Why Embark had to “pull the handbrake” on Arc Raiders | Full Interview

We talk consciously about we don't want to just be a live service studio even though there's nothing wrong with that. As people stopped playing it, they're saying why isn't there more art creators? What are the studio doing? And they not listen to us. It's not like the studio took a break, went to a beach and celebrated and never came back and didn't care about the game. That's not what happened.
We got some criticism when we launched the game around uh some of the text to speech, which to be fair, the quality of the output of that wasn't good. I've never seen a design document at Amar. They don't exist. We don't have them.
Hello and welcome to the Game Business Show. The Game Business is a reader supported publication. If you're interested in becoming a paid subscriber to the Game Business, we do an extra newsletter and podcast every single Monday for paying subscribers. You can find out more about how to become one at the game.com. Now, this week we're returning to one of our most successful ever interviews. This time last year, Ark Raiders came

out. The extraction shooter did the impossible. It was a new IP built on a relatively small budget, at least compared to other major shooters, and it went toe-to-toe with Battlefield 6 and Call of Duty, and came out with a smile on its face. The game, developed by Swedish studio Embark, went on to sell 16 million copies in six months. It's Nexon's most successful global launch, and it's the biggest release in its history. It's even being adapted into a movie or TV series. Now, a year ago, we spoke to the CEO of Embark, Patrick Sodeland, just ahead of the launch of the game. And now, here we are revisiting the story some 12 months later, and it hasn't been entirely smooth sailing. After an initially huge launch, the game has been through a series of challenges. Post Christmas, the content schedule dried up a little bit, and it's had challenges with cheating, too. Player numbers have dropped, as they tend to do, and the team has had to adapt. Is even considering a PVE mode, which was something it had ruled out this time last year. To talk us through all this

and a few other things besides, I'm once again joined by Patrick Sodland, who is now also executive chairman at Nexon, and Alexander Gondel, who's executive producer on Arc Raiders. So, hello Patrick. Hello, Alexander. How are you doing?
Hello. doing well. How are you?
I'm all right. Welcome to the show. A year on from the launch of uh Arc Raiders, which feels like a lifetime. How do you feel it's gone over the course of that year?
You want to start?
No, no, you start. It's your game.
Well, yeah. Um, so we felt like we were on to something when we ran our latest tests and we feel like we are on to something and of course we had high expectations of the game. Mhm.
But to be blunt, I don't think we kind of understood what kind of a monster we unleashed
after after we dropped the game. It kind of exploded in ways that I didn't see happen at all and in good ways, I I would say. And uh of course working on this for so long, it's such a pleasure

seeing like players enjoying the game in ways that you didn't expect them to and also what you did expect. So that couple first months is a bit of a blur to be honest for me because it it was so filled with surprises I wasn't expecting. So when I look back at it, I was just walking on air around. I also can't recall every single thing that happened last year because of there was so many things that happened. I think we realized as the pre-order numbers starting to come up then and we obviously could monitor that in the studio and we just saw them go up in in ways where we had to double check whether the numbers were accurate or not. We couldn't really believe you know how how much interest there was for the product and then obviously the launch came um I would say that we were relatively well prepared. I think the game, you know, what you worry about is obviously if people like it, but then does it technically work. Is it, you know, operationally sane? And I think for the most part it was.
Um, I don't know, Alex, you and I

together with random friends probably must have played 300 hours or something. We, Alex and I played more or less every single evening.
Mhm.
For the first months or something. And it was always like, okay, are the kids Alex has much younger children than I do. And obviously it was always like have your kids you know gone to bed you know and then you know are the wives reasonably happy with this? Can we can we get to play? And then um I remember my son who's 14 said listen you behave like you're 12 and like but but still you you talk to people as you care about them online. I'm like of course like why do you like you should shoot them. I'm like no no no. So we just had the most frankly fun time and obviously I know you guys must have also been exhausted having worked so hard but it kind of it became a thing where we just had to play because it was fun
and I could see you know my brother and friends who play games absolutely but play more randomly. They're all they all picked it up and like started playing

and then
I wouldn't say that at least you know I'll let Alex speak for himself. I'm not a great player, but I'm a reasonably okay player.
My friends weren't at all good, to be honest. So, I couldn't play with them. They they sucked. So, but I played with Alex and with the people on the team and everything. And and that's what I will remember myself just,
you know, kind of that joy of of longing to come home and playing something every single evening. It's pretty cool.
And and what about sort of since since then? How do you feel the years gone? Because this is where the hard work begins, right? when you're on the live service journey.
So we for the first couple of months we were reasonably well prepared. We had a couple of really big updates that we shipped before Christmas and we had a big kind of holiday event went over Christmas and um we could see that players really took to heart the road map that uh we created. So we were mostly just focusing on kind of executing on the road map. We had a Christmas break uh much deserved. And uh

