Ten years into Rainbow Six Siege’s life, Siege X is a conscious reimagining of the game that helped shaped competitive tactical shooters. Creative Director Alexander Karpazis led the overhaul with a clear brief: preserve the tactical essence that made Siege a staple of competitive shooters while modernizing systems to unlock new moments of player creativity.

During Thailand Game Show 2025, we sat down with Karpazis as he laid out the design thinking, the trade-offs the team wrestled with, and the roadmap that aims to keep Siege relevant for another decade.

Core principles of Rainbow Six Siege that never left

At the heart of Siege X are three non-negotiables that shaped every decision in the relaunch. First is performance: a shooter of Siege’s ambition must hit a minimum of 60 frames per second to preserve precision and responsiveness, with higher targets on platforms that support them. Second is the game’s esports cadence, as seasons were designed as recurring community milestones where competitive play, developer updates, and player feedback intersect. Third is variety, and the long-term vision of 100 operators forced the team to design with scale in mind, ensuring each new addition meaningfully changes the tactical landscape.

Modernization without betraying the fans

Modernizing a live service with a passionate player base is a tight and delicate balancing act. Siege veterans hold deep attachments to operators, maps, and the game’s particular pace. Change too fast and you alienate the core, but change too little and the game stagnates.

Siege X’s approach was surgical. Rather than accelerating the pace, the team improved the overall experience, such as audio, lighting, and the “game feel,” while guarding the tactical tempo that rewards outsmarting opponents over raw twitch aim. Even minor mechanical changes, such as allowing running while rappelling, were assessed not only for novelty but also for their effect on tactical decision-making.

“It’s something where you do have to respect the tactical nature of the game. The pace isn’t as fast as some other shooters, and there’s a reason behind that. It’s because strategy should always win out over just pure gunplay.”

“And so while new players may find that very different, it’s still something that’s a lot of fun because you can always outsmart your opponent.”

Balancing as a systems problem

Balance in Siege X is not done in isolation but is viewed as an ongoing systems problem. Introducing a new operator is not a single-variable tweak because it reshapes counterplay and synergy across the roster. That complexity is part of what Karpazis’ team loves and what keeps them up at night.

The balancing philosophy in Siege X evolved from reactive fixes to a more proactive mantra that urges them to observe, iterate, and redesign legacy operators to meet today’s metas. The team intentionally designs operators with unique roles in mind, but remains committed to revisiting older tools to keep them viable without destabilizing competitive play.

“Every time you introduce a new operator, you can’t balance that in a silo, right? You gotta have it with other operators. It is an immense challenge, and it’s one that our team loves because that complex relationship of one operator countering another or one that synergizes, that’s where all of the strategy comes from.”

“So while it can be hard to balance everything, we’ve been learning how to introduce new operators that are still unique? And we’ve been looking back at our past operators and redesigning them so that they can meet the standards today of the meta that’s being played.”

Designing for viral moments

One of Siege X’s clearest goals was to create systems that naturally encourage player creativity. Instead of scripting spectacle, the team added meaningful, destructible ingredients to maps. Elements like gas pipes and fire extinguishers are now tactically viable. When a desperate clutch uses the environment to flip a round, that play becomes a community moment which is organic, surprising, and endlessly shareable.

“I think for Siege X, one of the most compelling and natural things that we introduced was destructible ingredients. So things like gas pipes or fire extinguishers around the map actually have a purpose now, and it fits with the destructive nature of the game.”

“So seeing players kind of play around these things and in a clutch situation where you think that they have no chance at all and then all of a sudden they use their environment to win a round, that’s really gratifying. And again, it’s just pure opportunity for players to play with.”

A game built with the community

Community feedback isn’t an afterthought for Siege X, because the team understands the importance of listening and communicating. The dev team runs a weekly feedback report, separating short-term requests from systemic issues. That steady loop helps the roadmap remain responsive while still allowing developer-driven design choices born from internal player histories and instincts.

Lighting is a concrete example. Launch-day lighting in 2015 was praised for its immersion, but later adjustments for competitive clarity diminished the game’s atmosphere. Players kept asking for that original feeling, so Siege X reworked the lighting engine to balance visibility and immersion, in turn effectively blending nostalgia with competitive reality.

“One of the biggest changes we did was the lighting engine because when the game originally shipped, it had really immersive lighting. However, over the years, we had to modify it so that players couldn’t hide in shadows, and you wouldn’t get things like really dark spaces beyond a doorway or beyond a window. That would affect the competitive balance.”

“So we made tweaks to it, and over the years, it lessened the immersion. But players still talk about that kind of launch day lighting. And so with Siege X, we took the best of both worlds, and we reworked the entire lighting engine based on player feedback to see if we could get something closer to the original 2015 launch of the game.”

Looking ahead

Karpazis admits there are challenges ahead: new hardware and platforms, as well as technical shifts, will shape what Siege can become. The studio is thinking multi-year, building technical groundwork that will allow the game to adapt to new consoles and unlock fresh gameplay possibilities.

“We really want our players to be confident in the game and confident in when we’re going. So we mean it when we say we want to be here for the next 10 years as well.”

Tom Clancy’s Rainbow Six Siege X is now available on PS4, PS5, Xbox One, Xbox Series, PC, and Ubisoft+.