During a recent GDC presentation, Caio Braga, creator of Embark Studios’ upcoming game Arc Raiders, revealed intriguing insights gathered during the project’s testing phase. The development team was researching how players perceived the game’s Player-vs-Player (PvP) elements and conducted a survey to better understand their audience’s preferences. Testers were asked about the other games they typically play, and this data was then correlated with their personal enjoyment ratings of PvP in Arc Raiders.
As expected, players who regularly immerse themselves in titles like Delta Force, PUBG, Escape from Tarkov, Rust, and Hunt: Showdown gave high marks to Arc Raiders’ PvP gameplay. However, a genuinely surprising outcome emerged from the responses of fans of The Last of Us. This group rated Arc Raiders’ PvP among the highest across all segments that primarily favor cooperative or adventure games, a category that also included fans of Destiny, Elden Ring, The Division, and Helldivers 2.
Caio Braga expressed his astonishment at these findings in a subsequent interview, noting: “These players simply didn’t want PvP to be a constant element. They desired to participate in PvP periodically, and it was precisely this group that I found much more interesting. My user experience and data analysis specialist affirmed that our game looks so good that we would attract these players too. We just needed to find something that would be suitable and enjoyable for them.”
This discovery significantly influenced Arc Raiders’ market positioning. The developers are now emphasizing that their game is not merely an “extraction shooter” but rather an “extraction-adventure.” The overarching goal is to make the game appealing to a broad spectrum of players, including those who appreciate the adventure aspect and the flexibility to engage in PvP at their own pace, rather than solely focusing on continuous firefights.