I remember I was in Spain kind of just looking at it from the outside and looking you know at the numbers and looking at live streams and stuff and uh it started to dawn on me that you know at some point here we're going to run into some challenges of course that that was pretty clear.
Mhm. Since we basically frontloaded so much of our our systems and content into the launch season, uh we didn't really have that much kind of lined up for the January February updates which we knew was going to be the the problem. So when we came back in January, we had to pick up and uh start working on on some of the things looking at the data looking at the feedback and trying to figure out okay where do we go from here and then we created another road map and try to kind of see like this is what the players liked and we tried to kind of make sure that we executed on the monthly updates in which we had them. But we could also see that a game of this size also have some some problems that starts becoming a little bit more

apparent. So, so we had to kind of split our focus between the things we wanted to add to the game
and the things that required maintenance, let's say, on the game itself. So, that that kind of came pretty fast uh when we came back into January.
I was always talking to Alex and the team long before said we have to plan for success. We have to plan for this game to work. We have to have a live service plan if you want to or a post-launch plan that that is reasonable. And I think we had that to a large extent. What what happened was the game took off in a way that we didn't anticipate. There were a lot more players that played the game, but also I think we became a victim of our own success to some extent and and had like 80% u day one retention, which meant everyone that played the game decided to continue playing, which is what you want as a a game maker. That's the that's like what you're looking for is a game that people enjoy so much they want to come back and play. But what that meant is that we kind of got this incredible

demand for more and people just wanted more arc raiders. They loved what we built and now we were, you know, they they came to about a 100 hours we counted, right? I think at about 100 hours they were kind of done with what we had given them
and and I said, listen, if if you pay $40 and you get a 100 hours worth of of play time,
I think it's a reasonable return on
on how much you've spent, right? So I think I think that's fair but at the same time we built something that became more than we than we anticipated to be very honest. And
I think the team did what we could uh and we were reasonably prepared but obviously not prepared for what what what came and then the other thing I would say is the controversy in the beginning you know that there's always like the PvE PVP aspect of the game etc. What made the game interesting? what made a game successful also, you know, can become or or did become to some extent one of the most talked about points about the game, which you can

look at that either way you want. It's either a good thing or bad thing or neutral thing depending on how you how you slice it. But but we obviously had to listen to all aspects of feedback that was coming to us.
I I I think that's probably the challenge. What surprised me about Arc Raiders is the game that it I compared it to the most was Sea of Thieves. Like if you play Sea of Thieves, I thought it's actually very similar to Sea of Thieves. And Sea of Thieves has a had a problem that there's a group of players on Sea of Thieves that just want to sail around, collect treasure, you know, just do that. And then there's the players that want to, you know, um sink everyone else's ships and um I get the impression you've had a similar challenge and you've got the sort of peaceful players and those that you know want to fight and having to strike the balance between the two.
Yeah. So from the beginning of our credit, it used to be a PvE game. Uh that what it started as and then we reset the game and we created the PVP PVE game that we have today.
And one of the things that was always on the back of our minds is like how would

a PVE version of this game really look like? Even though like we were really happy about the the tension and the things that we shipped with, but we saw the player base kind of ended in kind of two pockets. Generally speaking, there's like a third that is like more friendly type players and then you have a mix in the middle which is the larger group and then you have a very engaged like highly engaged PVP group on the on the top end and we started seeing that kind of segmenting itself after the first couple of months of the game. uh which was interesting because all players had their own experience of how to play arc raiders and and if you were playing on the friendly servers that was quite different experience than playing on stella monties on like a highly uh competitive PVP server so we saw that there was already quite early some sort of split let's say say
but interesting thing I think Patrick you wrote actually you know in our Slack just right after launch you were asking about PB yeah you I think you wrote the questions and I was Hold on, Patrick. We

