The survival MMO ARK Survival Evolved is a major success on PS4, Xbox One, and PC. The developers have now shown their cards: How did ARK become so successful?
At the developer conference GDC, the two heads behind ARK Survival Evolved, Jesse Rapczak and Jeremy Stieglitz, gave a presentation about their success concept.
What is special about ARK is that it is developed by a relatively small core team of only 25 people and without a great design document. There was only a brief presentation with ideas for the game. Based on this document, ARK has been developed ever since.
In the future, nothing should be done that explicitly contradicts this document.
The success of ARK is largely attributed to the big community, its constant care, and their input. The developers emphasize how crucial good community management is, that stays in touch with the pulse of the player base.
The ARK team makes a presentation for every progress, feeds players with trailers and videos, and showcased the dinosaurs in a large wiki long before they were officially presented. Studio Wildcard does everything to ensure the community can truly see and feel the game to keep the hype alive.
Steam reviews are often worst when user numbers are best
All this contributes to the community feeling passionate about ARK and supporting the game over the years. However, listening to the community is not the secret of ARK. It’s more about when to listen to them and when not.
You hear the community, but don’t always listen to them
The main reason for ARK’s success is attributed by Studio Wildcard to the numerous new features that were added to ARK over time that do not always relate to the base game.
It looked like this after the controversial “Scorched Earth phase”.
As a benchmark to see whether ARK is developing in the desired direction, the team looks at feedback, such as Steam reviews, but the most important indicator is the “user numbers” on Steam, how many people are actually playing the game. Both indicators often diverge significantly.
While Steam reviews proclaim the downfall of ARK, record user numbers are being reported at the same time.
After failing with a free-to-play and eSports concept, with Survival of the Fittest, which had to be discontinued afterward, a kind of “formula for new features”, a scorecard was created. They no longer wanted to rely solely on their gut feeling.
Since then, every new feature is written on an index card and reviewed for how many points it receives.
This is ARK Survival Evolved’s success formula for new features
Points are given in these categories:
Does the team want the new feature? How eager are they themselves?
Does the community want it? Is there a large enough faction among the players advocating for it?
Is the feature good for new players?
Does it help us release ARK? Does it align with our core idea?
Are there no loud opposing voices in the community? (1 point question)
Is it easy to implement? (1 point question)
Can we really do it well?
Every new feature needs +2 points to make it into ARK: Survival Evolved
For each of the 7 categories, a feature either gets one point or two points, or points are deducted. If it ends in a tie in a category, no points are awarded.
If a new feature receives a total of 2 points or more, it will be added to ARK. If it has less, then likely not.
The developers went through all potentially implemented features during the presentation.
The “free-to-play” variant, Survival of the Fittest, failed. Although both the community and the team wanted this feature, it was extremely labor-intensive, did not really advance ARK, and could not be implemented satisfactorily. Meanwhile, Survival of the Fittest is back out.
The expansion “Scorched Earth”, however, was not really demanded by the community. There were many opposing voices in the Steam reviews “How can you bring an expansion in Early Access? Finish developing it first! But overall, Scorched Earth advanced ARK, user numbers rose, and the scorecard reflects that the feature “expansion” looks great.
Sometimes you have to act against the will of the players
A nerf of the powerful dinos was outright rejected by the community, and developers were wished death and destruction for scaling down the dinosaurs that had become too powerful. In the scorecard, however, the dino nerf stands at 6 points in positive and was deemed essential for the long-term health of ARK, according to the team.
Similarly, the decision to introduce Cross-ARK. This feature allowed players to switch their servers. This brought movement into the static ARK and “mega-tribes” that had made themselves comfortable on their servers were called back to action.
A problem-feature that the team faces is the introduction of “underwater bases.” They do not expect great success from this. On the other hand, they have already promised it and believe: “Nothing much can go wrong here.” Therefore, the team wants to bring underwater bases to ARK Survival Evolved, although their own formula warns against it. They want to trust their gut feeling here.
Even though there is a success formula, ARK apparently does not want to become a slave to it.
You love dinos and have always wanted to face them, tame them, and even ride them? Then ARK: Survival Evolved could be your game. Here you explore a wild world ...
