One of the producers of ARC Raiders revealed that there were so-called “playtest battles” during development. This was fought in developer team against developer team
.
In a talk at GDC (Game Developers Conference), producer Caio Braga gave a presentation about the development process of ARC Raiders. In the presentation “When Your AAA Game Isn’t Fun: The ARC Raiders Story of Starting Over with Intent,” Caio Braga primarily talked about the importance of playtesting.
According to him, there were also rivalries between the individual teams regarding the game in the form of so-called playtest battles
. These teams were supposed to believe in something different in the game, making it sometimes more difficult for the other developers on the team. This was, according to Caio Braga, done daily.
Developer Team vs. Developer Team
What did these playtest battles
look like? The core of the playtest battles
is described by Caio Braga with an example. The weapon team wanted the weapons in the game to feel particularly good for players, thus making them so powerful that they could quickly kill the ARCs.
However, during the next playtest, the ARC team was annoyed that the time and effort they invested in the AI of the opponents felt almost wasted. So they vented their frustrations
by making the ARCs more powerful.
This changed the very essence of the shooter in the next playtest, and Caio Braga describes it by saying: Suddenly you’re playing a Souls game, and the weapons no longer matter.
(via gamesradar+). So you can imagine it as if ARC Raiders had unstoppable bosses like in Elden Ring or other Souls games.
This way, the various development teams have been arguing for years about the soul and identity of the game. After that, the team was reduced in size, allowing for a refocusing on the ARC Raiders.
Previously, producer Caio Braga disclosed some information about the development process of ARC Raiders. The game not only went through various playtest battles but also faced much debate about the actual identity of ARC Raiders: Before ARC Raiders became the extraction shooter as you know it today, the developers themselves did not know what they were really working on
