Bungie's reveal: a disservice to Destiny

by kapowaz, Monday, February 18, 2013, 14:48 (4084 days ago)

The general vibe from almost all of the press articles about Destiny's reveal have been guarded, cautiously optimistic, but uncertain pieces where speculation is mixed with acknowledgement of how little is actually known.

Meanwhile here (and I suspect elsewhere, too) the speculation is leading into unhealthy territory. Far too many threads are making bold assertions centred on assumed gameplay mechanics where fans with almost nothing else to go on are using the only known frame of reference they have to guess just how Destiny will work. Mostly this is about MMOs. Sometimes it's the concerns of always-online, or levelling mechanics, or just how are Bungie going to make money from this anyway?

These frustrate me, because we know so little, but I think ultimately the buck stops with Bungie. We want to know about this game, but you gave us so little that we're forced to speculate. What this media event has demonstrated to me unequivocally is there is such a thing as too little information when teasing a game. Or at least, there is when it's a hyped reveal presaged by ARG and where members of the press are invited to see what you have to show.

Now maybe this is Activision's doing. Maybe they still want the big reveal for E3. But either way, I think this hasn't gone nearly as well as it should have, and it's doing what is undoubtedly going to be an excellent videogame a massive disservice.