Marathon: There Is No Coming Back From This Now

Summary

In a video detailing his thoughts on Bungie's upcoming game Marathon, Paul Tassi expresses concerns about the game's inevitable failure. Despite being built by the reputed creators of Destiny and Halo, Tassi criticizes the game's core concept as an extraction shooter with hero elements that doesn't appeal to either hardcore or casual gamers. Moreover, he highlights issues of art plagiarism, lack of compelling features, and failed marketing strategies which he believes cement the game's fate. Tassi hopes for improvement but is skeptical about Bungie's ability to turn things around given their current trajectory.

Highlights

• Paul Tassi doubts Marathon will succeed as a game due to its flawed core concept. 😬
• The game attempts to marry a wider casual focus with high-stakes extraction shooter mechanics, a risky formula. 🎯
• An art plagiarism scandal involving stolen art assets further tarnishes Marathon's reputation. 🎭
• The initial excitement from Marathon's trailer has faded following player impressions and feedback. 🎥
• Tassi criticizes Bungie's insufficient response to community issues and questionable decisions during livestreams. 🎤

Key Takeaways

• Marathon's concept as an extraction shooter doesn't appeal broadly, stuck between casual and hardcore player expectations. 🎮
• The game's plagued by an art plagiarism scandal, damaging its reputation before release. 🎨
• Failed marketing strategies and ill-planned public engagements signal potential disaster. 🚫
• The genre mix and uninspiring alpha feedback leave doubts about game appeal and player retention. 🎭
• Marathon's pricing and multiplayer dependency pose further accessibility issues. 💰

Overview

Paul Tassi's video about Marathon unveils a series of concerns that dampen the excitement surrounding Bungie's upcoming game. As the creators of Destiny, expectations were high, but Marathon's attempt to blend casual gaming with the intense dynamics of an extraction shooter seems misjudged. Tassi argues this mixture fails to captivate the broader gaming community, leaving the game in a precarious position of appealing neither to casual nor hardcore gamers.

The unveiling of subsequent issues, notably an art plagiarism scandal, has only added fuel to the fire of controversy surrounding Marathon. Tassi points out the repetition of such issues in Bungie's history, signaling a deeper problem within the company. This scandal, coupled with a muddled marketing approach and tepid alpha testing feedback, creates a bleak outlook for Marathon's release and reception.

As Tassi predicts, despite Bungie's established reputation, the uncertain execution of Marathon's innovative elements coupled with pervasive community disinterest poses serious challenges. He suggests that not even a potential delay could resolve these fundamental issues. With the game's launch approaching, questions linger about Bungie's ability to adapt and respond to player expectations meaningfully in time.

Chapters

• 00:00 - 00:30: Introduction The introduction sets the stage for a comprehensive discussion in the form of a marathon video. The speaker mentions having written a 1,600-word article on the topic but acknowledges that some individuals prefer consuming content through video rather than reading. The subject of the video is something the speaker has pondered for a long time.
• 00:30 - 01:30: Doubts about Marathon's Success The narrator expresses deep doubts about the success of a project or endeavor named 'Marathon'. Initially trying to rationalize their doubts, the narrator has come to the conclusion that the failure of Marathon is inevitable. They believe it's not a matter of 'if', but 'when' it will fail, pointing out that there are numerous reasons supporting this belief. The situation has prompted the narrator to create an outline detailing these reasons, which is unusual for them.
• 01:30 - 03:00: Game Concept Criticism In 'Game Concept Criticism,' the speaker expresses reluctance about being negative or harsh in their critique yet feels compelled to be honest. They discuss the perception that negativity might drive engagement, but argue that ongoing successful games, like Bungie's Destiny, generate sustained interest and content. The speaker mentions having friends in the industry, acknowledging the challenge of balancing criticism with personal relationships. Throughout, there's an underlying struggle to justify their critical perspective while maintaining integrity.
