Your criticism can't hurt Arc Raiders' art director Robert Sammelin, as his child has already been his biggest critic. In a new series called The Evolution of Arc Raiders, Sammelin describes how his own spawn was less than enthusiastic about Embark Studios' idea for a third-person extraction shooter.
In the new YouTube video, Sammelin explains how the team at Embark Studios came up with the idea for Arc Raiders' setting: "We wanted to make something that was completely our own," he says. "And everyone had an idea of something fantastical, sci-fi leaning, because it's comfortable, everyone likes it, but it's also a challenge to carve out your own [path]."
Gaming is full of third-person shooters, and it can be difficult to create your own niche in the genre, especially when it comes to the setting. In particular, third-person shooter x sci-fi is a well-trodden path, with behemoths like Halo, Mass Effect, and even the fairly recent Starfield.
Embark wasn't the only one to realise the overlapping venn diagram between this genre and setting, as Sammelin's kid delivered the artist a burn that he has thankfully now recovered from. "Even my kid, who was 12 at the time," Sammelin says. "[They] just had this sentiment going, 'Oh. New studio? Sci-fi game? Very original.'"
Turns out that you can still serve a hit in an oversaturated market.
