Above

Marathon is stuck between a rock and a hard place. It's an incredibly good game, but the more casual audience seems to be avoiding it. But if they dumb the game down, it will be considerably worse and I'll likely stop playing it. It's basically a phenomenal game that doesn't appeal, I guess, to a wider audience. I'm not sure what exactly the solution is, maybe it's better strategic marketing and creative efforts to onboard new players. I'm not sure. But dumbing the game down would likely fix nothing. You might get new players to temporarily try it, but then they're playing a considerably less inspired game and will bounce off it. I also think the truly bizarre pre-launch hate campaign was SUPER weird. Like, gamers can be such strange people and I say that with peace and love. But I'm not sure I've ever seen a global predisposition to hate a game the way I saw it with Marathon. People were literally parroting the exact same sentences for months, almost like they had talking points and were collectively regurgitating them. Like the places where gamers hang out (YT, Reddit, Twitch, X, etc) had posts or something hating the game that circulated so much that people just latched onto them. I dunno. Either way, it didn't do the game any favors. I'm not sure what the best path forward is but good marketing and a positive outward image might help. And the vault wipes are definitely a good thing, that's totally necessary. But I think diluting the game to make it more palatable is the wrong play personally. Short term gain maybe, but over time will actually hurt retention I think.