take risks” with Warframe has ultimately paid off. She points to the 2015 expansion The Second Dream, which “really showed us that our players wanted more of a narrative storyline to the game.” Before then, the game had been known more for the ninja-esque power fantasy of the Tenno’s suits and less about story.

“But then we tried this new emotional narrative, and our players loved it. That is one of the highlights of my career, putting out The Second Dream. I’ll never forget that it changed the directory of the game, and the company, almost immediately.”

Back to the future

Nine years later, Warframe is another massive swing with its 1999 update, which, as the title suggests, brings a Y2K theme to the game. Releasing sometime this fall, the expansion will see players facing off against an infested digitized boy band long before the main Warframe era, and Ford told media in a pre-TennoCon briefing that this was inspired by her inadvertently infecting her family computer in the ’90s when trying to download music from Napster. (DE even made a catchy original Backstreet Boys-esque song for the update.) This might seem like an unorthodox direction for a futuristic sci-fi shooter, but the response to the update has been positive so far, in no small part due to the talent involved with it.

Case in point: actor Ben Starr. Over the past year, Starr has garnered his own ample fanbase thanks to his award-winning performance as Clive Rosfield, the protagonist of Final Fantasy XVI, as well as a series of popular quirky online skits. Now, he’s playing the lead character of Warframe: 1999, Arthur, an exoskeleton-wearing warrior, and he specifically requested getting to come to TennoCon to promote the role and meet the fans.

As a lifelong lover of Final Fantasy who’s also now one of its key players, Starr is no stranger to big franchises, and he says the experience of joining the massive world of Warframe has been similarly rewarding. “I get to be a part of a community that is as passionate about the thing that they love as the franchise that I’ve just been spending however many years doing that myself, so it felt like a no-brainer,” he says.

Starr credits Ford’s passionate leadership and mutual “nerdy” love of games as another key reason for coming aboard the Warframe train. “Rebb, now that she’s at the helm of this amazing thing, is just kind of assembling actors that she really appreciates, who she wants to work with, and actors want to work with her and want to work with this team because they feel appreciated,” he says. “The fact that we’ve been brought out here to celebrate this game is kind of not common in the games industry. I really shouldn’t be here. I’m not needed to be here, but the fact that they want to include us makes us feel wanted and liked.”

Arthur Warframe 1999

A statue of Arthur that fans could pose with at TennoCon.

Starr specifically mentions the likes of Nick Apostolides (Leon S. Kennedy in the recent Resident Evil games) and The Game Awards-winning Neil Newbon (Astarion in Baldur’s Gate 3) as some of the big names who were eager to join Warframe in recent months. At TennoCon 2024, DE also confirmed that Amelia Tyler (the narrator of Baldur’s Gate 3), Kevin Afghani (the new voice of Mario) and Alpha Takahashi (Hanako in Cyberpunk 2077) have been cast in Warframe: 1999.

“[They] want to work with Rebb because she absolutely gets it — that whole team gets it,” says Starr. “And I can only see more and more actors wanting to work for Digital Extremes because of how supportive they are of us and how much they show that they value what we bring to the game.” (Everett cryptically teased that DE has “more in store” when it comes to these kinds of major collaborations.)

But beyond that impressively stacked cast of peers, Starr says he’s just in awe of the community that DE has created. Outside of hearing some praise from friends and watching a NoClip documentary on the making of Warframe, he hadn’t actually played the game before being cast, and so getting to join 1999 and attend TennoCon has been quite an experience for him.

“It’s a really cool thing to happen, and the fact that you can do this year after year and have thousands of people descend in London, Ontario shows you that this franchise has just gone from strength to strength to strength,” he says. “I love groups of people coming together to celebrate the things they love in the way that they want to celebrate it. That’s the beautiful thing about conventions. And when it’s about one particular thing — like, I’ve been to [Final Fantasy XIV’s] Fan Fest — to see how much people love a thing, and they want to express it, and they want to celebrate it with other people who have like-minded ideas, is one of the most rewarding things in the world. Because to have that outlet to celebrate the things that you love should be celebrated, should be supported, and Digital Extremes knows that.”

No signs of slowing down

While much of TennoCon was 1999-focused, that’s only one of three updates that DE teased for later this year. The first, August’s Lotus Eaters, will bridge the gap between Whispers in the Wall and the upcoming 1999, but another as-yet-unnamed update will be revealed at Tokyo Game Show (TGS) in September. Yes, what better way to celebrate the spirit of ’90s boy bands than by kicking off a splashy world tour, which includes TennoCon, Gamescom in Germany in August and TGS in September?

Warframe: The Lotus Eaters

Somewhere between all of that, DE will also unveil an initiative to help ease in new players. While the team isn’t quite ready to detail this in-game system, Everett did tease the thought process behind it.

“We’ve done a lot of work, especially recently, in trying to streamline that new player experience in terms of the game really telling you the way that you can go. Because a lot of people, understandably, will pick up the game when they see a TennoCon reveal and they go, ‘Oh my God, 1999, that’s so cool, but I never played Warframe or I’m not caught up yet. I need to do all these quests,” she says. “So we’ve really tried to streamline that new player experience for the game to tell you the easiest path to get there. ‘Okay, if your goal is to get to 1999, you need these four major quests and these two side quests, and then you’re good to go. Yes, there are six other quests you could do, but you don’t need those to get to where you want to go — you can do those later, if you want.'”

On top of that, even more new players are expected to join the DE community with the studio’s other big multiplayer game, the upcoming Soulframe, which has been in development for a few years. Despite the similar names, the two games aren’t actually related, with Soulframe instead positioned as a melee-focused fantasy alternative to Warframe. Select players have been able to test the game as part of an early access Preludes version, and at TennoCon, DE confirmed that everyone will get to join the fun this fall. No release date has been given for the full game, but DE is planning to launch on PC first before eventually expanding to consoles, just as it did with Warframe all those years ago.

Soulframe hut

Soulframe is a marked departure from Warframe. (Image credit: Digital Extremes)

That significant passage of time is something that Everett is well aware of, especially given all of the layoffs and other turmoil the video game industry has faced as of late.

“There’s been ups, there’s been downs, there’s been learning lessons… We don’t have a perfect formula at all. But I think what we’ve built, we’ve been able to sustain as we’ve grown. And it’s a hard industry to grow in and survive in, especially nowadays,” she says.

“It’s fortunate that we were able to find success 11 years ago and maintain it. And hopefully, we continue to maintain it. I’ve been saying this for a while, but we’ll continue making Warframe as long as people want to play it. And I’ll be doing it until I’m in the ground, so if the people want Warframe, we’re going to keep doing it.”

TennoCon will return for its 10th anniversary on July 18th and 19th, 2025 at RBC Place London. In the meantime, Warframe can be downloaded for free on PlayStation 4/5, Xbox One, Xbox Series X/S, Nintendo Switch, PC and iOS. Those who want to register for the chance to join Soulframe Preludes can do so here.

Our full interview with Ben Starr, which touches on everything from Final Fantasy VIII and ’90s nostalgia to Toronto Pearson Airport and Tim Hortons, can be found here.

Header image credit: Digital Extremes

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