• 03:00 - 05:00: Gameplay Issues for Casual Players The chapter discusses the concept of extraction shooters and questions the decision to create a more casual-focused, wider-targeted version of this game genre. The author expresses skepticism about the obsession with extraction shooters and implies that the initial idea of the game was flawed.
• 05:00 - 06:00: Appeal to Hardcore vs Casual Gamers This chapter discusses the challenge of appealing to both hardcore and casual gamers. It points out that attempts to make a game more accessible to casual players can backfire if the game inherently caters to a niche audience. Specifically, it highlights a game that causes players to permanently lose their loot—a concept that doesn't align well with casual gaming styles. This kind of game design appeals more to hardcore gamers who are comfortable with risk and loss, rather than to a broad casual gaming market.
• 06:00 - 07:30: Conceptual Challenges and Feedback This chapter focuses on the challenges and feedback associated with the game's loot mechanics. It highlights the frustration of casual players who lose their loot and then need to purchase inferior items from vendors to continue competing. The chapter contrasts this with other games like hero shooters or Destiny PvP, where players have set loadouts or gear. The experience of losing loot is acknowledged as being part of the game for some players.
• 07:30 - 09:30: Hero Shooter Dynamics The chapter 'Hero Shooter Dynamics' discusses the challenges and limitations of attracting new players to the hero shooter genre. It highlights the intense, high-stakes nature of these games and suggests that while similar games have large audiences, the game 'Marathon' struggles to captivate players from existing popular games like 'Tarov'. The chapter delves into the competitive landscape and Bungie's desire to draw players from its competitors.
• 09:30 - 13:00: Live Stream Feedback and Issues The chapter discusses the opinions of avid Tarov players regarding a game called Marathon. The players consider Marathon to be too casual and not hardcore enough, with complaints focusing on aspects like time to kill, loot speed, and mechanics like double reviving. The chapter highlights the disconnect between the game's features and the expectations of hardcore players, questioning the intended audience for Marathon.
• 13:00 - 16:00: Marketing and Community Sentiment The chapter discusses the limited appeal of a casual extraction game among a niche group of users. While some people find it fun, the majority do not. The speaker expresses skepticism about the broad success of such games, emphasizing that the concept may not appeal to a large audience.
• 16:00 - 18:00: Game Pricing and Multiplayer Challenges The chapter discusses game pricing models and challenges faced in developing multiplayer games. The focus is on Bungie's contribution to the gaming industry with titles like Halo and Destiny, and how these games set a benchmark for gunplay mechanics.
• 18:00 - 23:00: Plagiarism Accusations The chapter discusses the reception of the game Marathon, which is described as having decent shooting mechanics but lacking a revolutionary feel. This impression led to some disappointment among players, and there is criticism of the decision to lift the NDA on the game's alpha version, which allowed negative narratives to spread. Overall, the chapter explores feelings of missed potential and public relations missteps regarding the game's release and community feedback.
• 23:00 - 26:30: Community and Developer Reactions The chapter discusses reactions from the community and developers regarding a game that has experienced leaks. The main issues highlighted are related to the unfinished state of the game, with skepticism about the potential improvement before its official launch in four months. A six-month difference exists between the current build and an alpha version. There's also a mention of the concept of a hero shooter extraction, which will be elaborated on later.
• 26:30 - 31:00: Delay and Cancellation Speculations The chapter discusses the unique elements of the game 'Marathon', particularly focusing on what differentiates it from other shooters. The game was supposed to incorporate heroes into the gameplay, a relatively novel concept for the genre. This approach has been compared to hero games like 'Overwatch' and 'Marvel Rivals'. However, the opinion expressed is that introducing heroes might not necessarily improve gameplay.
• 31:00 - 37:00: Predictions and Comparison to Other Games The chapter discusses game mechanics and class selections in a game where players tend to stack the most powerful classes available. It highlights the class 'Void' for its overpowered features like full invisibility and critiques such classes for having abilities that may not suit the traditional genre. Additionally, another class named 'Blackbird' is mentioned for its wall hack capability, emphasizing the high stakes of dying in this game, which results in losing everything.
