Former Bungie director calls “extraction shooter” label ‘dumb’ criticizing genre definition for Helldivers 2, Marathon and Escape from Tarkov
The Shooter Monthly Podcast on the Destructor of Fun YouTube Channel hosted the former Bungie director of Product Management, Chris Sides, where he critiqued the label “extraction shooter” and called it “dumb” and a fundamentally inaccurate way of describing the genre and Bungie’s upcoming Marathon.
Chris Sides departed from Bungie earlier this year, where he was working on Marathon’s early concepts. He argued that the term “extraction shooter” is reductive because it narrows the game down to a single mechanic. Loot an area in a game session and exit.
In the interview, he stated:
The genre name is so bad. I hate the name of the extraction shooter. When I was working on Marathon, I was working with marketing, dying to be like, ‘Can we please create a different genre name?’ because extraction shooter is so dumb. It’s the only genre where its name is a mechanic.
Sides believes that the genre and term confuse players and temper their expectations. He gave examples of other games in the genre, such as Escape from Tarkov and Helldivers 2. While both games feature extraction as a core loop, they have wildly different pacing, tones, dynamics, and gameplay mechanics.
Sides further elaborated:
It’s just…it’s a problem. I cannot stand the name of it. So I think that when you say the extraction genre, it should hit your spot. I think it’s really the fact that the genre doesn’t even know what it is.
You, as a player, how do you know what you’re going to get? And I think that’s one of the real issues with the genre itself.
Despite Side’s viewpoint, Bungie is sticking with “extraction shooter” for Marathon, a revival of the studio’s 1990 sci-fi FPS. After being indefinitely delayed, Bungie’s Marathon is launching in March 2026.
Bungie conducted NDA playtests for Marathon toward the end of October, and according to playtest participants, the studio has made changes to the upcoming extraction shooter.
Sony CFO Lin Tao emphasized during a quarterly earnings call that the company is “fully dedicated” to launching Marathon in the current fiscal year. Sony’s fiscal year wraps up in March 2026, suggesting that Marathon will potentially launch in the first quarter of 2026.
