Extraction shooters are hotter than ever. What began as a niche subgenre with a single top dog (Escape from Tarkov) is thriving into an entire ecosystem that can seemingly sustain a bunch of similar games, including Arc Raiders, Marathon, and more. One Embark Studios developer reckons the once-niche is now booming because new entrants are designed to be “easier to step into.”
In an interview with GamesRadar+ about the new slate of PvPvE extraction shooters, Arc Raiders’ design director Virgil Watkins says multiplayer games “absolutely can be a difficult space to break into” because “the bar is extremely high” for live service titles. Players have already sunk sometimes hundreds, sometimes thousands of hours into a select few experiences, “so anything new really has to earn its place.”
“At the same time, I think it’s often a factor that often what’s niche yesterday can become mainstream tomorrow,” he explains. “It’s often a question of opening up those experiences to be approachable to more players.” Extraction shooters are a perfect example of a subgenre that previously had a pretty high barrier to entry that’s now being lowered with something like Arc Raiders with its bigger emphasis on social elements and less punishing deaths.
“It allows them [players] to have the experiences that first thrilled those more niche players when it was harder to get into,” Watkins adds. “That doesn’t mean they lack depth, but they’re designed in a way that’s easier to step into, understand, and ‘find the fun’ a bit faster.”
However, Embark Studios apparently didn’t intend to break into the extraction shooter niche. The developer’s focus was said to have been simply building a game the staff wanted to play, and Watkins thinks anything that “feels engaging, approachable, and has room for players to make it their own” can also carve out a space for itself alongside your evergreen, almost immortal live service mainstays.
“So it’s probably less about a single shift, and more about a broader evolution in how these games are designed and who they’re designed for,” he says.
