Despite launching alongside major titles like Battlefield 6 and Call of Duty: Black Ops 7, ARC Raiders has found success. Embark Studios, the game’s developer, faced a tough challenge, and CEO Patrick Söderlund recently told GamesBeat that being a new studio forced them to try innovative approaches to game development.
The main challenge for Embark Studios was size. To truly compete with giants like Activision and EA, they’d have to grow enormously. But instead of pursuing that path, they chose to focus on improving how they make games and creating better tools – a strategy they felt would be more effective with a smaller team.
He explained that launching a new game studio and competing with major companies like EA and Activision traditionally requires a huge team – five to seven hundred people. They decided against that approach because it was too expensive, and they didn’t think it would lead to the best innovation or quality games.
When we founded Embark, we dedicated the first seven to ten months to planning ARC Raiders and, more importantly, to creating new production methods and tools. Our goal was to dramatically speed up game development, allowing us to compete with larger publishers even with a smaller team.
Owen Mahoney, the former CEO of Nexon, also shared his thoughts on Embark Studios’ approach, praising their deliberate decision to grow at a measured pace rather than quickly assembling a large team. He highlighted that this was a very intentional strategy.
I was really impressed with what Mahoney said. They clearly thought things through – they knew a huge team would be difficult to manage, and they believed software could help a lot. But even more than that, they were determined to create something truly unique, and that really came across.
During the same interview, Söderlund also explained that ARC Raiders is designed to encourage players to work together instead of competing against each other. This is why the game won’t include features like leaderboards, as the developers want to prioritize cooperative play.
We’ve talked a lot about Nemesis systems and related features, but I’m not sure what the team’s current progress is on them. What I really like about this game is that it focuses on enjoyment rather than competition – there aren’t any leaderboards or rankings.
We’re not really aiming to encourage players to focus on shooting each other. While it’s possible to do that in the game, it’s not the main idea. We see player conflict as a way to build suspense and excitement, not as the core gameplay loop.
He explained the origins of ARC Raiders as a PvE game, recalling its initial announcement, and how incorporating multiplayer elements significantly enhanced the game’s suspenseful atmosphere.
ARC Raiders is available on PC, PS5 and Xbox Series X/S. Check out our review for more details.
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2026-01-08 21:11