Just as we saw when battle royales swept through the industry, I’m calling it now, and I’m certainly not the only one, but extraction games are going to be the next big genre. We’re currently looking at a landscape that has some brilliant extraction gameplay already and plenty more games to come even from the likes of Bungie.
If you’re unsure of what an extraction game is, let me try to break it down for you. No matter the sub-genre, whether that’s a shooter or a medieval brawler, the format is simple. You enter a map and engage in PvEvP tasks while looting for items to progress quests or weapons to battle with. If you die, you lose all your loot and equipment, if you extract, you earn XP and keep all your loot.
It’s a very simple foundation on which several games are already built. Not only that, but it’s an engaging genre due to its ‘all or nothing’ gamble - do you stick it out longer in the match and gain more loot, or do you extract quickly with some good guns or quest items to live another day?
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Tarkov
Since the success ofEscape From Tarkovand its domination on Twitch in 2020, when the drops campaign started and it broke viewing records on the streaming platform, many other developers have eyed up the genre in the hopes of cashing in.
Perhaps the biggest company to do so was Activision when it added theDMZmode to Call of Duty. A mode that was rather popular, especially with console players as, until then, most extraction shooters were PC exclusives. Oddly, Activision decided to cancel theDMZgame mode and implement the latest Zombies mode in what most called a silly move.DMZ, while not the strongest in the genre, was well fleshed out and delivered a more ‘arcadey’ feel to the gunplay.
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DMZ
However, instead of going full bore, Activision backed off, probably to their detriment. As we look out to the genre now, we not only have Bungie trying their hand with the upcomingMarathon, but we’ve already got a plethora of great titles that capitalise on the idea.
Now we haveDark and Darker, a fantasy twist on the genre that uses traditional classes and a medieval style;Maraudersis a sci-fi adventure where you play as a space pirate; and then there’s the upcomingGray Zone Warfarewhich takes the genre into a huge persistent map with 16 players running around in real-time, getting into firefights.
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Sadly, the genre is a turbulent one and often suffers from rampant cheating due to the value players put on weapons and items in the games.Escape From Tarkovhas suffered for such a long time from cheaters that Battlestate Games and the anti-cheat company BattleEye now publish monthly spreadsheets outing cheaters publicly. Cheating got so bad forThe Cycle: Frontier- a brilliant sci-fi casual extractor - that the developers waved the white flag and closed the game down.
The Cycle
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None of these games will, as yet, hold a candle toEscape From Tarkovwho, it’s heavily rumoured, will finally release version 1.0 later this year. However, developers can very much copy the homework as Battlestate Games have put in years of work to finesse their game and shape the genre from the ground up.
Gray Zone
If we look at one of gaming’s other hot properties, the battle royale, we can see a similar path. WhileFortnitecertainly dominates the space, it wasPUBGwho made the first mark and then many dashed to try and make a competitor with varying success. In the end, games likeRealm Royalefell whileApex Legendssucceeded. Now we’ll see similarities in this new genre. WillArena Breakoutbe the second string to the bow? WillMarathontake over and bring the genre to consoles, where success can be claimed across a large audience?
What’s key is that the core foundation survives no matter whether there are guns, swords, or magical powers. It’s that fine line between greed and victory, or safety and death, that brings players back again and again. It’s a similar feeling to scouring theFortniteisland for loot and going on to score a Victory Royale, the same balance exists in pushing further to gear up and go for the win.
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Mark my words, the engaging formula is going to be aped and mimicked repeatedly over the coming years with only a few staying on top and more players will discover the genre through games coming to console or expanding beyond military simulations.
Topics:Call Of Duty,Bungie,Activision,Opinion
