After EA buyout, former exec calls its huge teams "counterproductive"

Arc Raiders developer Embark is a studio made up of lots of ex-EA and DICE execs and devs, all tired of FPS games and ready to do something different, something for themselves. It's a tale I've been hearing more and more often in recent years, as developers at massive companies find more creative freedom, satisfaction, and often security by going it alone. From the tiniest independent narrative games to the kind of cultural behemoth that Arc Raiders promises to become, the traditional method of game development is fast growing stale.

It's not often these developers look back on their times with massive corporations, though. Most are determined to look forwards to their next project, the one that they've poured their heart and soul into. If Arc Raiders wants to become one of the best multiplayer games, it'll need every ounce of energy from the team behind it, ex-Battlefield or not.

Arc Raiders was delayed by nearly four years-essentially the time it had taken to develop until that point all over again. Embark had just released a high-octane trailer at The Game Awards in 2021, but the actual game felt nothing like the excitement it portrayed. It was, to put it simply, "not fun," the developers recently revealed in an interview.

But during that same conversation with Edge magazine, Embark CEO Patrick Soderlund reflects on his time as executive vice president in charge of worldwide studios at Electronic Arts. EA, he says, had a different approach to 'fixing' games, owing to the fact it had so many more resources (read: developers) at its disposal.

"When I worked at EA, because we had the pressure to deliver a game on time-which is quite common, and everyone is faced with this-sometimes the only solution was, 'Just put more people on it,'" he says. "And on these large-scale productions, you end up having not a hundred people, but eight, nine hundred, even a thousand people working on something.

"That obviously works, short-term, but it's arguably counterproductive to efficiency, and to controlling quality. Sometimes you just need time. It's not about money or people. It's about giving enough time to learn the things you need to learn. To test something, mine all the data, understand what happened. You can't really rush that."

This slower pace is what led Embark to completely pivot its game. What was a PvE experience turned into a competitive extraction shooter. Many fans were annoyed at the shift-and the delay it caused-but the developers were given that chance to learn, test, and iterate, and playtests of the new-look Arc Raiders have been received very well.

Of course, there's no inherent benefit to doing things differently just for the sake of it. But if something's not working, then why not try a fresh approach? Triple-A development is struggling at the moment, with layoffs occurring most years.

If you want to try something similar, check out our list of the best FPS games. And if you're prepping your PC for the big day, make sure you're up to date with the Arc Raiders system requirements before installing.

What do you make of the game's pivot to an extraction shooter? Let us know in our community Discord server, where staff and readers discuss all the latest gaming news.