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?
The first big game in the genre is, unarguably, Escape From Tarkov made by Russian developers Battlestate Games. Released into beta in 2017, the game initially launched with only a handful of weapons and small maps. Since then, it has grown into a huge experience for PC players with several large maps, thousands of items and weapon parts, bosses to take out, and a hardcore difficulty that emphasises the risk/reward nature of the genre.
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Since the success of Escape From Tarkov and 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 the DMZ mode 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 the DMZ game 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.
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 upcoming Marathon, but we’ve already got a plethora of great titles that capitalise on the idea.
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Now we have Dark and Darker, a fantasy twist on the genre that uses traditional classes and a medieval style; Marauders is a sci-fi adventure where you play as a space pirate; and then there’s the upcoming Gray Zone Warfare which takes the genre into a huge persistent map with 16 players running around in real-time, getting into firefights.
It’s a burgeoning genre that isn’t slowing down. If anything, by the end of 2024 there will be several more games vying for our attention, including Hawked, Blight: Survivor, and Arena Breakout, the latter of which debuted on mobile and will come to PC in May.
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 Tarkov has 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 for The Cycle: Frontier - a brilliant sci-fi casual extractor - that the developers waved the white flag and closed the game down.
This isn’t stopping others from attempting to enter the space and many games that are already very popular are being played by people who might not even consider it an extraction game. Hunt: Showdown is a great example. In that game, you enter a map with other players and must hunt down monsters to gain precious XP, money, and resources before extracting safely. While many see this as another multiplayer shooter, it’s definitely a part of the growing genre. As is Vigor, a lesser-known, but still remarkable action game that leans into the tropes of this genre.
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All eyes are going to be on these upcoming games such as Deadrop, a vertical extraction shooter helmed by Midnight Society, a development team put together by streamer Dr Disrespect. And, of course, in 2025, perhaps the biggest attempt at getting in on the trend will come from Bungie who are reviving their retro game, Marathon, into an extraction shooter in a gorgeous sci-fi world.
None of these games will, as yet, hold a candle to Escape From Tarkov who, 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.
If we look at one of gaming’s other hot properties, the battle royale, we can see a similar path. While Fortnite certainly dominates the space, it was PUBG who made the first mark and then many dashed to try and make a competitor with varying success. In the end, games like Realm Royale fell while Apex Legends succeeded. Now we’ll see similarities in this new genre. Will Arena Breakout be the second string to the bow? Will Marathon take over and bring the genre to consoles, where success can be claimed across a large audience?
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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 the Fortnite island 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.
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.
Featured Image Credit: Tencent, Battlestate GamesTopics: Call Of Duty, Bungie, Activision, Opinion