Everyone knows about iD Software’s DOOM from 1994; its one of the most important cultural pillars in both video games and western media in general, but not everyone knew about its awkward, kind of pretentious younger brother Marathon released the same year for the Mac OS by a small company named BUNGiE until a few years ago. Where DOOM was accessible, fast and easy to pick up and play, Marathon was weird, a more measured experience for the time that was mostly about navigating maze-like environments and constantly watching out for ambushes while a real asshole of an artificial intelligence directs you. It was innovative, and really, really clunky as a result; it was one of the first games to be rendered in an entirely 3d space, feature reloading as a mechanic, and allow the player to duel wield, although you were limited to pistols.
Marathon didn’t sell as much as its contemporaries, not even close, but it did sell enough to allow BUNGiE to cover costs and continue developing under a partnership with Apple and later Microsoft, developing smaller games such as the Marathon sequels, Myth and its sequel Myth 2: Soulblighter, the innovative, Ghost in the Shell inspired ONI, and eventually moved on to a little project set in the Marathon universe internally called Blam!, which changed to Ringworld and, eventually, Halo, gaining the tagline Combat Evolved when they were bought by Microsoft.
And the rest is history.
BUNGiE’s return to Marathon has been a long time coming. Without it, there’d be no Halo, which means no Destiny, and likely a whole other slew of FPS games that took inspiration from Halo would be erased from the timeline. Marathon still constantly shows up in BUNGiE’s releases; its logo is everywhere in the original Halo trilogy and is very overtly referenced several times in both Destiny games through the MIDA Multi-Tool. But the form it took was strange to say the least–the single player retro shooter’s modern incarnation would take the form of a member of the budding extraction shooter genre, which immediately turned people off from the start.
I don’t want to make this piece a “review” as many people can and have articulated it better than I could but knowing mine and many others’ opinion on Marathon is pretty integral to the point I’m trying to make, so lets get it out of the way quick; I fucking love Marathon. Its one of the only competitive shooters that has grabbed me in the past 5 years, the gunplay is best-in-class especially for the genre, the art direction is striking and manages to make brightly lit and colored interiors feel ever-ominous, and its endgame map, Cryo Archive, is up there with Destiny’s Vault of Glass with BUNGiE pushing what is possible in a multiplayer space forward. For my money, its the best PvP experience released since Titanfall 2 in 2016. Most everyone who has sunk a reasonable amount of time into Marathon adores it; it garnered generally favorable reviews and retains a dedicated playerbase that is fanatic about their support.
So why is everyone else seemingly so eager to see it fail?
Now, in all fairness, BUNGiE has not garnered the greatest rep over the past decade with the outside observer with Destiny and its… questionable business decisions over the years. Negatively polarizing your consumer base against you through the actions of the former c-suite–who, don’t worry, we’ll get back to–isn’t great, but every year EA and Activision finds new and innovative ways to nickel and dime their customers and somehow they’re still the biggest publishers on the planet. So what gives?
By all logic, this should be the type of game that picks up steam as word of mouth spreads. Marathon had pretty limited marketing and a niche appeal, but strong word of mouth has saved games more niche than Marathon before, and those didn’t have the ability to put “From the creators of Halo and Destiny” on all their marketing material. Its not as simple as “oh the game failed to meet expectations”–Marathon, despite being one of the best PvP games of the last decade, can’t seem to catch a break and has several groups of people emotionally invested in seeing it fail.
Now there’s being a hater, and than there’s the people invested in Marathon‘s downfall. I am a self-proclaimed hater who loves to see things I don’t like fail, and even to me, the lengths, passion and reasoning these people have to root for Marathon‘s death fascinates me to no end; I’ve seen people posting on the, get this, r/MarathonHate subreddit, and there’s a guy who gives out reddit awards to anyone posting anti-Marathon rhetoric on any subreddit, which is not only horribly embarassing but also costs real life money to do.
There’s a few distinct groups that are invested in Marathon‘s failure, and I’ll do a quick overview here for those not caught up on the discourse; these groups neatly divide into 2 niche groups with loud voices, and a 3rd, larger and more generalized consumer base that end up getting their news–and, unfortunately, opinions–from these 2 groups.
One of these groups is composed of online personalities who’s politics are right of center to extreme right wing who noticed that BUNGiE had the gaul to hire openly gay employees or something. This group is the most boring to talk about, unfortunately; they suck, everyone knows that they suck and why they suck, and its just unfortunate that their influence is large enough to taint a genuinely great game this much.
The other group is little more nuanced, as it mainly consists of disgruntled Destiny fans lashing out at the death of the franchise. For those who don’t know, due to several factors and bad management, Destiny 2 received its final content update after 12 continuous years and the future of the franchise is essentially a big question mark right now. This group at least has a somewhat valid reason for lashing out as over 15 years of constantly playing you do develop a somewhat emotional attachment to even a game as flawed as Destiny; I’m guilty of it. This lashing out at Marathon comes from a misunderstanding of the conditions that lead to the place we find ourselves in now; There’s a perception that because of Marathon getting greenlit some 4 years ago, it took vital resources away from Destiny and led to it not getting the support it needed during some particularly rough patches over the last few years.