• 37:00 - 45:00: Conclusion and Personal Reflection The chapter provides an analysis on the concept of balance within the context of an extraction shooter game. It raises concerns about the inherent issues associated with this game genre and discusses potential reasons why such games might not resonate with players. The focus is on the challenges that arise from the core concept of extraction shooters, suggesting that these might lead to long-term problems impacting player engagement and the overall success of the game. The reflection notes that some things are unchangeable, indicating a pessimistic view on the viability of certain design choices.

Marathon: There Is No Coming Back From This Now Transcription

• 00:00 - 00:30 All right, I'm back with another marathon video. This is a big one. Um, I wrote a 1,600word article about this earlier, but I know some people would prefer to watch a video instead of listening or instead of reading that. So, here we are. Um, this is about something I've been thinking about for a very long time. It's always been
• 00:30 - 01:00 in the back of my mind, but I've always tried to like, you know, rationalize it. Uh, then this week, I just I think it's done. I think it's cemented. Um, I do not think Marathon has a chance to be successful. And it's not for in my mind, it's not really if it's going to fail, but when it's going to fail. And I think there are just so many reasons for this that it's it's I had to write a whole outline, which I never do because I
• 01:00 - 01:30 don't really want to forget anything. And I this gives me no pleasure um to to say this and do this. Everyone's like, "Oh, you get clicks because of negativity, blah, blah, blah." You know what I get clicks from? Uh Bungie games that survive a really long time. So I always have something to write about uh as evidenced by Destiny. So, I also have friends working on it. I maybe I'm being overly brutal here, but this is what I think. And I was always trying to rationalize like maybe, you know, they
• 01:30 - 02:00 could change this and do this and it'll be okay, but I don't think it's going to be okay. Um, I think this starts with pretty much the entire concept of the game. I think this was a bad idea from the start that they wanted to make a more casual focused, you know, wider targeted extraction shooter. I do not know what everyone's current obsession with extraction shooters are. Uh, moving on from battle royale and things like that
• 02:00 - 02:30 because it seems pretty obvious to me that at least in this instance, trying to make it more casual has sort of not worked on any specific group of people outside of a pretty small niche. This is not really appealing to a large number of casual players because this is not really a concept of a game that is designed for casual players. It is a game where you will lose your loot and you will permanently lose your loot. You
• 02:30 - 03:00 can take out more loot from your vault and you will lose that loot. And if you do, you have to buy really crappy loot from a vendor and try and compete that way. So, if you are already a casual player that you know might be used to other games even like hero shooters or whatever or uh you know Destiny PvP or something like that where you have like a set loadout or gear you cultivate here you are never going to have a more casual version of just losing your loot and for some people that is part of the
• 03:00 - 03:30 fun. It puts high stakes on things, but I think that is why it is not necessarily something that can appeal to a widespread collection of new players. And I know what you're about to say is that, well, this is, you know, a lot of people do play this genre. But the problem there is marathon does not appeal to almost all of those people. If you have a bunch of Tarov people and Tarov is like super popular and Bungie would love to peel off people from that.
