Shooter Monthly #5: The Marathon Revelation, Overwatch Reborn & The Death of Highguard

This game is going to ship early next year from Bungie and this is the first time anybody has ever seen it. It's the first time they've debuted it. The original Doom was a really significant jump in gaming technology for the time.
And there's one more thing we'll bring to Battlefield.
That chainsaw.
I had to fight for that. programming mods are building, you know, their own levels in Unreal
for Call of Duty. Call of Duty. Call of Duty. Call of Duty. Entirely new Call of Duty.
Call of Duty. Call of Duty. One of the fascinating new additions to your squad is a dog.
Hey, is that about ready?
These things, they take time.
Shooter monthly episode 5. We are back. We are on the west coast for once. Fas is not with us today, but we still have two wonderful co-hosts with us. It is

the podcast that's never out of bullets. Joining me with his Escape from Tokov sweatshirt in Seattle, Mr. Extraction Shooter himself. Hello, it's Chris Sides. Yeah, I was former EA, former Bungie, worked on Marathon. So, it's a very exciting week as we go through the server slam happened. Launches tomorrow as a recording of this. Uh, and yeah, I'm currently working on in indie developments. Uh, and I just can't wait for Marathon to be out there. So, I am wearing my Tarov shirt just to, you know, show some more extraction love where I can. I should have worn my Marathon shirt to be honest.
I think that's bad ju guu.
Maybe. Yeah, that's true. It hasn't had the greatest launch uh or the greatest time since launch.
And from beautiful San Francisco,
uh, Christopher's over here formerly like many people here, formerly at EA, formerly of Activision, worked on big projects, lovely projects such as Battlefield and Call of Duty. several several of each actually. Al now currently in publish working as director of progress strategy and everyone's in the west coast for what I believe to be a very exciting GDC next week. Hope to see you all there.

I'm excited. I'm Phil Black, former dice former zomb. Many, many things going on in the world of shooters. Thank god there's a podcast dedicated to it. High guard is shutting down. We'll be talking about that. That has been the talk of the town. Marathon server slam. Man, there's a lot writing on this game. Will this sell through the roof? hot diggity. Is this the true extraction shooter moment? I have I have some hot takes. I think uh this crew has some interesting things to say. And Overwatch 2 roaring back. Marvel rivals haven't heard a lot about them in a long time. What is behind the success? Shall we shall we jump right in?
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Gentlemen, Highgard, what the [ __ ] It is announced that it is shutting down. There was a downsizing since the last time we talked. This did this last less

time than Concord.
No, no, no. So, I did the math on it. So by the time Highguard servers close, it would be like 3.2 Concords essentially.
Yeah, I think Concord was like 12 days and High Guard is like 45 or something something weird like that. But short no matter which way you look,
you got to kill a wounded animal. I think
Yeah. I think I think Highguard is just a really interesting case study in how important marketing is in the modern gaming era. It's why marketing budgets are so insane. It's one of the reasons why dev costs are so high is like these marketing budgets are ridiculous. I do kind of wonder if the reason why they were I don't know how long they had the idea of the shadow drop strategy if it was always that way or not or if just from a budgetary standpoint it was the only like marketing strategy they couldn't because launching a game into a new genre requires like educating an audience which is often very expensive and so there's a lot of stuff in there that I would love to have more insight into but I really think it's a a point

of marketing and also I would say too like high guard personally I did feel lacked a lot of the core necessities to like be as engaging as it needed to be. So I do think there was problems with the actual game itself as well. But I think looking back on it, the marketing aspect is truly the thing to look at and understand why that occurred and how not to manage how not to allow that to occur again. I think Concord also had a pretty rough marketing time too.
Can I can I just ask for a bit more expansion on that Mr. Sides? Just from the from the announcement from Highguard devs themselves, they revealed that two million players actually downloaded the game and I believe played a match or play or started playing. It's it's very hard to get players for the past 5 years or beyond to download even a free game. So at what point does do you think it's what because from one perspective is that marketing did their function. They got people to actually download the game and the other side of the formula it's typically the game speaks for itself. So, how is it on the community management side? Is it on the sentiment

side? Is it is it is it butressing or sentiments beforehand that you think marketing could uh could have added to? So, I think it's a good question. I do think like 2 million players, you know, installed is a okay number. I mean I mean I don't know how much the game costs, but I have to imagine their their forecast would have been higher than that. I would say though I have I don't have there's no data here, but I have this theory that you know how like in content creation there's people that hate watch.
Yes. I feel like Highgard had like hate playing. Okay. I feel like a lot of people installed that game because of all the hate around it. So like I guess technically there was some like marketing from a hate perspective, but I really feel like a lot of people played it because there was so much negativity around it that like they either had to like see it or people just wanted to hate on it more. And one of the reasons why I think that is just due to the likeund and something thousand in like the first couple hours to, you know, 10 to 15 over the next couple days. Like that decrease is drastic. And I do think that is also a reflection. I think the game didn't engage very well. But I

think that amount of drop, I feel like there was like hate playing or something going on. I I think there's something to that. I'll tell you why. One of the biggest, most upvoted or most visible comments I've seen since the news of H Highore sharing down, which was yesterday at the time of this recording, was someone saying it was my daily habit of logging into Steam Deb to look at the player request for Highguard. And this wasn't a fan saying that. And even the subreddit for High Guard, I believe, was also devolving into a pardon my French, a [ __ ] post subreddit, if that makes sense to you guys, where the moderators pretty much relinquish control of the narrative of a dedicated subreddit and let people who weren't even fans of the game, having control of that and essentially the narrative going forward. So, I do think that is a function of marketing to maintain that, to maintain that sentiment, to maintain that attitude going forward post launch. So, I do agree with you there. Yeah, I think it's a good point too to talk about like pre and post-launch marketing. Like there are different there's are totally different strategies often and so yeah,

