At an early stage, the project did not look promising.
The extraction shooter ARC Raiders is now very popular, but during development, not everyone believed in the project. Recently, Embark Studios released a documentary in which the project's art director shared a story about his child's reaction to the game's concept.
Robert Sammelin recalls:
We wanted to do something completely our own. Everyone had an idea of something fantastic, with a bias towards science fiction, because it's a comfortable option, everyone likes it, but it's also a challenge to pave your own way.
Various science fiction projects were already on the market. Embark Studios is far from the first studio to propose the concept of a shooter in such a setting, so Sammelin's child was not impressed:
Even my child, who was 12 years old at the time, treated our idea like this: "Oh, a new studio? A game in a science fiction setting? Very \"original.\""
However, in the end, ARC Raiders managed to become a hit.
