Arc Raiders devs now force themselves to act nice in playtests to better understand friendly players: "One day I'm playing as a Care Bear, the other day I'm very aggressive"

Many Arc Raiders developers at Embark Studios are such PvP demons that they have to force themselves into the community-named Care Bear mindset in order to better understand the surprisingly large group of friendly players who keep the game's community so peaceful. In an interview at GDC, production director Caio Braga tells me that he and several other devs use a randomizer to pick their play style for the day, ensuring a more even spread during testing.

It's not that everybody at Embark will shoot any raider on sight before they can even get out the "don't" in "don't shoot." It's just that, uh, a lot of them will.

"We played quite aggressively internally," Braga recalls. "In our play tests, we are more PvP-leaning, but every now and then our team tries outright not to play PvP and to be a bit more friendly. One of the things that was very interesting is that our weapon designer was very, very keen on keeping the 'don't shoot' emote, and that was something we debated a lot because, like, we're adding PvP. We play very aggressively. Who is going to use this? Maybe we shouldn't do that. Let them customize everything. And that was one of the moments where the team said, 'No, no, we believe players will use this.' And it's there and now people really like that and use it."

Somewhere at Embark there are true-blue ambassadors for the Care Bear lobbies that pacifist players strive to break into. Others are willing to roleplay the part, and it's hilarious to me that many folks at the studio, creators of the famously friendly extraction shooter, are such PvP hounds that they have to be lotteried into the friendly life.

"There's a few people that are very quest-driven," Braga says. "We have a few of those. Because I know we're more aggressive, I started using a randomizer for the way I play or playtest. Because we playtest every day. So one day I'm playing as a Care Bear, the other day I'm very aggressive. Sometimes I'm doing just quests. Some people in the team also use that randomizer just to try to put themselves in the shoes of those players and see what would be nice for them. We're building it for fun, right? We want to provide as much fun as we can. So it's good to understand all of those players."

As Arc Raiders gets stale for some, lead dev says players "reaching the end of our content" are a top focus: "We want more for them."