Aleksander Grøndal admits Embark has struggled to balance the needs of millions of players with those of its workforce.
Arc Raiders executive producer Aleksander Grøndal has spoken at length about the brutal exertions of live service development and how the need to consistently produce new content can quickly result in debilitating creative and physical burnout.
Speaking to Game Developer at Gamescom earlier this year, Grøndal said Embark Studios has struggled to balance the needs of over 16 million players and its own workforce, who he admits are "super tired" after sprinting out of the blocks. His comments came around four months after the Swedish studio confirmed it would be ditching monthly updates to alleviate pressure on the Arc Raiders team.
"Transitioning to live service is going to be fucking hard. Everyone said that to me. I've even said that to other people. I was mentally prepared for it to be hard—but I wasn't completely prepared for how hard it was," explains Grøndal.
"When you build a game up until launch, you build and you test and you build and you test and you fix things and measure results. So the way that we've been building video games was based on that idea—but now the demands of the players are really high we feel like we really can't go much faster."
"The team is super tired. We're putting out content as fast as we can but it's not enough, and perhaps it wasn't necessarily interesting enough as well. I'm proud of what we achieved during the first four months of this year, but at the same time, I think we have to be honest at looking at some of the impacts of that."
Grøndal stresses that even the best laid plans can quickly unravel when you take on a large-scale live service endeavor. He explains Embark had a vision for how they would support Arc Raiders on a month-to-month basis and how much engagement those updates would drive. In reality, those plans had to be reworked and content cut because the studio simply ran out of road.
"We didn't have the time. You also have a lot of the cost of just maintaining the game—implementing bug fixes, exploits, and other constraints. We were constantly overshooting our capacity and so it was hard to plan when there's so much to do. There's a lot maintenance and cleanup [that takes up so much of your time]."
To rightsize, Grøndal says Embark had to completely rethink its workflows to recapture the pre-launch magic. "The team were super unhappy. To be fair, they were running really hard milestones and that wasn't fun and challenging, so we had to do something. The players were also complaining and I don't think the consistency was high enough," he adds.
"Ultimately, we asked 'why are we doing this?' Everything pointed towards the fact that we were doing it better before shipping, so we need to play to our strengths […] and what we produce will be better, more interesting, and higher-quality across the board. It also gives us time to work things out instead of just shipping, shipping, shipping. We can actually iterate."
We ask Grøndal how important it is to protect employees who might be experiencing burnout, prompting the Embark exec to share a candid account of how he personally suffered during his 15 year tenure at Electronic Arts.
"It's super important [to protect people]. I can tell you a personal story. I was burned out. We'd just shipped a Battlefield game [when I was at EA] and I kept pushing so hard that I had to take a break for five months and go on sick leave because I was completely broken. We talk about burnout and it's obviously bad, but being burned out feels super shitty to be honest. It's terrible. I don't recommend it to anyone. Also, it means we lose good people who might be out [of work] for a very long time," he explains.
"It's very important for us to create a framework that allows us to be creative while having a good work-life balance. If we think long-term about this product—not just in small increments but big-picture stuff—we need all of these great people. Those are the people who built Arc Raiders in the first place."
About the Author
Senior Editor, News, GameDeveloper.com
Game Developer news editor Chris Kerr is an award-winning reporter with over a decade of experience in the game industry. His byline has appeared in notable print and digital publications including Edge, Stuff, Wireframe, International Business Times, and PocketGamer.biz. Throughout his career, Chris has covered major industry events including GDC, PAX Australia, Gamescom, Paris Games Week, and Develop Brighton.
Source: Game Developer