I think my perspective is coming at it more from the pre-launch side. Well, post-launch side, there probably could have been a lot more there. Well, there could have definitely been a lot more there, but I haven't necessarily put as much thought into the post-launch as I have thought about the pre-launch.
Mhm. And just from a game perspective side, I think we all agree if we if we all play the game, uh first off, there's a argument of of people who maintain that on Steam reviews, for example, you'll see a lot of negative reviews for for High Garden and even any other game really that has less than an hour play with a negative review with the argument being that Steam should have rules in place where only people or players with X amount of hours can leave a review. I push back on that namely because if a game I'm not saying Highgard is, but if a game is unoptimized for specs required based on the game's page and it's then unoptimized for your system, a negative review at that point is okay because you could literally if the game isn't for you for your system, you can find that out within the first 2 minutes of

booting. So negative reviews coupled with I think we all play the game now. I think a clunky core loop in in the original high guard mode did a lot of disservice to the game as well. Namely because of in the current day environments if your game isn't fun or engaging within the first 30 seconds of the first session then every 30 seconds after that you are fighting for attention not just with any other games but also your phone which is always arms reach away. I think you're hitting on something, Chris, when you talk about the fact that there's this hate watching element to this, and we're also seeing this with Marathon 2, where there's an agenda that particularly this age and gender demo align around on the internet. I mean, you remember NeoGAF, like this has always been the case for gamers, like we have been at the forefront of a lot of what we might call cancel culture tactics, internet bandwaging, boycotting, review bombing, like these are very much gamer tactics and it's its own culture. and they were unable to bring people to their side and

instead this game became fashionable to hate became the thing to do. There's this element of of just desserts that Lulu talks about uh who's a PR former head of communications at Activision Blizzard that a lot of people are looking for what you deserve and measuring you relative to that. And there was this element ever since the video game awards trailer that they didn't deserve this, they didn't earn this. I mean, the conspiracy theories started. I remember someone tweeted at the host of the video game awards saying, "Hey, did you get paid to put that trailer on there?" Like some sort of conspiracy theory rather than just the simple reality that they were trying to make a great game. And I don't think game developers, particularly brand marketers, have mastered how to talk to this audience and how to take control of that narrative before it slides. And it becomes fashionable to watch this thing burn. Like it became the spectacle exactly as Mr. Anjos is describing. Like people would log in just to see the thing fall. like it's it's the new thing to it's the fireworks of explosion that people just want. They want the drama of the game rather than the game itself.

Just as a thought experiment, has there been a game in the past 5 to 10 years that also had a hate campaign against it that then exceeded expectations that did well? Does any game come to mind? I
It's hard for me to remember like hate campaigns at this level even before this time. Like there's always been like detractors and and you know, whatever that's always existed. I do think like an example of a way to manage this and something that was actually, you know, I I still believe like Bungie's marketing team is one of the best. If you remember like the alpha was not received well. They had all the stolen art stuff. They did a dev live stream that was not great and they have like fully recovered from that narrative. Took, you know, it takes a long time and like really smart strategy and also like beautiful marketing trailers and all these things. And so they put a lot of work in to get there. So, I do think they did a pretty good job of countering some of these narratives, but they had the budget and the time to do so, which many games just don't have. Speaking of time and budget, Earthon Server Slam is out. In the game of Growth, everyone is looking for that

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creative optimization 2025 edition. It's not about how to make creatives. It's about understanding what makes users actually stop scrolling and what emotional and psychological triggers drive performance. Based on over a million creative variations and nearly $2.5 billion dollars in ad spend, the insights in the report will help you develop a winning creative strategy. Check out the link in the podcast description below or go to appslire.com and search the state of creative optimization. That's appslire.com. If you know, by the time this podcast airs, Marathon will likely have had a worldwide release. They did, I guess you could call it a, you know, they called it a server slam, which I thought was a great branding behind it, but just trying to ramp up the PSU count for a premium game beforehand. Get those pre-order funnels in a little free weekend. Free free free weekend before the free weekend. I thought it was a brilliant deployment strategy, and I also think it helped counter a lot of the narrative that was running against this game. Gentlemen, did you have a

chance to play this weekend? And has Bungie found the future of Extraction Shooters?
So, I'll slide right in here. I played 15 hours of the Service Land. I very much enjoy my time. So much so, I purchased the game or pre-order the game. And I wasn't the only one. Based on the past week on Steam top sellers, Marathon is within the top 10 of top selling games across all of Steam, which is remarkable. And depending on the day, it would even outsell games. It would be the top selling game out selling things even like Counter Strike in terms of revenue being generated. And that being said, to answer your question, Philip, is it the future of extraction? It can be for a cohort of players, and I'm going to quantify that a bit. I'm dating myself here, but around 20 years ago, I think you guys were around then if you guys were gamers or first-person shooters as well, the original Halo was designated as quote unquote baby's first shooter. Now, we look back on Halo and we love it. In my opinion, I think one of the things that Marathon can be striving towards or hit as a positive,

as a high note, if they're able to once they release Marathon, carve out an audience of extraction shooter shooting players whose first experience in the genre is in Marathon. To be clear, I'm very biased when I play any Extraction game just because I've been playing them for such a long time. That being said, I do see the appeal and I do see the vision if I if I could kind of remove myself from the equation and go back go in the shoes of a player who's never played an Extraction game but is aware of Bungie is aware of Halo and this could be for a for a core player base their first four-way and good memories of the extraction shooter. So to ask your question, Philip, for strong core players, this could be the present and future for Extraction games.
I'm on board with this take. I actually think this is the extraction shooter that evolves battle royale. Like I think Bungie actually got this one right. And there's so many things I would point to, but the thing I keep going back to when

I think about this genre is this idea of a drama curve with inside of a match. And if you'll think about Escape from Torov, one of the things that was really important for that design was this idea of having a persistent server that you would spawn into. And although there were match limits, you could spawn into a server that's already been running for 30 minutes. And so everyone's staked out their position, they've looted, they're engaging in the game in a very different way than a new player being inserted. And so that completely changes the drama curve when we think about something like Battle Royale where there's a scramble at the beginning of the match cuz everyone is naked and there's a very high amount of player density. And then of course they try to control that drama curve with the shrinking circle that's supposed to tighten player density as the player count drops to maintain some level of drama. And I think what's interesting about Marathon is that they're finally taking that formula but modernizing it to more of a battle royale expectation where they're simultaneous inserts. And so you get more of a battle royale type sessioning, particularly with how they've done like

late game extraction. Feels like the drama curve heightens at the end of the round. And I'm already seeing them [ __ ] with this drama curve in ways that only extraction shooters can. Like if I'm understood correctly, one of the sleeves or the character classes in the game, the rook, can be inserted in the middle of a game. And so they have just this very interesting drama curve that they've ended up creating that feels like a more natural extension of battle royale. I mean, there's so many elements of Apex that are in this game, too. Like, when I was doing a lot of my healing, it felt like I was applying shields like I would in Apex Legends. There's a stamina system for how you move, which totally changed my level of strategic interaction. You can't just spam high velocity movement, and your slide becomes an escape. There's just all these accessibility improvements that I really came to appreciate over the weekend playing it that led me to believe there's going to be faith that this really can evolve the audience of battle royale players into extraction. I don't think that's what Arc Raiders did. Arc Raiders was for the Destiny RPG

crowd. Like one of the things that's really key in that game is going on these expeditions which give you perma progression. So, when you are in the course of a 60-day season, if you remember, you have to undergo these series of quests to basically give your your uh character away. And when you're able to complete all those quests over the course of that season, you get a perma buff, like more skill tree or XP boost added at the account level. And Marathon's going to have the traditional server wipe, which is something that we haven't seen, I think, in a mainstream game to the degree that Marathon's going to bring it. And similar to Path of Exile, where I see product managers study this [ __ ] PSU curve we're looking at right now religiously, there's wipes inside of these Diablo like games as well. And so they create these opportunities for new players to enter because they don't feel like they're so behind in the progression cycle. And I'm very curious to see whether or not Bungie can leap on that because I think this game, this type of genre is going to be able to do things to live ops and first person shooters

that we haven't seen in a long time, which is not making seasonal content actually matter in the gameplay loop rather than just be stupid cosmetics. Like give me something more meaty in that cycle. And that's what I find really exciting about Arc Raiders and Marathon bringing this to first person shooters, a live ops cycle.
Can I put you on the spot real fast based on what you said
along with you, Mr. Sides, if possible? So, you mentioned Tarov, you mentioned Apex, you mentioned Destiny. So, I'm going to give you my hook, what what those games hooks are from my perspective. Tarov is a hardcore extraction plus loot risk or loose loss risk. Apex is a hero battle royale with movement and a ping system, let's put it that way. Destiny is a loot treadmill with raids. What is the one sentence pitch that comes to mind after your play session weekend of the service level marathon? Does anything come to mind? Because I've been struggling with this.
That is a good question. I think not to give you a one sentence pitch to work it out a little bit. Let me let me spit out what's in my mouth. I've definitely been wanting something more. I wanted this word persistence. Like we talk about

round meta. I wanted more persistence in my first person shooters,
but I don't want an RPG. I really don't want an RPG. I don't want to be thinking about like my power score. Like that's a bridge too far. I still want to be thinking about tactics and I still want to be thinking about upgrading my gun and just core shooter movements having a lot of significance in winning or losing. And so far we've seen RedSe which just like copied old ideas and added nothing new. And we've kind of just had these these kind of incumbents that really are not changing their core gameplay at all. And nor would I expect them to. Why would you when you capture the market and so it's just a classic innovator's dilemma. And to me, what I get out of this as a battle royale player is a lot of the battle royale staples I wanted with a little bit more tactics. Like I think that I spent a lot of time thinking about my engagements, thinking about my loot, thinking about my out of round meta progression. Like that's what I don't have in battle royale is when I go from session to session, there's no persistence. Whereas here, I can upgrade my sleeve, I have currency, and because there's me losing all my [ __ ] every game matters in a way that battle royale didn't. So, I think

persistence, persistence for battle royale players is maybe my one sentence pitch. If you ever wanted persistence in in higher stakes, then this is it for you. And they do enough to soften it. Again, like I think that's it's a nuanced answer here, but they soften the hard edges. Like for instance, you have the ability to respawn your teammate
inside of a session. That's straight [ __ ] battle rail [ __ ] Like you have to go to their casket just like an Apex straight straight Apex stuff. Like again, there's a lot of Apex Legends in this core that I appreciated because Apex Legends is just it's transformative game in my opinion, just like Call of Duty 4 was for the genre. The sliding element I think is really important. Movement feels good here. And not only that, like they give you these sponsored kits. So when I lose all my [ __ ] because there's so much deflationary pressure inside of these extraction shooters, I still felt like the stop gap was not as high as I would expect. Like they soften some of the riskreward decisions.
Totally. Yeah. Thank you for that. And what's very clear to me after playing in the service land, Marathon does

differenti differentiate itself from Arc Raiders a lot. Primarily being if Tarov is a hardcore extraction, I would call Marathon a hardcore PvP with extraction elements in there. And this could be this could be good or bad depending on your perspective. where the meta for me that I found out that worked that worked well for me as a marathon player is kill every other player as fast as I can that I could then you know do some looting here and there or camp around extraction points that that can be that that is I'm okay with that because that reminds me a lot of when I played a lot of DMZ if you guys remember DMZ from a few years ago so and I love DMZ and I think I'll love Marathon not concerned but the but this is obviously a design choice people whose first impression of extraction games are our arc raiders may not find that experience tenable or even interesting. Love to hear your take on that as well.
So I agree with you that they're super differentiated arc raiders and marathon. Again, I think the RPG element and the PV elements are much stronger in Arc

Raiders. The IP is different. Like first of all, hell yeah, sci-fi like sci-fi is [ __ ] in, baby. But two very different takes on sci-fi.
Two two just like very very different takes on sci-fi. Look, I don't want to I don't want to skip past like how much this is done in terms of like moving past extraction [ __ ]
Like for instance, the 3D space that almost all extraction shooters love is they like to put you back in a 3D menu essentially where you see your character and you're going to these different contractors to complete quests and move up their respective skill trees or progression trees. Thank god we're just down to a [ __ ] menu so I can get back in the game and start shooting [ __ ] Which again, you got to remember when you lose when you lose stuff, you're losing progression. And so I want less friction getting back into the loop. And I hated these [ __ ] every game designer tries to sell you this immersion through a 3D space. Like just give me a menu so I can go quicker. And that that really helps soften the blow when I lost in marathon is that I was

back into a session fairly quickly. And because the TTK and maps are smaller while the density remains high, I was into action fairly quickly. And so again, it just felt like the friction that I faced in Extraction Shooters gone. The goals are so much clearer. Thank god. Like I'll get into an Extraction map, especially when I was playing DMZ and there's 15 million things on my [ __ ] map. I like I don't know what to do. I don't know what the goal is. I don't know how the session closes. Like this feels much tighter in its choreography. Like oh, I need to go to Alpha Station and be able to complete this this goal. The thing that ends up being strange is that your teammates have goals themselves, which could differ from you, and they can also extract without you. So, there's some coordination about whether or not you're actually going to be teammates with your teammate. And I found that rather frustrating,
but we've never had clear goals before like we've had here. Like, again, this is game design 101. Clear, straightforward goals for the player to track down.
Uh, and I thought they got that right, too. So,
what you described to me is very close

to what what I would correlate to Bungie DNA. you kind of outlined a sandbox combat and a shared world plus loots. I think the the friction here, not friction, it could be by design are the unaligned goals or win conditions based on the squad. So, the parts are there. It's a bungee game. The shooting is solid. It's just the ingredient of extraction now that kind of I think can be expanded upon, at least from what I played this far. And one of the reasons why I'm being quiet is, you know, I've you know, I worked on I was an employee of Bungie working on Marathon for four years. I was a consultant on Marathon for a year and a half after that. And so after five and a half years, it is like just so relieving to hear other people talk about the game and and understand the decisions that were made and how they're impacting. So I'm kind of I'm being a little bit quiet and I also want to wait until the full launch to really talk about everything. But there were a couple things I wanted to point out. You talked about that out of raid experience. And so you know in Tarov it is notoriously brutal when you die to get back in. Uh, Arc Raiders also I feel

has a little bit of friction there that could be better. It doesn't have the full 3D world like something like the cycle did. If anybody ever played the cycle I did long live.
Yeah, I mean the cycle the whole Yeah, that whole 3D space was obnoxious. So I totally agree on that part but that was one of the strategies when we looked at like how do we bring this genre? How do we like make it more approachable is like you look at all the problems at the time. It was only really Tarov that we could look at and this is like 2020 2021 era. uh you look at like what are the problems and one of those was that out of raid experience. How do we streamline that so you can get back into the game? Um cuz that's really I mean the gameplay of Marathon it's a Bungie game like they're just they're one of the best you know it's going to feel good. Um and it's using you know the Tiger engine so it's not it doesn't necessarily have like the Unreal feel that a lot of other games have like it has its own unique feel because it is Bungie's engine.
It's dripping in artistic integrity. Like I love what they did with the menus. I'm not a fan of what Reddit has gone crazy. I like this game. You have to drive the IP down to every single Last Morsel if you want

people to get it. And I felt so immersed in this world. I felt so it was exactly like the trailer that just drew me to this franchise. The initial trailer I thought was something else. And that's that's every moment I'm in this product. I feel that that feeling this this just strange sci-fi [ __ ] up world. Well, there is like, you know, there there are arguments that the art and UI, these are polarizing decisions that were made when working on the game because they are risky. Like you can see now the discourse around even the art, you know, there's people that like it, people that don't. I personally love the art, people within the UI of like, you know, the all the font slop. I think um Elliot Gray, who's like UX lead on or I don't know his title now, but back when I worked there, it was he was like part of the UX lead organization and and he commented on it. And these were all decisions that were made that were there for a reason, but also difficult decisions because they are, you know, not necessarily the norm. So there are these risks being taken and they appeared so far to be paying off decently well. There was one thing I wanted to talk about too when Philip you talked about persistent battle royale. So you know I once said

