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Alongside the likes of Rust, Valheim, and Subnautica, Ark has established itself as one of the biggest players in the survival game space. Ark Survival Evolved is now ten years old, and still boasts healthy player counts to this day. The same can be said for its Unreal Engine 5 remaster, Ark Survival Ascended, which is busy enhancing ASE’s vast library of content expansions and creating original ones in the process. An ambitious sequel, Ark 2, is also in the works. There’s even a star-studded Ark animated series. While that all sounds remarkably positive, it’s safe to say that there have been trying times too. In an exclusive interview with PCGamesN, two of the co-founders of Studio Wildcard – Jesse Rapczak and Jeremey Stieglitz – reflect on the last decade of Ark, the reasons why swathes of players are yet to shift over to Survival Ascended, and their favorite Ark expansion of the last ten years.
2015’s Ark Survival Evolved has sat proudly on our list of the best survival games for some time. It’s not the most refined or polished experience out there, but with base building, a wide array of maps and expansion content, a huge lineup of prehistoric creatures to battle and tame, a surprising amount of intricate lore, and solid survival systems at its core, it’s fostered a sizable community over the years. “Within the survival space, we’re right up there,” Stieglitz says, proudly. “If not number one, we’re right on that top level with the Rusts and the games of that ilk. Notably, I think Rust has been around a little bit longer [than Ark], so due credit really to the one that ultimately is the godfather [of the genre].”
However, ASE is now in Studio Wildcard’s rear view mirror, with the studio throwing almost everything it has at Ark Survival Ascended. Stieglitz explains how it was a hard but necessary decision to step away from ASE due its tech limitations. For example, “cross platform multiplayer was never going to happen due to how the game was architected, and that was something that we felt was really holding the game back.”
While Wildcard started to work on its full sequel, Ark 2, it felt inexperienced with Unreal Engine 5 and unable to see the game through to completion without some practice. So, Survival Ascended (or ‘Ark 1.5’) was born. Stieglitz compares Wildcard’s initial attempt at Ark 2 to trying to play in the NFL with only high school football experience – “you should probably play some college football first.”
While Ark 2 will have a lot of gameplay differences (such as third-person, soulslike-inspired combat and dynamic world events) its technical underpinnings are being realized through Survival Ascended. Sure, the decision to release ASA and remake all of ASE’s expansions has seen the Ark 2 release date window repeatedly pushed back, but it has at least meant the sequel wasn’t rushed out the door in a less-than-optimal state. Wildcard is insistent that the game will be worth the wait, and as I revealed in a piece earlier this week, Stieglitz estimates it’ll be in players’ hands “hopefully within the next two years.”
Despite Wildcard shutting down Survival Evolved’s official servers in order to reduce costs and focus on Survival Ascended and Ark 2, the game continues to thrive on PC thanks to unofficial community servers. While we can’t see stats on other platforms, on Steam at least it’s actually attracting slightly higher player counts than Survival Ascended.
I ask if that’s a concern and if Studio Wildcard anticipated this kind of split, or if it expected more people to transition over to ASA.
Stieglitz believes there are three core reasons why some players haven’t made the switch to Ascended. The first is that for those with older rigs, ASE’s undemanding specs make it the only option for them to enjoy Ark due to ASA’s much loftier system requirements. The second is that “their favorite content hasn’t migrated over yet” – while Wildcard has now remastered most of ASE’s expansions at this point, there are still some that are yet to find their way to ASA. The third and final reason is that some players will only want to commit to Survival Ascended once actual original content (like the upcoming Lost Colony expansion) arrives. “[This group of players] actually just want a reason, creatively, to reinvest their time, and that’s got to be something whole cloth new. An upgrade of existing stuff isn’t enough to interest them.”
While Studio Wildcard is of course celebratory of the success ASE and ASA have achieved, Rapczak shares equal amounts of pride about the fact that developer turnover has been low. “It’s been quite rewarding as a team. You know, we haven’t had a massive amount of turnover on this team. So a lot of the people that work on this game every day have maybe been here for ten, nine, eight, seven years and counting.”
I also quiz the two co-founders on what their favorite Ark expansion of the last decade has been, and both agree on the same one: Genesis 2.
“We did the most storytelling and it’s the most ambitious [expansion] in a lot of ways,” Rapczak says. “I really liked that it was a fork of the original story and that it was tying into the future storytelling in Ark 2, and the team really got to do a little bit of what we’re doing now in Lost Colony, which is exploring a new story, a new setting, reimagined creatures and aesthetics – even crazy stuff like the lunar missions [which] were just so far out there from what we had originally done in Ark.”
There have been some rocky moments over the last ten years – Stieglitz himself admits that “we don’t always bullseye the mark as much as we would like to” – and its reputation for pushing back or missing deadlines is hard to ignore. Despite its flaws, Ark still boasts one of the most solid and loyal survival game communities.
“I want to say that we tremendously appreciate the love, passion, and support of the fans… Everybody on the team really always gives everything they’ve got,” he adds. “We love working on this franchise, and we really hope to be able to do it for ten more years and bring the experience we know they all want to see with Ark 2.” As Rapczak neatly summarizes, “the best stuff is yet to come.”