need to figure this out. But I think like that but that question has been lingering in our minds for some time.
Yeah, we don't want to lose the essence of the game though. I think the things that rare fantas it's a pirate game.
Yeah. And it's it's a
the fantasy kind of works.
Yeah. Yeah. I know. You want to sit down and have a nice time and chill out and not be worried about attacking, but you're probably not playing the right game.
No, but I also think it's it's it's more than that. If you think about what it does, it's actually you create a game formula and and you know, one of the things that we were honestly, you know, we could just frankly add PVE. It's not a difficult thing for us to do, but we didn't want to obstruct or fiddle too much with the core loop of the game where the PVP aspect of a PVP PVE game does add,
we believe, adequate tension. And when you're building a game, what you're trying to do is to evoke emotion in players. You know, if you can evoke emotions into people that are playing the game, you're probably doing

something right. It could be joy. It could be, you know, fear. It could be whatever you do, like whatever you your aspirations are. And a game that does does all of those things. It's probably a game that will do relatively well. And I think arcoders do touch a lot of those different type of emotions. And by removing one substantial component from the game, you're fiddling with the core emotional loop of the game, which we believe is maybe not the right thing to do. But, you know, we've now since tried it and realized that it it's fine. Why not have it, you know, maybe people can choose what they what they like? But but that's that was our fear all along. People may have been wondering why the hell aren't they just doing what some players were looking for. We were looking at the holistic picture which we have to do and like the whole of the game and that that's and kind of took also protect the creative integrity of what we have created and what we aspire to build and what the game should be according to us.
Yeah, there is that element. There's that balance. You want to listen to the

players and give them what they want, but also it's an artistic expression that you've created. It's a it's a thing and um and that's come from you and at least to reflect that I guess. But I guess so you're rethinking that element of the game and I know that you've paused these expeditions sort of season things as well. I know a lot of the people listening to this won't know all that means but it feels to me is there an element of uncertainty around where the game goes next sort of is is that fair?
I'll let you answer that. But I think from my perspective the PVP PVE aspect of the game is we now have a large of enough audience that we need to listen and cater for both you know for both camps so to say. We can't ignore
the PVE camp completely and just say well this is not the game that we built. You know that would be unwise. So what we're trying to do is to obviously stay true to the game that we built but then at the same time understand how we can give the respective kind of camp. The people in the middle are not the problem myself, Alex and others. But
we also need to respect like you said

that there are people that want a slightly different art creators than the others. M
so we then have to figure out how can we do a good enough job to cater for all the player types without still watering down the overall experience and that's kind of the balance you need to strike that we're that we're working on. I'll let you continue. Sorry.
Yeah, I think it's important to say that we are we're still very much our creators in the sense that we are going to stay true to the tenants that we have already established with the game. Um but at the same time there might be ways for players to enjoy the game in slightly different ways. And recently we ran a big test uh on the players who are specifically asked to do PVE and we're kind of going through that data right now. But what we did see which was really interesting is that it was a huge amount of interest in it and there was a lot of players who tried it out and uh almost 50% of the rounds that were played during the test were on the PBE server. So I think it we it created a moment there where people like okay what does this actually mean for our creators

and when going into solution territory some of the interesting takeaways are that some people that was like hey I want PVE changed their mind they didn't want it because they were lacking some of the values that the product had and then you have players who absolutely loved it so now it's for us to figure out how we can cater to the specific needs of the players and ultimately
I I look at games is something that I'm choosing to invest time in. And if I if we as developers can give you the best possible time while you're playing and respect your time and then kind of respect different player types, I think that's that's a great way to engage with the players, but of course not at the expense of the integrity of the experience itself. So you water down and become like a game of nothing instead of becoming great at what you are, which is always the balance that I think we need to take into account. Um, so you just launched this big Frozen Trail um, release. I mean, it looks the numbers look good, but has it delivered what um, what what you needed and what your

players needed?
Yeah, I I would say um, the numbers look really good. So, um, we we managed to get a lot of players back, which is what we were hoping to do. And we were able to address a lot of the concerns that the players were having about the game, which I think is important to say like, okay, these were some of the things you wanted more of. So we gave you we gave that and we tried to be quite surgical when we think about what type of experiences we had to the game. So the results are looking really promising so far. Uh it was a big change for us going from the monthly cadence of updates which didn't really work out that well.
But but I'm glad we we got to that decision right. It's it's not it would be it's a difficult decision to make in in when when you're on a high, you're generating a ton of of of sales and people are enjoying what you're playing and they're asking, you know, you you just like, trust us, we listen to the players. We read everything. All we want to do is to please them and to give them

what they're longing for and what what to some extent they're asking us for. But then we actually have to live with the reality of okay, how do we do this?
What does it mean for us? there are, you know, people need to build everything and what can we build, etc. So, it's not like we're sitting here ignoring what's being said. We have tentacles all over the place and trying to understand what it means. You need to listen to large cohorts to understand overall sentiment and maybe, you know, not listen to the loudest voices, but more the mass and to understand what direction are you taking things. And the decision that was made was to slow down to frankly go back to the drawing board and to you know stop monthly drops realizing and understanding that that would have an impact on our sales numbers. you would have a probably an impact on the engagement and kind of live with the fact that the team and the product per Alex earlier comment the integrity of the game needed that breathing space for

it to be able to make a comeback that that I think we believe will help the game live longer. That's a difficult decision to make
when you're sitting kind of on top uh to say, you know, slow down, pull the handbrake, let's not do this right now. uh when your instinct may be no no no no no you have to do more and then push harder and get more stuff out you know we should go to bi-weekly drops instead of monthly cadences like that that that's your inclination um that's and that's I think just human reaction right and we
the team suggested it I had to digest it is probably the word and then I said fine let's do that it's the right thing to do long term for the game but also for the people that work here uh the So, I'm happy that we did it. I think it's the right thing to do uh to respect the community, the the the game and and the people that work at Embark. So, I hope I hope people see it that way
because oddly it was feels faintly

familiar because obviously you and Owen both told me last year that Nexon was pretty calm after the finals went from had that big launch and then lost loads of players and everyone was like, "It's okay. Just, you know, take it's all right. Don't panic." I'm getting a similar vibe. Obviously all you want is like I said before is just to make sure that whatever negative sentiment uh sits around your product and and you want to cure that that that is again human nature especially when you have had something that was met with such love and critical acclaim
and then
as people stop playing it they're saying why isn't there more art creators what are the studio doing and they don't listen to us they it's not like the studio took a break went to a beach and celebrated and never came back and didn't care about the game. That's not what happened.
No.
But I think we we and there were absolutely moments of,
you know, a little bit of panic again. I think it's
it's probably normal and and I don't mind it. It's it's it's good to be relatively paranoid if you make video

games. But I think I think um common sense prevailed and I think we got to the point where we have to think long term and we can't it's also about what what the studio can do and we just had to think about that as well.
Well, okay. Cuz when we spoke a year ago, you spoke really passionately about going 100 times faster than previously possible. That was a challenge you set and rewriting how you go about building games. And now you've had 12 months of live ops and fighting fires and balancing a live content updates and and feedback and all that stuff. Does that strategy still hold or have you found that sometimes you might just need some more people?
Yeah, I mean in general I think work efficiency and how you how we build things should always be a priority and I think we are at the forefront of it and will continue to be. Um, we have a separate group of people dedicated to only doing that at Embark. That that's all they do every day, single day. And they're, you know, they're a relatively large team whose job is to figure out how the developers can do things easier,

faster, less tedious, um, so that we can get things in the hands of players quicker. That is our absolute goal. Would I say that the 100x thing is is reasonable? Probably not. But that's also why it needs to be 100x. If you say 10x, you'll get 2x. If you say 100x, you may get 10x.
So that's kind of how we look at it. And I think
if you look at the amount of content that this team is producing both on the finals and on art raers at the same time as we have a central team that does technology and other aspects of it, we are um I would say um without sounding arrogant, we're very efficient and and very very lean in how we how we build it. And I think that's that's what we have to be. and that's what we have to do. But yes, sometimes you need more people.
So, have you has the team changed much in the last 12 months?
Thanks.
Um, yeah, we've grown grown a little bit. Um,
mainly around trying to figure out like where our key bottlenecks were and

trying to invest into solving those primarily. So, we grown a little bit. I think we're more capable now than we were before launch. It's also like transitioning into a live service type of organization requires a different set of skills and and tools and experience. So, we had to kind of grow into that uh over time. Um, but to Patrick's point, we don't want to necessarily just outgrow what makes Embark embark. We want to make sure that we can still be all game creators and and and do the things we're really good at. uh more people equals you know more uh complications and and not necessarily always a onetoone like an efficiency from like hiring to output. So we want to make sure that we can stay uh agile and and and doing the things we're good at. Uh so so we try to do it in a reasonable pace growing the team without changing who we are. Um, so, so yeah, now we're focused on on uh trying to make also longerterm bets with the team. Not only kind of reacting, but also like

thinking about what the future might be for the game. So, we have a we have a little group looking at not necessarily the big update, next big update, but the update after that, so we can um so we can do something more interesting and more fun. I think at at the end of the day um we we we want to keep evolving, want to do things that are interesting and sometimes you need to make longerterm bets in order for that to to pay off as well. And also I think you have to you know if you look at it from a studio kind of operational perspective and if you run you know if you have my job and your job is to think holistically about what the studio is and how we how we work the the the bigger you get um and the more people you have um the the the culture and the dynamic and how a studio operates and functions changes. You know when you're six, seven people and you're in a startup mode, everyone knows everything at all times. Then, you know, you get to 30 people and you have subgroups forming

and people, you know, you have an information flow that's slightly different. you have the same level of escalation when you go from uh 200 people to then 200 people to 300 people and you know at some point you get to a certain mass where um your the ethos of what Embark is and why we started Embark and how we want to be changes so much that it's we need to become something different now that's not necessarily a bad thing but it's something that we have to be mindful of as we run the studio and think carefully about is this what we set ourselves out to do what changes if we do become too big. So we've never had an ambition to be x amount of people. You've always tried to look at how can we run the studio and still be embark and and protect um the reasons why we started this studio and and the things you know and then how we build things that that's
my job to kind of remind ourselves about that all the time because it easy financially one could afford to add you

know 100 people but it changes so many other as aspects of what embark is so that we may not want to do that or we may want to do that but unless we do It needs to be a very conscious decision.
Yeah. After our chat last year, the whole industry basically said how, you know, there was the uh uh they're all trying to work out to sort of how you managed to build such an incredible game was such highly rated that felt like it could stand toe-to-toe with some of the biggest names and it did in the genre on a budget that you know with with a team the size you are on a budget you had. Are you getting a lot of peers calling you up asking for your secrets? Have you had a lot of that?
Yeah, absolutely. we've had um you know you've been in some of these meetings with with with other developers that are asking us um how we do it etc. But but it's not always the answer that they hope that we give them that they hope to hear um because what we're doing is is foundational in many aspects. We have started you know from from the from the

start in redefining and understanding what it takes to build a video game. And that means throwing out a lot of old practices and and ideas around how you build. You know, I've never seen a design document at Embark. I don't, you know, they're not they don't exist. I've never seen we don't have them. Um, you know, we don't believe in in the fact that you should, you know, why would a design on paper for something that is inherently interactive be the right way of doing it? Yes, you want ideas and thoughts, but I can't read a game. I got to play a game. M so we're all about building systems that facilitate us playing what we're talking about rather than putting it on a paper and then trying to imagine how this is going to feel when you eventually play it as an interactive experience. That's just one way of looking at it. So there are no such things at Emark. There's never been there will never be. And if you are an old school developer and you used to design things on paper, I'm not saying that that's wrong by the way, but for us it wasn't the right thing. we believed

that we wanted to play it rather than than write about it.
So that's what I meant. So sometimes when we talk to people and we tell them what we do,
that may not at all be what they're looking for and and that is completely fine, you know, but that's there's there's no the embark way works for Embark and for us because we built it that way. It may not mean that it works for for someone else. Um or maybe parts of what we do can work for someone else
or maybe they can be inspired by something you did in that it the what you did won't necessarily work for them but maybe a version of it.
Yeah. The thinking I think um is probably and the process and and the kind of the idea that you you need to dare to challenge conventions. I think that's probably the biggest learning and then you got to find your own version of that
and I think it's easier for the sort of newer studios or the startups to sort of because you can do that from the start right it can be built in.
Absolutely. Whereas the big giants, the ones that have been, you know, have all these tech and tools and pipelines and staff and departments, well, I'm I'm

sure they can get there, but there's a journey they'll have to go on to do that. This is the thing I was looking looking into the year you had. And one of the things I find, and I found this a lot with big games that have a lot of players coming in, you do encounter people trying to sort of spoil the game. I think have you had a bit of a cheating challenge at the beginning or matter if you still do or
so I think with all big live service games that are go live today they're they're going to run into this challenge in some way or the other at some point. Uh we we we started seeing some signals of that um u early this year. Uh fortunately enough we had another game with the finals being live. We could carry some of the key learnings into that. Um uh but also we had to kind of invent all new ways to uh to think about that uh that problem. Um and it's not a battle necessarily that you can win because there's an industry out there that is making money of this unfortunately I would say. Um so so we'll continue like continuously been

kind of improving our methods to to detect using you know machine learning and using our third party um uh tools that can help us identify and then take care of it. Um and we seeing um some good results from our efforts over time. Um is it something that u you know is is it ever going to be fully solvable? Probably not. But uh I feel like we're on a good path right now with this. I I I wish that there were better ways to deal with the that problem as an industry because I actually believe that the industry has that this problem. It's costing the industry
a lot of money and I I I I heard someone quoting a figure. I don't want to misquote that but but I believe that that this industry is like needs to think about like how to solve this as together because every single live game is going to have
similar challenges to our to our game.
Yeah. And the bigger you get the more interesting you are as a target. Um so

which is something that we also have to live with right. So it comes with with a game that people want to play. You will you're bound to have these issues, but but obviously our responsibility is to do everything that we can and do as good of a job as we can to to make sure that the experience people have is as as as free of this as possible. Um knowing that per Alex, like Alex said, we probably
can't ever cure it 100%. But if you as a player come in and you experience you don't experience this for most of the time then we're probably okay. I did some research this week to a completely different subject. I was looking into AI and how it's using you know it's helping people pirate games and crack things and I spoke to people whose job it is to sort of deal with that. became quite apparent quite quickly although that they are concerned about that and that is a challenge actually most of their issues are around people bot farming cheaters and all these people in their

mind that's a much bigger problem for them to deal with there's these organized criminal gangs as they call them going in and doing causing this irreparable harm to a lot of live service products and it was quite eye opening to me cuz um I didn't really realize that had become I mean I I hear about it but I didn't I didn't know how much of a major issue this is for games I imagine the bigger you are the more attractive you are to these hangs. Do you find that player expectations, your Cuz they paid $40, you know, as a premium product, are those expectations higher? Are they more demanding? Are they less forgiving of things like that than they would be of a free-to-play game like The Finals?
I think we have to be kind of honest and look at it from a consumer perspective. I know personally if I, you know, buy into another service and I pay $40, I expect for it to be to work and I expect for it to be,
you know, not full of cheaters. So, I think the players have every right to be upset with us if it if our game is full of cheaters and it's not working. I I I mean, I would be naive to say something else. Uh so, our job is to make sure

that like I said that for most players enjoying our game, they can log in, the game works, and that it's not full of cheaters and that they have the experience that they that they paid for that. I we I mean that's at least how I look at it that you know and when when when we don't um deliver that experience we deserve to get heat for that to be honest we have to look at it that way.
Are there any other differences between premium players versus free-to-play players?
We see uh if you put $40 down you're probably going to be a little bit more invested in the experience. So I think you'll have more kind of blas type players coming into the free area where they just, you know, which is obvious the game is free, you can try it and it may not be for them. So I think if you have more more people coming in and out, I think you have a slightly more loyal player base and therefore um a slightly more competent player base in a premium game than you may have in a free free

free game. M um I mean overall um the free games obviously like you know have players that have played thousands and thousands of hours but you also have people that come and go because it's free to to test whilst the threshold to a premium game is you having to pay for it. Uh which gives gives it a slightly different dynamic. I think
I would say that also generally on any game that is live today, I think the expectations are continuously rising because there's some
there's some games that are putting out some tremendous amounts of of stuff for the players to do. And I think um if you if you backtrack and look at the same type of problem space just maybe five years ago, I think the expectations would be quite different than they are today. And I don't think that's that's between freeto play or premium. I think overall if it's just if the game is live and online you already have those expectations and if the the game is doing well I think you you even get higher expectations because I already seen some comments that it's like hey you did so well you should be able to

give us even more now um so so I think the bar just continuously gets raised and of course it's it's our job then to try to figure out how to best kind of match those expectations
I'm wary I'm sort of focusing on a bit of negative stuff actually because look at the game I think looking at the latest number 16 million sales. Is that the the last official figure? Which is enormous. And now it's it's you're taking it to TVs and movies, which is another fantastic sign. How involved are you looking to get in those sort of side projects? I guess we want to be involved. Um I think um we take pride in in our ability to build worlds and to create worlds that that people have an interest in. Um therefore we also need to be involved in in making sure that that our artistic vision and creative vision for those worlds and IPs are protected um in in other formats. So we will absolutely be involved. At the same time
we also need to understand that we know

how to make video games. We don't know how to make TV series or movies necessarily. So collaborate and work with professionals that are good. So for us, finding a partner that shared our creative vision that understood what our creators is to us and to the player base out there because it's quite large was important. And we went through a lot of offers and a lot of companies and and found a company that that we believed understood how to protect that creative integrity and to to to care for the brand, which is um the most important part for us. We don't necessarily do this to I mean this is a incredibly fun you know cool thing to do and and if more people we believe that there are more stories that can be told
in the Arc Raiders universe in different formats essentially and that's why we we did it. I was going to ask if there's anything else that surprised you because for me I was quite I wasn't quite surprised I guess maybe interested. It

was the reaction to the to the sort of AI use you had in the game in that there seemed to be some backlash to it but actually it seemed like the majority of players were sort of okay with it and I think it was the first time people started to discuss the nuance in terms of that technology and how it gets used. I mean that that sort of interested me. Was there anything that surprised you about any of that?
Yeah, go ahead. Yeah. So, so we got some criticism when we launched the game around uh some of the text to speech.
Yeah.
Which to be fair, the quality of the output of that wasn't wasn't good. Uh so, so I mean, not only was was it a complaint, you know, from the technology perspective, but it was also a quality complaints from some players, which is why we made a decision to go and re-record all the lines. And now they are they are gone, those lines from the game.
With real actors.
Yeah. With real actors. Exactly. And and and um or with the actors that that had the that we got the voices from in the first place.
So we did that from a quality perspective and trying to kind of make

sure that this was as good as possible.
Um were we surprised? Um I would say both yes and no to some degree. I think um it's um always when you're trying to to do something new and cool and then then there's always a risk associated with some elements of that. But but um overall I'd say we apply the right tools to the job eventually
and player seems satisfied with with the result.
Yeah. Yeah, I also think right now the you know a year on um where where AI still remains to some extent controversial and uh in in any any industry um you know for us as a studio uh we don't you know we're not using artificial intelligence to autogenerate games for us. you know, we are the game makers, but it it can be a very helpful tool for us to increase productivity to allow us to do more things and to remove obstacles and work that that frankly uh

is very repetitive and tedious that that you know where our people are better served doing other things that are more playercentric and and put in front of the player. I think it's become a little bit less controversial in in the last year. I think most development houses in the world utilize this to some extent.
Um, so I think I think that's going to become the norm and and something that I think is going to be less controversial over I think it is less controversial already because I I I think the fear rightfully so is or was that you know there will just be automate autogenerated games and the kind of creative integrity of what it means to build a video game is going to go away and that you know that is not how I envision AI at least from our perspective. But what what's interesting is what Alex was alluding to and I think something that I spend a lot of my time thinking about is not necessarily the efficiency component of artificial intelligence but how can AI give us different type of gameplay experiences that frankly we could not do

without this technology. So it's rather how can we improve the medium um rather than you know changing than removing the people that work on the medium. And I think we have elements of that in our creatives like how you know I think people maybe there's a perception that our all our AI or the P the PVE aspect of our creators that it's it's a machine learning system that learns everything. It isn't. Um but but um uh I think there are absolutely elements of how we uh make uh the AI enemies maneuver and and traverse and and how they're animated and how how the experience of them are improved by the use of artificial intelligence in the production pipeline. That I think makes the experience a lot better. Um, that's kind of where I think the sweet spots sit for artificial intelligence and where it gets exciting

for us as game developers to start pushing ourselves creatively around what can we do with this technology? What experiences can we create that didn't exist before? Um,
and I think that should be a positive for the players, not a negative. That was my obligatory AI question there for the um but it but I think you're right in terms of where what the conversation has moved on to. I'mware I'm out of time but um Patrick since we last spoke you've received quite the promotion I guess. Um are you being asked to replicate embark and arc raiders sort of across across the Nexon world? Now
I don't think you can uh I think um again there's every instance will have a different playbook and to take the embark playbook and just slap it onto Nexon uh would be a naive endeavor. Um doesn't mean that Nexon doesn't require or should be focusing on some of the things that Embark have been doing. Yes. And they are, you know, people, it's not

like in walks Patrick and Nexon all of a sudden started doing things that they had no idea what they were doing. That's not the case. This is a highly, you know, creative, smart, um, you know, leadership team that were on this ball a long time ago. Um, so I can take no credit from that. My job is to work with the leadership team there to um be slightly provocative, ask the questions that that um that come from, you know, 25 years of experience in this industry and to um lean into the creative aspect of what what makes a video game fun. Um understand uh what types of games are we making? How can we make them better? How can we make them more fun? How can we make them more in innovative? how how do we push the boundaries of what it means to um um play a game that comes from the from the from the Nexon sphere? Um you know, how can we make Nexon the best,

you know, game company on the planet where our developers are given the the best possible tools and and and um to to do the best job of their careers. That's essentially the type of stuff I'm working on together with longer term strategic things. Uh what does Nexon look like 10 years from now? So
um that's where it got interested when they asked me if I wanted to be take a slightly different role. So I'm I'm kind of doing that part-time and doing embark part-time. Um
yeah,
which works. Okay.
Okay. Uh well, I'm out of time. I was going to ask how the finals is doing because people don't talk about that one quite so much because Art Raiders has taken all the headlines. But
yeah, the finals is is is back with season 12. Launched last week. Um obviously I would like to for everyone to go try it. It's free. But I I've I'm stuck in it now and I'm I'm playing a lot. But I think it's the best season

that we've had in a very long time. We're seeing good um numbers on it. People are coming back playing it, staying longer. Um, I think the team um made a a brave decision to kind of focus on on the fundamentals of the game instead of getting trapped into the more content perspective necessarily. They've taken a different approach which I think the players out there are rewarding them for. The finals is almost three years old. There's
crazy amounts of content in it. So, it's rather ensuring that what's in the game works better than than to just build more and more and more and more. Um, so I think that they've done a really good job with it. Uh, and and um it's it's um I think we had the highest um CCU uh since season 2. Um so it's been a very successful launch for us, which um
um so kudos to to to the team for for doing that. It it is it is um not always

easy to run those types of games and I I think uh season 11 was not as good as we wanted to to be honest but 12 looks uh well we know is is a big step up and people are are really rewarding the team for for being bold and and making that that decision.
I'm glad to hear it. I I just think the amount of work going into Arc Raiders in the finals are you still are you still working on other games as well? Oh, is that or you having to divert all your energies into these other two?
We are and we have to be um we we
we we talk consciously about and and all the time about we we don't want to just be a live service studio even though there's nothing wrong with with that. It allows the the the electricity bill to be paid and and the people to to so it's it's important for us and also we believe that the games deserve it and the player base out there deserve it. But at the same time we need to be forwardlooking. we need to lean in and to kind of challenge ourselves to build

new things at all times. That that that's also kind of the ethos of of Embark. Um and and that's never going to stop. I think it's who we are.
Well, thank you. I thank you for staying on for a bit longer. Thank you, Patrick. Thank you, Alexander. Congratulations on one year of Art Raiders. Congratulations on all the success you've had and and and the growth you've had on that game. Appreciate.
Thank you. appreciate it's never easy and you're always you're always dealing with whatever the current crisis is and it can maybe be difficult to take a step back and look at what's happened but it's was a phenomenal success to go up against Call of Duty in Battlefield in that same window and come out smiling is is no small feat. So uh uh uh well done and uh and I look forward to talking about this for many many years ahead.
Yeah, thank you so much. Thank you to you and all the players out there.
Right, that's it for today's episode of the Game Business Show. Thank you to Patrick and Alexander for joining us. We will be back, of course, with more news, analysis, insight, and interviews in the days and weeks ahead. And to make sure you don't miss a single episode of the show, why not become a subscriber? You can go to the gamebus.com and sign up

for free. You can also become a paying subscriber and receive an extra newsletter and podcast every single Monday. But that's it from me today. Until next time, thank you for tuning in.