that like I hate the term the genre name extraction shooter and as we're talking about this and it's comparison to you can even feel why I don't like that term because it just doesn't really have a clear definition. One of the things well before extraction shooter genre was a name like before Tarov called itself an extraction shooter before the cycle before DMZ persistent battle royale was a way we talked about marathon when we wanted to pitch it to people who didn't understand what the extraction shooter genre was. So when we would build out decks we would call it sometimes like it's like a persistent battle royale. We didn't yet know the language to discuss the game genre and then eventually became extraction shooter and that's kind of where we landed. But I did find it very interesting that you said that because I I like it kind of shocked me that you actually brought that up because that was something we talked about like in 2020 when we were trying to like greenlight the game well before we were that far along.
Jeff, one last thing is talking about like stamina bar. There was all the TTK

discussion. It is very fun to see now the community have the same arguments that we had on the dev team. You know, we, you know, there was a every week there was like a play test that we would do where you get the whole, you know, get everybody who can to play the game. Sprint was always a hot topic. You know, too much sprint, too low sprint. Does the knife use sprint when you or like does the knife take your stamina bar away when you use it? All that. We tried like infinite sprints, you know, hard like really tight. We tried all the different ones. And I like that it's still being discussed as like something that players have opinions on because we had opinions on during all of development. TTK, another one that was constantly debated. You know, Tarov's TTK, you can have a one-shot kill pretty easily. Is that something that we wanted to do? Like that was pretty much a no kind of early on. But then how long does it take? How long does it what what is the tension? Because especially in 3v3, if it's a high TTK, battles could last very long and kind of get monotonous. So yeah, like all those discussions that we had, it's now fun to hear the community have those same discussions and hear their opinions. Can I can I give you the

biggest indication for me why this game is gonna have its own audience based on what we discussed thus far, Philip and Chris?
Let it rip.
So, it's the UIUX. So, I come from Tarov. The UX in Marathon doesn't bother me at all. Not one bit because I'm used to very very um structured intentful UIUX from Tarov. But hearing the complaints people have about the UIUX shows me that oh these these are new fans of the genre. This is a a strong signal that you guys have your own audience, your own core that is really ignorant to other extraction games. So this is this is a very very big opportunity to carve out your own audience, which is very rare in any quoteunquote saturated genre or otherwise.
There's there's this problem, Chris, that I've like been thinking about for a very long time as the extraction shooter after extraction shooter has failed, which is the lineage of extraction shooter and battle royale, right? the two paradigms that matter most right now for us. And so I view the split as Day Z

where Escape from Torov took the genre in one direction and H1Z1 took the direction in in another place which ended up being battle royale and Escape from Torov has
become a lot of what we think of as extraction shooter and like where where does Marathon fit and I feel like everyone has been evolving extraction shooters around its own line of reasoning rather than working starting with the battle royale assumptions and then making it extraction based. It's like it's Lucy in the evolution chart. Like where is she? And I think Marathon is that I think Arc is much more close to the Escape from Tarov lineage whereas this this to me fits within a battle royale lineage.
That's a very insightful takeaway, Philip. And prior to this conversation, I would categorize extraction games as so a lot of extraction games, especially ones that have that have failed, I would categorize as either Tarov like or Tarov light. They're still derivative of the godfather Tarov. And I would push back a bit on Arc Raiders. Arc Raiders I think is a very first principles approach on

the extraction genre itself. Very little to do with a lot of the Tarov elements from what I played thus far. That being said, just because a game is Tarov like or Tarov light does is that's not a death sentence. It's just how it's executed. And if I had if I had to ask you a question on where Marathon fits, I would I would say Marathon, at least from what I play in the service land, is more of a of a Tarov like as in it's not trying to sand down anything. In in fact, it's trying to keep a lot of the hardcore elements because there if people people don't like this, there are a strong number of players out there who want a hardcore experience. And that works if the game can be played casually. If a game can be played casually, it can then be played more competitively, which I think marathon passes with flying colors.
To me, the simultaneous insert is such a defining game design decision that to me feels like a battle royale lineage choice. That and I think the way the

drama curve is played up with the spawning of the extraction points. Like the thing that I also find fascinating about this genre as we get more and more into it is there's so many optimization levers to control and basically choreograph systems design. And when we end up talking about Deadlock, I think we'll come back to like systems design, but I feel like there's so many awesome system design choices to play around in the marathon toolbox. Like where are those extraction points? Did those extraction points spawn based on something conditional that happened in the round using actual like player data? Oh, hey, if you know there are five players left, one extraction point or two. I don't quite know the rule set behind that, but I know things like that have a huge they have a huge effect on my experience. It's a lot of surface area it covers. And if this is the worst it's ever going to be, I'm excited for what also will come after Marathon. If this really starts to light something on fire, like you know, the first flare was Arc Raiders, but if this does anywhere half as many sales as Arc Raiders, this will be the start of, I think, a earnest attempt at this genre. And I'd expect

some of like the key usual players to come back and take swings at this. I bet Battlefield takes a swing at this. I bet Call of Duty takes a swing at this again. This is not the last we've certainly heard of this genre.
Well, there's PUBG Black Budget as well that we already know is coming out. I would like to, you know, just ask everybody who I had to argue for the last 6 years that Extraction is where the first person shooter space is going and everybody disagreeing with me. I just want I just would love one apology. You make it on LinkedIn, that's fine. Tag me,
Chris. I would just love that.
I heard the word persistent battle royale.
That was a term that we used a long time ago. That's the extraction genre. And so, yeah, but just, you know, tag me on LinkedIn. That that'd be that'd be great. I'd appreciate that.
I'll see what I can do. But hold on, hold on. There is, I would say, some investigation to be done on where this is going to land financially. So, right now, we are looking at a time series of the number of followers between Marathon and Arc Raiders before the launch period. And as you can see, like Arc Raiders absolutely slaying when it comes

