🚨 MARATHON NEWS NETWORK — THE NO SPIN ZONE 🚨
Big news out of Bungie tonight, folks, and you will NOT hear this from the doom industrial complex.
Bungie is hiring a Principal Marketing Manager for Marathon. Global go-to-market strategy. Multi-season planning. "Franchise moments" — plural.
You do not build a marketing org chart for a funeral. You do not hire senior leadership to run point on a corpse. That is not how business works, sir.
But flip to the other networks and what do you see? Men. Refreshing SteamDB. Like a heart monitor. Professionally. These people have logged more hours on a line graph than in the actual game, and they want to lecture ME about engagement.
And somewhere out there, Paul Tassi has already filed three articles on this and is eight hundred words into a fourth. God bless him.
Season 3. September 22. The spin stops here.
I don't think we're actually disagreeing on whether Paul is a decent human being. I don't know the man personally, and I'm not claiming he's some evil person. My criticism is about what he does professionally and the effect it has.
That's also why I separated him from Cross. Cross said some genuinely stupid shit in an emotional moment, and I'm willing to give him shit for that. But I don't think one stupid outburst defines him or what he does as a creator. He also went and played the game anyway, which tells me he was reacting emotionally rather than deliberately building a sustained narrative around it.
With Paul, my frustration is the sheer amount of content he has produced around Marathon despite having relatively little playtime. Criticism itself isn't the problem. I have absolutely no issue with someone saying "I played 30 hours and I don't like this game." That's completely fair. It's the constant cycle of negative articles, headlines, and engagement farming around the same game that bothers me, especially when negativity is demonstrably what gets rewarded online.
And yes, technically that's his job. But "it's my job" doesn't automatically make every way of doing that job ethically neutral. Journalists, creators, influencers, etc. still make choices about what they amplify and how they frame things. There are real people whose livelihoods are attached to these games, and that's the part I think gets forgotten when everything becomes content.
As for the Grummz point, I have no idea who even he is, I cannot say more.
So I completely understand why you disagree with me on Paul. Where I disagree is the idea that criticizing his *professional behavior* means I'm claiming he's a bad human being. Those are two very different arguments.
I have so many people to thank for the 1994 Marathon Loreathon/Subathon, and so much to unpack - I haven't had a mind fuck like that in a video game in YEARS. I cannot fathom how Bungie did what they did with Marathon in 1994. I GET IT NOW, and I have ONLY scratched the surface of the density and complexity of the lore and story told in these games.
If I forgot to tag you personally PLEASE yell at me, if I forgot to follow you back from the stream PLEASE yell at me lol, there are so many notifications on X that I genuinely miss a lot of them.
@Mythoclast_X for absolutely carrying and speaking fluent yapanese, and providing destiny and halo related context as my mind was melting. Much love brotha - Can't wait for [REDACTED].
WARMEST THANK YOU'S AS WELL TO @shouty31 , @TheRoyalCatten , zig (if you're here i'm sorry!) @SentinelEnjoyer , CREAGAN IF YOU'RE HERE BROTHER YOU TOO , @Anon223456789 , @yeahitsjin and @grizzleyburr811, @DDtheUnlucky , for being there EVERY DAMN DAY, and "Feeding the Compiler" (whatever that shit does we still don't know)
Some Twitch Usernames don't match your X handles so I am SUPER sorry if I fucked up identifying and thanking you.
Most of all, I want to thank the Marathon community for being (honestly, genuinely) some of the coolest and most talented people I know on planet Earth.
And lastly, my community. Yo Proxies, we did it. Who the fuck would have thought? Not me, that's for damn sure. Not me. We've come a longggg way since streaming Nightreign in our shitty studio apartment to 0 people, huh? Thanks for never giving up on me.
My cup is full and my head is spinning. I'll see you guys on Tau Ceti.
Much Love,
TurtleProxy
THIS SATURDAY: I'm starting a lore Subathon. The original 1994 Marathon, start to finish, every Terminal read. No stone unturned.
Chat decides how fast the lore gets decrypted.
nuMarathon Rook runs between chapters.
Daily till it's done.
8/29 · 11AM MT https://t.co/KVMiPmixIo
We're aware of the differences between the White Rabbit model and Store image and are actively investigating. We'll share an update as soon as we have more information. Our intention is to make this right for everyone who chose to purchase this Runner Shell Style. Thank you for your reports.
FILE TYPE: Personal Log
PERIOD: COLONY E%#A // [REDACTED]
SPEAKERS: Hassan, M. [ID: MHAS]
TOPIC: Shared Nightmare
SUMMARY:
Thousands left Earth with a 300-year blank in their lives.
Something is filling the void.
And just because some people here have the audacity to push back against this ridiculous hate, our community gets branded as the toxic ones. We just want to enjoy ourselves, but we're all just so, so tired and frustrated having to deal with this for so long.
It's an objective fact that Marathon haters are obsessed with the game, these mentally deranged assholes have three fucking subreddits where they do nothing but hate on the game, and they also use multiple accounts to harass anyone who likes Marathon.
When we (and I don't mean to speak for Zenith here, I mean the Marathon community in general) say there is a coordinated, online, and funded hate campaign against this game we are not wrong.
Sometimes Marathon community members can come off a little sour, but we love Marathon and have to deal with something every single day that we haven't seen in the gaming industry, almost ever.
I've had people impersonate my X account, I've had people falsely report my account, various other personal and attacking (borderline violent) DM's for ...
Just enjoying Marathon.
YouTube accounts screenshotting, attacking, and keeping public Twitter lists of Marathon fans to harass us.
And the best part is? When community members like myself speak out and are sick of it, and become reactionary, we are called "babies" or "using victimhood" instead of "talking about Marathon's problems"
I don't think I will ever understand.