One Other Thing... (Destiny)

by CruelLEGACEY , Toronto, Thursday, January 05, 2017, 16:56 (2878 days ago) @ Claude Errera

Game development, especially on the scale of something like Destiny is very hard. But it's also hard as a fan of the studio and game to be in the dark about why thing were like they were.

I do not now, and never have, understood this attitude. You're paying them for a game - not a history lesson. When you buy a pound of roast beef at the grocery store, you don't consider yourself entitled to the life story of the cow that beef was cut from (unless you live in Portland, but that's another story altogether). When you buy a chair at a furniture store, you do not expect (and will likely never be given) a list of things that didn't work when the designers were deciding how to put that chair together. More relevantly, you don't expect the farmer that grew that cow (or the company who built that chair) to give you status updates along the way. ("Cow got brucellosis again. Hopefully we get it cured before slaughter.") Why, then, do you think it's okay to ask that of Bungie (or any game company)?

Why do you think you have a right to see how the sausage is made? And (to look at it from the other side) what could Bungie POSSIBLY gain by providing that information? For a tiny, tiny fraction of their fanbase (you, me, another thousand people), it makes them more relatable as people. For EVERYONE ELSE, it introduces doubt into the quality of the final product. It's one thing to look back on the development of a successful product and say "these are the things that MIGHT have killed us." It's another thing altogether (and a stupid thing, from the standpoint of selling your product) to say "hey, we fucked up bigtime, and we're gonna do our best to fix it, but this mistake has the potential to kill us as a company." Why would you think they'd even CONSIDER saying something like that?

I agree with Raga that it can be hard as a fan of the studio and the game to feel "in the dark" about why certain things are the way they are, but at the same time I think you are completely right. Bungie has no reason to share those kinds of details with the public.

I get that some fans (myself included) would love a more open look behind the curtain, but there really is no reason to expect it.