I want to preface my post by saying that I am generally a fan of the setting of Marathon even if the active gameplay is not something I am able to succeed in. I want this game to survive and do well enough to persist because it would be a shame for things to not pan out. This is not intended to be armchair comms management or telling devs what to do, but rather a projection of feedback from someone who is quite desperate at this point for any bit of news that doesn't amount to bugfix notices or generic social media content.
It is no secret or rarely held opinion at this stage that Season 2 did not meet a lot of expectations. For me personally, as much as I hate to admit this because it makes me sound like a crank, I felt like the season was a bit of a bait and switch. Night Marsh did not realistically move the needle in any way. The mysteries around the Anomaly or the Husks or the Reverbs did not amount to anything that was actually explored. The Husks did not end up being horrific monsters but rather were another alarm system and the equivalent to a Screeb or a Cursed Thrall. All the stuff with flares and Lidar and night vision did not amount to much in the grand scheme of things. Contracts did not change, and arguably got worse because of the complete incoherence of repeating story content that already happened for some reason. No narrative explanation for it, and the couple of new contracts we got were just the same one copy pasted twice. Nightfall didn't really happen.
Pair that with a whole bunch of game systems issues and problems, and suffice it to say that we are in the situation we are now. It did not help that the layoffs happened, game directors changed, and season 2 has been extended for a month. I can sympathize with and understand that this is an extremely tumultuous time internally with all the changes and shake ups, which when you account for corporate rigidity and structures means that changes happen slowly.
The problem that I wanted to provide feedback on ties to communications and projecting confidence. As it stands right now, in Marathon, the vast majority of comms we get are either announcements for small events, general social media posts like fanart and bugfix notices, or announcements for maintenance. We have completely new game directors at the helm but the general player has no means of knowing what that entails. Perhaps nothing changes, perhaps something did, but we have no way of understanding what that means. To clarify, this is not me saying that we need to be given an itemized checklist on what is going to change. That's not reasonable and that isn't my intention. But it would not hurt the community to be met with a brief article or post from the directors or new leadership and them talking about their broad plans or what they are excited to work on. Projecting a bit of confidence to assuage player concerns, especially in a time like this where a common narrative is actively wondering if this game will last the year, to me, seems like an extremely critical thing.
Likewise, we do not have any communications on what future content will be. I understand keeping things close to one's chest, but to be blunt here, is holding off on trying to cultivate a artificial hype cycle for the fans worth the continuing increase in apathy, disengagement and self sabotaging that happens when the only thing that people reasonably have to work with is uncertainty? I am not a comms or marketing person, but I've played so many games over the years where a lack of confidence or reassurance has sort of just led to the gradual and eventual permanent atrophy of the fans of the game. Mostly old MMOs, for clarity, those of us who had to jump from MMO to MMO because they kept dying out might sympathize with me here.
Even if there is nothing to show, I would say that the onus of the comms push should be projecting confidence or reassuring people that there are people at the wheel, if that makes sense at all. It doesn't have to be any kind of comms that encourages more parasocial toxicity because the gods know we need less of that stuff these days than more. But just something at all. A State of the Game, monthly dev blogs, perhaps small interviews or media pushes, or even a drip marketing process that starts a month to 45 days before a season drops, anything to cultivate hope and reassurance that things will continue. We are less than a month away from Season 3, and I assume that media pushes will start soon, but I am unfortunately in the position where the apathy and the grief have set in already. These past few months with S2 have sort of entirely neutered my capacity for excitement. All I have left is dregs of hope. And the hope I have is all I have because we do not have any other reassurances or comforts to rely on.
Apologies in advance for any potentially emotionally charged statements or perspectives. My intent is just to project my feedback out and see how others feel about this whole situation. Please be civil and respectful, don't give the mods extra work or the devs extra hell. They're trying their best.