to wish lists and followers on Steam, looking about like 3 to 4x where Marathon is right now. And so it becomes a very curious question about how this game is going to perform financially. The analysis I did was basically looking at well, if they're able to pull off similar conversion rates to Marathon in terms of wish list and followers, which again, that's a bold assumption. Marathon, excuse me, art creators had a very strong assumption. and we throw in an ASP number. What would that mean in terms of 30-day revenue based on those conversion rates, which lets us back into units? And so, I got anywhere from a bull case of around 50 million all the way to around 100 million. Now, this is Steam only, so I think maybe you get to 200 million when you slap on HD in totality, but it's not tracking the way that Arc Raiders did. And I find that to be very curious, especially for a game that again, it had strong artistic choices. And it's becoming fashion in the same way that Hardguired was to have an opinion about this. But I'm just surprised we're not seeing more good

early indicators here for whatever it's worth.
Yeah. No, I mean I'm not I can't, you know, obviously comment on this specifically, but what I would say is uh what you've been talking about too, Anos, and I think Philip, you've been saying it as well, is I think the thing that Arc Raiders has done that does have an impact on Marathon is that it became the new kind of base point of what extraction is. You know, throughout most of the development of Marathon before Arc Raiders was there, it was like a more approachable Tarov. I think if Arc Raiders wasn't here, Marathon would be looked at more as like a casual version of Tarov. But because Arc Raiders exists, it now looks like a hardcore version of Arc Raiders. And so when you have that Arc Raiders audience, they may not want that. There's a big chunk of the J of the player base that may see that narrative of like a hardcore Arc Raiders and turn away from it rather than the other way of a more approachable Tarov. And so I don't know what that'll actually do from a like a

from a narrative from a sales perspective. Uh I actually didn't know those wish list numbers. That's that's really interesting data to see. Um and I I don't know enough about how how wish lists correlate to sales. Um I think they're decently related. Um but I don't fully know. But yeah, there I think this this narrative change is kind of has been really interesting for me to watch because for most of the development it was like more approachable Tarov and now all of a sudden it's a hardcore rock raider. like that was that that that narrative just didn't exist until, you know, September of last year. And so, it'll be interesting to see how that actually impacts all the marketing going into it. And I think that they've leaned into it, right? Like they I think the marketing strategy is focused on the PvP. It is focused on that aspect. So, they have leaned into that area. And, you know, Joe Ziegler being the game director coming from Valerant, you know, there's obviously this PvP passion and gameplay from the highest level of of creative direction. And so, it does seem like they're leaning into it. And I think the size of the audience will become the question. It absolutely has an audience. It absolutely will not, you know, you will not see the game being shut down in a short time. Like it this is going to be here and last. The

question is just how big is that become? So I'm pretty, this is just more of a product perspective to follow up what you mentioned over there, Chris. 20 odd years ago, Gears of War came out. It was very popular, but it was in third person. And then very shortly afterwards, Call of Duty 4 MW1 came out and just destroyed everything. So what I'm trying to my thesis of saying that is my my belief I think I think the research points to this as well players in general would always opt more for a first person perspective rather than a third person perspective when given the choice. So there hasn't been many if at all what I would call big budget extraction shooters overall let alone big budget focused firsterson extraction shooters. Marathon I think is the biggest one we've seen thus far in terms of development cost, marketing push, developer pedigree of an entrant into the genre and I think this is a big this is a big X factor. I think that's going to be a big factor to deal with the game success which I think it will succeed.

And the thing that Bungie does is they play with the first person shooter element. like all the spaces are very first person shooter ccentric like they understand map design but it also extends to for instance making stealth more of a central gameplay option which is something that I think is much easier to do when you can't peak behind walls particularly when you have enemy opponents. So like seeing some of that was interesting. They reach into very interesting systems design space again. So one of the abilities you can upgrade is the rate at which loot is revealed to you when you open up a chest. So there's an unveil moment and you like very quickly want to see whether or not you should grab something and so they change the speed of with which that is unveiled to you as a part of system design. Of course you can upgrade this but like they definitely are trying to find what are also the persistent elements that this audience will accept and that one feels like relatively safe but you've got to I think there's more mining to be done in the systems design aspect of like what is what is something we can add persistence to? What is something that we can't? Like right now, you're looking at the different shield levels. That is something that's a key staple of battle royale and really I think

measures your persistence is like what shield level you're at. So, I'm I'm curious to see how all this balancing will will happen in the course of a season. But, I felt they were giving me tons of [ __ ] They were they were softening the blow when I would lose a big bell of loot. I felt like I had enough safety and I had enough persistence that I could earn that back fairly quickly. Again, friction just felt so much lower here than I've had in other extraction games. I I guess you kind of trigger a thought over there again, Philip, where I have two big questions I have for Marathon still. Number one, what what will be the extraction innovation that will come out of Marathon? Like what will people start to chase after in that genre that Marathon will sort of unveil or innovate upon? Number two is I'm still looking for and you don't have to answer this, but it's just a strong thought of mine is again Halo really executed well on the sandbox combat. They brought that over to Destiny. Destiny has sandbox combat and then also added the shared world plus loot. Marathon right now has sandbox combat plus the shared world plus loot. And I'm still looking for

