From Tuncer Deniz ...

Now there's a name I haven't heard in a long time.

https://xcancel.com/i/article/2070544328158838933

Good stories in there. I've been accused more than once of being a shill for Bungie. I do tend to see the glass as half full. I'm with Tuncer, though. Mourning what could be the end while holding out hope that Bungie can rediscover itself.

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There's an old inside joke about how @Bungie got its name. Only a handful of us ever knew the real story behind it. We called it Death By Bungie. I'm not going to spoil it here.

It's the one where the two guys wash up onto an isolated Island, and the natives that find them give them a choice. Be killed, or submit to 'Bungie'. First guy says how bad can it be, give me 'Bungie'.

What they do to him is very NSFW, then he's free to go.

Second guy says 'that was horrendous, I'll take death'. The native chief goes 'very well you shall have death. DEATH… BY BUNGIE"

I remember when the new Quake came out. I told Jason Jones about it and he agreed to come over and check it out. The whole team crowded around the screen. Jason lasted about thirty seconds and left. Everyone else kept playing. I asked him about it later. His answer was simple. Bungie doesn't copy other people's games. They make their own.

That was the whole company in one sentence.

Which is why the new Marathon hit me the way it did. I watched the trailer and my heart sank. No single player. An extraction shooter. The exact genre everyone else was already piling into. The Jason Jones I knew would have walked out in thirty seconds.

[image]

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See, that’s the anecdote that kinda just made me sigh and roll my eyes. I think he’s being awfully reductive.

Because for as much as he seems to not like it, Marathon is the thing I play and say “Now that’s fucking cool!”

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See, that’s the anecdote that kinda just made me sigh and roll my eyes. I think he’s being awfully reductive.

Because for as much as he seems to not like it, Marathon is the thing I play and say “Now that’s fucking cool!”

Weird. I’m not alone in my reaction to Marathon being “This is… hella lame.” Judging by the numbers the people who think it’s fucking cool are in the minority.

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I mean, it's not like Halo had ever been bigger than CoD...

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As a Marathon non-player myself, it’s not that I avoid the game because it looks “lame”, but rather because it isn’t the type of experience I’m looking for at this point in my life. A hardcore PvP-only online shooter with high stakes has a very niche built-in audience.

With how hard things have gotten out there, I don’t know that very many people are looking for gaming experiences that add even more stress to their lives.

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As a Marathon non-player myself, it’s not that I avoid the game because it looks “lame”, but rather because it isn’t the type of experience I’m looking for at this point in my life. A hardcore PvP-only online shooter with high stakes has a very niche built-in audience.

With how hard things have gotten out there, I don’t know that very many people are looking for gaming experiences that add even more stress to their lives.

I'm not here to tell you Marathon is a relaxing day on the lake, but it's astonishing to me how many times I see someone (this is not personal to Coaxkez) who says some variation of "Marathon is not for me, because I don't like [description that's not really a good match to Marathon]"

It's not PVP only. In fact, the whole point of it is that it is PvPvE (and that's even in the time before several recent and future changes to shift that balance toward PvE. And the stakes are…pretty low. You can (I do) have a good time running only free kits that get equipped onto your character with a single click. There is a mode designed to only last about 15 minutes if you don't even want to invest that much time. You can gear up, and lose it, but there's very little consequence to that gear loss. Unlike, say Destiny, there are very few activities from which you are excluded for not having grinded for hours hoping for the right gear.
It is an Online shooter, but in the world of online shooters it's not that hardcore. The most popular format for shooters is Battle Royale. Every match of that type of game starts with a huge number of players and only one team (1-3 people) will avoid loss and the only way to define success is by beating others. THAT'S hardcore. I know. I played APEX between D2 and Marathon. Marathon lets the entire map extract, if they want to. Extraction can happen multiple times at locations all over the map. You can choose to co-operate and your personality becomes part of the game. You can make progress on contracts, or gather resources and never fight anyone. That is an intended option. But it's not an arena deathmatch, so it's got some consequence to death. I'd say it is in the middle.

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Marathon lets the entire map extract, if they want to. Extraction can happen multiple times at locations all over the map. You can choose to co-operate and your personality becomes part of the game. You can make progress on contracts, or gather resources and never fight anyone. That is an intended option. But it's not an arena deathmatch, so it's got some consequence to death. I'd say it is in the middle.

It's just not super compelling. Going down to hold square to pick up materials and extract with them is not interesting exploration. The spaces in Marathon aren't really designed to have interesting things to do. What is interesting is limited to looking down the barrel of a gun. All this talk about avoiding PvP is essentially, in my mind anyway, simply telling someone to not do the only real compelling thing the game has to offer.

Like, if you don't want to kill anyone else and nobody wants to kill you, what is the point? What are you left to do that's in any way engaging? Shoot bots with AI that isn't even as good as the dudes in Halo?

You can do everything you say, but then the game becomes absolutely pointless. Extraction is catharsis precisely because you're being hunted.