• 03:30 - 04:00 I have not heard any very avid Tarov players have much positive to say on Marathon. They think it's too casual. Um they are complaining about, you know, time to kill, uh how you loot, how fast you can loot, the fact that you can like double revive people from being down or in their their uh duffel bags. And generally speaking, it's just not really remotely hardcore enough for that group. So where this is aimed, I I'm not even sure. It seems like a very very small
• 04:00 - 04:30 sliver of a group that, you know, I certainly see people say it was fun. I'm not saying I saw zero people that thought it was fun, but it is not a large group from what I've seen. So conceptually from the start I don't think a casual uh you know looter not loo I'm so used to saying that casual uh extraction game is going to work it. So that leads to the next point where just past conceptually now we have
• 04:30 - 05:00 seen and some of us have played what this actually looks like. And I don't I mean I'm personally not very impressed, but I do I'm trying not to make this like just about me and my thoughts and like oh he doesn't like extraction shooters. I'm I'm trying to kind of gauge what I see as wider trends here. And while you know the gunplay might be pretty good. This is Bungie. This is uh the studio, you know, with at least a different version of people back then that made Halo. Um and then they made Destiny. I still believe Destiny is one
• 05:00 - 05:30 of the best feeling shooters that exists. And now they've made Marathon where shooting feels fine, but it does not feel particularly revolutionary or something be like you got to experience this. Um I just don't think that too many people were impressed by this. And you know, people are saying maybe it was a mistake to have the alpha stop being, you know, NDA and stuff, so there wouldn't be this narrative that got out. But I I you know, either way, there
• 05:30 - 06:00 would have been leaks. And I don't think that's like the main problem the game had or like the fact that it was not finished. I There's this group that says it's going to be just dramatically better by launch. And we are now four months away from launch. I think it was like a six months difference between the build and the alpha. And I refuse to believe that is possible in meaningful ways. I'll get back into that later. But another, you know, conceptual thing here and what it looked like in practice is the idea of a hero shooter extraction
• 06:00 - 06:30 game. This seems to be the thing that was going to differentiate Marathon from other shooters. Um, you know, outside of aesthetic and some different things. Uh, the idea here was that this isn't really something that happens in the genre. So, we're going to do some heroes and see, you know, how that changes gameplay. I think most would argue that it does not change things for the better. You know, I've certainly played hero games before. You know, Overwatch, Marvel Rivals, like there's, you know, a good
• 06:30 - 07:00 amount of games where that does work. But here, having these classes, what I found is like most people are just stacking what is the current best class. Very, very often that was void. And these classes have abilities that just don't seem like they have any place in the genre. Like Void has full invisibility, which seems crazy, and he can run around invisible with a shotgun in a game where if you die once, you lose everything. There is Blackbird that has wall hacks with uh her ping, which is again kind of very
• 07:00 - 07:30 contrary to the idea of stalking around in a extraction shooter. And like there are balance things that can be done here, but you know, balancing the stuff around an extraction shooter kind of just reminds you that like maybe there's a reason that this doesn't happen. And I do not think that landed too well with a lot of players. This is something you cannot change. You know, we're talking about things that I think are are long-term problems or why it will fail because the core concept is always going
• 07:30 - 08:00 to be a extraction shooter with heroes. and you can't get around that. You're not going to change it out of Heroes unless you spend years and years trying to rework the whole thing. It will not have that much time. Um, especially now we are way way too close to launch to change anything of significance. And that leads to the next thing. That live stream, man. I I mean, it was awful on so many levels. Obviously, it was deeply uncomfortable. I I mean Joe Cross looked just like he
• 08:00 - 08:30 hadn't slept in five years and like I imagine he did not sleep and then they went into like alpha feedback and it was just nothing. I mean pretty much it was like the most minor of things that they went through. They were focused on like a lot of balance changes and oh like the time to kill between shield levels is uh you know too high and looting we need to think about stack size and like we think backpacks are too readily available but
