The term “loot shooter” is increasingly used in games such as Escape from Tarkov and Arc Raiders command a huge audience. This is a popular genre at the moment. But according to former Bungie product manager Chris Sides, who worked on the shooter Marathon, that label is deeply flawed. Personally, he hates the term.
“The genre name is so bad,” Sides said. Shooter Monthly Podcast (by using Game post). “I hate the name of the genre “extra shooter.” When I was working on Marathon, I was doing marketing and I really wanted to ask, “Can we come up with a different name for the genre?” because “evacuation shooter” is so stupid. This is the only genre whose name is mechanics.”
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What about a battle royale, the podcast host quickly retorted. “Battle Royale isn’t a mechanic,” Sides said, “it’s a mode. Extraction is a mechanic that allows you to get out. Helldivers 2 fetch shooter because you fetch? No, this doesn’t look like Tarkov at all.”
And therein lies the problem: games being mislabeled and potentially misleading players. Sides said the “terrible” terminology makes it very difficult to compare games in the extravagant shooter genre. Arena Breakout and Escape from Tarkov: Yes, they can be compared because they roughly follow the same template, he said. But Arc Raiders and Tarkov? Nope. “Comparing Arc Raiders to Rust might be fine,” he said, “and then is Rust an extraction? Because this is survival…
“This is a problem,” he continued. “I can't stand this name. When you say “genre extraction” it should hit your mark. In fact, this genre doesn't even know what it is. You, as a player, how do you know what you're going to get? And this is one of the real problems of the genre itself.”
Chris Sides left Bungie in 2024 to become a freelance consultant and create a new studio doing something he's not ready to talk about yet, he said on the podcast. Meanwhile, Marathon continues to reel. receiving scathing reviews during technical testing last yearthen disappearing from the release schedule, only will appear recently against the backdrop of publisher Sony's promises to release the game by March 2026.. Whether it will come then – and in what form – we cannot yet know.
