Context: Aside from Marathon missing the mark on its early playtests and getting mediocre reviews, Bungie was caught copy/pasting stolen art into a lot of the game’s art and textures. The company is internally under fire.
Context: Aside from Marathon missing the mark on its early playtests and getting mediocre reviews, Bungie was caught copy/pasting stolen art into a lot of the game’s art and textures. The company is internally under fire.
This one and FairGame$ are both screwed, and they’ll mark the end of an era for Sony and live service. What’s funny too is that Bungie was purchased in large part for being experts in making successful live service games, but it reminds me of something in investing where those who appear to be very smart after a string of successes are compared to being “expert coin flippers” who just got heads a number of times in a row. As we’ve gotten a peak or two behind the curtain after the purchase, it certainly looks like Bungie was only lucky.
I think Bungie still has experience making successful live service games, Destiny 2 has been a massive success for Bungie. The issue with Bungie is that they’ve forgotten how to release good games. Destiny 1 released kinda meh, but a year after launch started crawled back to being generally well received. Destiny 2 release (followed by the Curse of Osiris expansion) almost killed the studio, a year after launch started crawling back into being great and only in the last years really dropped off (when resources were pulled away from Destiny to Marathon). It feels almost like there are some head up their ass lead designers at Bungie who just won’t listen to feedback and release a shitty game. Then the live team takes over the project, listen to actual feedback and fixes the stupid shit that should’ve been fixed the first time around.
Even with Marathon they had that event where streamers (and some other media people) got to play the game at Bungie and then Bungie asked for their feedback and when they got feedback on some really stupid things (like not being able to take off attachments from guns) they just went “We know, that’s intentional”. They’re deliberately making design decisions that anyone with experience within the genre would instantly say “that’s a bad idea”. I don’t know whose head needs to be pulled out of their ass but if Bungie doesn’t want to release Marathon as a flop they need to do it quickly.
On a slightly different topic. I love how some people got to experience Marathon and Arc raiders in close proximity. Prior to the playtest people were cautiously optimistic about Marathon but Arc raiders evoked no emotion in anyone. And now it’s more than reversed. People are praising Arc raiders and Marathon is seen as a lost cause.
Bungie is a lot like Bioware in that regard: Some real bangers on the resume, but none very recently. It should serve as a reminder that companies don’t make games, people do. If the right people aren’t involved, or too many of the wrong people are, past successes are entirely meaningless.
That’s what weirds me out when people say things like: i will always pre order the new (insert developer name) game because i trust them. It’s not the shareholders or the suits who make the games, it’s the people, and these people may work somewhere else 10 years later.
It’s not only the people, it’s the people at specific timepoints, nobody wants a remake of skyrim and another iteration of assassin’s creed is only gonna get a lukewarm reception. Games are lightning in a bottle, their successes are basically impossible to replicate because there’s so many variables at play.
“Recently” also means something different in a time where BioWare makes one game every 5 years rather two games in the same year.
It is a little funny that even after Sony backpedaled hard on live service after Concord, the one studio they bought to make live service games instantly started failing too. Destiny hasn’t been doing too great either. Sony have been very unlucky this generation.