what is that? What is the addition that Marathon will bring to that equation? So the the Bungie innovation along with in both the gameplay along coupled with the genre overall. So I'm excited about finding out what those are.
Should we talk about Overwatch 2?
You mean Overwatch? Overwatch.
Overwatch. Just drop just drop the
It makes it hard when you have to like Google search stuff. You're like Overwatch 2 that's now over Overwatch one, not the original Overwatch one. Like when you're looking for data.
So I would say this has almost constituted a relaunch of Overwatch, but they came out with a huge update. They're dropping five new heroes, new UI, new live ops, and it has pushed the game to the highest it's ever been. Right now we're looking at daily active users across all platforms except for Blizz.net, net, which is also a substantial part of our watch's audience. This is only covering Steam, so I'll put that out there. But when we at least look at these numbers, Overwatch 2 for the first time since this time series, which begins tracking

just around January 2024, they are finally above Marvel rivals in terms of DAU. I mean, it's been a long time coming, but I think this is a monumental moment for them and for what they've done to this franchise, which was not looking like it was going to be in the greatest place, particularly since the free-to-play pivot.
Totally. I love to see it. I'm I've been a Overwatch fan since I was at Activision in the in the internal alphas and betas. It's I'm happy to see the game still doing very well. I'm happy to see my kids actually asking me about the game and wanting to play that game rather than say Arrivals on top of that. Oh, go ahead.
Oh, no. I was just going to say like it does feel interesting that Blizzard's kind of strategy for their games has been this a little bit of like a nostalgia play. like you had Wild Classic and this almost feels like not not Overwatch classic but it's kind of going back to like its roots quote unquote. Um obviously it has way more heroes and like originally and a lot more updates but it's kind of going back to its root. They also released the Diablo II expansion, you know, like it almost feels like Blizzard's strategy

here is to, you know, I guess once you've had games out long enough, this is like a new strategy that opens up that way where you can, you know, bring people back because they remember the good old days. They remember what, you know, all the fun they had in Overwatch one. I just think that's like a really interesting thing that they're all doing at once. I don't know. World of Warcraft, Diablo II, Overwatch, they're all kind of like going back to where it was and kind of having like a relaunch and like seeing new life.
Good design last forever.
So, hold on, Chris. You love to dunk on Western developers being shitty at live service.
Yeah, I do.
This to me is This is not just a content update where you have new heroes. Like, they've been making more baseline changes to this game. So for instance like they have the perk system which is in the main mode. They have stadium. They have hero mastery. They also have this things called this whole prison system which let you like upgrade skins. Like this isn't just they have first of all one of the exciting new things about this update is that they're going back to the narrative aspect of the game and trying to say oh there's this the evil side and then the Overwatch side. If you

remember that was like a core part of the franchise and they're building it into live ops. Like they had an event with the launch of what they're now calling season 1 Overwatch. this this whole rebrand. God, it's [ __ ] confusing. Uh where's HBO when you need it? Where like you would earn loot boxes for one side, you would play for one side or another, and there was events that were actually tied into their event loop boxes, too. And so it it feels like this is this is a service-based response to Marvel's Rivals, which is just shoving a new hero every year. Like it feels like the changes here are more on the systems design side that gives it, I would say, just more baseline retentive units. This this seems like great [ __ ] that the West is striking back with rather than Chinese supply side arms race.
Yeah, I mean the conquest factions event is great. I love those meta progressions, the communitydriven ones. I think it's a great live ops update and all the stuff you talk about they added for sure they added it and I think a lot of players have never experienced it. So they almost have this new wealth of live ops to a new audience or to an audience that hasn't been around for a while. And

so yeah, I mean I think I will continue until I'm proven like wrong about Western live ops. like if Battlefield 6 did anything even though that's like all it talked about and I said I didn't believe it and I was again proven correct just like how I said extraction shooters are the future you know there's just like no western developer is really proving that they're on the level of the east and like the amount of kind of excitement they provide on almost a daily basis outside I do think that like from a gameplay perspective you know there obviously are a lot of great developers everywhere I do think that like Blizzard Bungie they're kind of more of the staple of like good gameplay which is more western developers But on the live ops side, they're just still they're still far behind.
So you don't think this represents a reboot to that point of view?
I mean, I think it can, but you know, it we have to continue to see like live ops isn't one update, you know, like we have to continue to see how this goes on. And they did say I think they're releasing five more heroes this year. So they're going down a little bit of that Marvel path of having like kind of uh and they launched with five, I think, for season 1. It's like 10 heroes in a year is

quite a lot. And so that's kind of what Marvel Rivals was doing as well. And so we'll see how it continues. If it's just heroes, if there's more these types of meta events or other type of events that are going on. I think this this event's great. I I love meta events. Um but yeah, we have to see. I mean, it's been one it's been one good one. Um but live ops is it's a marathon, as people would say, not a sprint. You know, there was a there was a uh executive producer named Carrie who worked on marathon and every time there was a joke of marathon's not a sprint, we had like a marathon's not a sprint jar. You had to like put money in it. Um so yeah, I just want to throw that up. throw that you use marathon there as well.
Do you think the Chinese are effectively live opsing Marvel rivals though? Like I I think that's that's been a pretty they're hitting their content volume, but they're struggling on basically every other aspect of the game. Like the game feels fairly barren to me beyond its core and them shoving down heroes as often as possible. Like any sort of progression that game feels entirely weak. It's extremely frail cosmetics. The cosmetic skins themselves don't overlap with characters. There's very little, if any, character progression.

