For the 7th anniversary of the game series Destiny , the studio Bungie shares stories from its early days. During E3 2013, there was a catastrophic error, but they managed to cover it up somewhat. For Bungie, it was a sign of how Destiny would be successful in the following years: through stubbornness and preparation.
What went wrong back then?
- At E3 2013, Bungie wanted to showcase a major gameplay presentation of Destiny 1. It was planned that then-writer Joe Staten and Jason Jones, one of the founders of Bungie, would deliver a meticulously rehearsed run through Destiny 1 live in front of millions. This was to happen during the Sony press conference, the largest press conference of E3.
- However, a technician accidentally disconnected Jones’s monitor under the stage: he could no longer see what he was playing. An HDMI cable had broken.
- It looked like the huge announcement of Destiny would become a complete flop because one of the presenters couldn’t see what he was playing. Even though they had run through the presentation dozens of times and everything worked during rehearsals, the premiere now threatened to fail.
About 2 minutes into the trailer, Jason Jones’s Guardian appears, who must play blind at that moment:
“A man down” as a secret code for the technicians
This is how Bungie saved the day: Already at 2:20 minutes into the now-legendary gameplay presentation, Joe Staten said: “Unfortunately, we have a man down.” This was a signal to the technicians at Bungie: “Something went wrong here, play the video.”
At this point, you can also hear Jones laughing a bit nervously and walking over to Staten, who greets him with “I knew you would make it.”
Bungie said: In the seconds that followed, the technicians managed to switch unnoticed to a recorded video, and from then on, a recording was running. Jones and Staten were just pretending to play Destiny. In reality, it was a playback.
According to Bungie, the switch from live to recording only appeared to the viewers as a “long loading screen.” Nobody noticed.
Hard work, preparation, and stubbornness as the formula for success
This is how Bungie sees the incident: For Bungie, this incident is a sign that “maybe not everything always goes according to the perfect plan, but hard work, preparation, and stubbornness would ultimately push the game series forward.”
This is another perspective: What seems like “fun improvisation” here was not the only slip-up Bungie allowed in 2013. This was later revealed through insider reports.
The hero of the E3 presentation, Joe Staten, had written the story of Destiny 1. However, Bungie’s leadership was so dissatisfied with the story that they chopped it up just before release and reassembled the pieces, resulting in the story appearing arbitrary and nonsensical in many places.
The line “I don’t even have time to explain why I don’t have time to explain” has become legendary. Bungie had a character who played a larger role in the original version, reduced to a single scene as “The Stranger” in Destiny 1 because they had the character’s animations completed. Therefore, “The Stranger” appeared in a key scene of Destiny 1 and significantly advanced the plot.
Fans wondered where this character came from, who she was, and what role she would play in the future of Destiny. However, “The Stranger” didn’t play any role in Destiny for years, only in this one scene.
Even though the flying switch at E3 went unnoticed by anyone in the audience, everyone later noticed the story reboot.
The tendency for perfect plans to go awry continued later with Destiny 2. The comparatively low quality of the endgame in Destiny 2 had a reason that couldn’t be easily masked with a code word and a video playback:
