Embark Studios: Smaller Teams, Bigger Games?

Underdogs or innovators? Embark Studios claims they outmaneuvered EA and Activision by refusing to play by the old rules.

CEO Patrick Söderlund said:

"To compete with EA and Activision... you're going to have to have five, six, seven hundred people. We couldn't afford that many people..."

Instead, the studio spent seven to ten months conceptualizing Arc Raiders while building tools and pipelines to change game development. Söderlund emphasized: "Spent the first seven to 10 months conceptualising Arc Raiders... building tools and pipelines to change the way games were being developed..."

AI integration became critical. Söderlund stated: "Without AI tools, we wouldn't have been able to complete work on The Finals..." Owen Mahoney, former Nexon CEO, noted: "You guys were super intentional in that if we have too big a team... we can do a lot with software."

Arc Raiders succeeded through emergent storytelling, wacky social interactions, and PvP/PvE distinctions. Söderlund concluded: "It hasn't been easy, and we're not done with it yet."