Home Gaming Dinosaur-filled survival game ARK: Survival Evolved sells a million copies in under a month

Dinosaur-filled survival game ARK: Survival Evolved sells a million copies in under a month

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Ark

Gamers seem to love dinosaurs, whether they’re cobbled together out of sentient machinery in Horizon Zero Dawn or the great big terrible lizards we’ve been brought up to believe they were. Open world dinosaur survival adventure game ARK: Survival Evolved has proven just how much gamers crave interacting with digital dinosaurs, by becoming the latest early access survival game to sell over a million copies on Steam despite not technically being a finished game.

It took just under a month of it being available for it to hit that milestone, joining games like DayZ, Rust, Don’t Starve and The Forest in the upper echelons of early access open-world survival.

Its release timing could not have been better, coinciding nicely with the fever-pitch anticipation for Jurassic World. That was certainly a factor in its success, says developer Studio Wildcard’s Jesse Rapczak, who serves as co-creative director on ARK: Survival Evolved.

“[With] the timing of Jurassic World, dinosaurs are really big right now, so that [release timing] was kind of intentional. We wanted to be out and be the biggest dinosaur game around summertime,” he said.

Ark2

But it wasn’t the only thing drawing people to a game that lets you ride on dinosaur’s backs.

“A lot of people have been streaming the game during this time, it seems like it’s a very streamable game. People have a lot of fun, they’re doing all sorts of stuff in the game, and I think that’s kept it at the top of people’s playlists. They see a lot of their friends doing fun stuff in the game when they’re playing together,” he continued. “That’s really one of the things we designed the game for, with our tribe system, and I think a lot of people sharing the news of the game and sharing all the fun they’re having has helped the world spread.”

And while the game is often branded as Rust with Dinosaurs, its developers believe it has its own unique flavour, largely thanks to its emphasis on co-operartion and adventuring as opposed to straight out survival.

“We’re very careful to call Ark an ‘open world adventure game,’ because it’s not just about survival,” says Widcard’s Doug Kennedy “And I don’t think it’s a very deep comparison [with Rust], to be honest. Ark has a lot of solo play that’s available and that will become more available over Early Access. There’s a lot of adventure and discovery in the game, attaining creatures and creating pets and having that AI that’s in the game with you. I think it’s a little bit of a deeper experience than a lot of the survival games that are out there right now.”

 

“One of the reasons that this game is different from other survival games is that it really encourages cooperation and exploration,” Kennedy added. “A lot of the other survival games out there aren’t really aimed at cooperating. They’re really aimed at solo survival skills, where with this game, you can do a lot of things with a village or a tribe or a group that you just can’t do alone.”

If this sort of thing tickles you – and honestly, it’s got dinosaurs in it so it should – you can pick it up from Steam at the moment for a reduced price; $25 instead of $30.

Last Updated: July 3, 2015

45 Comments

  1. Pieter Kruger

    July 3, 2015 at 07:49

    Are Dinosaurs the new Zombies? Zombie Dinosaurs coming soon!????

    Reply

  2. Alien Emperor Trevor

    July 3, 2015 at 07:59

    Dinosnores. 😛

    But only because I couldn’t think of a good way to combine “meh” & “dinosaur”.

    Reply

    • Admiral Chief's Adventure

      July 3, 2015 at 08:00

      xD

      Reply

    • Admiral Chief's Adventure

      July 3, 2015 at 08:00

      They could be from the MEHstatious period?

      Reply

    • GooseZA

      July 3, 2015 at 08:02

      Survival Mehvolved?

      Reply

    • RinceThis

      July 3, 2015 at 08:06

      Mehivour?

      Reply

    • HairyEwok

      July 3, 2015 at 08:25

      Mehnosaurs?

      Reply

    • Matthew Holliday

      July 3, 2015 at 10:16

      ive been spreading them between biscuits and roasting them on a fire.
      Dinosmores.

      Reply

  3. RinceThis

    July 3, 2015 at 08:05

    • Alien Emperor Trevor

      July 3, 2015 at 08:14

      Hey, come now. They had to do something with their Batman refunds.

      Reply

      • RinceThis

        July 3, 2015 at 08:23

        HAHAHAHA!

        Reply

      • HairyEwok

        July 3, 2015 at 08:27

        And they will refund this too as soon as they see their struggling to run the game on medium XD. I wonder how many refunds you’re allowed to make in a set period of time, like a week.

        Reply

      • Deceased

        July 3, 2015 at 10:37

        Up up up you go XD

        Reply

  4. HairyEwok

    July 3, 2015 at 08:25

    I want to get this but honestly hearing all the smack about optimization and how a Titan X is struggling to run the game on epic 1080p scares the hell out of me. My 780 will struggle so much more then and also this game looks horrific from medium downwards.

    Reply

    • Kromas,powered by windows 10.

      July 3, 2015 at 09:13

      Game gets a fps improvement at least once a week. My R9290x could barely get to 20fps on launch medium settings. I now run 45fps stable on epic settings.

      Well worth it. I have not had this much fun in a survival game since the original DayZ mod.

      Reply

      • HairyEwok

        July 3, 2015 at 11:22

        So that being said my GTX 780 should run this game stable 40FPS+ at high settings then?

        Reply

        • Kromas,powered by windows 10.

          July 3, 2015 at 11:29

          60FPS at high with shadows lowered to medium and scaling dropped to 1.

          Then again everyone has different experiences with it.

          Reply

  5. Ottokie

    July 3, 2015 at 08:29

    Yea its a little un-optimized, but the developers are bringing patches though that total more in 14 days than DayZ in 2 years. The game now runs on my 680 at 30fps after the latest GPU patches (so Xbox One owners will not see any difference).

