Arc Raiders is entering a new, hopefully healthier era, both for players and developer Embark Studios. Instead of constantly laying on the gas trying to keep up with player demands, Embark has pumped the brakes a bit to prepare one big update – Arc Raiders' Frozen Trail, out tomorrow, October 8 – and go back to the processes that it used to make this hit extraction shooter in the first place.
Executive producer Aleksander Grøndal says the dev team is feeling better today, months after becoming "super unhappy" in the live service content race, and hopes to give players big chunks of content to chew on through this new update schedule. But we will inevitably run out of content again. When we do, let's remember Grøndal's sage advice: "Take a break and play some other games."
I spoke to Grøndal about what's coming in Frozen Trail and, just as importantly, what's happening around it. Embark has changed considerably after Arc Raiders grew larger than anyone expected, but it's not just been victory after victory. The studio's had to accept a few things. A big one was getting comfortable with the peaks and valleys of a live service player base. Two truths bookend a lot of this fluctuation: players can consume content much faster than devs can produce it, and some live service frustrations are self-inflicted by folks who don't know when it's time to step away for a bit.
How can Embark fight the live service problem and keep players happy? "I think it's a combination of a lot of initiatives," Grøndal begins. "Of course, we want to create systems that keep people entertained over time because that's the bread and butter for our dedicated fans. And we get new players coming in continuously, so we want to make sure it stays interesting and fresh, absolutely."
Grøndal also hits on a point that the Final Fantasy 14 and Diablo 4 dev teams, for example, have done a good job reinforcing. "I think it's perfectly fine that players take a break and play some other games," he says. "If we just look at it from an industry perspective, we spend so much time in these evergreen games now that a lot of new games aren't really getting the chance they should be getting.
"Jumping out, playing some other games, waiting a couple of updates, and coming back to play some Arc Raiders for some time, I think that's perfectly good for the industry as a whole. So I would encourage that type of behavior. And hopefully we can produce interesting content that makes you want to come back and play the game."
This is the exact position I find myself in with Frozen Trail. I put 350 hours into Arc Raiders, perhaps too quickly, and when I felt I'd done everything, I stopped playing, because that's how you maintain a healthy relationship with a live service game. I came back briefly for the new map and a few other things, but I was waiting for something chunky like this. Grøndal says this is how he plays a lot of games, too, like one of this year's biggest early access graduates: Valheim.
"I consume games in that way as a game developer and a gamer myself," he explains. "I played tons of Valheim when it came out, and now I came back and I'm playing 1.0 after, what was it, almost four years when I took a break from it. And I enjoy it. I think it's great. In my opinion, there's so many good games out there, so go out, play some games, come back if you want. I think that's the best way of looking at it. It's best for the industry as well, perhaps – more players spread out a bit. That, I think, will be good for everyone that is making games these days."
