My take on the Netease thing. (Destiny)

by FyreWulff, Tuesday, June 05, 2018, 15:11 (2440 days ago) @ cheapLEY
edited by FyreWulff, Tuesday, June 05, 2018, 15:17

I think people are probably getting ahead of themselves, for multiple reasons, so I'll "respond" to each point I generally see people making:

This means Bungie is abandoning Destiny...

No, not really. We have to remember they've always said Destiny had a roughly 10 year plan around it. Depending on where you're counting from, we're either halfway through that plan or significantly through it, but either way, a lot of time has passed. This is about the time they'd start spinning up other projects. Remember, we had to wait FOUR years between Reach and Destiny for a new Bungie game.. they practically sat out the span of a regular console generation. Keep in mind how much they've supported their previous games when contractually able to - I'm not concerned.

They can barely keep up with content for Destiny! They're gonna add another game?!?!

Okay, I'll stay away from the opinion part but.. this is what all developers do. You spin up the next project while the current one is underway. This is how you keep people employed and things rolling. If Bungie waited until the last Destiny 3/4/5 content to even start working on another project, they'd have to lay off 90% of their workforce. You guys want games to have 3 year dev cycles? Alright, Bungie is going to need to start 4 years before (due to previs, pitch, etc) the game's release to get it out in time so there's no gap.

Know what's 4 years from now?

2022.

Know what year Destiny will be in then?

Year 8 if you count from D1's release. Year 12 if you're counting from Reach. Split the difference.. Destiny will be at 10 years of active development. Just like the plan. lol.

But the contract..

The best part of a new Bungie IP is we won't have people going "BUT THE CONTRACT" for the next one for another 10 years. I really, REALLY hate that the contract was made public, because people just use it to short circuit discussion about the game constantly, and don't understand contracts change, get changed, or even misinterpreted what was in the contract itself. It's been one of the worst things for casual community discussion.

Why talk about it now?

Like I said above - if they want to transition people to new projects and work, the spin up has to start now. They have to be able to publically talk about it existing, so they can hire for it more easily. I would not expect to hear anything substantial about this project until 2020 at minimum, because I'm assuming they're in pitch phase if they're showing potential partners like NetEase and are signing things just now - they wouldn't have had the spare manpower or money to start truly spinning anything substantial up - so I'll just call it the Bungie 202X Project.