'Insanely punishing' survival game Atlas is being distilled 'into a more accessible form' for Ark: Survival Ascended's new DLC

Last week I sat down with Studio Wildcard co-founders Jeremy Stieglitz and Jesse Rapczak, mostly to grill them about Vin Diesel but also to talk about what's happening with Ark: Survival Ascended these days. I was surprised when Stieglitz started talking not about dinosaurs but pirates, bringing up another game Studio Wildcard had developed: Atlas.

Remember Atlas? The open world pirate survival game was put to sea in December 2018 but had a rough launch, including performance and stability problems that led to heaps of negative reviews. It's still out there: you can buy it and play it, but unlike Ark: Survival Evolved, Atlas never recovered from its shaky start.

"It didn't really work out for us, because it had some insane tech, some crazy cool ideas, but as a game loop, it had a lot of problems," Stieglitz said. "Atlas is, like, crazy cool tech, but a lot of game design lessons about what not to do."

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Atlas took place in a huge, networked ocean world of stitched-together servers so players could sail from server to server as they battled each other and collected resources. It was a labor intensive game: logs from felled trees could only be carried one at a time, ships were built plank by plank, and defeat meant you basically had to start all over again.

"All these things sound very interesting in theory, but you put them all together, and what's the result? A game that's insanely punishing, and if you make one wrong turn you've just lost 50 hours of progress," Stieglitz said. "But what I did like about it was, I liked the sailing. I liked the water. I liked the physicality of the ships. Those things were satisfying."

That's why some parts of Atlas, at least in spirit, are being salvaged for Ark: Survival Ascended's upcoming Tides of Fortune DLC. This summer, Ark players will be able to build huge pirate ships and sail across simulated ocean physics in search of adventure.

"Ark's water is famously flat and uninteresting, and having network simulated ocean physics is cool," Jesse Rapczak said. "Not just for this, but also for modders and the general capability of the engine."

"We know how to work the water systems. We know how to work the physics systems, the networking systems to pull that off," Stieglitz said. "It builds on our expertise with those mechanics from Atlas, and we hope to distill it into a more accessible form than Atlas ever had."

They showed me some video—which I unfortunately can't show to you because it's a work in progress. But it looked pretty brilliant: the ocean isn't as glorious to behold as in a game like Sea of Thieves, but it's a major improvement over Ark's current water, sporting realistic looking waves, foamy wakes, and sunlight scattering off the rippled surface.

The ship in the video, and in the images on this page, is an asset from Atlas, so I haven't seen what your real ships will look like yet, but getting and maintaining those ships in Tides of Fortune will be easier than it was in Atlas, and crafting a replacement if it's sunk won't be a long, labor-intensive process.

"There'll still be a lot of customization. You'll be able to put attachments on, and cannons where you want, and build all kinds of other regular structures on it." Stieglitz said. And, of course, you'll be able to bring your dinosaurs on your ship. You may become a pirate, but it's still gonna be Ark.