It forgot to be fun
While the first Destiny may be a solid enough game, it had a lot of stumbling points in its three year history. At launch, the campaign of the original was fairly lackluster and forgettable. It was the slow release of additional content, however, that did more to hurt the reputation of the game than any glitches, disappointing content or internet cynicism could have.
When fans bested everything there was to do, it was nearly half a year before anything new came to the game. After each major expansion (Taken King, Rise of Iron), the game also got reused asset flips as “new” content, thus aggravating sympathetic fans. It becomes hard to defend something you love when the company making it doesn’t seem to care.
In an interview with GamesIndustry.biz, Activsion CEO Eric Hirshberg sat down to talk about the future of the publisher, the pratfalls they’ve faced with yearly Call of Duty installments and how Destiny failed to meet expectations.
With specific regards to the drip feed of content for Bungie’s space opera, Hirshberg said, “We got a lot right with Destiny 1, but one of the things we didn’t do was keep up with the demand for new content. I feel like that, as great as [DLC packs] The Dark Below, House of Wolves, The Taken King and Rise of Iron all are, clearly there was appetite for more.” It is unreasonable to expect high quality content every week, but launching a pseudo-MMO without a clear content strategy plan is a recipe for failure.
What is the solution for this drought? Bringing more development teams on board, of course. “One of the things you’ll see post the launch of Destiny 2,” Hirshberg details, “is that we have got additional AAA developers from inside the Activision ecosystem working with Bungie on Destiny content, including Vicarious Visions and High Moon. That will allow us to keep an even more robust pipeline of content in the ecosystem.”
I understand wanting more people working on content to consistently be releasing things, but Destiny started life as a Bungie project. It was their chance at success after leaving Halo and Microsoft behind to try something new. The game had all the hallmarks of a Bungie porject. As the old saying goes, I think we’ll be seeing too many cooks in the kitchen with Destiny 2. Maybe getting fresh blood will keep the series interesting, but I’m betting that it will be at the cost of the game’s identity.
Either way, fans of the series shouldn’t expect the game to stagnate for months on end like last time. Maybe now jumping in at launch won’t feel like paying for beta access.
“Gamers are part of our creative process” – Activision’s Eric Hirshberg [GamesIndustry.biz]
