The extraction shooter ARC Raiders is known for its friendly community, but they operate quite differently than the game’s developers. They much prefer to take out every other player they see, and therefore have to force themselves to be nice every now and then.
Who said that? This statement comes from Caio Braga, the game’s production lead. In an interview he gave at the Game Developers Conference (GDC) with GamesRadar+, he admitted: Many developers at Embark Studios are true PvP demons.
ARC Raiders is known for having a particularly friendly and helpful community. They prefer to fight together against the mechanical threat posed by the ARCs rather than shooting each other over loot.
He and several other developers let a random generator decide how they should play on any given day. As Braga recounts: “One day I’m playing as a Care Bear, the other day I’m very aggressive. Sometimes I’m doing just quests. .”
Developers try to better understand friendly players
What do they hope for? In this way, the developers also want to cater to the needs of the friendliest Raiders. Braga immediately provides an example of something that only made it into the game because the team didn’t immediately start shooting at each other when they had line of sight.
“our weapon designer was very, very keen on keeping the ‘don’t shoot’ emote, and that was something we debated a lot,” Braga recounts. “Who is supposed to use that?” was the question, because after all, the developers themselves were PvP players who found no use for it.
In the end, the team decided to keep the emote – and it was the right decision. Players like the emote and they use it frequently, the developer claims.
So, it’s about putting yourself in the position of as many players as possible and seeing what they might enjoy. “We’re building it for fun, right?” Braga says. “We want to provide as much fun as we can. So it’s good to understand all of those players.”
How do you prefer to play ARC Raiders? Feel free to let us know in the comments. The developers themselves have already revealed that they did not expect their shooter community to be so friendly: “That encourages us, of course”: Developers behind ARC Raiders had to rethink because the community is more peaceful than expected
