While Marathon will be a PvEvP multiplayer shooter that focuses on players taking on AI-controlled NPCs as well as other players across large levels, game director Joe Ziegler has revealed why Bungie decided to not include proximity chat as one of its communication features.
Speaking to PCGamer, Ziegler revealed that the primary reason for skipping the feature for Marathon was because of the potential toxicity amongst players it causes. For context, proximity chat in a game means that, depending on where a player is in the game’s world, they may or may not be able to hear and communicate with other players through voice. While this offers plenty of chances for emergent storytelling through player interactions, it also has the downside of not allowing players to filter out whose voice they can or cannot hear.
“When it comes to [proximity chat], I don’t think we’re against the experience of it, to be fair,” said Ziegler. “I think the challenge is how to make sure we’re creating a safe environment for players inside that space.”
“I don’t think anyone really has a good solution to that yet. Because we’re so dedicated to making sure that we’re creating a safe space where we don’t have players just flaming each other or doing terrible things to one another, I think we’re not ready to invest in prox chat until we have a solution.”
Extraction shooters, in particular, along with other adjacent genres like battle royales, tend to benefit quite a bit from proximity chat as a feature. Owing to the genre’s emphasis on scavenging for resources and trying to make it out alive, proximity chat often adds an extra layer of tension, and sometimes even leads to situations where two players are nervously negotiating with each other, for instance.
“I think that’s where we stand right now,” Ziegler said. “Like, if it was magical and we could somehow come up with that solution, I think we totally would do it. But right now, it is a challenge that many companies are trying to figure out.”
Ultimately, it looks like Bungie will take player feedback into account when it comes to the potential for proximity chat to be added to Marathon. As Ziegler himself explained, toxic players are definitely a real thing that often tends to take place in competitive games, and once a solution to this is figured out, we might see more games with proximity chat down the line.
In another interview, Ziegler also spoke about how Bungie wants to offer an extraction shooter experience through Marathon that also allows players to get into the genre’s “survival storytelling” aspects without having to deal with the jank and “cruft” that games in the genre are known for.
Marathon is being developed for PC, PS5, and Xbox Series X/S, and will be coming out on September 23. Over the weekend, Bungie officially revealed what gameplay in the upcoming title will look like. At launch, players will be able to play through three maps, with six distinct Runners to choose from.