    The game is a tremendous time sink and I love every minute spent in game 😛

    Reply

    • HairyEwok

      July 3, 2015 at 08:32

      I’ll get the game if I can tame a dinosaur with. I’ll even sing a song.
      Do you wanna tame a dino, come on let’s go and tame…..

      Reply

      • Ottokie

        July 3, 2015 at 08:34

        I just hum the Jurassic park song, but we can do it your way too xD

        Reply

        • HairyEwok

          July 3, 2015 at 08:44

          Do you play on SP and MP or just SP. If on MP hows the servers? Stable?

          Reply

          • Kromas,powered by windows 10.

            July 3, 2015 at 09:15

            Depends on amount of players. Huge improvements have been made though. I run my own server and only get a bit of lag past the 50 player mark.

          • HairyEwok

            July 3, 2015 at 11:23

            I’m going to get the game this afternoon. Hopefully the dl size isn’t too big.

          • Kromas,powered by windows 10.

            July 3, 2015 at 11:27

            was 6gb a month ago. I hear it is 15gb already 😛

            Still worth it.

          • Ottokie

            July 3, 2015 at 10:37

            I play MP over 2 servers, one being the server of Kromas. PvE and PvP. What server I join depends on how I feel at that moment. Server stability vary a bit depending on total players and density of structures.

        • Kromas,powered by windows 10.

          July 3, 2015 at 09:16

          I prefer the pokemon theme.

          Gotta Catch ’em ALL!

          Reply

          • Ottokie

            July 3, 2015 at 10:38

            xD

            I saw a big update last night. Might be the round 2 of GPU optimizations.

          • Kromas,powered by windows 10.

            July 3, 2015 at 10:51

            it was. 10% perf gains on shader 4 as well as more reworking of foilage decals as well as loading perf increase

            Running at 45FPS everything turned to epic cept distance shadowing cause of flickering shadows.

          • Ottokie

            July 3, 2015 at 11:51

            My 980 Ti arrives 14 July, maybe then I can push things a bit to get 50 fps with good quality textures.

    • Kromas,powered by windows 10.

      July 3, 2015 at 09:15

      Just did a settings tweak on my servers cause my regulars want harder dinos. Most of our bases are now surrounded by very very aggressive wild animals. Well worth it. 🙂

      Reply

      • Matthew Holliday

        July 3, 2015 at 10:21

        server details?
        might drop my SP character for some online this weekend

        Reply

    • Matthew Holliday

      July 3, 2015 at 10:19

      i dropped some of the settings down and am getting a pretty solid 60 with my 970.

      the game sucks you in, started playing last night and got to level 30 befor heading to bed, had no idea where the time went.
      and that was even without taming dinos, got a bug where the dinos health doesnt drop and the taming bar doesnt work =/

      Reply

  6. Kromas,powered by windows 10.

    July 3, 2015 at 09:11

    Rust with Dinos is already waaayyyy better than Rust due to the fact that it has PVE content!

    Reply

  7. DragonSpirit009

    July 3, 2015 at 09:15

    Was that a dragon at the end? O.o Or a really large dino bat?

    Reply

    • Kromas,powered by windows 10.

      July 3, 2015 at 09:17

      Dragon. Unlike other survival games this one has actual end game content. You get to summon bosses and fight them.

      Dragon not available for summoning yet. Just a massive spider.

      Reply

      • loftie

        July 3, 2015 at 09:19

        ..which can also be tamed!

        Reply

      • DragonSpirit009

        July 3, 2015 at 09:19

        Ah interesting….Well clearly I’m sold now XD

        Reply

  8. b1nd3r

    July 3, 2015 at 11:38

    almost 400 hours on this game, Still not one bit of regret for purchasing an early access game. This is more complete than almost every AAA title last year 😛

    Reply

    • R4ziel

      July 3, 2015 at 12:16

      I came here to make this comment. The feel of this game is pretty much complete at this stage, the content is all there and is still improving which is spectacular. I havent had this much fun in any of the other early access games ive played and even some AAA titles.
      There are issues yes, but thats expected of Early Access, they are minimal though and sometimes even fun to witness (helium balloon bronco anyone).
      The optimization is all over the forums and if you read that I would also not buy the game, but actually playing it I can tell you that every update they release it just gets better and better. It is definitely playable in the current state and a crapload of fun.
      If anyone is on the wire with buying this, I would definitely say that if you enjoy survival games in general (DayZ, H1Z1 etc) this is the best game of them all and it puts all the previous ones to shame.

      Reply

      • b1nd3r

        July 3, 2015 at 13:02

        Completely agree even though you on crak 😉 this game has converted my friend who only plays dota csgo etc competitive games only, he msg`d me this morning at 5am to tell me he finally completed his wall and is busy taming shit, he played all night >.<

        Reply

        • R4ziel

          July 3, 2015 at 13:07

          Hehe but CraK is good for you, wouldnt you agree? We try to be at least XD
          Raven and I went exploring a bit last night and ran into the Apes, they almost attacked us for scouting their base, and then they saw we were from CraK so they asked us what we needed (we were halfway across the map). We sat and chatted to the okes a bit and went off on our merry way, looks like CraK is not the villains people try to make us out to be last week 🙂

          Reply

  9. Meh

    August 16, 2015 at 10:32

    I wonder how many of those copies were returned to shelf after the 24h purchase because this game sucks monkey balls. I have seen allot of early access stuff, this title reeks of dino droppings. Imo Orion Prelude is a much better game, its a horde fest that drops over the top action for simple shooter mechanics. Hell even Goat Simulator is a better game.

    Reply

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