Joseph Staten was responsible for the disastrous launch of Destiny 1 as an author and design director 10 years ago, and then moved on to Microsoft to work on Halo Infinite. Now, the 51-year-old is set to develop a new amazing game for Netflix, apparently for PC, PlayStation, and Xbox.
What does Joseph Staten have to do with Destiny?
- Joseph Staten is an author who joined Bungie in 1998 and played a major role in the in-game videos for Halo, Halo 2, and Halo 3.
- When Bungie committed to the huge project Destiny, Staten worked there as an author and design director. As later heard, his work on the story of Destiny was so strange and eccentric that the story was scrapped just before release and under the leadership of Luke Smith, a new story was pieced together from the remnants of the old story within a few months.
- Staten left Bungie in September 2013, before the reboot came, and went to Microsoft, where he worked on games like Halo Infinite from 2014 to 2023.
New AAA Game for Netflix with Secrets and Adventure
This is now his job at Netflix: Staten has now announced that he is moving to Netflix as “Creative Director” and is working on a brand-new AAA game for multiple platforms – typically in the West, “multiplatform” refers to something like “PC, PS5, Xbox Series X”. The game is supposed to establish a “new IP”, meaning a new game universe.
He also says:
In my working life, there is nothing I love more than collaborating with others to build a world filled with iconic characters, deep puzzles, and endless adventures.
Netflix is apparently making a major first-person shooter in the Unreal Engine
What does Netflix have to do with gaming? There are about 50 games on Netflix, most of them are indie games. However, job postings were discovered in November 2022 suggesting that Netflix is looking for a design director to develop a PC game with the Unreal Engine, apparently a first-person shooter (via kotaku).
It’s quite possible that Staten is now working on this title for Netflix. That would certainly fit with his previous work.
Gaming could become an important pillar for Netflix alongside series and movies, which has recently lost ground in the race to be the top streaming service.
What was Staten’s problem with Destiny back then? This is still not entirely clear. The original story of Destiny revolved around abstract concepts such as light, darkness, and hope.
Apparently, at some point in 2013, Destiny’s decision-makers concluded that such a story was not suitable for a multimillion-dollar shooter project, and they then turned it into a relatively confusing sci-fi story that has no time to explain why there is no time to explain anything. For years, Destiny struggled with a story resulting from this reboot that even the creators didn’t fully understand:
Destiny: Insiders explain why the story was so terrible at release
