About 10 years ago, I played my first ever game that involved ‘extraction shooter’ mechanics. It was The Division… specifically, the infamous Dark Zone. It was a fascinating and gripping experience that I ended up loving. I have fond recollections of firing down a street against NPC opponents as a blizzard hit, cutting my ability to see. I slowed my fire and called out as I heard other voices; there had been another team on the other side, and we just barely avoided a three way war.
I ended up writing about the time I accidentally teamed up with someone looking to hunt other players, spawning a brief yet memorable run becoming the terror of the lower east side of NYC. It was a rush, something new and exciting. It was a game area that was PvE and PvP, funneling players into cramped quarters and made them decide whether or not to work together
That was 2016 of course. Since then, extraction shooters gained a lot of traction, and also gained a bit of a reputation. In 2017, Escape from Tarkov became a cult hit because of its sheer intensity and attention to detail, captivating players for the same reason The Division had: that sense of risk and reward. Your loot is on the line, your progress as a player risked when you step out into war torn streets. Will players betray you for the gear you carry, stripping away much of what you’ve worked so hard to achieve?
I love how much flavor there is in ARC Raiders. There's such a sense of history and in the opening cutscene that it immediately makes you want to see more of the world.
The answer to that question, as many gamers know, was yes. Tarkov, and many games like it, have become notorious for psychopathic behavior over the last few years. Streamers, looking to make eyecatching clips, proudly post moments where they betray or ambush others. The culture of the game becomes not just about survival, but surviving with bragging rights. Being the last man standing… especially if you are the one who made sure you are the only one left.
The culture around extraction shooters became competition, or dare I say it, about trolling. It was enough where it was a constant undercurrent in articles and youtube videos about the games. I really enjoyed my time in Division’s Dark Zone, but I lost my taste for it quickly. People levelled up to max, knew where to camp, knew how to manage NPC behaviour, and went for the kill. I tried to find other friends, and found only enemies. I tried Dark and Darker for a short time, loving the extraction shooter concept taken into the world of fantasy… but every time, it was just shoot first, then shoot again.
As of one week into the game, 80% of players have downed another, out of self defense or otherwise.
For years, I thought extraction shooters weren’t right for me. And then last week, I played ARC Raiders. Since last week, I’ve been proud of the fact I haven’t killed a single other human.
How ARC Raiders Nudges Us Towards Kindness
There is so much to talk about when we talk about ARC Raiders. The setting, the crafting system, the retro-future art style that feels both familiar and unique. I could rave about its phenomenal soundtrack that unexplainably evokes nostalgia, or rant about a sound design that keeps you constantly swiveling your head, trying to figure out just how far away those gunshots were. I adore how the weapons and gear feel so cobbled together, making the best of what you have; it's best trait, however, is how Embark Studios have created a world that pushes you to rethink the core tenets of an entire genre.
Before I go on, I should clear something up that I’ve seen talked about on Reddit and in comment sections: I am not asking for ARC Raiders to be a PvE game. I have personally become a pacifist, but I’m not demanding everyone else do the same. Half the magic of a game like ARC or Tarkov is the tension it creates, having you experience that half second of decision making when you see another player and decide if you should engage, attempt to interact, or just avoid entirely. The relief you feel when you make it to an extraction point and the other players give you emotes of ‘thank you’ and ‘don’t shoot’ so you all make it out alive… or the agony of hearing the sniper round ring out just before the impact takes you down, it’s all part of the magic.
The Spaceport map is wonderful. It feels vast and grandiose, giving you a sense of being constantly exposed as you try and find valuable tech in the ruins.
However, I am incredibly thankful that Embark Studios has made a world that encourages tenuous ceasefires and tense co-operation. It does this in ways that are profound, but feel natural, and it all starts with the choice of enemy. I think most players will agree that the ARC robots are the stars of the show. Just look at all the youtube shorts of people reacting to Leaper attacks or listen to the sounds of a Bastion robot preparing to open fire: just by introducing an inhuman enemy, the calculus and conversation around threat has been changed dramatically.
It’s not like previous games haven’t had NPCs foes before, but they are typically humanoid, and often dressed in gear similar to the players. The silhouette of a man peeking around the corner becomes an instinctive trigger to pull your gun and fire. In many of these previous games, that reaction is valid, which then justifies other players doing the same. Thematically, it sort of makes sense as well. The set dressing in Tarkov is militarism and mercenaries, about how individuals have to become monsters to survive.
Here however, the ARC drones are terrifying and alien. Drones can hunt in packs looking for players, swarming them with missiles and electrical shocks. The sounds of some of the larger robots shuffling nearby, letting out their whistles and wails can send a shiver down your spine. You know that you can’t beat that thing… not alone, not without at least some sort of distraction.
