Digital Media Concepts/ARK: Survival Evolved

ARK: Survival Evolved is an open world survival based video game developed by Studio Wildcard, with help from Instinct Games, Virtual Basement, and Efecto Studios. The game was released in early access on June 2, 2015 only being available on steam. You start off stranded on an island filled with a variety of different creatures from dinosaur to prehistoric animals, play in a third person or first person perspective as you survive alone or with others against the dangers the island has to offer. You can tame creatures, craft weapons, and build bases with defenses to help you survive.

Creatures
The creatures in ARK: Survival Evolved are one of the defining features to the game, there are a lot of different creatures like dinosaurs, prehistoric species, and fantasy creatures. A majority of the creatures can be tamed to fight by your side and help you in survival. Taming creatures can be essential to your survival with each of them having their own unique features when tamed such as help you gather resources/food, hunt by your side, or travel the map on their back.

Exploring
There are a few different maps the game has all having discoveries to be made while exploring. There are multiple caves, different creatures in different regions, and different resources around the map. Caves are difficult but contain rewards like new armor or weapons, and at the end of each cave is an artifact that is required for summoning the main bosses of the game.

customization
When starting the game you can choose to play as male or female and have the ability to customize your character’s physical features such as hair, skin, and body. There are other customization options while in game with armor and weapon cosmetics. Cosmetics can be unlocked through completing achievements, you can get a variety of cosmetics from item skins to new hair styles.

Engrams/Leveling
When starting the game you’ll notice you are able to craft only a couple items, to get new craftables you need to gain engram points which can be used to unlock different item recipes. Leveling up also gives you engram points and the ability to choose which skill you can upgrade such as health or damage. Being a higher level gives you accessibility to new craftables and gives an overall advantage of having a stronger character to have more survivability. The creatures you can tame also have leveling you making them more useful for combat situations or resource gathering. You can gain experience for leveling through either gathering resources, crafting, or killing creatures.

Multiplayer
There are a few ways to play multiplayer there are pvp and pve servers. PVP makes the game more difficult making you have to worry about other players coming to kill you or raid your base. You can create tribes with other players to survive, having a bigger tribe gives you an advantage over tribes with a smaller number of players. You can build bases and create defenses to fend off other players trying to raid your base. In PVE servers you can play the game with others not having to worry about your base being broken into and looted. Tribe up with players and play through the game against the environment.

Development
October 14, 2014 was the start of development and was released in early access on steam on June 2, 2015. Console editions of the game were released on later dates, releasing on Xbox first on December 16, 2015 then almost a year later was released on playstation on December 6, 2016. Through the stage of early access the developers had been adding new content along with bug fixes and optimization. ARK Survival Evolved went out of early access on August 29, 2017 coming out with the standard edition and explorers edition of the game. Later down the line they released mobile versions of the game on Android and IOS on June 14, 2018. The game was eventually released on nintendo switch as well on November 30, 2018.

DLC
There has been multiple DLC that has been released for ARK: Survival Evolved. There are two season passes for the game, the first one containing three of the games’ paid DLC, ARK Scorched Earth, ARK: Aberration, and ARK: Extinction. The second season pass containing a two part story for the game’s lore. DLC in ARK: Survival Evolved all come with a new map, new creatures, and new items for a new challenge for the player to take on. When the first DLC was released, the game got a lot of backlash due to the game not being out of early access with a lot of work to be done, a lot of negative reviews were made after the release of the DLC.