it still feels like a naked game.
So, on the Marvel Rivals front, I think what ties into into the progression, a lot of that is fed through via matchmaking. Like, I'll tell you what I mean. When I play Marvel Rivals, almost every day it's almost always on quick play. And the matchmaking is at a point where one game my team would dominate and in the next game it's an absolute blowout. And it's almost like a switch watch where you could time that out and that is a very poor experience. And I think what makes the progression gaps even more egregious is that you know that you're you're on it essentially a timer to either increase or decrease the progression pace and it's very obvious to a player and if I feel that others will feel that as well and I think that comes to the whole naked feeling that you mentioned as well over there Philip.
No I I agree with that. There's there isn't the elements that I think Overwatch got right, the productivity of content that I feel like each hero matters so much more in Overwatch now because they have passive roles for

them. They have the perks that you upgrade in round for each of the heroes inside of Overwatch. And then stadium is a whole new systems design rapper where you're earning abilities for your given characters within the context of a round. You're using currency to spec out your character. Like that to me is all them milking individual character for so many more units of retention.
Gotcha. The mechanics. Yeah.
Yeah. This is this to me is the western response to Chinese supply side arms is like we need to figure out how to make systems that create value rather than just like raw manpower. Um if that makes sense. We're we're not going to win we're not going to win by trying to outdo Marvel rivals a hero a year. That's not going to happen. That's not how the west wins. our labor source. We we need to become more productive. That that is how you win.
I don't think we figured that out yet.
I totally agree that like I don't think we'll win from a content perspective. But so yeah, leaning into the systems. I mean I worked in mobile for 9 years. That's all live ops is is just systems. And it is usually very cheap. It's very

difficult to get right, very confusing to manage, but very cheap to develop once you actually get it in there. Like Galaxy of Heroes, all the systems in there, like amazing systems.
Yeah. you could pull like one little little lever and like change the whole trajectory of the month of a game. Like it was awesome. And so, you know, they're still lacking a lot of that in I think the western AAA space. But there could be an argument too that maybe these games just don't suffice for systems or maybe the audience that plays them don't they don't care about those systems. I personally am a very systems driven player. I like numbers go up and so I tend to lean into them more and probably overindex them on them when I think about life services. So yeah, I agree. systems is like a quicker, cheaper option because we are not going to outc content the east.
And I I would say we don't have enough time for talking about deadlock, although we'll do that next episode. I know Chris, you've been dying to talk about it.
In this latter leg of the of this pod, we've discussed Overwatch, Rivals, and now we're touching upon Deadlock. Three,

let's call them Hiroshima games. And at any given time on Steam, all three of these games have over 100k concurrent players. one of them isn't even officially launched. That makes me so in knowing that whenever someone says a space is saturated, especially in the hero shooter space, I that does give me some pause. Maybe we're overblowing saturation. Maybe it's a skill issue as in it's a game issue. Maybe I could be wrong.
So, do do you think this is a push back against the concept of remember black hole games is a term that I've seen come out in the last I would say couple years that they just suck in all this engagement. Do you think this marks not the end of that, but is that power now closing? Is the black hole hole shrinking?
Yes and no. I have a so a few thoughts on that. Black hole games do exist. Comfort games with where you have your friends where they where they hang out. That's very hard to pull people away from. If you want to pull people away from black hole games, which I'm not denying their existence. You have to make a game that's not only fun, but players also see a future in. Okay. If

you take Deadlock for example, Deadlock I think is getting a lot of velocity now. And when it comes to players want to play that game because they see longevity in the title, which means they see it as an opportunity to get as good as they can in that game to then take part in the either rank mode of the game or a content ecosystem. Because when that game does blow up, you'll put yourself as a situation as a content creator to be the authority on the game that could set you up for life in terms of uh either an audience or even monetary advantages. And if that opportunity is there for a game that you know has a life in that is the gravity shift that could that could become the next black hole game. That is my thesis at least.
No, I think that makes sense to me. I mean the thing and now we're going to get into other talk but like I still I still don't there's all this innovation happening in non-tactical shooters. But I still think that is a a missing piece is Valerant and CS:GO still seem like they own half of this market. And we haven't seen more interesting attempts there beyond Mountaintop Studios. And I don't think we should ignore that. Like this is starting to become more of an

action. Like almost think about Fast and Furious and its evolution as a franchise. But the default view now in Overwatch is third person. The default view in Marvel Rivals is third person. And it's not called firsterson shooter monthly. It is shooter monthly. But the things that Marvel Rivals has, it's so much more action, right? There's so much more melee combat. And I've seen Overwatch move in that direction, too. But that feels like, you know, maybe it's not Black Hole, but it's it's it's growing. It's growing and it's like infringing on on third person shooter in a way that we haven't seen before, which I think is another interesting aspect here. Gentlemen, any closing thoughts? Shooter monthly episode 5 for us will be back with us next episode. Maybe Deadlock
played for Marathon. I'm very excited to play Marathon.
No, I agree. I'm excited. I'm legitimately excited. Chris, good job. You often in this industry, you don't get to see [ __ ] [ __ ] I can tell you that with a lot of personal personal experience. Like seeing your game come out means a lot. Doesn't matter how it does. The fact that you express yourself is cool.
Yeah. Thank you. And and also just like shout out to the the Marathon team. You

know, it's it it's been a long grueling process.
Long grueling process. And so yeah, just I'm just happy for everybody. and uh we actually get to see players, you know, have opinions and response and debate and have fun. It's going to be great.
This will be even even if this doesn't survive for three years, this is definitely going to be a pivotal moment. Like this goes down in the history books, I think, for sure about what how this genre is going to be written the next couple pages. Shooter monthly, episode 5 in the can. Boom. Boom.
Thank you for making this.
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