That image above is of a Queen. I haven’t seen one in game yet, and that’s very much on purpose. According to steam’s achievements on the morning of 11/6/25, a week after release, it currently seems as though 0% of raiders have managed to down one. With estimates of there being over two million owners of this game, there’s a chance that a few have, but it's still not enough to have moved that needle even to 0.1%. I’ve seen Bastions and Rocketeers taken down by duos, but something like that? It’s probably going to need more than just one team.
By making the enemies inhuman, it helps us differentiate between players and immediate foes. By making them powerful, it gives players more reason to group up and work together. The final piece of the puzzle comes by the framing of the game itself: it’s a war of survival… not as individuals, but as a society. Toledo, our beautiful underground city, needs the raiders to survive, or so the story goes. Every time someone comes back from the surface with the barest scraps of seeds, wires, and scrap metal, there’s a chance another person gets fed or has the materials they need.
I wonder psychologically what that sort of context does to a new community of gamers?
Witnessing Heroism And Sacrifice
Since ARC Raiders came out and my writing of this article, I’ve spent about eight hours topside on missions. I’ve done 46 runs, each lasting around ten minutes on average. I’ll fully admit I’m a bit of a coward; I’m currently in a place where I like taking free loadouts, try and find the kind of scrap I need to level up my base, and rush for an exit, slowly building up an arsenal of better guns and equipment for when I do real load outs and go hunting for the bigger robots that roam the countryside.
I’ve only been downed 11 times out of those 46 runs, with five of those deaths being from players. For a game style that's known for its savage ambushes and gunfights, that’s an insanely low number. I’m happy about it for sure, but I went into this expecting to be sniped and stripped of gear as I learned the ropes, expecting to have to grit my teeth through it as a learning experience. And yet, after the first two days, I’ve only been ganked once while I was hiding in swamp brush, looking happily at a new shiny rifle I found off a supply drop.
Can we talk about how unheard of that is? How, from the experience of my friends and I, the game seems to be getting less aggressive over time? Sure, it sucked that one time I breached a door in the first 30 seconds of a match and a dude on the other side was just waiting with a shotgun, but the fact that I’ve only been killed by players five times out of 46?
One of my favorite recent missions took place at the Spaceport. It’s a dangerous place, filled with bare exposed fields you have to cross to find anything worth salvaging, the crumbling launch tower looming like one of the world’s ancient wonders. A minute in, while I was checking for scrap, a grenade soared past me down the stairwell. “Hey! Friendly, friendly! I won’t shoot!” I called out.
“Oh shit, sorry!” came a voice. It sounded like a teenager. The gun holstered immediately as I came up out of the stairwell. “Sorry man, I got… I didn’t know. I got ganked the last four times I played, and I didn’t know if you were going to shoot-”
“It’s cool, I get it, I just got ganked too last round. I’m in a free load out, just looking for fuel. Want to team up?”
It was a 22 minute mission, with us running into supply depots looking for gear for the both of us. We took out crawling ticks, some rolling fireballs, and a few flying drones. He used a shield regen on me, I used bandages on him. We ran into other players, called out where some of the bigger things on the map were that we saw, and went our separate ways. It ended badly - We were trying to make it across the central launch pad when a sniper turret opened up. He engaged at range and I rushed to close the distance. The turret died, but when I looked back, he was dropping down into cover, crawling along.
“You don’t have a defib, do you?”
“Shit. I’m sorry, no.”
“It’s cool. GG man. Take my stuff - I’ve got some good loot. Good luck.”
He was gone. I got out using his ferro rifle.
One of my first missions on the first day. A bunch of solo players, many of who had shot at first, grouped up instead to clear a way to the extraction point, giving each other tips as how to navigate the zone. Half stayed to find more gear and hunt, the other half escaping back to Speranza.
Another game, I got stuck in the library in the Buried City, a rockeeter trapping me and another stranger inside. Explosives rattled the whole room, we only made it because my new friend had better guns than me. We ducked behind bookshelves, and she sadly got the short end of the stick, a waiting turret coming to life and filling her with bullets.
That time, I did have a defib, as I had brought a real load out. “Bless you-” she said, laughing with relief. “You’re a saint.”
I only lived because of their firepower backing me up, her knowing the map better… and me taking the risk of using up the ‘safe pocket’ in the game to bring a defib. Whenever I use a full load out of my best stuff, that’s now what I do every time.
I never got either of their names. I probably should have. ARC Raiders has been full of five, ten, even fifteen minute friendships that are stuck in my mind for hours after I stopped playing, making me grin while at work the next day. I’ve seen players leave the escape bunker to defend total strangers rushing for the exit. I’ve gotten into firefights with drones who are attacking someone else to hopefully help out someone, and had others do the same for me.
