"'You have no idea what you've built'": Arc Raiders lead says a "prominent professor in neurology" encouraged him to submit the extraction shooter to science

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"We may not go that far"

Arc Raiders character holding golden sledgehammer on dark blue starry background
(Image credit: Embark Studios)

Next time you play Arc Raiders, try ringing a bell each time you engage in PvP, or salivating whenever you get shot in the head – apparently, a distinguished neurology professor told developer Embark Studios' CEO Patrick Söderlund his game is a big psychological deal.

"I've read a bunch of articles saying the Arc Raiders is almost like a social experiment, and it kind of is, and I love that," Söderlund tells IGN in a recent interview. "I genuinely love the fact that that's what it is. I actually had a conversation at dinner three days ago with a very prominent professor in neurology that had gotten to know about the game, and said, 'Listen, you have no idea what you've built. Forget about the game itself.'"

Söderlund continues, "From just the whole idea of psychological experimentation and social experimentation, and what this game can be. She, a good friend of mine, basically said, 'You should go and do a collab or work with people from the medical field to study what behaviors are triggered in Arc Raiders.'"

I, certainly, would love to see an Arc Raiders collab that includes an electroencephalogram cap skin, or perhaps a map that doubles as an operant conditioning chamber. But Söderlund says, "We may not go that far. That would not be anything to do with the game itself, but it points to something that I believe is so fundamental with this game, and I believe is a big component to why the game has been successful."

Ashley Bardhan
Ashley Bardhan
Senior Writer

Ashley is a Senior Writer at GamesRadar+. She's been a staff writer at Kotaku and Inverse, too, and she's written freelance pieces about horror and women in games for sites like Rolling Stone, Vulture, IGN, and Polygon. When she's not covering gaming news, she's usually working on expanding her doll collection while watching Saw movies one through 11.

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