After testing, the developers decided to take a different approach to positioning Arc Raiders in the market.
Arc Raiders creator Kayo Braga spoke during a presentation at GDC about how the team explored "the pleasure of PvP" during testing.
Embark Studios conducted a survey of testers: they were asked what other games they play. The developers compared the answers received with feedback on the level of enjoyment from PvP.
Fans of games like Delta Force, PUBG, Escape from Tarkov, Rust, and Hunt: Showdown quite expectedly highly rated the PvP gameplay.
The answers from The Last of Us fans were surprising — they rated PvP higher than everyone else among the group of players who prefer games in the "cooperative / adventure" genre. This group also included Destiny, Elden Ring, The Division, and Helldivers 2.
In a conversation with GamesRadar+, Kayo Braga said that he was surprised by the survey results:
[These players] just didn't want PvP to happen all the time. They wanted to participate in PvP with a certain frequency, and they seemed much more interesting to me. My user experience and data analysis specialist said that our game looks so good that we will attract such players as well. We just needed to find something that would be suitable and fun for them.
This observation influenced the positioning of Arc Raiders — the developers began to emphasize that their game is not an "extraction shooter":
We use the wording "extraction-adventure" to describe the game — and we don't just call Arc Raiders an "extraction-shooter". There is, of course, shooting in the game, but we want all categories of players to have fun.