• 08:30 - 09:00 they'll spawn with more slots and like the craziest part was when when Joe was asked Joe Ziggler what was the biggest issue with the alpha that they came out of it with and what do they think they need to change about that. Then he went on to list like a bunch of issues that are not remotely the biggest issues and they're kind of just more minor things that I said and they're like oh enemy AI and like map events and like this is just
• 09:00 - 09:30 tiny tiny little stuff and like yes it's important for a shooter to have balance and things. It's also important to get people to play that shooter in the first place. I think it's pretty obvious to me that the biggest issue with the alpha was solos as in a lack of solos, a lack of it feeling good to play solo. Um, you know, this is not always true across games, but especially with the way Marathon worked. It's either like you play with a a stack team of your friends on comms and you will do very well most likely or you play in a group of three
• 09:30 - 10:00 with randoms. Sometimes that can go okay. Almost no one will ever be on coms. There are contrary objectives to, you know, playing. Someone has to go here. Someone has to go there for a bounty. And then you can't control just someone going off and and sticking around somewhere or looting too long and getting picked off. And then you will probably almost certainly die uh in a 3v2 or 3v1 or whatever it ends up being. You can load in solo and you'll be skullking around trying to get loot and
• 10:00 - 10:30 avoiding everybody and everything. I did that sometimes. It was not the most fun. It got pretty old very quickly. Um, and this is one issue like this and proximity chat and some of these other things that they just sort of like handwaved away. They're like, "Oh yeah, like we're thinking about that. That's a future plan." Like, "Sure." And it's like these are some of the most like player requested player, you know, problems that have been talked about and it's it it seems crazy that they're not
• 10:30 - 11:00 even addressing it. On top of that, what they need to do is tell people things that will get them excited about the game. And if the current stuff isn't, it's time to pull the mask off. We are four months from this alleged launch. Talk about the new heroes. Show those heroes off. Well, you can't because you can't show the game because you're stripping it of all stolen art assets. And uh or talk about these new maps. talk about when the new alien race is coming, what they're like as opposed to just being super secret about it. Um,
• 11:00 - 11:30 you know, there's been people have been like leaking essentially that there's this fourth map with like raidlike mechanics and like show that he talk about that. I get how in a normal situation you might want to keep that under wraps, but like buddy this is Defcon one or Defcon 5. I think it's Defcon 1. is the most severe one. And like it's time to bust that out and they're just not talking about anything. And I mean internally things are are in chaos. I wrote about this where they've
• 11:30 - 12:00 supposedly scrapped their whole marketing plan. Like they have to go back from scratch there. They're going to do a new trailer. They were going to open up pre-orders and then they're going to do a big open beta in August. All of that is in flux now. They got to redo the ad campaign. There's going to be other multiple play tests before launch and like the the how that's working is is unclear. So that's that's in chaos there. Uh and then so this that live stream if if we're looking at problems at present and at launch that gave me very very little hope for the future or the idea that Bungie and
• 12:00 - 12:30 Ziggler understand a lot of the main problems with this game. like, okay, we got a hero shooter, extraction shooter, but you know, it's there are other issues that are big that maybe you could fix that they do not seem terribly interested in fixing anytime soon. Um, then, you know, related to this is solos and the team thing and you need people on your team to play and make it fun. You know, this is going to be a game that costs 40 bucks, probably
• 12:30 - 13:00 40 bucks. I've heard that from a lot of people. A lot of these games cost 40 bucks. let's say 30 to get people more interested in it. You're It's not just that you have to decide whether it's worth it to play that. You're gonna have to convince two of your friends to play that or to buy that and then two of your friends to play that with you regularly. Uh that is difficult and that chops away a huge portion of you know the player base. I would say it's generally, you know, younger people, younger generations that have more time to do
• 13:00 - 13:30 stuff like that as opposed to people around my age, um, who are like the average age of gamers now. But those kids are playing Fortnite and Roblox and you're not going to get them to come play Marathon. So, just the design of how this game is supposed to be played and then sold is difficult there. Like I think there's all there's this long list of problems and at the end you're like well you got to pay $40 to experience the game. And I get that other uh extraction games are not free to play and cost money, but this especially is
