Arc Raiders designer says Marathon’s reception’was a great A/B test’: ‘They made decisions that we didn’t, and vice versa … we could compare and contrast how some of those things shook out’

It might feel like there’s been a shedload of extraction shooters lately, but the genre still seems to crackle with untapped potential. Two heavy hitters—the reboot of Bungie’s venerable shooter Marathon and Embark’s fresh up-and-comer Arc Raiders—are nearly here, and both have had a chance to gear up with playtests. Speaking with PC Gamer US editor-in-chief Tyler Wilde, Arc Raiders design director Virgil Watkins said the shared timing made for a fortuitous opportunity.

“It was very coincidental that they had their test around the time we did. To my knowledge, I don’t think any of us knew that was going to happen,” Watkins said. “It was a very great A/B test for us, because obviously they made decisions that we didn’t, and vice versa. So we could kind of compare and contrast how some of those things shook out.”

Of course, Arc Raiders and Marathon are different games, but it’s hard not to compare the two. Timing aside, when PC Gamer staff writer Morgan Park played both back-to-back earlier this year, he noted “both studios need their extraction shooters to be a hit,” adding he was “skeptical there’s enough interest in the inherently un-casual genre to support them both.”

For Watkins, it was a chance to see how players reacted to the two games’ divergent designs: “[It] was quite interesting to follow in what players thought about those certain things, or what did work in their context and didn’t, and what may have worked in ours.”

He said he hasn’t been holding a magnifying glass up to the game; after all, most of Marathon’s tests have been limited-access. But he only rooted the game’s successes on, saying he “[found] the art style very evocative … I’m personally curious to see how that ends up. I hope to see more of that in the future.”