Primeval time

Immediately after Ark’s release into the wild, it dominated Twitch’s most-viewed streams, rarely slipping from the top ten for a few weeks. For a game that demands more of communities than lone survivors, such willingness by players to broadcast their experience is a publicist’s dream – word-of-mouth marketing on a global scale. Ark’s time as the go-to material for streamers wasn’t all providence, of course: a sign of the times, Studio Wildcard made the first move, corralling select streamers for prelaunch coverage that encouraged the habit. “It’s been great for us,” Rapczak says. “Our development team will pop in and get feedback and talk to those streamers as well. We’ve built fun relationships with those guys; we really enjoy that kind of back and forth.”