Arc Raiders developer Embark Studios was once again contacted by a social scientist struck by the petri dish of human behavior presented by the game – this time, a criminologist who, not unlike the devs themselves, was interested in the surprising number of friendly players who've taken a vow of peace in a genre notorious for cutthroat competition.
As The Guardian reports, Arc Raiders executive producer Aleksander Grøndal recently heard from a criminologist – someone who studies crime and/or criminals under a branch of sociology – who was "really intrigued by how players are interacting with each other".
This follows the "prominent professor in neurology" who reached out to Embark CEO and now Nexon creative boss Patrick Söderlund, saying, "'Listen, you have no idea what you've built. Forget about the game itself.'"
Grøndal also shared new and interesting data that gives those peaceful interactions some color. He reiterates what many Arc Raiders devs have said: the volume of friendly players "caught us a little bit by surprise," but in a good way. He adds that, "It kind of blew the whole extraction shooter open, because it doesn’t always have to be about conflict with other players."
Just yesterday, Bungie announced big changes for its own extraction shooter, Marathon, which very openly promotes friendly interactions, and it certainly feels like the game is taking cues from Arc Raiders. "Who said you can't make friends on Tau Ceti?" Bungie asked. (The answer is Bungie.)
How friendly are Arc Raiders players, really? Firstly, solo players are more friendly on average, Grøndal says, while teams of three are more likely to engage in PvP. Anyone who's played Arc Raiders solo and then in a group can also tell you, and probably feel in their own hearts, that the modes have very different rules of engagement. Everything is scarier alone, and winning a fight is more fun with friends.
Grøndal says only 30% of Arc Raiders players actively focus on PvP. Another 30% focus on PvE, and the remaining 40% are somewhere in the middle. But overall, roughly 20% of players have never knocked out a single raider, while nearly 50% have fewer than 10 KOs. (Officially, you don't 'kill' other raiders in PvP, but rather knock them unconscious and take their stuff. You know, with bullets. Bullets would also rob me of consciousness, technically.)
The latter figures seem to stem from Steam achievements, which are likely the biggest publicly available chunk of data for stats like this. Only 80.3% of Arc Raiders Steam players have the achievement for knocking out a raider, fittingly called "Cross the Threshold." While there's sure to be some statistical effect from people who bought but haven't played or quickly dropped the game, that's pretty close to the described 20%. Likewise, the achievement for 10 KOs has only been claimed by 51.5% of Steam players. For comparison, 88.4% of players have the achievement for dealing 1,000 damage to Arc enemies. 30.8% have revived a rogue raider with a defibrillator.
Here's the biggest number of the bunch: Grøndal says more than 95% of Arc Raiders players use proximity chat to communicate. Some of them surely use it to talk smack in PvP, but the raider culture of opening with "friendly, friendly" and the like is strong.
This also goes to show how essential, not just powerful, prox chat truly is. It's a wonder that Marathon didn't have it at one point. Almost all of Arc Raiders' most popular clips and most memorable experiences involve surprising, funny, or touching conversations that generate stories. One of my clearest memories is showing a new player where to use a loot keycard in Buried City, happily accepting some of their loot as a thank you, and then leading them to a safe hatch that I opened with a key. I'll never see them again.
The Guardian clocks an abundance of conversations between folks who just want to chill with people online and maybe learn about their lives or countries, not unlike users on older internet boards or chats. Grøndal has an interesting theory about these interactions. As a game increasingly known for friendly players and filled with brief, almost ethereal exchanges, Arc Raiders might be "a place to connect with other people and maybe open up without fear or repercussions or judgment."
