14 DAY TRIAL // Destiny is one of the hottest games of the moment, scheduled to come out in two weeks, on September 9, and touted as having the potential to become one of the best-selling new IPs in video game history.
Former Halo developer Bungie has really poured its heart into the upcoming science fiction first-person shooter, hosting the largest multiplayer console beta ever, with over 4.3 million participants, and offering a fresh take on persistent online multiplayer.
Publisher Activision and Bungie intend to make the Destiny franchise one of the biggest investments since the development of the original Call of Duty video game, and their plans extend far into the future.
"We tried to make it so that we never took you out of the universe, so you're always living in the world that is Destiny rather than being reminded that you're in a computer game," Director of Production Jonty Barnes tells OXM in regard to the game's artistic direction and design.
There was a bit of a legal dispute between Activision and Respawn Entertainment's founders (the makers of the Call of Duty franchise) a while back, before Titanfall was launched, which resulted in the publisher and Bungie entering a long-term development deal for Destiny, said to span ten years.
"The contract is just an arrangement so we understand where the creative decision making is and the marketing is and how we kind of work together and I think that has played to both sides' strengths. I'd certainly say that they recognize when something's great and they recognize to double down and really get behind something that they really believe in, and that's been great to see," Barnes commented on the deal.
One of the big parts of any modern shooter is the competitive multiplayer component, and Barnes mentions that the development team doesn't worry very much about other games, as they are all passionate gamers who learned a lot from a wide array of genres, and partnering with the PlayStation Network, Xbox and Activision's DemonWare organization resulted in a great online infrastructure.
Working on such a big project for such an extended period of time can negatively affect the morale and the creative enthusiasm behind the entire development effort, but the team has gone to great lengths to ensure that everything stays fresh.
"We have a feedback forum which is an official way of giving credit contribution to the game that is passed by the designers and prototyped, so you're always invested and great ideas can come from anywhere or inform great ideas."
"We also have e-mail groups like Tiger Corps, which is just an e-mail group for players of the game in that they're really aggressively pushing ideas that they think are important, trying to rally behind it; 'Hey, I've got this great idea, can you thumb-up it?' in the feedback forum. And then you have user-research as well, so you can participate in that," Barnes outlines the ways that Bungie tries to have people invested in the upcoming shooter.
He concludes by saying that he believes that most people will be impressed by the manner in which the studio managed to evolve the way cooperative multiplayer gaming works, and that they will find more enjoyment playing together than they ever did in traditional shooters and other multiplayer games.
Destiny is coming out on September 9, headed to the PlayStation 3, PlayStation 4, Xbox 360 and Xbox One platforms.
