Embark Studios scrapped many concepts to arrive at a playable, compelling format
The development of Arc Raiders was bumpy: the initially shown PvE version was largely abandoned in favor of an extraction shooter. At Embark Studios they explain how failed experiments ultimately shaped interesting gameplay systems.
“For much of the first year we were simply building tools,” said founder and CEO Patrick Söderlund in a documentary about the making of one of 2025’s standout titles.
I knew mistakes were inevitable. We expected many missteps and proactively built safeguards to fix them.
You know what? If you try to send people to Mars, you’ll break a lot of rockets. We broke a lot of rockets.
Senior technical artist Paul Grevson added:
Sometimes ideas that look great on paper don’t work in-game. It sounded cool, but in practice I found myself constantly looking up.
Source: iXBT.games