Bungie wants to make Destiny 2 a hobby. Our author Schuhmann believes it already is. An important part of the hobby: Getting frustrated about Destiny 2.
Bungie has been trying to make Destiny a hobby for 3 years: Bungie didn’t know for a long time where they wanted to go with Destiny. At the end of 2015, around December, they suddenly had a breakthrough: Destiny should become a hobby. They called it a Life-Style-Game at Bungie. They introduced Sparrow Racing and announced glorious times ahead. In a video documentary, they repeatedly stated: Living world, live game, hobby.
What does Bungie mean when they say “hobby”?
What does Bungie mean by that? “Hobby” is a code for “people spend a lot of time in the game” at Bungie. The idea behind it is roughly this – players should:
- Engage in side activities – like Sparrow Racing, perhaps later housing or space racing
- People should spend a lot of time in the game working on their gear and fine-tuning their Guardians (T12)
- Players should spend time on “fashion”, think about how everything looks, perhaps shop in the cash shop and definitely not run around looking foolish with a Prince Valiant hairstyle
- Guardians should hunt for Triumphs, special achievements, try every aspect of the game
- Preferably, they should also engage in PvP
- They want to experience and enjoy all the weekly and monthly events and rituals: Xur, milestones, raid lockouts, and the Trials
- And players should also engage intensively with the game even when they are not logged in – discussing in forums, playing with the app, watching videos on YouTube or Twitch streams
But somehow not: The good intention lasted a maximum of 6 weeks. Then Bungie looked around and realized: “Our reserves are empty. We have no content prepared for 2016 and Destiny 2 is supposed to come out in 9 months!” Soon after the announcement “We are making Destiny a hobby”, they pushed the idea of the “hobby” aside and just tried to get by. Destiny 2 was supposed to fix it.
Destiny 1 was still a hobby: Even though they barely developed the idea further, Destiny 1 functioned well as a hobby during the “dull” years. Even though almost nothing happened in 2016, Destiny sold a lot of “Silver”, the in-game cash shop currency. Thus, in terms of digital revenue, Destiny finished just behind the new game, The Division, in 2016. And they had their launch year that year.
Destiny 2 – The Anti-Hobby
Destiny 2 is not a hobby: However, Bungie developed a Destiny 2 that was aimed at casual players and wanted to be as accessible as possible for everyone. There were no more “hobby” elements recognizable at all. Almost everything that previously fell under “hobby”, which they had been dedicated to 2 years earlier, was gone in Destiny 2.
Destiny 2 needs to become a hobby again: When fans reacted with angry protests, Bungie realized in November 2017: Destiny 2 needs to become much more of a hobby. All the changes and the seemingly 24 new roadmaps since then say: “We will become a hobby again.”
Destiny 2 – One hobby has remained: Currently, all “hobby” elements in Destiny 2 look quite bleak. But one thing still holds true. Even though sites like “Planet Destiny” are dead and many YouTubers have withdrawn from the game, the Destiny player community remains active. Yes, it even seems to be more active than ever before. For it has long become part of the hobby to get extremely frustrated with Bungie and their ideas.
A relationship like with your football club: Our author Robert A. (name unchanged by the editorial team) has developed a love-hate relationship with Destiny like a traumatized HSV fan with their club:
- He repeatedly emphasizes that he actually doesn’t care about it all and is deeply sad about Destiny
- At the same time, he follows every announcement, comments on them extensively, and is fully involved in the topic
- He passionately discusses, has an opinion on everything, and a clear idea of how it should all be much better
- Even though he has completely and forever finished with Destiny 2 and will never give them another cent
And he is not the only one: Even people in our editorial team, who have nothing formal to do with Destiny, complain that “Destiny 2 no longer has a single nice Hunter Cloak and therefore is absolutely unplayable.”
Destiny 2 – Is this still a hobby or already a support group?
Like a traumatized football fan: Just as a fan loves their club but can get terribly upset about every player mistake, every wrong personnel decision, and every substitution made by the coach in everyday life, many Destiny fans feel the same way. Hundreds of comments on Mein MMO for every article about Destiny show this. The gravitational pull of Destiny is still strong. The bond between players and the game cannot be easily severed, even if many keep insisting otherwise.
Destiny 2 and the hobby: So, Destiny 2 is still a hobby for many, but not the hobby Bungie envisioned. However, maybe that will change. Have you heard? “Forsaken” is supposed to introduce many new hobby elements again. Because Destiny 2 must become a hobby again, says Bungie.