• 13:30 - 14:00 going to be uh a problem for Marathon. Then we will get to the plagiarism. This is it. This is slitting the throat of the game. If all these things were, you know, body blows, this is kind of the last thing. And it's what it's done is, to recap here, this is a supposedly an ex spongy artist from years ago that took a bunch of art and designs from
• 14:00 - 14:30 this artist named uh Anti-real, who has like a very marathonish portfolio, and then over the years, you know, put those into the game development. And sure enough, there are I don't know a dozen at least um similar similar ones in the in the game. We only had two maps and like Antreel and their friends were going around trying to find them in those maps and like who knows about the maps we haven't seen yet. And it's just
• 14:30 - 15:00 so bad because first of all, this is like the fourth or fifth time this has happened. Budgie has uh at least has third party contractors stole a lot of fan art or designs. There was one that was like an actual Nerf item you could buy that was stolen and they've had to go back and like apologize and like change things and whatever. You know, this doesn't happen like super often in gaming and if it does, it doesn't happen five times. So the the process of
• 15:00 - 15:30 finding this stuff like this is is awful and it's it's clearly not working. One kind of side issue here was that, you know, you looked at this anti-real portfolio. It looks very marathon marathonish and then you have the revelation that Joe Cross and a bunch of members of the art team have been following this person for a long time. uh this created a narrative which I will admit I participated in for a lit little bit that like you know this was even broader than that and the style was you know so similar to this that you know
• 15:30 - 16:00 marathon doesn't have a unique style they took it from this it it is true that there are many many sources of inspiration I do believe cross when he says like oh we're inspired by these different forms of art and like you know you look at his work from 11 years ago you can see how these people could be like marathon heroes or something um but Like it doesn't matter really because perception is reality. And if you just saw this gallery in a vacuum, like you could be like, "Oh, that kind of looks like Marathon." And it but like the fact
• 16:00 - 16:30 that this is combined with the actual thievery like just full-on uh you know just onetoone theft that it also makes you cast an eye on that. So that narrative is is everywhere like you know maybe I shouldn't have participated myself but you you have to understand why it's a problem and why this whole thing happened in the first place like I didn't invent this and it's it's everywhere like people outside of this
• 16:30 - 17:00 whole community everyone's doing reaction videos to it and like Bungie's cooked marathon stole things and um you know now we've had this this meme where it's plagiarism will make me god which was spammed in the chat Uh people are now referring to Marathon as um art raiders instead of arc raiders which is I didn't even mention that but arc raiders really uh dug a knife into the alpha there. Um that's that name is going to stick like that is something
• 17:00 - 17:30 you cannot really escape and this is always going to be the game that stole art. And if you talk about its art style, how you like that, like the previous thing here was, okay, I don't really like Marathon, but that art style is really cool. Like, you know, I'd really like to see more of that. I'd like to play in a world like that. Now, it's just the plagiarism game. And even if it's one guy, if it's a dozen pieces of art or whatever, and even if the whole soul wasn't stolen from this one
• 17:30 - 18:00 person, what still happened is this stuff was stolen. This stuff remained in like Bungie's art collection or whatever all the way to the point where it made it into the literal final game in this alpha where you could hunt around the maps and find it. And that what was that process? How did they not catch that? And yes, the buck stops with Joe Cross. And so we can talk about Joe Cross's inspiration. This is on him in terms of, you know, whatever his process is of trying to avoid this specifically
• 18:00 - 18:30 happening that failed. He didn't do a good enough job like so he is culpable for that certainly. So I this is just destroyed community sentiment like everyone was kind of like teetering on edge like oh you know is this going to be okay like the alpha was like okay but you know it's I was hoping it would be better and some people were like okay well maybe you know I I could try this and it's it's pretty okay. I had some fun. Now it's just slammed with
• 18:30 - 19:00 this and the whole thing is tainted by this new thing to the point where you're not you're not really gonna avoid it. As I said like you will be the stolen art game from here and people cannot know really you know not really bring up its cool aesthetic anymore without this coming up. So, this is, you know, on top of this, that one stream really just sort of like closed the coffin because it applied to me that they just don't have any idea what the
