Heh, poor Chris has to keep answering the same question over and over about Destiny's genre and social aspects. Seems like the interviewer really just wanted him to say "MMO".

I think everyone wants him to say "MMO." Seems like the entire industry is struggling with the fact that Destiny is a genre-straddling title.

We should just name this new genre after Destiny for all the future copycats. :)

Heh, poor Chris has to keep answering the same question over and over about Destiny's genre and social aspects. Seems like the interviewer really just wanted him to say "MMO".

I think everyone wants him to say "MMO." Seems like the entire industry is struggling with the fact that Destiny is a genre-straddling title.

INT. ACTIVISION-BLIZZARD PRESS ROOM - MORNING

CHRIS BUTCHER is being interviewed by JOYSTIQ.

CHRIS BUTCHER
(New Zealand accent)
UGH. FINE. You want us to call DESTINY a "MMO"? FINE. Have fun typing "PMMOFPSRPAG" in every one of your bloody articles, you wankers!

CHRIS BUTCHER then sics RASPY, a stuffed tiger that has come to live through SPACE MAGIC!!!1!!, on JOYSTIQ.

A year later, one of the few surviving JOYSTIQ employees gives DESTINY a 10/10 and calls it "the CITIZEN KANE of video games."

Fade to black.

im so sorry

Saying "it's an MMO shooter" or a "shared world shooter" wouldn't really help though.

Yeah I'd love to know more about how the matching system works, how competitive play will interact with story play.

However I can understand them wanting to get out there and show a really solid version of a public event and point at it and say "THAT is what we're going for".

It's solid and gives us all sorts of solid information to process.

But I still feel there's scope for Bungie to communicate a little more candidly about just how this game will work.

What if some of those details are still in flux, though? Perhaps they're simply _not ready_ to flesh out the scope of how those aspects will work because they're still trying to fine-tune them or figure out how achievable they are with the various levels of hardware and infrastructure that they're working with.

Despite us now having seen in-game footage and having had all these interviews, I still feel like Bungie are being evasive when it comes to answering questions. The MMO question keeps coming up, but I find their answers dissatisfying. Yes, it's a shooter, but that isn't mutually exclusive with the MMO genre. I get the feeling they're avoiding that key abbreviation simply because they're worried it'll scare some players off. That might be a legitimate concern, but it still feels like they're intentionally not discussing certain key gameplay mechanics that people obviously want to know about.

This is what I talked about before when it comes to having a dialogue with Bungie. We'd like to understand the game better. Sure, we're going to pore over every screenshot and video and try and glean what we can from that, but from the horse's mouth is obviously better. Yes, some things are going to change, some features aren't going to make the cut. But I still feel there's scope for Bungie to communicate a little more candidly about just how this game will work.

Yeah, well. In 2000 describing a top-notch shooter on a console with a two-weapon limitation turned quite a few people away. That's to say that often playing the game is even better than hearing something from the horse's mouth.

It could be that they don't want to scare people away by using "MMO," but it could be (and I believe it is the case) that they see MMO as an inaccurate descriptor. That's a pretty good reason not to use it, too.

I think their relative unease with the word 'MMO' is simply because the amount of players you will be able to interact with at any given time will be way too few to be called 'massive multiplayer' and get away with it.

As far as I gathered, it is a Borderlands-like FPS with a seamless Journey-like matchmaking.

This is what I talked about before when it comes to having a dialogue with Bungie. We'd like to understand the game better. Sure, we're going to pore over every screenshot and video and try and glean what we can from that, but from the horse's mouth is obviously better. Yes, some things are going to change, some features aren't going to make the cut. But I still feel there's scope for Bungie to communicate a little more candidly about just how this game will work.

I'd say that if Bungie isn't being more descriptive about their game by the spring, then you can worry. For now, just chill for a bit and come back to Destiny closer to release…

Bungie has decided on a reveal campaign where large information releases are focused on a specific topic. E3 was all about showing the FPS capabilities of the game.

My discussions with various members of the dev team showed that they feel that trying to explain too much about too many facets of Destiny at once might dilute any individual message - so the reveals are going to be structured this way for a while.

You might hate that - but don't take it as "they're afraid of the comparisons that will be made", it's just that the social aspects of the game were NOT the focus of the E3 reveal.