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Poseable Devil Walkers in every Happy Meal

Polygon has posted a short report on Activision's presence at the Licensing Expo in Las Vegas and the last paragraph provides an amusing juxtaposition:

This year the company pulled off the golden dream of all licensing agents, a Happy Meal deal with fast-food giant McDonalds. Activision says its big priority for the coming year is tying up some deals for its new franchise, Destiny.

Obviously the two sentences are unrelated, but I wouldn't mind seeing the Hamburglar outclassed by the might of a Fallen captain. What kind of licensing deals will we see emerge from the Destiny universe?

Looking To Get Hooked

Dean Takahasi, writer for Venturebeat, shared his thoughts one Destiny's E3 reveal. He has a lot of positive things to say, but he also expected a little more from Bungie. 

This is one of the tough things about operating an MMO. The technology will eventually start lagging behind single-player games. And when that happens, the MMO has to have its hooks in its players, or it will lose them. I don’t see the hooks yet for Destiny. They might be there, but Bungie has to show them.

Space magic, Dean… space magic.

Destiny's Poster Child

TIME's techland subdomain has posted a short article about Destiny as a promising example of next-gen, always-online gaming.

“It’s just building the ecosystem where you can carry friends, meet friends, hold onto friends,” Ryan said. “Building communities around the people that you share entertainment experiences with is one of the things we’ve definitely been a strong proponent of, pusher of, and advocate for.”

Building communities? Sounds like fun.

Your weekly maelstrom of inquiry

E3 is over and there are only 19 shopping days left until Bungie Day. If the recent gameplay reveal left a few questions rattling around your skull, be sure to deposit them in this week's Mail Sack thread.

Sitting alongside Harry Potter

Wired.co.uk has a very interesting article about Destiny's past, present, and future, which includes some revealing numbers on how Bungie has grown in recent years:

How large a group? "It's around three times the size of the Halo Reach development team," Butcher, the game's lead engineer, tells Wired.co.uk. "If you count all of the test and development and support staff then we're over 400 people."

For perspective, the size of the team working on the next big-budget Call of Duty title, Ghosts, in-house at Infinity Ward is 125, in addition to about a few contractors and additional work done at partner studios.

Be sure to read the rest of the article to see how Bungie learned from ten years of making Halo. (Afterwards, discuss it in this thread Xenos posted!)

Joystiq Interviews Chris Butcher

Joystiq's Alexander Sliwinski posted an video interview with Chris Butcher, engineering lead at Bungie, about game concepts and how the social components of Destiny work. Check it out!

Guardian Radio Episode 16

The Guardians of Destiny have not slowed their frenetic podcast pace just because they spent a week in LA - the latest episode actually COVERS that week.. great talk. Mark, Patrick, Chris, Derrick, and Craig take on the highs and lows (mostly highs) of their week in this two-hour extravaganza. Thanks, roland.

TTL Tuesday -- Keepin' It Classy

TTL Demag0gue told us about an article at Tied the Leader wherein gunslingers share their thoughts about Destiny's character classes. Go read it!

Breaking Down the Clues

Destiny Updates stopped in to announce an analysis of the Destiny weapon/armor information screens, as shown at E3. Pretty nice rundown - check it out, you may have missed some of this!

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