Using a rare item to bring a stranger back into the fight feels impactful and cinematic.
We’re all just trying to survive out here. All trying to make it back to Speranza.
A Paradigm Shift Unfolding In Real Time
I’m not usually a Reddit person, but its always fun to watch people’s excitement about a new game play out. You see post after post of people recording big action moments and tense standoffs. People complaining about bugs, players debating if one starter gun is better than another, and in general sharing their experiences in exuberance before cynicism sets in.
Let me tell you, the ARC Raiders reddit page has been fascinating to see play out. You can almost see player perceptions change in real time.
If you were to log onto youtube and look for ARC Raiders videos, you’ll see a bunch listed from either a few months ago during the summer game fest, used as a way to beta the game, or from mid october, during a weekend long ‘server slam’ to make sure things were up to date. Many of these are clips from streamers who were used to PvP exclusive games, looking to get the drop on other players. You can do that: I’ve seen some insane videos where people rappel down buildings to get in behind other players, and it's brilliant! However, there’s also been many crashouts, with the general player population realizing how much of a threat the robots are. This video from SpudHunter is a great showcase of initial reactions and people realizing that ARC Raiders is different from other extraction shooters.
Videos like this one by Riloe convinced me to play ARC Raiders on day one. At about the four minute mark, you see him rally together more than just a trio, but a small mob. Everyone teaming up, long rifles pointed up, taking down Rocketeers that are the bane of new players everywhere, those seemingly dispensers of explosive death from the sky. Moments that showcased how people were learning to work together, even though they didn’t have to.
Then, two or three days into the game’s release, you find dozens of posts like this:
I adore this post. It’s honest, it’s funny, it tells a story. It is entirely antithetical to so many ways people have approached or even thought about games. As someone who played League of Legends while it was in beta and left as it became too toxic, as someone who loved LAN games like Halo but can’t deal with anonymous online spawn campers in PvP games, seeing stories of players who become less bloodthirsty, who become more like team players feels like a statistical impossibility. It's astonishing, seeing a community become friendlier instead of calcifying.
Seeing people post tips on where to find loot, share ideas how to broadcast and look for other friendly teams to go hunting larger bots, and even seeing players happily upload how a total stranger not only saved them from someone trying to kill them, but then took revenge on their behalf… it feels magical. Again, I'm not asking for ARC Raiders to become a PvE only game. All I'm saying is how amazing this push towards camaraderie is to watch unfold. How it's amazing play a game that not only lets you kill your fellow players, but rewards you for doing so... and then watch as so many players choose to be kind instead.
A Beautiful Moment In Multiplayer Gaming
I don’t know how long this magic will last. Video games are wonderful things, but any that rely on constant multiplayer interaction shift and mutate and change over time. Avid fans run numbers and figure out optimal builds for perfect efficiency. They’ll find ways to take on the heaviest ARC robots with just one team, and never need anyone else. PvP players will practice the best places to camp and snipe, and it might change the atmosphere around extraction hatches to fear and paranoia. God forbid, it becomes a meme to use the ‘don’t shoot’ E-mote on a few big streamer clips before gunning down entire teams, and the tenuous balance of trust that the E-mote wheel currently carries shatters into a thousand pieces.
Many online multiplayer game experiences can break down as people come and go, learn the game inside and out, and leave immersion behind in favor of mastery. I can’t speak for what ARC Raiders will look like in a few weeks, much less a few months. However, what I can speak to is how this current sense of camaraderie is having an impact. How it’s making people smile, how it's making them excited to log in. How this chance at finding fellow raiders willing to work together is helping this game spread like wildfire, with people feeling like they finally have a chance to see what this extraction shooter genre might be all about.
As the first week of its release comes to an end, I can at least speak about how the game feels in this moment. I can speak about the electric feelings of anticipation and the desperate team ups and the laughs of relief as total strangers cram into extraction bunkers together, just happy to have survived a round and share that moment of survival with someone else. For right now, ARC Raiders is something special, like there’s a whole new way to play games that’s opened up, and that’s an amazing achievement all on its own.
I know my “Crossed The Threshold” achievement will trigger sooner than later. I’ll get pulled into a firefight after seeing my friend attacked, or I’ll get vindictive when a player pretends to be friendly and then fires first. Maybe it’ll be a paranoid trigger finger as I turn a blind corner that makes it happen… who knows? For now though, it makes me smile that there’s no blood yet on my hands in a genre that makes it so very easy to get dirty fast. Even if players get more bloodthirsty soon, I’ll still have these first few weeks filled with a sense of wonder and exploration and magic to remember, and that’s more than good enough for me.
