Feature or Function: Extraction Shooters Need Drive
In simple terms, an extraction shooter is a type of videogame where the players drop or spawn into an area, loot the area, and get out. If you die in the zone, you typically lose all or some of the loot you gathered or came into the map with. Often, we see PvP or PvE or PvPvE mixes for this type of game.
The PvP elements mixed with the loop are what make an extraction shooter an ‘extraction shooter.’
You can do ES without PvP, but the loop is the defining factor. The getting in and getting out with stuff is the loop. Escape from Tarkov, The Hunt: Showdown, ARC Raiders, among others, are well known games with this loop. For most people, those games aren’t as accessible as something like Fortnite or Warzone.
Perhaps it’s not accessibility that’s the issue for the games at all- perhaps it’s something else. The Hunt: Showdown and Vigor’s matches and systems aren’t overly complex and the matches aren’t long enough to dissuade casual gamers from playing them. Compared to Tarkov’s complexity and game mechanics- which are why it’s referred to as a basement dweller game- these games feel you’re riding with training wheels on. So, it must not be an accessibility issue across the board, right?
Try to think of the objective of an extraction shooter game.
Is it to survive? Yes, kind of. Is it to get better loot? Yes, but still kind of. Is it to build up the little base feature they all seem to have? Yes, but again, kind of. All of those things are often the core of ES games. Survive, get better loot, and build a base. But what for? What does that benefit the player?
I imagine a game like ARC Raiders or Tarkov or Vigor gets popular for the same reason a game like Gardenscapes gets traction on mobile phones. It’s mindless, pointless, and you slowly build a somewhat interesting area with mini objectives scattered throughout to keep you playing the next round. Instead of swiping gems in a pattern though, you’re shooting people and rage quitting when you lose all of your hard-earned loot from the map you’ve been sneaking around in.
So what can we do about all of this? What’s the solution for my dilemma? My dilemma of feeling like the extraction shooter genre is a dull bullet against a wall of battle-royales.
Is it a permanence issue?
Let’s take a look at Off the Grid. Off the Grid is a hybrid extraction/battle-royale where you keep all the final-zone moments of PUBG or Fortnite and you include the time-test extraction elements and point holding like a real but simplified extraction shooter game. Instead of a base, the stuff you extract count for permanent weapons and cosmetics for your loadouts. The permanency and the objective with collecting the loot makes the loop feel worthwhile. That’s not to say that OTG is a perfect game, but for this example it makes my case. The last man standing with the extraction mayhem are what kept me interested for a long time.
The thing about extraction shooters in their purest form is that I want to like them. I really do. I want to be able to get into the systems and get a gun and kill a guy out in the wild and then go to a save point and do it all over again, but maybe the problem is that safe spot. I don’t like the safe spots. The base, the menu, the shops, the crafters. I can do without. And if I can do without but I like the way Tarkov feels, then I might as well just hop on Day Z.
An extraction shooter is a match-based version of a game genre that at its core doesn’t work as match-based game.
Day Z has all the fun parts of an extraction shooter minus the matches and between times. You’re always on the go, you’re up against people and zombies alike, and if you die you lose it all. You can get it back, but it’s going to be a hell of a hike to get there- if you know where you were, that is.
Day-Z has technically fewer objectives than any of the games I mentioned previously. The only real objective is to survive- but that makes it a survival game, and therefore that is the objective. How you survive is your decision. You can build a base if you want, but it can be found and raided and taken down. You can go hunting for people to get their loot but that’s not always the best idea. The major difference is that you’re not going to get out of the zone. There is no between time.
ARC Raiders has the three same objectives that Vigor and Tarkov have, and that’s why I think it won’t be the COD killer that the internet says it could be.
This is because the objectives that they share are not truly objectives; they’re elements. Survival is an element of a game if the game is not primarily a survival game. Looting is an element of a game, not the objective of a game. Borderlands wouldn’t be any fun if there wasn’t a driving force behind the looting. Get a better gun to kill a bigger guy. It’s a shooter with looting as the heavy component. And finally, base building isn’t really a game objective unless you’re playing Animal Crossing. Even then, the objective is to pay off your mortgage. All three of these are game elements.
I believe that because there is no objective, the extraction shooter’s audience will stagnate unless something changes in the formula. Something outside the box. Every extraction shooter that’s come out recently tells the same story of a new experience, but none truly change the formula. There are minor differences with loot extraction amounts or inventory limits, but at the end of the day you still have to load between matches and manage a warehouse or a cabin in the woods. In the heat of the battle royale years, reskins without any major changed gameplay elements pass off without much pushback. What’s the difference between PUBG and Warzone if not for the Gulag?
Let’s talk about Tom Clancy’s the Division from 2016. You groan when you read that name but let’s look at the facts. The game was a story and objective driven online multiplayer experience, with an intricate survivalist- but not survival- world. It featured an area called the Dark Zone where players would enter and loot high-ranking equipment while in a PvPvE setting. They would have to leave with the loot and if they did, they got to keep it. If they died, the stuff they picked up along the way was lost but not the inventory they came in with. Permanence, to a degree, is what made it accessible. And, just to reiterate, that Dark Zone was a feature of the game and not the entirety of it. There was still a story to drive the player through the map and keep playing. Ubisoft, with all of their missteps over the last few years, laid the groundwork for extraction shooters without the intent to do so. The Dark Zone was one of the first- if not the first- mainstream examples of extraction-based gameplay, and we’ve forgotten why it worked for them.
Well quite frankly, I think Ubisoft was onto something with The Division. There was objective, the extraction system was an enticing element, and the story added a layer of drive to the less-intensive player’s engagement. I think that while extraction shooters are fun- and I don’t discredit the fans of the genre for enjoying their games- I do think that to draw a ground breaking audience for extraction, you have to give a player a reason to do it other than lore.
ARC Raiders starts you out with a chunk of world-building lore to give you the details on why you’re in this loop. If one day they made story driven mode and not a season-based objective and cosmetic hunt, perhaps I’d give it all a try again.
If I want survival and high-risk looting, I’ll hop onto DayZ. If I want high action shooting, I’ll give Arma or Battlefield a run. If I want loot, Borderlands is on sale already. And base building, let’s be honest, you’re playing Gardenscapes when you’re on the toilet.
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