14 DAY TRIAL // Destiny, the upcoming shooter from Bungie, can be the next big thing for the gaming industry but a lot more details about its mechanics are needed until a clear picture can form. From the monetization options to the methods of delivering new content, the studio needs to speak about them sooner rather than later.
Destiny promises to deliver an online first-person shooter experience in which players can go alone or team up with friends and complete story missions, various free roam objectives, or just go head to head against other humans in the competitive Crucible area.
Bungie has offered a lot of details about Destiny in recent months as the studio wants fans to stay as hyped up as possible ahead of the game's actual release in September.
The recent Destiny Alpha stage on the PS4 did much to improve the popularity of Destiny, as until then quite a lot of players were unsure how the ambitious game would cope in real life and how it would play, given its online nature.
A special beta stage will kick off later this month on July 17 for the PS4 and PS3 and a few days later for the Xbox One and Xbox 360, and that will also play a huge role for quite a lot of fans who have pre-ordered the game just to get access into the test phase.
Even so, while all these hands-on opportunities are great, Bungie needs to offer concrete details about the way it's going to monetize Destiny and how it's going to treat downloadable content.
It's been touted many times that Bungie looks at Destiny as a 10-year experience and you can't support an online game just based on an upfront cost of 60 USD/EUR (Guild Wars 2 being an exception).
Given the nature of publisher Activision, you can expect a lot of downloadable content to be offered at regular intervals and, unfortunately, you shouldn't expect that many freebies.
Call of Duty games are saturated with premium downloadable content, not just in the form of multiplayer map packs but also in the form of personalization and cosmetic items.
You can expect, to some degree, that Destiny will be monetized in a similar way. Already there's a rich customization system inside the game and it's rather obvious that Bungie and Activision will charge those that want their Guardian to look even prettier than the rest (Dota 2 bases its whole monetization strategy on this).
You can also expect to receive story content for a price, although it's unclear just what Bungie is willing to offer for free, so that players are able to keep up with the narrative, and what it's going to charge money for.
As you can see, there are plenty of possibilities and Bungie should most definitively come forward and explain how it will support Destiny after launch and what costs players should be prepared to pay if they want to ensure that the game remains profitable.
Unfortunately, it won't happen in the near future, although it's possible that some form of announcement is going to be made after the beta stage concludes and before the game gets released in September.