• 19:00 - 19:30 community wants and any real timeline as to when it's going to be implemented and like what they should be talking about now. And then they address the art thievery and we don't know the resolution of that. They were asked if they like would hire Anti-real and I'm like, why would Anti-real want to work there? But they should pay them a ton of money obviously and you know it's gonna be a lot of work I imagine to run every single asset through the game. But guess what? You should have done that a long time ago and not when the game is coming
• 19:30 - 20:00 out in four months. Uh that is the next point. A delay. Everyone's like, "Well, the game should be delayed. Uh I've said this and you know it seems insane that this would come out in four months." Like no no way. that that doesn't make any sense. It you would be sending it out to fully die if you did that to the point where it would almost seem like a scam. Like the idea is that maybe Sony must have this come out no matter what or like Bungie executives needed to come
• 20:00 - 20:30 out so they can like vest their stock at the right time and leave. If because if you're if you say at this date like there is no earthly reason that that makes sense. That said, I don't think a delay fixes this. I don't think it fixes much of anything. I think there was not really a way to claw back community sentiment at this point. Like, yeah, we'll get a little further away from the plagiarism thing. And I don't know, it probably better if they just don't talk about the game for like 3 to 6 months and then come back and be like, we changed all this stuff. Like, cool. But
• 20:30 - 21:00 again, you're not changing the core concept. I still think your audience is very limited. And it is hard for me to see, you know, 3, six months, even a year that is going to significantly change this. This game has been worked on in some form or another for since like 2018, you know, and then maybe in earnest for like five years, but then, you know, Chris Barrett was out, they threw away his vision mostly and then Joe came with the heroes and stuff. So,
• 21:00 - 21:30 this version has really only been here for twoish years, but like I you know what what patience does Sony have at this point to throw how many millions into future development for this? You know, have Bungie just kind of limping along on Destiny Frontier stuff, which is probably not going to be as as profitable or uh widely played. So, it's like would Sony even tolerate that? So, one thing you can't do is you can't cancel the game. Too late for that.
• 21:30 - 22:00 Like, you got to launch it. You cannot cancel this game at the last minute. This is Batgirl. You're not going to write it off for taxes. Like, I don't think there's any way. Uh, and you're not going to significantly change. People are like, well, they should change this and add PVE. And, you know, I would love that. And Bungie employees would have loved that because that's what they told me uh behind the scenes and they repeatedly suggested that. And it's it didn't happen. It's not going to happen. Like that would take years more of development time to add some sort of sign significant PVE component here.
• 22:00 - 22:30 Again, I don't even think they could rip heroes out of it at this point. It's it's all too ingrained. So, all they can really do is maybe add more stuff like, oh, we have six maps and eight heroes at launch and like things like that. But I I don't think that's enough to turn things around. Um, you know, people people have been calling this Concord 2.0. I think people forget just how historic the the failure of Concord is. That had it did not hit 700 concurrent scene
• 22:30 - 23:00 players. It was shut down in two weeks. That said, I don't expect this to be a success. As I've been saying, it might not get 700, but it is going to get way way less than um you know, they're hoping for. I heard this needed to be in the top five of like NPD sales for the year if it's going to be a success or considered a success. Crazy. No way. There's no way. Um you another reason you're not going free to play. But like I that seems impossible to me. Um
• 23:00 - 23:30 it's I I don't even know what to say. So it will not be literally Concord, but it will still be bad. If it's not 700 players, maybe it's I I don't even want to predict, you know, how many thousands, maybe tens of thousands at launch. But what we saw in the alpha is interest dropped off very quick, both in terms of viewer metrics and player metrics. The uh player count went down
• 23:30 - 24:00 every single day in the alpha as opposed to the Arc Raiders one, which went up every single day. We had a lot lot of initial Twitch viewership with uh you know really really bigname streamer shooter players checking it out. Even some saying it was pretty cool. Guess what? Within 48 hours almost all of them stopped playing it. And within like four or five days this was getting it went from like 150,000 viewers to like a th00and to 3,000. So the interest was not there for this test.