While this is in some ways true in an objective sense, its important to examine the context of how Destiny met its fate and what transpired both prior and post both Marathon’s greenlighting and launch. That’s a subject for another time, maybe, but suffice to say that BUNGiE has a rather infamous curse in that they have a seemingly unlimited supply of some of the finest talent in the entire industry yet are doomed to be perpetually managed by literal demons who prioritize private car collections over the wellbeing of the studio and making sure projects are properly managed and staffed. There’s also the issue of BUNGiE being sold to Sony for a whopping 3.6 billion with a B dollars, and the version of BUNGiE Sony bought simply did not exist in any practical sense, and was rather an inflation the amount of and progress made on theoretical incubation projects along with a number of other assets and timelines that were simply not all there yet included in the valuation anyways. Sony expected a return on investment in line with what paying 3.6 billion bucks should get you, when that valuation was bullshit from the start. Thus, even though Destiny was and still is performing admirably, it gets canned to cut costs, and the c-suite gets golden parachutes out of the fire. The consumer base is left with what was once an industry pillar with sales numbers comparable to Call of Duty getting killed out back and no obvious culprit besides Marathon.
And this would be all the needed context to understand Marathon as just another financial failure in a long, continuing line of financial failures we’ve seen in the industry as of late, but while I was debating writing this, the universe threw another curveball that makes it all the more mystifying–and upsetting–to watch Marathon flounder despite how good it is. Namely, Insomniac’s Wolverine came out. These may seem completely unrelated but walk with me.
Wolverine, unlike Marathon, debuted to middling reviews and lots of criticism about its lack of challenge and intrusive handholding. While Marathon could be obtuse and difficult, Wolverine was predictable, cookie cutter and easy to the point of boredom. Basically, it was the AAA Ying to Marathon‘s Yang. The main criticism was that it treated the player like an idiot and left no room for individual problem solving.
Marathon‘s inverse is that it asks you to basically solve every problem yourself with no help. While this could be frustrating, it contributed to Marathon‘s vision as an art form and the fantasy of being a mercenary on a mystery world. Marathon has faults but felt definitively like a piece of art, flawed as it was, while Wolverine fell within the definition of Product, made to appeal to the lowest common denominator and played by many, yet loved by few. It was everything the online echo chambers we all find ourselves in claim to hate about modern AAA design… and yet its one of the top selling games of the year.
So here we come back to the original question; Why did Marathon fail? Its the polar opposite of what everyone claims to hate about AAA design–some for better and some for worse–and the personification of “AAA Slop” continues to dominate the top selling list this year (NBA 2k26 also shows up on the same list, which is infuriating but not surprising). And so its time to reckon with the fact that, ultimately, while Marathon may be a partial victim of circumstance and prejudice, it is ultimately the fault of the consumer base that Marathon and other, interesting games like it fail while cookie cutter mid continues to sell gangbusters every year.
Outside of online communities, “gamers” still tend to view games as Products rather than Art. And a Product should seek to appeal to as many people as possible while allowing as little friction as possible to reach peak “enjoyment”. This mindset is what has led to the dumbing down of nearly every facet of AAA development as the industry grows, budgets inflate and more and more people need to buy a game to maintain profit margins. And rather than being rejected, this approach of dumbing down big titles has largely been accepted by what seems to be a vast majority of the consumer base–its healthy for all of us to remember that the online communities we talk in is a miniscule percentage of who actually buys video games these days. So games that are challenging, and weird, and don’t immediately give the player all the best stuff to make them feel powerful oftentimes get left in the dust. Games that try to be something beyond either a linear, easy single player experience or a multiplayer team deathmatch arena. Games like Marathon.
Because Marathon is art. Art in an exclusively multiplayer setting to boot, which is impressive in its own right. And art seeks to challenge and obscure its best from you at post. Marathon‘s story is obtuse and shrouded in mystery, hidden in the environment and the lore blurbs of findable collectibles. Its gameplay is difficult; you will get dunked on by people who have put in the time, and probably even AI robots that those same players roll through with little effort. But at its best, its incredibly rewarding, with some of the most impressive art direction, map design and gunplay I’ve played in a decade.
The gaming industry’s consumer base has made it clear which they prefer. And I’ll never forgive them for it.
Its not like me to sell a game to you, especially one made by what is ostensibly a multi-billion dollar company, but if you are at all interested, give Marathon a whirl. Its cheaper than a modern AAA release by 30 bucks, and Steam has a generous refund policy. Its the best extraction shooter on the market right now in my opinion, and if not now, its getting a dedicated pure PvP and a PvE mode, along with a revamped new player introduction if you find it a bit too obtuse at the moment. Check it out, and let me know if you like it or wanna play sometime.
