The corporate ding-dongs don't seem to understand (Gaming)

by Cody Miller , Music of the Spheres - Never Forgot, Friday, March 13, 2026, 10:32 (5 hours, 22 minutes ago) @ Korny

You can't force fun, or community or engagement.

You don't just build Halo 2 and a rabid player base. It just happens. It's a lightning strike. It happens organically.

Make your game fun first. Keep the price reasonable. People will play, they'll get their friends to play. That's the best you can do.

I wish Marathon the best of luck, because that is what it mostly comes down to.

This statement makes me think about Helldivers. The first game was extremely fun, it was free for all PS+ subscribers, and it came out on PS3, PS4, and Vita simultaneously... And it was still a niche game. A commited playerbase sure, but even now, you don't hear too much chatter about it online.

Then Helldivers 2 launched at $40, and was so popular that successfully getting into a server was a whole thing for nearly a month, and people happily stood in the digital rain for hours to get in. What changed?

It may really just come down to luck and timing.

RIP Titanfall 2.

This must be a nightmare for people making games. When it takes over 6 years to make a game like Marathon, it seems like the 'timing' aspect becomes impossible since you have no idea at all how things will change in that amount of time.

Like, the early 90s and the late 90s almost feel like totally different decades. That's the future you release a game into unless you can make it quickly.

But man… there were some bad choices here let's be honest. Having your story be told with ARG puzzles and talking heads between PvP matches is just so conceptually bad.