The game about leveling up "rooster" and "panties": dissecting the ARC Raiders phenomenon with industry experts

On December 10th, the final broadcast of the year for the deconstruction show "What about the Game?" aired on the WN Academy platform. This time, the experts discussed in detail and with quite some emotion the mechanics, design, and other aspects of one of the main hits of the fall — the extraction shooter ARC Raiders.

The special guest of the broadcast was GDCy founder Tim Fadeyev, who played ARC Raiders for about 40 hours. He joined the regular hosts Alexander Semenov, head of WN Media Group’s media division, and Maxim Fomichev, an independent expert and former producer of the upcoming RPG The Expanse: Osiris Reborn.

This time, opinions on the game were divided. Fadeyev liked the extraction shooter from Embark Studios, whereas Fomichev, despite acknowledging the project's merits, eventually lost interest in it.

On one hand, ARC Raiders generates many unique situations related to player interactions. There's the now-meme phrase "Don't shoot" and unexpected temporary alliances. On the other hand, like in any extraction shooter, there's a certain type of player who enjoys ambushing others or camping.

According to Fadeyev, this problem could be solved if the developers of ARC Raiders took a mechanic from The Division: "If you play dirty, you'd get marked, making you visible across the map, or you get some kind of debuff. There should be some punitive system."

It's telling how different the game experience was for each expert. If Fomichev barely encountered friendly players or squads, Fadeyev, on the contrary, shared many stories of his raids with examples of the most unexpected mutual aid.

"This is both the curse and the charm of ARC Raiders. Every game session can go completely differently for each person and evoke different emotions," Fadeyev summarized.

Fomichev had overall entirely different impressions of ARC Raiders. He acknowledges it's a great game but couldn’t bring himself to love it, partly due to personal frustration with the core gameplay. However, he noted that the project constantly offers new experiences, comparing this aspect to Sea of Thieves: "It's a game where there are few embedded mechanics, and most emotions are generated during encounters with players. It's not just about PvP but about interactions, which are always different."

Given the vivid emotions from the game, humor was inevitable in the discussion. This includes the metaphorical "underpants" — a term familiar to Escape from Tarkov players, referring to trying to carry valuable items off the map. And one of the most meme-worthy features of ARC Raiders — the rooster companion. Fadeyev shared memories of tense raids trying to extract resources needed for its level-up.

The rooster not only serves as a cute companion but also solves a rather important game design task — it passively collects certain basic resources that can be used for crafting after exchange. "In essence, this mechanic is designed so that if you play so poorly and keep dying, the rooster makes it better for you," Fomichev joked.

Speaking of leveling up, Fomichev highlighted another problem with ARC Raiders — if you die often, you lose the incentive to craft anything. And if you don't die and often evacuate, you accumulate too many resources, which can also negatively impact motivation.

Both experts noted that this might just be a feature of the genre, as ARC Raiders was their first full experience with extraction shooters.

In the full recording of the hour and a half long broadcast, you can learn more about what the experts think about the core mechanics of ARC Raiders, including Embark Studios’ approach to genre-traditional wipes, and the key components of the project's success.

"What about the Game?" is a monthly show on the educational platform WN Academy. After registering and attending the first broadcast, access to the archive of all previous episodes is opened.

This was the last episode of "What about the Game?" for 2025. You can watch the recordings of all aired episodes on WN Hub. These include analyses of games like Marvel Rivals, Clair Obscur: Expedition 33, Dune: Awakening, and Vampire: The Masquerade – Bloodlines 2.

See you next year on App2Top and WN Academy.