Arc Raiders hasn't been out for more than a week yet, and already, it's being touted as one of the most accessible and enjoyable extractions shooters ever made. In fact, a lot of players, including yours truly, would put it right at the very top of that looter-shooter pyramid, and not without good reason. The game is ridiculously fun, ultra-optimized, downright gorgeous, with a thriving and camaraderie-heavy community — what else do you need?

Every single run in the game is eventful, to say the very least, and you bring something new with you every time, be it an inventory full of loot or a broken jaw and a learning experience. What you never fail to get, however, is the rush of pure fun that every round of Arc Raiders is. Sadly, that's exactly the part that I seem to have ruined for myself, and I'm hoping you don't make the same mistake.

My curiosity spoiled my own Arc Raiders experience

I now know too much for my own good

Considering how brilliant the game's Tech Test and Server Slam betas were prior to release, I couldn't help but put the game on my watchlist in more ways than one. Not only did I wishlist the game and get my friends to pre-order it, I also ended up consuming Arc Raiders content on YouTube — copious amounts of it. It started off pretty simple at first, with a few interesting facts about how the game uses AI to train its in-game AI, or how it went through development hell, being a PvE game first before turning into a full-blown PvPvE adventure over the course of a six-year development cycle.

However, I soon found myself watching videos about "tips and tricks", which soon snowballed into where to go, what to loot, and how I could "maximize my loot" during every single run. On paper, that sounds like something you'd want to do and learn, but in reality, all it did was take away a lot of crucial first experiences that I otherwise would've been blown away by. And the only one to blame? The man in the mirror.

My greed got the better of me

Money-collecting tips robbed me of the joy of discovering it myself

One of the first experiences I ended up ruining for myself in Arc Raiders was a money run. As is the case with any extraction shooter, you decide before the match starts what kind of run you want it to be, and money is an important aspect in the game if you want to stay stocked up on weapons and utilities in the early goings. So, a video I watched told me where I needed to go, which lockers I needed to raid, and how it would end up getting me a rather remarkable amount of in-game money with just a couple of raids. Did it work? Absolutely it did.

Here's the terrible part, though. As I dropped into the map with a friend of mine, I took him to the same spot, but this time, I just hung around after leading him into the direction of those same lockers that carried fantastic and valuable loot. The result? Cackles and guffaws from his mic as he couldn't believe his luck in chancing upon an amazing area with such high-level loot to line his pockets with. It was in that moment that I realized I'd robbed my own self of a similar experience, of chancing upon amazing loot like this, by watching the entire thing online first.

This mistake ruined the fun for my friend, too

I wasn't the only one affected by my need to know ahead

Perhaps the worst thing about my need to know what lies ahead, or how to be "most efficient" with my time while playing the game, any game, is how it affected my friend. We both began playing the game on October 30 when it launched, and yet, just two days later, we ran into a situation where he wished to check out a rather interesting looking structure at the top of a cliff, on the edge of the map. I, on the other hand, wanted to get some tools from a nearby scrapyard, and told him "we" need to go there instead.

A scrapyard of rubber tires and decaying vans felt more important than checking out a really cool-looking outpost at the very edge of the map, and since I already knew it didn't have good loot, I just told it to my friend willy-nilly. An audible groan came from his mic and he told me I was ruining the fun for him.

The same thing happened when we unlocked the final map (currently) in the game — The Blue Gate. It unlocks after eighteen whole runs in the game, and it's also the most gorgeous map, with grasslands, misty mountains, and beautiful landscapes. As we dropped into The Blue Gate, my friend couldn't help but audibly wonder at and appreciate this new map. Meanwhile, I'd seen the map on YouTube countless times before, because once I started down the Streamer route, the algorithm decided to make me watch everything about the game. I was almost envious because he was having an experience that I stole from my own self, with nobody to blame but my own actions.

There's a joy of discovery even in the little things

I began 'knowing' things ahead of turn

The enemy AI in Arc Raiders is insanely dangerous, and not without good reason. After all, you can't have the human race being driven underground unless the enemy is overwhelmingly powerful. So, on day one, when we kept getting knocked out by the ARC and going back empty-handed, it was exhilarating. On day two, however, running into ARC was a different experience. My friend continued to try and hide, but I was a lot more confident simply because I already knew that the gun I'd chosen would be more effective. I knew that I had to aim at the thrusters, and that if they came close, I could climb atop the flying drones and hammer them down without damage.

Within the span of a couple of days, I had suddenly become a more "experienced" raider, and that wasn't from real experience. Instead, it just came from watching "things you didn't know you could do" videos about the game. So, when I started telling my friend to save materials for later, or to kite enemies in a certain manner, or when I stopped him from using a valuable Lure Grenade by telling him outright what it does, he snapped. Not angrily, but honestly.

He told me I was ruining it for him, because I was always trying to get ahead even though we'd started at the same time. If he'd thrown the ARC Lure Grenade at his own feet, he'd have died, but it would also have become a core memory — one I simply didn't let happen. That's the essence of a game like Arc Raiders — once you replace uncertainty with memorized loot routes and meta builds, you stop playing and start replicating.

I didn't realize it until I saw how much joy my friend was still having in places I'd already "studied."

So, should one completely avoid consuming any content?

After all, any game you like is one you want to watch, too

Look, it's a tough line to tread, and I'm definitely not saying that you shouldn't pick up a few tips and tricks, at least. Knowing how to manage your stamina, knowing to shoot thrusters on the ARC, or that you can switch shoulders, or even how you can inventory manage on the fly if you run into more nice stuff you didn't account for — I think that's all well and good, and fair game. These things are definitely useful and make your overall experience better and smoother.

But starting to memorize "money runs", "extraction tricks", and "loot-rich spawns" is where I believe the line gets crossed. One video even suggested using C4 at extract elevators to cheese other players, and while I never stooped that low, I couldn't stop thinking about the thousands who might have. That's not mastery of the game at all, no. It's just missing the point.

It's a lesson I learned too late

A week after launch, Arc Raiders gave me some pretty highs with its gameplay loop and world-building, and some other great moments with a friend where I knew I was operating out of a place of diminished returns since I'd already stolen the feeling of wonder from myself. Now, I've stopped, and the game feels like it's opening itself back up to me.

Instead of a head start, I was getting a hollow, rehearsed experience, instead, and that's now a thing of the past. It's only been a week, and I'm sure that streamers and YouTubers whose livelihood it is to absolutely pull apart a game are making more videos on where to go and what loot to find, but I'm leaving all of that wonder to myself. Come November, when the new map releases, I'll be glad to go into it without knowing a single damn thing, and I might lose a lot of my high-level loot, but the highest-level memories I'll get out of it will be worth a hundred times that loot, and then some.