Destiny launched on September 9th to much excitement and record sales numbers. This must have been great news for the overlor- I mean executives at Activision. Destiny also saw some rave reviews, and tough criticisms, becoming a polarizing title in the gaming world. While some were happy to kill endless hordes of aliens and farm sweet loot, other’s clamored for more narrative and substance. This was in no way helped by the series of tough questions being shot at Bungie about content being cut from the final game.
I myself love Destiny, have written other pieces on it, and will continue to play it despite my suspicions. But having seen what Activision has done to series like Tony Hawk Pro Skater, Guitar Hero, Call of Duty, and many others, one can see how gamer’s are not considered in the publishers business practices. It does not seem outlandish to think that they would pressure Bungie to cut content from their base game, in order to sell it back to us as DLC. My suspicions were raised when Bungie issued a “hush hush” answer to allegations about the games narrative being changed so close to launch, delivering a much different experience than what gamers had been advertised and promised. Community Manager David “DeeJ” Dague’s answer did not deny very much and gave a sort of non answer that we would expect from a politician:
“The launch of Destiny changed things for me at Bungie. Ever since you became a community, instead of an audience waiting for a game, I’ve been invited into a room where a dedicated team is talking exclusively about the next updates for Destiny. Through me, you have a seat at their table. I’d rather spend the precious time we have together coming up with ideas for how the game can better support us as a community. I’d rather we look toward the next update. There may come a time when we take a probing look back at the challenges we faced during the development of Destiny, but those won’t be my stories to tell. You have me to kick around, Guardians, but know that I’m focused on our future together.”
Another interesting note, is the full detail of an anonymous Bungie employees experience with a previous build of Destiny which featured a very different narrative. This post seemed to have struck such a chord, that it was removed from its original post site, seemingly swept under the rug. It also seems odd that Bungie would recruit and pay (highly), some of the greatest writers in gaming, film and tv to write that very scant story that is currently present in game.
Finally, after digging up previous dev diaries and game trailers, you can plainly see that developers spoke of features such as trade systems, and they even showed playable spaces like Mercury. And as one youtuber BDobbinsFTW pointed out, why is it that Mercury is the only planet with a PVP map and no PVE content? Very odd. And why must we pay more strange coins for sparrow upgrades and customizations than exotic armor, if sparrows were never meant to play a bigger role in the game. Why must we grind to unlock more advanced sparrows if all we do is use them get from repetitive bounty mission to repetitive bounty mission. A few other interesting points can be seen in his video below.
Why should we care? Many games have shipped with locked content on disc before. You as a consumer should be concerned because practices like this, cutting up something you basically already paid for and selling it back to you later, shows that publishers such as Activision have no concern for your experience. To allow this to continue is foster these practices and allow even MORE content to be cut, in order to create some perceived value later down the road, to suck a few more dollars from your bank account. They are fooling you into thinking you are getting your money’s worth, when we as gamers deserve much more for the full price we pay for AAA titles.
It isn’t that much a stretch to think that a publisher that has outright said that it puts business before gamers, would force a dev studio to cut up its content. Again this is all speculation, but if these things are true it is sad that the reputation of Bungie must also sink to the depths along with Activision, who’ve already been living in those depths for quite some time.