Embark Studios abandoned many ideas to find a playable and engaging format
The development of Arc Raiders was fraught with difficulties: the initially shown PvE version was almost completely canceled in favor of an extraction shooter. Embark Studios explains how failed ideas led to interesting game mechanics.
"We spent most of the first year just building tools," said founder and CEO Patrick Söderlund in a documentary about the development of one of the main hits of 2025.
I understood that we would make mistakes. We expected a lot of mistakes and prepared in advance by creating a safety net to fix them.
You know what? If you try to send people to Mars, you'll crash a bunch of rockets. We crashed a bunch of rockets.
Senior Technical Artist Paul Grevson noted:
Sometimes ideas on paper don't work in the game. It sounded cool, but in reality, I'm always looking up [referring to improving the user experience - ed.].
