ARC Raiders Developers Learn from Others' Mistakes. Marathon Testing Became a Lesson

Embark Studios is preparing to release the shooter ARC Raiders. At the same time, the team closely followed other games in the genre, in particular the Bungie playtest. Design Director Virgil Watkins talked about what the studio learned from the players' reaction to Marathon and how it influenced the development of ARC Raiders.

Watkins called the Marathon playtest an "excellent A/B test" that allowed comparing Embark Studios' decisions with those made by Bungie.

"As far as I know, none of us knew this was going to happen. For us, it was a great A/B test because, obviously, they were making decisions that we weren't, and vice versa. So we could compare and contrast how some of these things manifested. It was interesting to follow what players think about these things, what worked in their context and what didn't, and what could work in ours."

Watkins praised some aspects of the game that he saw. For example, he called the "graphic style very expressive."