• 24:00 - 24:30 Um, that said, I don't think Sony can afford to do something crazy like totally shut down Bungie or shut this game off after two weeks. Like, that would be so so embarrassing. Um, you know, Concord never really looked good like from the start, but Marathon at least had some sort of wind in its sales uh, initially. Everyone loved the initial trailer. It looked really awesome. This is Bungie making a shooter. Like, hell yeah, it's going to be great. Um, but now that it's here, it's too embarrassing for for Sony to to
• 24:30 - 25:00 shut down Bungie or can the game immediately. So, I could do a whole video on the results of this, but it's very bad for Bungie. It's very bad for Destiny. There would almost certainly be layoffs. Um, Sony will probably fully take over leadership. Hey, which may be a good thing. Uh, and it will, you know, I imagine it would be a shell of what it was because if if Marathon flops like Bungie is not in a good place and even though, you know, I don't think they'll shut down Bungie, I feel like it will be Bungie almost in name only. And in terms
• 25:00 - 25:30 of shutting the game off, I think they will give it some amount of time. You know, Marvel's Avengers got almost two years and you know, we we know what happened to that. Suicide Squad made content for a year. I would imagine this gets probably a year, you know, it that probably should just to see what they can do. Um, so no, it won't be Concord in that way. And if it did, that's like the most embarrassing thing that could happen to
• 25:30 - 26:00 Sony. I don't I don't like saying all this. I don't like being this harsh. As people have pointed out, I do have friends in the company. I do have friends working on the game. And someone asked me if I like burn bridges by doing this. and like, well, my sources are not too keen on what's happening either, and many of them share a lot of these thoughts. I'm just trying to present what I think is the reality of the situation. Did I personally enjoy playing Marathon? I don't know. Not really. I played for 20 hours. Probably
• 26:00 - 26:30 not going to get me into extraction shooters. I played Ark and I I thought it was, you know, good. It was better, but I'm probably still not going to get into extraction shooters. But that's just me. And I I very obviously been tracking the metrics of everybody, you know, target audience, alpha players, and now the wider gaming community that is sort of run with this controversy. And, you know, it's it's become kind of a laughingtock. And it's impossible for me not to read the writing on the wall. And I mean, who knows? Maybe I will be
• 26:30 - 27:00 totally wrong. Maybe this will do a Fallout 76 and a No Man's Sky. The difference here is that It's it's how much does Sony want to dump into this still? And I don't think Sony has the patience of a Bethesda who has other stuff going on who's going to make other Fallout games or uh Hello Games, which is only working on, you know, uh No Man's Sky all this time. It's it's a different situation. So, doing some sort of grand comeback or
• 27:00 - 27:30 whatever, I would worry about that being able to happen. And we see when that happens. We have your anthems, we have your Suicide Squads, you know, different genres, but that's sort of what happened. They tried they tried to make it work. Didn't work. So, no, not two weeks, not Concord, but not good. Uh, that's what I got to say for now. I said this in my article like if good I'm going to keep covering it. If good things happen with Marathon, I will write about good things. If bad things happen about Marathon, I will write
• 27:30 - 28:00 about those bad things. There are much more bad things than there are good things at the moment. So, if I'm being negative, that's why uh you know, we'll we'll see what happens next. I imagine they're going to go dark for some period of time. It's clear now they shouldn't have done that stream. Like even if it felt like, oh, you're being cowards, they shouldn't have done that stream. They should have issued a really long statement about the art theft and like what they're going to do, but that was one of the most uncomfortable streams I've ever seen in my life. So, not great. I don't know. Let me know your
• 28:00 - 28:30 thoughts. This article I wrote is getting viral online to say the least with everyone dumping their takes in and almost everyone sort of agreeing with it. Uh and you know if you guys don't feel free to let me know that's fine. Everyone can have their opinions. I just I've just finally kind of reached the top of the hill where it's like I I don't see it I can't see it happening. So anyway uh thanks for watching and I'll talk to you soon. Take care.