In Destiny 2, a new ViDoc has been released. The most exciting part here are the many new faces among the Bungie developers, says our author Schuhmann. You can see that Bungie has restructured behind the scenes to satisfy the content hunger of the Guardians.
This video is about: On November 27, Bungie released the ViDoc: “The Path to the Future”.
In the video, Bungie presented what the next year will be like, from now until September 2019, when either Destiny 3 or the next “real” expansion comes
The time is to be bridged by 3 episodes included in the Annual Pass.
The exciting part about the video is: Most are certainly focused on what the Bungie employees are presenting there and which images of new Exotics or locations we recognize.
For me, the exciting part is how much personnel is visible in the video. A total of 13 Bungie employees present the individual features and speak.
Thus, we get an insight into how Bungie exactly works, or at least hints of it.
Almost only “Directors” or “Leads” are visible, meaning team leaders at Bungie – similar to “senior department heads” in other companies.
The following are visible in the video:
- Justin Truman, Production Director – has been with Bungie for 9 years, originally from the tech side
- Eric Osborne, Head of Community – the direct boss of DeeJ, a long-timer
- Steve Cotton, Creative Director – basically the strong man in Forsaken
- Scott Taylor, Production Director – first seen at Rise of Iron, now the partner of Steve Cotton. The two also worked together in Forsaken as a “Creative/Producer” duo
- Jason Sussman, Art Director – has been with Bungie for 12 years, promoted to “Art Director” in October 2018
- Evan Nikolich, Design Director – has been with Bungie for 6 years, also recently promoted in November
- Chris Barrett, Creative Director – Barrett was the hope after the failed launch of Destiny 2, who promised new features and improvements
- Sam Jones, Production Director – has been with Bungie for 9 years, responsible for working with external studios
- Danielle Morales, Art Lead (Vicarious Visions)
- Chris Degnan, Design Lead (Vicarious Visions)
- Brian Frank, Design Lead – has been with Bungie for 9 years
- Josh Hamrick, Design Lead – the famous “hat guy”, friend of all Hunters
- Greg Peng, Senior Designer
Many New Faces and Promotions
What does this mean? We can derive a lot just from the personnel:
- There are many “leaders” at the Director level, often with the same job title. Three Production Directors and three Creative or Design Directors can be recognized alone
- Bungie has apparently slowly completed the restructuring and formed three teams with their own leaders, who work on different DLCs
- Also, Vicarious Visions will be working on the Annual Pass. This is the Activision studio that handled the PC port. However, no one from High Moon Studios was in the video. They had probably led the campaign for Forsaken.
- Many of the people who are seen here for the first time have long worked on Destiny but have been promoted and shifted into new roles – as LinkedIn reveals
- It is particularly noticeable that in October/November 2018, some were promoted to higher roles, probably because independent teams have been formed
- Many “familiar faces” like Luke Smith, Mark Noseworthy, or Lars Bakken are not visible – they are probably already working on “the next big thing”
- Instead, the former B-Team with Scott Taylor and Steve Cotton is visible. Chris Barrett is also recognized from the past – all in leadership positions
What lies behind it: Bungie has struggled in the first years to develop multiple new DLCs and expansions simultaneously while continuing to maintain the base game. The ambitious master plan for the game could not be fulfilled. Thus, there have been repeatedly long content droughts.
In 2016, an internal restructuring apparently began with a hatchet:
- That was when the president of Bungie, Harold Ryan left
- and probably also the actual Game Director of Destiny 2, CJ Cowan
- Destiny 2 was also rebooted
Evidently, this restructuring has now been completed: Many have been promoted and now own “Platoons” formed, which are supposed to drive the content of Destiny 2 forward, while others are already working on future projects.
We will have to wait and see if Bungie can satisfy the content hunger of the players with this technique. Because behind each face in this trailer, there is surely a host of developers working to ensure that the game content this time offers more depth.
We will find out more on Tuesday when the DLC “Black Armory” is released.
