Is marathon the best chance to extract the shooter must break into the mainstream?

At the end of last month, the large publisher EA fires 300 workersincluding the surrounding Developers Rebirth 100. Founded by a former tax developer, the studio is responsible for Apex Legends and Star Wars Jedi Games, and he is reportedly playing the third game in his beloved Titanfall series before his roster was ruled. Rumors now canceled suggest that this Titanfall project is an extractive shooter, a tough design PVPVE type that currently enjoys only the niche visibility. However, the extracted shooter set in the world of Titanfall and Apex Legends may be a major league ticket for that type. So if not EA, who would have taken “Tarkov” like “Tarkov” from its passionate niche and entered the mainstream? The answer may be only a few months away.

A EA spokesperson said of the layoffs: “As part of our long-term strategic focus, we have made select changes within the organization to more effectively align the team and allocate resources to drive future growth.” EA employees have heard of this before. The move follows layoffs in other segments of the EA portfolio, including developers Codemaster and BioWaremore general 670 company-wide employees Back in March last year. This trend many people condemn the state of the gaming industry Not sustainable And call Trade unionization.

But what is the rumored Titan Fall Extract Shooter? Naturally, its obvious cancellation disappointed many fans. The existence of new Titanfall games (and lack of public appearance) has become a joke in recent years. Additionally, rumors of new extracted shooting games from Studio Triple A have brought focus to the game style that has worked so far to attract a large audience. And whether the canceled Rebirth title is indeed a kind of extractive shooter, more and more people are discussing the potential of its infancy genre.

“It's an enthusiast type, and so far the impact on mass market participants has not been significantly broken,” Mat Piscatella, a video game industry consultant at Mircana, told IGN.

Last month, developer Bungie finally revealed the game video of the marathon, the upcoming extracted shooter game, which some predicted would push the genre to the mainstream. This is a game that has already found itself in hot water Accused of suffering damage to art assets. But despite the ethical issues in the production of the marathon, the answer to the game itself after the press release Start your move It seems very positive. Perhaps a studio known for excellent first-person shooter experiences like Halo and Destiny can be obtained from the studio. However, by September, marathons will enter a very different market, and extract shooters are a relatively untested genre. Is the pedigree and tight FPS design enough to make the game successful? Analysts said: Maybe.

“If I bet any developer that can bring this type into the mass market, it would be Bungei,” Piscatella said.

For those who are unfamiliar, extracted shooters are often combined with player-player-player-player-player-player-player-player-player-player-player-player-player-player-player-player-player-player-player-player-player-player-player-player-player-player-player-player-player-player-player-player-player-player-player-player-player A small group of players is fallen into a world where they fight against AI enemies, sometimes even other players-controlled squads to complete goals and collect resources, then escape the map. The popularity of the genre escaped from Tarkov, a formula characterized by its high-risk, high-reward crossfire, incredibly forgiving that attracted a respected audience during the Covid-19 lockdown.

Since then, many other developers have tried their genre with varying degrees of success. One of the most prominent ones is last year’s Helldivers 2, developed by Arrowhead Game Studios and published by Sony. It tends to camping schticks, community engagement and in-game activities, which make it an outstanding performance for extracting shooters. Also, perhaps most importantly, it's a collaborative thing, and no nervous PVP encounters, which makes games like Escape from Tarkov so challenging. Helldivers 2 is the eighth game on Steam in April, ranking 34 on PlayStation, according to Piscatella.

“Helldivers 2 is an outlier success in the group,” Piscatella explained. “In April, about 9% of active steam users in the U.S. hit Helldivers 2, while about 3% of PS5 players interacted with the game at least once. On any platform that plays that particular game, no other (extract shooter) has more than 2.3% of active players.”

It's obvious that these stats are small compared to Battle Royale or multiplayer FPS games, such as Battle Royale or multiplayer games. Just as popular as Helldivers 2, it seems to be a dedicated PlayStation owner, the mainstream is Fortnite, Duts Call of Duts, and EA's FC – the game attracts a lot of people. But Piscatella is quick to point out that extracting shooters is a thriving genre with great potential, and it faces the same challenges as other early genres.

“Small or developing genres usually only get big after a game,” he said. “Before the advent of guitar heroes, the dance/music genre was a small niche market. Console FPS games usually didn't sell well before Halo at all. MMOS formed a relatively small market until World of Warcraft became the biggest thing in the world. Marathon became the world's largest shooting game.

Other popular games in the Extract Shooter genre include Deep Rock Galaxy, Hunter: Showdown 1896 and Delta Force. The latter, the free tournament champion launched late last year, has been growing continuously in recent months: At the time of writing, Daily Players ranked 15th among Steam players, with about 135,000 players at the peak. It's a considerable number, but it's consistently close to the number of the Grand Royals and their Titans fighting. Let's face it: executives show a certain amount of tunnel vision, catching up with the high monetization sticks set by the world's fortnites, warzones and pubgs.

There is an argument that this fixation has led to a certain creative stagnation in the development space, and the studio’s head is reluctant to take the opportunity to choose an unproven genre (such as extract shooters) (perhaps saying the Call of Duty attempt was a kind of supporter that has been added to Warzone instead of its own flagship). In this way, the marathon represents the first important triple effort to bring this type to the masses. And it will take all the help along the way.

“Bungie is certainly a developer who can't guarantee the success of the marathon,” Piscatella said. “To make (IT) break through it, it will certainly help if the game can win dedicated fans of the genre so they can advocate the game between family and friends.”

In addition to word of mouth, Bungie also needs to ensure a smooth entry to potential players. In particular, the rollout strategy of converting core players familiar with the first-person shooter to Bungie, but the long-term retention will come down to gameplay.

“It would be helpful if the marathon was more familiar with the big FPS champions (like Call of Duty) to help start trials and conversions,” Piscatella explained. “It also had to pin the entire 'easy to pick up, hard to master' technique that many mass markets could achieve.”

The reality is that these are all problems faced by any new title, and one real decision-maker of success or failure is the market, which, as Piscatella points out, is very unwelcome.

“Currently, it’s a very fantasy market. People have their favorite long-term games that are constantly updated, familiar, with huge social and currency hooks, and many of these titles are free or easy to access without upfront purchase prices.

Nevertheless, the biggest challenge facing marathons is the untested nature of the entire extracted shooting game genre. Escaped from Tarkov, but the game benefits from the audience locked in the pandemic, as well as the game loop that attracts core gamers’ segments. The titles followed were only intermediate performances (Helldivers 2 is outlier), so it’s easy to understand why the studio has been silently investing a lot of resources into such a project, especially when the battle royal style proves its strengths.

In this way, the marathon should prove to be a useful stone test for the rest of the industry. Surprisingly, in this environment, studios like Bungie go all out in extract shooters, and if you get a strong reception, you can expect other developers and publishers to lead it. Of course, there are many factors to address – things like monetization and market trends – no one can predict how things go. But Bungie certainly has the effect of influence and design to make something special. And, something special will be needed to bring extract shooters from the niche to the mainstream. You can be sure that in September, the industry will eagerly watch the launch of the marathon.