It’s from appropriately humble beginnings that you will cut your teeth in ARK: Survival Evolved. Though borne of the same mould as many of its survivalist contemporaries, ARK’s modern-upon-Mesozoic slant quickly captures the imagination through a muddied fiction that allows rocket launchers and raptors to coexist in a land free of sense. It’s hardly a survival game that leans on grit and semi-realism then, instead casting its net upon those with far more tyrannical expectations. For myself and two other friends, ARK simply represented another cooperative game to get lost in.
Yet faster than a roving pack of famished Allosaurs, my introduction to ARK had begun without any detraction from the savagery the game so readily teases. Even despite the player-versus-player ruleset, shooting on sight isn’t a surety as many prefer to sequester themselves away from it all. But here I was some ten minutes into my journey, picked up between the sharpened talons of a Pterodactyl, dropped into the confines of a fortified metal base and infected with a contagion by way of blood transfusion as I lay naked and unconscious on the floor. By the grace of their benevolence, my captors eventually released me back to the sanctity of my thatch shack, but by then the sense of accomplishment for having built it had been replaced by disillusionment as I deliberated over starting anew. My character coughed himself to sleep and never woke again. I resolved to try once more in a less hostile environment.
Having begun their journey a week before my arrival, my two fellow tribesmen already boasted a stone abode with a perimeter fence and plenty of supplies by the time that I had rejoined them. I divulged what had happened to me the last time that I played, but none of what I had recounted really seemed to resonate amidst the offsetting climate of the new server that we all found ourselves a part of. According to them, the lay of the land in ‘Server 8’ was that the alpha tribe had strong-armed its competitors into servitude, and thereby had enough collective resources to eviscerate any who crossed their path. For those players, the goal of survival within the survival game had long since been accomplished. All that was left to do was preside over a barren land and slowly chip away at the remaining populace.
“We don’t raid without cause” typed one of the underlings in a profanity-laden text across the global chat. A simple tour of the grounds near our house showed evidence to the contrary – it was a boneyard of crushed stone and house husks razed to the ground long before we had ever set foot on the server. And the perpetrators were those who encased themselves in an impenetrable metal fortress on a hill to the north, a headquarters defended by automated turrets and ballistae. Our sharpened spears and weaponised crocodiles were of little match for their guns and explosives. An unprovoked assault was soon sure to come.
Perpetuating the race for supremacy in ARK was a levelling system that valued time spent above all else. In ARK, you learn new skills through selecting engrams, which you unlock with points that are awarded via a level-up. What engram you choose to utilise is up to you, but you’ll still be growing in parallel to every other player on the server in a race to see who can reach the tech section first and craft a rocket launcher. Pursuits to the contrary are fleeting when increased manpower means a faster ascent towards some of the game-changing technological advancements. And whoever should reach that point first, whoever clambers up the mountain before all others, has the power to impose their will on this digital kingdom.
The likelihood then is that before long, a machine-gun toting knight riding atop a Tyrannosaurus Rex will pass by your modest accommodation and relieve you of your entire inventory with very little effort, all before trudging back into the murk of the forest completely unchecked. From the moment you first set foot in a new server, you become an unwilling part in a ceaseless arms race. Walking on eggshells will only take you so far in the realms of ARK’s densely inhabited PvP lands. A week of successive log-ins onto the same server only brought about the same process happening over and over – the big clan stepped on the small clan until the small clan quit. No offer to work together, no chance of lending a hand to the new guys. Eventually you’ll be discovered, and then they’ll know where you keep your stuff when you log out for the night.
Although the amassing of wares and the growth of your own little empire is but one of the unwritten goals of ARK, another is the battling of AI-controlled bosses that you may challenge when you reach certain level milestones. Some of the most punishing encounters that the ARK has to offer, these antagonists reside within floating metallic obelisks that are visible from any point on the island, with the conquest of any one of them a victory worth celebrating. Outside of our local obelisk though wasn’t the gateway to a fight worth steeling ourselves for, but instead an automated machine gun turret placed by one of the larger tribes. For in their quest for dominance, they had opted to neuter one of the games more interesting mechanics and keep it for themselves. Another turret placed next to the largest source of metal in the land had finally prevented us from growing our homestead any further. Our progress had ceased, not entirely through game design issues, but through players exploiting them for their own gain. It took only a week for our tribe to mutually agree that this ARK had become completely inhospitable.
The wonderfully literal gatekeeping that occurred on our ARK server is unlike anything I’ve experienced in a game before. It was a PvP world, sure, yet at no point did any opportunity to branch out and become a part of a cooperative multiplayer environment present itself. Any chance of an alliance was spurned and any alleged infractions punished with theft and slaughter. Becoming the first tribe to reach the technological upgrades was a tipping point. Once had you managed to do that, you had accomplished the unwritten objective of all objectives within ARK – maintaining the hierarchy. Everything else is just survival, and survival is as easy as you choose to make it.
Before finally freeing ourselves of the server, a happening upon a tribe in the chat feed with a mutual understanding of the Server 8’s issues lead to an opportunity for us to divulge a parting gift. He and his tribe transferred out of the server on the cusp of being slaughtered riding the backs of a few tamed Pteranodons that we had given them. They escaped just in time. Our characters however were doomed, and so instead we exited in a way that evoked all the courage and camaraderie befitting of our horrid choice of server – we broke into the neighbouring house of those who had spurned our alliance and killed them where they slept. No longer exists the mystery surrounding the canonical purpose of the ARK – it’s a breeding ground for the manic. In hindsight, the dinosaurs and guns on the cover should have been a dead giveaway.