The journey to creating Embark Studios’ popular extraction-shooter, Arc Raiders, was far from straightforward. For three arduous years, the development team found itself in a constant struggle to align on a unified vision for the game’s core concept.
Caio Braga, Production Director at Embark Studios, recounted at the GDC 2026 conference that upon joining the company in 2020, a year into the project, there was no singular answer to the question, “What kind of game is this?” Every team member had a distinct idea. “Ask one, and they’d say it’s a ‘battle royale’ against Arc; another would claim it’s a cooperative version of Shadow of the Colossus; someone else would call it a hero looter-shooter,” Braga recalled.
Braga himself envisioned Arc Raiders as a “boss-rush race with obstacles,” explaining, “You appear on the map, identify where the big boss will emerge, and race towards it like crazy, because whoever kills the boss wins. Everyone else loses.”
This internal divergence led to what Braga termed “playtest battles,” where each of the approximately 120 team members effectively championed a fundamentally different iteration of the game during testing sessions. The studio eventually invested in external playtesting, which, while offering mixed feedback, notably showed that the game was “sometimes” enjoyable.
Despite the challenges, the developers successfully convinced Nexon to continue funding the project, allowing the team to undertake a significant “reboot.” A crucial turning point in shaping Arc Raiders into the game players know today was a dramatic reduction in its overall pace.
“The first thing we did after the restart was to slow down everything by about 60%,” Braga revealed. This decisive change proved instrumental, enabling the team to recognize and leverage the inherent strengths of elements such as map design, intricate sound design, and the “sandbox” mechanics involving various tools – core components that define the extraction-shooter nature of Arc Raiders.