ARC Raiders is one of the hottest games out right now, with the extraction shooter selling over four million units worldwide shortly after its launch and reaching over 700,000 peak concurrent players. Those who followed the game’s development, though, know it had its turbulent moments, and now the developers want to share that story. It all goes back to nearly seven years ago, when ARC Raiders was just an idea. Over the years, the development team struggled to get a satisfying gameplay loop from its initial concept, which culminated in an entire reset in 2021.
Obviously, not every developer can afford to do that, but it’s clear that recognizing what it had in 2021 just wasn’t working has paid off. Embark Studios’ ability to pivot speaks volumes about the team, considering ARC Raiders is one of the most successful games of the year.
To tell the story, documentary filmmaker Danny O’Dwyer, commonly known as the founder of Noclip, is releasing a three-part series. It explores ARC Raiders from its initial sketches to the extraction adventure game that has won over millions of players. If you don’t recognize the name Noclip, Danny has done some of the best documentaries covering the gaming industry. I’ve been a huge fan since his Final Fantasy XIV series, which covered the game’s revival.
As for the ARC Raiders documentary, the first episode, Finding ARC Raiders, covers the start of the game’s development, from six developers chatting in an apartment to the very first designs, gameplay mechanics, and enemies. The second episode is titled The Life of a Raider and covers the team’s pivot to a PvPvE framework and the search for that satisfying gameplay loop. The final episode, Building ARC Machines, gives an inside look at using machine learning to build intelligent enemies, each with distinct attributes and threats.
The full first episode is available now, while the second episode will be released next week.
