Fuck the discourse, I'm going to play Marathon for as long as I can

A little over a year ago, before I ever played it, my opinion on Marathon was that it wasn't for me. It was a game I knew I'd try, and maybe play with my Destiny friends for a bit – because how often does a new Bungie game come along? – but it was never going to be my next obsession because I thought I was done with competitive shooters.

Then I went to Bungie on one of my last assignments for Polygon, fell in love with the game, shared it with my friends for the April playtest, and watched the internet have a total meltdown over it.

After some controversy, a delay, and 10 months of bad press, the game is here. It's not as good as it was in April – it's even better. It's the best PvP-focused shooter I've played since Halo 3 came out when I was 13 years old (that's 19 years ago).

In the past week, I've coordinated childcare to help cover me, sacrificed precious sleep, and taken rare time away from this very website to put 80 hours into it already. I've even gotten back into hardcore guide writing for it via some contractual work at IGN.

And the discourse is still insufferable.

While you'll see a lot of positive press about the game from people who are actually playing it (even people who don't immediately connect with it seem to change their tune around the five hour mark), you'll also see an army of grifters, dipshits, and weirdos out there just blasting the game with almost no real feedback. Marathon isn't for everyone, and there's nothing wrong with people who don't like it voicing their opinion. But you can pretty easily separate those people out from the losers by scanning for words like:

• Slop
• Woke
• DEI
• Roblox
• "Destiny died for this"

Then there's the whole player count discourse, which I maintain is one of the worst and stupidest things to happen to the gaming landscape. Player numbers can be useful data points, but only when you have other pieces of actual, meaningful data to look at. Without studio expectations, and revenue projections, player count only tells you how hard it is going to be to get into a match, and the answer is always "not hard" if there are more than 30,000 people playing globally every day, and Marathon is well above that.

But don't take my word for it, here is what the former VP of Destiny (who was laid off a few years ago), has to say:

And a senior designer on Overwatch ...

And best of all, the creative director of Warframe:

All of these folks say it better than me and with more lived experience. But I'll still say it again. Chart watching is fake "big brain" bullshit that is meaningless without information that none of us will ever have.

The point is, I'm having fun with Marathon. Not just more fun than I dreamed I'd ever be having with a multiplayer again, but more fun than I've had playing a video game with friends since the early days of Destiny 2.

But if you've been reading the site for more than a month, you probably know that I'm a "worrier," to bring out a classic term from my childhood. I'm not a dog person, but that image of the greyhound in a vest that says "anxious" is as close to a spirit animal as I have. Largely that's all because I have diagnosed OCD, but hey, you get the point.

When you love something – even if it's just a game – it can be really easy to allow yourself to be taken over by "the discourse." I've spent years of my life worrying about the future of Destiny despite the fact that it was a Platinum Best Seller on Steam from 2019-2024. (It missed 2017-2019 because it wasn't on Steam yet). A very popular video game, and yet I couldn't stop worrying that it was going to go away and I'd lose contact with my friends.

With Marathon, I'm trying to be better.

I don't know what the future has in store for Marathon, or Destiny, or even Bungie. I have thoughts and ideas, things I tell myself about both the studio and the game that seem smart. But I truthfully just don't know. And nobody else does either.

The point is, I'm going to try and just enjoy the game. I'm going to try and play as much of it with my friends as I can while it's still fun. And I'm going to dive into the next season with gusto. And whether we get four seasons or 20 seasons, I'll be there to enjoy each of them.

At the end of the day, who gives a shit what dumbasses are saying on the internet. And who cares if they end up being right and the game isn't around as long as we all hope it is? The game is here, in front of me, right now, and I'm going to play it until I can't anymore.