Marathon Brought on a New Creative Director Last Month

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Or is it just one of Phil's balls in my throat?


Marathon recently faced a massive controversy, with a Bungie artist using unauthorised art of an independent artist in the game. The company acknowledged and apologised for the art theft concerns; however, it seems morale has been in "free fall" since this issue. It seems the developers have appointed a new creative director to steer the ship in the right direction.
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Marathon Appoints Julia Nardin as Creative Director

Spotted by Marathon Bulletin on X (formerly Twitter), Julia Nardin has updated their LinkedIn profile to reveal the new role at Bungie. Nardin started as a Narrative lead in 2019, working on Destiny, and became the narrative director in 2022 for Marathon and Destiny: The Final Shape. In May 2025, Nardin was promoted as the Creative Director for Marathon.

Recently, there was also a report about Marathon cancelling all planned paid marketing, which suggested that the game could either be facing a delay or could be cancelled altogether. With the company appointing a new creative director so close to its expected release, it suggests that we could receive an announcement for the delay soon. However, players should wait for official communication from Bungie to know for sure.
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marshall GIF
 
Just cancel it already.

They won't because it will tank their stock with 2 big cancellations making seem Sony doesn't know what they are doing.
 
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RoboFu said:
Just cancel it already.

They won't because it will tank their stock with 2 big cancellations making seem Sony doesn't know what they are doing.
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They should cancel it, sure.

But investors don't care about individual games (or games in general). As long as Sony is making record revenue/profits, they couldn't GAF. (whereas here, we GAF, on multiple levels)
 
nowhat said:
They should cancel it, sure.

But investors don't care about individual games (or games in general). As long as Sony is making record revenue/profits, they couldn't GAF. (whereas here, we GAF, on multiple levels)
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Investors are more skittish than cockroaches when the lights come on.
 
RoboFu said:
Investors are more skittish than cockroaches when the lights come on.
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Yes, when it comes to the actual big numbers. But a single game, really not. Did Concord affect Sony's stock in any meaningful way? What investors are after is "is $NUMBER bigger than last quarter?" If yes, it's all good. If not, we're doomed and all going to die. (I'm not saying investors are smart)
 
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That game doesnt need female narrative director, it needs some big dose of toxic masculinity, put those soyboy devs on HRT so they start thinking like men and liking what men like, then maybe, just maybe they can create game that men(so most of online multiplayer shooter aduience is) can enjoy...
Brutal take downs, massive nasty guns of all kinds, gore everywhere, sexy outfits with tons of boobies and asscheeks, t-baging, we dont ask for much, just obvious basics any guy enjoys :messenger_sunglasses:
Oh, and ofc voice chat with 0 cenzorship where we can call u and ur momma all kinds of names for good measure, man has to have standards after all :messenger_ok:
 
The narrative direction of Destiny (except Lightfall and I can't express that enough) was very good.
At this point there is no benefit of the doubt to be given to Bungie. Hope she pulls through like in The Final Shape.
 
Maybe they will completely restart the project and release it in 2030

Would work out better for them than releasing it this year and flopping worse than Concord

I guess I'm impressed they haven't just canceled it. Sony learned nothing from a Concord I guess
 
I don't see how Bungie is going to survive this. You either rework it or just cancel it

People are already not digging it and they have been loud and clear about it
 
Any money being spent on Marathon at this point is money being tossed into an incinerator. I think Concord had better buzz after the beta. It would struggle to find an audience as a f2p game, let alone at $40.
 
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missiles said:
Julia-Nardin-header.png


BOYS WE MIGHT BE OKAY.
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Pic doesn't tell the whole story. Do an image search. Pretty girl, but clearly a late bloomer. Probably had a middling time in high school at best. There's usually a certain amount is misanthropic salt in these types. Proceed with caution.

But, this will clearly save the game. We wanted the OG Bungie pedigree, and I can't think of anything better for that than Julia Nardin.

Also found this. Sorry to say it lads, but she's a mall witch. Clearly looks just like the Marathon art style on the website, so it's a perfect fit to design the look of a game targeted to young men. https://www.cafenordo.com/nordo-blog/2022/julia-spiritparlour
 
TransTrender said:
Things have been INCREDIBLY quiet since that livestream.
They're fucked.
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Nah, in the livestream they said that weren't showing game stuff because were going to review and replace the art assets involved in the plagiarism and were in conversations with the artist to compensate or maybe eventually even hire her.

Since then the game was featured in 3 different promotions: a PS5 sizzle tv ad were appeared among other recent and upcoming big PS games, a portion of the PS5 booth in the UEFA Champions League finals, and in the Summer Game Fest hype video.

Other than this, they must be busy crunching to complete the game and address the stuff found in the closed alpha, so pretty likely will continue quiet for a while. Pretty likely until August, where they were considering to make an open beta.

Gitaroo said:
if they turn it into a more traditional campaign with multiplayer I am still interested.
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Same here, but sadly their idea is that the game will be MP only and is supposed to release in 3 months and a half.

The game to be shipped at release won't almost change versus what they had before because it's on its final stages before release.

GaaS teams sometimes have two -often different- teams: one is the main dev team (for the pre-launch stuff, work making new games) and the other one the live ops team (for the post-launch stuff, they keep the game alive adding new stuff).

I assume that the idea was to have Steve Cotton as creative director for the stuff included until launch and now she will be the creative director for the stuff being added after launch. Meanwhile Steve Cotton would move to another Bungie team to start a new project.
 
