In the last stream of Destiny , there was new information about how many people work at Bungie.
Bungie is currently using live streams to introduce the team to the players and showcase the work on Destiny. New information about the spring update is expected to follow later. This week, they talked about the sounds of Destiny.
They had the new Creative Story Lead CJ Cowan as a guest, and he revealed in a casual tone some internal insights that we would otherwise never receive information about.
Cowan is the head of the “story team,” a group of 40 people. They have been together for a little over a year and have hired some writers and producers.
The job of the story team is to set the direction of the story in a studio with 700 employees so that everyone tells the same story and not a multitude of different ones.
The point we are referring to comes around 26:15 in this stream.
700 people work in the Destiny studio
Although Cowan does not specify exactly how the number 700 is composed at Bungie. Since it was said more in a casual tone and not in focus, the context of this number is hard to assess. But if one assumes that Bungie is only working on Destiny and even has the “Highmoon Studios” working on the game, then this information makes it clear: Compared to the launch of the first Destiny title, they have stepped up efforts and costs significantly.
In 2014, numbers circulated stating that 500 people were working on Destiny.
Concerns from fans, who infer from the content void that Destiny is only being cooked at a low flame now seem to be refuted.
In recent months, there have been reports that Bungie has hired individual writers from other games, such as Star Trek Online, Guild Wars 2, or Mass Effect Andromeda. If the story team has been working together for a year now, we should see their first works in future expansions and updates. This also suggests that they have now put the struggles after the release behind them and restructured internally.
Regarding the release, insider reports stated that they had to retell the story practically without authors after the leadership of Destiny was dissatisfied with the original story by Joe Staten.
The next live stream for Destiny is scheduled for Monday evening. Bungie has a clan as a guest and will focus on the Crucible mode “Rift”.