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I tried to make it clear I'm not saying there is no PvP (although that mode is coming in a few weeks - and practically that's what sponsored survival was, but that was not the intended experience) and I'm not recommending people get the game intending to avoid PvP entirely.

Things can exist between the two extremes. That's my point. Marathon exists in the middle area on the array of shooter games, and yet people talk about it as if it were at the extreme edge. That's also my point. If that middle area is not something you enjoy, oh well, that's life. But it's confusing to me for someone to say it's because of how hardcore the game is.

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But it's confusing to me for someone to say it's because of how hardcore the game is.

It could be one of those 'top 20% get 80% of the kills' things. I don't think the scale of hardcore is linear.

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Yes. In the early to mid 90s absolutely nobody was making First Person Shooters. Great fucking point. I'm surprised we even remember that tiny little genre compared to the massive juggernaut that is Extraction shooters.

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Yes. In the early to mid 90s absolutely nobody was making First Person Shooters. Great fucking point. I'm surprised we even remember that tiny little genre compared to the massive juggernaut that is Extraction shooters.

Right? I wasn’t in the scene at the time, so I don’t know, but I can imagine Marathon being written off as nothing more than a Doom clone. It’s obviously not that, but you’d be forgiven for thinking it if you only looked at it for 30 seconds.

To pretend that Halo didn’t take lessons from Quake (especially when apparently lots of Bungie devs loved it) is even more asinine.

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Yes. In the early to mid 90s absolutely nobody was making First Person Shooters. Great fucking point. I'm surprised we even remember that tiny little genre compared to the massive juggernaut that is Extraction shooters.

[image]

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Now there's a name I haven't heard in a long time.

https://xcancel.com/i/article/2070544328158838933

Good stories in there. I've been accused more than once of being a shill for Bungie. I do tend to see the glass as half full. I'm with Tuncer, though. Mourning what could be the end while holding out hope that Bungie can rediscover itself.

I guess the question is: why are you hoping Bungie can rediscover itself? Why are you hitching yourself emotionally to a marque when it no longer represents what attracted you? It's brand loyalty, but to what? What makes Bungie different from any other similarly-sized game company at this point?

That's an honest question on my part; I'm genuinely curious where this comes from or if there's some extant endearing attribute of the company I'm missing.

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Because they still got it. Whatever that special sauce is. Marathon proves that to me. Lots of people make good first person shooters, hell some are better at certain things than Bungie is. But absolutely nothing feels like a Bungie FPS, and Marathon feels as good as anything they’ve ever made. It has that distinct flavor that it still seems like only Bungie knows how to do. For all the folks that have come and gone, they seem to have certainly managed to pass on whatever they do that makes their games feel so damn good.

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Now there's a name I haven't heard in a long time.

https://xcancel.com/i/article/2070544328158838933

Good stories in there. I've been accused more than once of being a shill for Bungie. I do tend to see the glass as half full. I'm with Tuncer, though. Mourning what could be the end while holding out hope that Bungie can rediscover itself.

I guess the question is: why are you hoping Bungie can rediscover itself? Why are you hitching yourself emotionally to a marque when it no longer represents what attracted you? It's brand loyalty, but to what? What makes Bungie different from any other similarly-sized game company at this point?

That's an honest question on my part; I'm genuinely curious where this comes from or if there's some extant endearing attribute of the company I'm missing.

Speaking of Band Loyalty, when is the first TSD Halo Campaign Evolved game night gonna be?

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Now there's a name I haven't heard in a long time.

https://xcancel.com/i/article/2070544328158838933

Good stories in there. I've been accused more than once of being a shill for Bungie. I do tend to see the glass as half full. I'm with Tuncer, though. Mourning what could be the end while holding out hope that Bungie can rediscover itself.

I guess the question is: why are you hoping Bungie can rediscover itself? Why are you hitching yourself emotionally to a marque when it no longer represents what attracted you? It's brand loyalty, but to what? What makes Bungie different from any other similarly-sized game company at this point?

That's an honest question on my part; I'm genuinely curious where this comes from or if there's some extant endearing attribute of the company I'm missing.

Because I believe Tuncer was right. They were unique. They were special. Rediscovering what makes them special would be a good thing. Why would I not hope for it?

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Up until last week, I would have responded that enough of the people who made Bungie special back in the day are still there, so there’s still hope that they can pull a rabbit out of the hat and turn things around. Additionally, even though I don’t have any desire to play it myself, Marathon is a great game by all accounts. The problem with Marathon has never been that the quality isn’t there, but rather that the game fundamentally does not appeal to a wide enough audience. It is a very, very well-made entry in a genre that 90% of gamers simply do not want to touch with a ten-foot pole.

But now? I have to admit that I do not believe there’s a good response anymore. We don’t know anything for sure until we see what happens next, but my sense is that the cumulative loss of institutional knowledge is insurmountable and that, at long last, Bungie isn’t Bungie anymore. What is left within those walls to be rediscovered?

I would think the only thing we could hope for now is that Bungie forges a new path for itself that works on its own merits.

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But now? I have to admit that I do not believe there’s a good response anymore. We don’t know anything for sure until we see what happens next, but my sense is that the cumulative loss of institutional knowledge is insurmountable and that, at long last, Bungie isn’t Bungie anymore. What is left within those walls to be rediscovered?

While I understand the sentiment, I think it does a great disservice to everyone else who works at Bungie. How many people that made Halo worked on Destiny, Destiny 2, and Marathon? To claim all that knowledge as lost undercuts the incredible work that literally thousands of people did on Destiny (and NuMarathon). Throughout their massive growth (and plenty of grizzled ancients leaving), every Bungie game has still felt like a Bungie game. I think it's pretty evident that for whatever flaws in the culture and management of that studio, they did a pretty good job of passing on knowledge and skills that go into making a Bungie game feel like a Bungie game. Destiny and NuMarathon wouldn't exist if that weren't the case.

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The problem with Marathon has never been that the quality isn’t there, but rather that the game fundamentally does not appeal to a wide enough audience.

No. The problem is they made a game in a niche genre, and spent $200+ million on it. Nothing wrong with making a game for a hyper specific audience. But if you're going to do that, you should probably make it lean.

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True. I felt that went without saying since Bungie already spent that amount of money (and probably a lot more), therefore the game really needs to justify its cost of production or else it’s going to be culled by Sony leadership.

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Someone just posted this on reddit, from some showcase or ViDoc a few years ago, with Luke Smith talking to Jason Jones:

Luke Smith: What is Bungie's epitaph? What is the tombstone distillation of what Bungie is?

Jason: I was on the 271 coming back across the bridge home one night on the bus. These two guys in front of me were talking about college, they were older but had gone to college together. At some point they started talking about Halo, I think it was Halo 2 for them and they weren't really talking about how much Halo meant to them and they weren't really talking about how much they meant to each other but that's what they were doing. They were sharing these stories of where they were and what they were doing and how they were feeling. That moment, is still keeping me going, I mean that might fuel me for the rest of my life. It's not the only time that's happened, but you get a few of those and that's all I want -- it's just people sharing memories in an experience that wouldn't have existed without you bleeding buckets of blood into whatever code or design. Two people having an experience that they wouldn't have had if you hadn't created what you did. That's what matters to me.

I won’t pretend that’s a unique perspective to Jason or Bungie—I’m sure lots of creators feel similarly. But Bungie has consistently been the studio to provide those sorts of experiences. Hell, this place existing is evidence enough of that.

That’s where the hope that they can somehow pull through comes from.

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Someone just posted this on reddit, from some showcase or ViDoc a few years ago, with Luke Smith talking to Jason Jones:

Luke Smith: What is Bungie's epitaph? What is the tombstone distillation of what Bungie is?

Jason: I was on the 271 coming back across the bridge home one night on the bus. These two guys in front of me were talking about college, they were older but had gone to college together. At some point they started talking about Halo, I think it was Halo 2 for them and they weren't really talking about how much Halo meant to them and they weren't really talking about how much they meant to each other but that's what they were doing. They were sharing these stories of where they were and what they were doing and how they were feeling. That moment, is still keeping me going, I mean that might fuel me for the rest of my life. It's not the only time that's happened, but you get a few of those and that's all I want -- it's just people sharing memories in an experience that wouldn't have existed without you bleeding buckets of blood into whatever code or design. Two people having an experience that they wouldn't have had if you hadn't created what you did. That's what matters to me.

I won’t pretend that’s a unique perspective to Jason or Bungie—I’m sure lots of creators feel similarly. But Bungie has consistently been the studio to provide those sorts of experiences. Hell, this place existing is evidence enough of that.

That’s where the hope that they can somehow pull through comes from.

As to the question, why hope? I think you did a good job of answering that in this thread. Bungie games have retained something special through all that churn. Talent has been leaving for a long time now. That did not seem to keep Bungie from "cooking" when they had to stick the landing. Some of those big names went on to create other games, and these were for most part worthy experiments, but they didn't catch fire. To me they didn't feel like Bungie games. (I don't say that to disrespect anyone. I truly admire and continue to be in awe of their talent.) I realize that this is different. Bungie has been severely injured. It is likely that Sony has cut to the quick. It hurts.

If you go back through all the Bungie.org forums, I stated several times that I was mainly a Bungie gamer--that I didn't play a lot other games. Then, before Destiny came out, I bought a Playstation. That broadened my horizons. So it's not like I don't pay attention to other things. (I saw a video the other day about a forthcoming game that blew me away. I might post about it in a separate thread.) But no other studio has gotten as much of my money and no other studio has given me so many friends and memories in return such that I still felt like I got a bargain. They've disappointed me, sure, but don't begrudge me having a soft spot for them. They were once "the one." Going forward, the proof of the pudding will be in the eating. Their games may not be for me personally. It's no sin to hope for good things or for their success, simply out of gratitude.

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