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6 years in the games industry and already creative director on Sony's biggest upcoming multiplayer game ... did no-one else apply for the role?

Meanwhile:
Embark requires 10+ years experience for the Lead Designer role. [Job Listing]
Ten Square Games requires 8+ years experience for Lead Designer role. [Job Listing]
Warner Bros requires 7+ years experience for Lead Designer role. [Job Listing]

But sure ... 6 years of writing narrative qualifies you for creative direction at Sony.
 
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Shubh_C63 said:
The narrative direction of Destiny (except Lightfall and I can't express that enough) was very good.
At this point there is no benefit of the doubt to be given to Bungie. Hope she pulls through like in The Final Shape.
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This 100%.

I still believe going from Witch Queen to Lightfall was one of the biggest contributors to Destiny 2 player base and excitement for Final Shape declining fanbase.

To your second point though, if they don't delay this to - at least end of next year - they're setting the team up to fail. Announce a delay, push it to at least next year, and make it free to play with a battlepass. That's the only thing that'll give this thing a slim chance of making its money back
 
MrRibeye said:
6 years in the games industry and already creative director on Sony's biggest upcoming multiplayer game ... did no-one else apply for the role?

Meanwhile:
Embark requires 10+ years experience for the Lead Designer role. [Job Listing]
Ten Square Games requires 8+ years experience for Lead Designer role. [Job Listing]
Warner Bros requires 7+ years experience for Lead Designer role. [Job Listing]

But sure ... 6 years of writing narrative qualifies you for creative direction at Sony.
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She was the creative director of The Final Shape, which was highly praised and a big success.

The previous expansion before that, Lightfall, underperformed to the point of causing layoffs and changes in Bungie's management.

And well she is creative director, and was narrative director and narrative lead before that. Lead designer is a different role, it's the manager of the game designers. The narrative leads/directors are the ones in charge of the writing and cutscenes instead.

The creative directors are above the art, design or narrative teams. They give a creative/artistic direction to the heads of art, design, narrative etc. teams, who later are the ones who detail that in technical tasks and assign them to their teams members and overview them.

Depending on the project or the team, people typical get promoted to creative direction from art, design or narrative branches, but sometimes also coming from game direction.

Loomy said:
I still believe going from Witch Queen to Lightfall was one of the biggest contributors to Destiny 2 player base and excitement for Final Shape declining fanbase.
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The failed expansion that didn't meet expectations was Lightfall, and the super successful one was The Final Shape.
 
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Loomy said:
This 100%.

I still believe going from Witch Queen to Lightfall was one of the biggest contributors to Destiny 2 player base and excitement for Final Shape declining fanbase.

To your second point though, if they don't delay this to - at least end of next year - they're setting the team up to fail. Announce a delay, push it to at least next year, and make it free to play with a battlepass. That's the only thing that'll give this thing a slim chance of making its money back
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Lightfall was so terrible,.. cool concept. Terrible execution
 
cormack12 said:
Yes. I am convinced working on the narrative and emotional impact of the character backstories will save this game.

9wwze7.gif
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They should plan a whole transmedia universe. Animated shorts, HBO series, graphic novels, maybe some kind of augmented reality smartphone game. It has Star Wars-like potential
 
yurinka said:
The failed expansion that didn't meet expectations was Lightfall, and the super successful one was The Final Shape.
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That's what I meant.

Witch Queen was very good, got people excited. Followed up with Lightfall. A bad expansion that disappointed a lot of people.

The fallout from Lightfall was that the follow-up - The Final Shape - sold around 30% less than Lightfall. Successful in execution, yeah but initially a commercial failure. That's part of the reason Bungie had a pretty big layoff about 2 months after Final Shape launched.
 
I can't understand the hate and negativity surrounding this game. I hope they can counter the hate and perception surrounding Marathon, because I don't think the game itself has as many problems as people think. Even with stolen art issue -a problem absolutlely fixable and less serious than people people believe or would like-, the art direction is the best of the generation by a mile. Good luck to the new director.
 
yurinka said:
Nah, in the livestream they said that weren't showing game stuff because were going to review and replace the art assets involved in the plagiarism and were in conversations with the artist to compensate or maybe eventually even hire her.

Since then the game was featured in 3 different promotions: a PS5 sizzle tv ad were appeared among other recent and upcoming big PS games, a portion of the PS5 booth in the UEFA Champions League finals, and in the Summer Game Fest hype video.

Other than this, they must be busy crunching to complete the game and address the stuff found in the closed alpha, so pretty likely will continue quiet for a while. Pretty likely until August, where they were considering to make an open beta.


Same here, but sadly their idea is that the game will be MP only and is supposed to release in 3 months and a half.

The game to be shipped at release won't almost change versus what they had before because it's on its final stages before release.

GaaS teams sometimes have two -often different- teams: one is the main dev team (for the pre-launch stuff, work making new games) and the other one the live ops team (for the post-launch stuff, they keep the game alive adding new stuff).

I assume that the idea was to have Steve Cotton as creative director for the stuff included until launch and now she will be the creative director for the stuff being added after launch. Meanwhile Steve Cotton would move to another Bungie team to start a new project.
Click to expand...

Honestly I would rebuild the entire game with whatever assets created into a old school SP+MP package like Halo Reach to regain people faith in the studio assuming it's good that is. I would pay Metal Eden, a similar looking game money than any GAAS only shooter.
 
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