An Early Warning Flag For Bungie’s ‘Marathon’ Prospects

I’ve been up and down with my thoughts on Marathon, Bungie’s new extraction shooter currently in its Closed Alpha. I’m not an extraction player at all, but I’ve had some good runs and some bad runs. Sticking around for the long term though remains a tough prospect to see.

But I think there may be a shorter-term problem, one that has implications for its actual launch. And I’m a bit concerned about it.

Tracking the playercount of the Closed Alpha on Steam, I’m noticing something. No, I don’t care about the actual numbers at this point. This is a Closed Alpha. We know probably 80%+ of code applications have been denied. It’s too early to extrapolate things like Open Beta or launch figures that will arrive in the coming months.

But what I’m noticing is the trendline. The peak at launch is an obvious spike, up to 7K (though again, the specific number doesn’t matter). However, Thursday night dropped to less than half that. Then, as the weekend has started, Friday night lost more players, and the game is approaching less than a third of its initial players on launch day after just 72 hours. If this is the case for Saturday and Sunday night, that’s not great.

There are two other things to consider here. First, this is happening as new players are being issued codes. So more players are being let into the Alpha with at least another big code wave having gone out, but the declines still exist. Second, if you are interested enough in Marathon to apply for a code in the first place, you are probably more prone to appreciate it than the average consumer. But if interest is dropping off in time this quickly with that group…

You could use Twitch metrics here as well, as those have also dropped dramatically from launch day when a bunch of huge streamers were playing, but I find those less reliable as they fluctuate heavily based on who is online, and a big streamer or three can produce dramatic swings. But these overall trendlines are more relevant. Ideally you’d want them to stay consistent or even increase as more codes go out and the weekend progresses.

I am not saying that based on 72 hours of a Closed Alpha that Marathon is going to be a big miss. But I feel like I would be remiss to avoid saying that this is not an ideal thing to see if this is in fact representative of short-term player interest, as that has implications for both launch and long-term interest when the game launches.

This is a Closed Alpha. There is more to be added to the game by launch, there are balance patches and there is polishing to do. It is likely that the final product is more attractive and results in more interest (albeit by then you’ll have to pay for it). But the core concepts of Marathon are not changing, and the question is whether or not that will capture fans’ interest once they get their hands on it.

Update: The Saturday night peak has again fallen down from 2,500 to 1,800, indicating that this trend is continuing.

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