In Destiny 2, the Season of the Drifter is coming up. A new video documentation has been released. Our author Schuhmann can’t get past one sentence.
I really like Bungie’s video documentaries.
I imagine Bungie’s headquarters to be a magnificent castle, lying behind thick walls and surrounded by a moat. The people in the town outside the castle go about their daily business, but occasionally they glance at the castle and wonder what goes on behind the walls of Castle Bungiestein.
Occasionally, the herald stands up grandly, in his finest attire, and speaks of the castle walls: “We hear you! This is just the start of a conversation.”
People look up briefly, the herald nods, then retreats, and the people continue with their business.
But occasionally the drawbridge is lowered and the townsfolk are allowed into the castle.
Then they walk through the halls with wide eyes, seeing who is there and what they are doing. That’s then a ViDoc.
The video documentaries are short promotional films in which Bungie employees explain what they envision for Destiny 2, what they plan for the coming months, and what they were thinking.
You might recognize most of the faces in these video documentaries from Destiny for years:
- Lars Bakken, the PvP head, who secretly introduced skill-based PvP and drove everyone crazy – he is now “Creative Lead” and, in my opinion, clearly the archvillain of Bungie.
- Eric Osborne, the communications head, a bearded, laid-back guy, is actually the hero of the story, but he hardly says anything, since he once promised a flood of content that never came
- and Luke Smith, now a sort of “Skywalker”-like figure, who only comes down from his mountain for special appearances, is responsible for the big visions. Now he says, “We are starting to figure out how the roadmap for a Destiny controlled by Bungie could look like.” Heavily loaded with significance, but lacking real substance. Cool.
In this video documentation, I stumbled upon a sentence that really bothered me:
“This is one of the most exciting times. We are starting to build the muscles to make Destiny a fast-reacting live game. And I think from here it will only get better.”
Design Lead, Ryan Paradis
The sentence sounds as if Destiny has only been on the market for 2 weeks and not for 5 years. Now they want to become a cool, “fast-reacting live game” – you can almost hear them whisper “Like Fortnite.”
Since at least 2014, Bungie has known and has said that they
- must be a live game that keeps players entertained
- and must respond faster to criticism
For 5 years, they should have been working on becoming just such a “fast-reacting live game.” And from everything we know, Bungie has made great efforts and internal restructuring to become such a game:
- They founded the live team
- have multiple teams working simultaneously on DLCs
- received additional support studios from Activision
- recruited community managers from reddit
- and much more.
It just never worked before, and it still takes 2 months to fix the smallest issue.
That it is now seriously said in 2019 that they are building the “muscles” for it, meaning to lay the foundation, keeps me restless:
- either they have now found a completely new approach, finally identified and localized the crucial problems that have been plaguing them for years
- or they have done nothing for the past 5 years and only now it has genuinely become clear to them
- or it is simply a sentence they think the townspeople would like to hear right now because it’s somehow trendy
I am definitely curious how this “muscle” that is currently being built will impact the future of Destiny 2. I hope we learn more the next time they lower the drawbridge.
Until then, I hope Bungie hits the gym hard, because they desperately need those muscles.
