Introduction
I’ve played a lot of games.
I’ve also played a lot of games that I would call “social experiments”. Games which aim to mix up the conventional formula of multiplayer competition.
Games like:
One Hour One Life: A game in which your character only lives one hour.
You are born as the child of another player
That player raises you
You go out into the world
Age
Share your objectives with the new generation you’ve raised
Die
All in one hour.
More recently I reviewed a game called Aneurism IV
The game world in Aneurism is a hostile police state riddled with parasites, plague, and rebellion. Your job is simply to survive while working strict jobs.
The fun in these games comes from player interaction informed by the world itself.
Its back and forth role-playing and improv between the players and the game.
Arc Raiders
I bring these up because of a new game I’ve been obsessed with called Arc Raiders.
On the surface Arc Raiders looks nothing like One Hour One Life, or Aneurism IV and that’s because it’s really not.
Its an extraction shooter in the vein of Escape From Tarkov. You load into a map, loot, kill, and survive or die. Should you die you lose everything you brought with you.
Extraction shooters are inherently hostile, and the high cost of raiding makes joining new matches very stressful.
What do I bring?
What am I willing to lose?
Arc Raiders, on a surface level, is a sci-fi twist on the slav-core classic.
You loot buildings of varying value, fight drones, other players, and run away from large robots.
The game itself is extremely fun, but… something unexpected happened that I’ve never seen in a game before.
Why solo mode is so friendly
You may have heard about this already, but Arc Raiders players have accidentally split it into two different games. Loading into a raid with a team of two or three results in.. nothing surprising. You loot, you fight… It’s all fantastic, but expected.
However, when you load into a game solo, by yourself, something different happens.
Loading in Solo should be the most stressful version of the game. You vs the world. There is no help, no-one to revive you, no-one to stop the drones and other players from demolishing you.
This is what you’d expect, but you get something different instead.
The players are… friendly. They chat, they work together, and they share loot. The same hostile streets are flipped completely on their heads.
I don’t think the developers planned for this to happen, and yet… it did.
Its like watching life emerge from the perfect conditions spontaneously. Not because it was planned but because this moment is the perfect one for it to exist.
So why do I think spontaneous co-operation emerged?
I believe it has to do with multiple converging systems accidentally rewarding cooperation only in solos.
The first system is the Arc, the drones.
The enemies are balanced in such a way that surviving solo is not impossible, but difficult. Drones such as “Hornets” have weak spots behind them, but will turn to face you when engaging. This creates the perfect opportunity for someone to help you out.
Other enemies like leapers, bombardiers, and sentinels have the same mechanics and enough health that they are tough with a group, but hard solo.
The second system is Proximity Voice chat
Being able to communicate directly with strangers allows for more complex communication and co-operation. Communication is inherently co-operative. You don’t need to tell someone you’re going to kill them. Especially when alone and defenseless.
The third system is the “Free Kit”
Unlike Tarkov, Arc allows you, at any time, to go into a raid with random low level gear rather than something you bring. Its low risk, but also low reward. You can do it to get quests done with low stakes, or just reduce the stress of starting a match.
The fourth system is matchmaking
When you load in solo you are only in queue with other solo players. You don’t have to contend with teams who exist in a totally different gameplay environment.
The fourth system and largely the most impactful is the oppressive atmosphere of the game
This is the most aesthetic of what I’m calling “systems” but if you’ll forgive me I believe this is the final piece of the emergent puzzle.
How it emerged
The reason I believe this has to emerge is because of the games competitive nature. Something had to happen to flip the script. Here’s what I think re-defined the experience on solo:
Solo players feel extremely overwhelmed loading into the game alone.
Perhaps they need to do a quest, perhaps they just don’t feel comfortable queueing with random people in their squad.
They will most likely load in with a free kit, or bad gear given the high risk of going in alone.
High chance of failure means players bring in worse gear
This dis-incentivizes pvp because of the high cost of a fight, the risk of failure, and the low reward
Additionally drones will be attracted to you from the fight so you have to expend more resources defending yourself from the oppressive fight after you’ve engaged in pvp.
This is something that is manageable with a team, but costly for a solo.
Voice chat allows players to verbally warn and socially condemn player killing
The utilitarian nature of the game, especially with quests, leads to players likely not interacting with each other out of shared knowledge of each others situation
Players eventually realize that forming parties, even temporarily, makes local interactions easier for the whole.
This is because of the intense, stressful atmosphere, as well as the drones ability to call in re-enforcement being a burden on all those in the vicinity
At this point you have players casually ignoring each other rather than attacking on sight, and helping out in small ways at their own benefit.
Since, at this point, pvp is dis-incentives, and co-operation becomes mutually beneficial it becomes the norm.
Emotionally players feel better giving and receiving help from others
Small acts of kindness build connections between players re-enforcing the atmosphere of the game-mode
A reinforced atmosphere creates expectations between multiple raids
And thus your friendly solo mode is born.
That’s not to say that people don’t pvp in solo mode. As word gets around that solo is filled with pacifists, there will be opportunists seeking to take advantage of this situation.
Especially don’t expect people to be friendly on Dam Battlegrounds solo.
On the whole though I think that friendly solo phenomena is unique and worth talking about.
Thank you for reading and I’ll see you in the next one!
