Related Q1: how important is "full creative control" when you're forced to output feature games on what amounts to a 1.5-year dev cycle? How easy is it to break new ground each time?

If Bungie agreed to whatever schedule they might be on, looking at what they've accomplished in the past and feeling that they could hit those marks, then it doesn't affect "full creative control" in my opinion. Creativity can actually be greatly helped by a deadline, if it's realistic for you.

Also, I sometimes wish Halo had never reached that level of popularity where parts of the industry, journalism, and fans made it fencing partners with CoD. I've always viewed that pressure as a far greater danger to Halo and Destiny's originality.

1. If Destiny has a stellar launch and CoD: Ghosts continues to underperform (current figures are not looking good), could we see a switch such that Destiny gets the coveted Fall release slot and CoD shifts to Spring?

Wasn't Destiny originally scheduled for the end of this year? I.e. Fall?

If the expansion is substantial enough to affect the next game's release, how concerning is that given it's eating into an already brief, CoD-ish 2-year cycle?

The cycle matters less than the manpower you have. Bungie has never had more manpower on their team.

Related Q2: does releasing Destiny onto not just different platforms, but different generations, sound like something Bungie would want to do? Or does it sound like something ordered at the behest of a publisher? As above, how does this constraint affect "full creative control?"

Yes, it is something they would want to do. There are still only a couple of million PS4s and Xbox Ones out there. That isn't going to change much in a few months. It makes every sense in the world to release it on at least Xbox 360 (where their previous Halo fan base are) and the size of the Playstation 3 install base makes it an attractive release platform as well.

The more platforms you can get your game on, the larger your potential market. Obviously you can't overstretch yourself with developing the engine and there are certain constraints on the mechanics or other goals you're interested in.

3. What is the danger for Bungie here, given that Bungie will ostensibly be on the same two-year cycle (which the article claims caused stagnation with CoD) but will, additionally, be developing DLC expansions in the off years? If the development of the expansion doesn't interfere with the development of the next game, will it be a substantial release? If the expansion is substantial enough to affect the next game's release, how concerning is that given it's eating into an already brief, CoD-ish 2-year cycle?

Perhaps not at all! For a few reasons:

1. It feels like Destiny and maybe even more importantly its tools were built for much more rapid development. Watching them throw together respectable, properly lit locations very rapidly was pretty amazing. Knowing that the designers' work has been simplified by not having to completely seal off world segments seemed to be a big deal. If the tools are much better and the engine itself handles some of the troublesome / slowdown issues of the past then perhaps rapid development is much less of a problem for Destiny that it would have been for Halo.

2. Knowing as little about Destiny as we do this is kinda a vaguely informed guess, but I get the sense that Destiny is being designed from the start as something that can be easily expanded. Not just because the tools are better, but because the story and universe have had a lot more pre-development / pre-success thought put into them. This time, unlike with Halo, I think Bungie knows the beginning, middle, and end of the story, which will be a huge help in shaping future gameplay and engine changes.

3. The Bungie of today is not the Bungie at the start of Halo. Back then it still felt like a tight knit group of friends that only partially knew what they were doing. Talent and good taste led to a fantastic string of games, but the planning and knowing what would come next didn't seem to be there as much. The Bungie of today still has the talent and the good taste, but also has a decade of experience good worthwhile experience. They've seen what poor planning can do and seem to have gotten things much more in order since then. They are, in some ways, more of an actual video game company than they were at the start of Halo, which is a good thing. A group of friends making games is great, but I think a well led powerful company making them is going to be even better.

4. Halo had to blaze a lot of trails and pioneer a lot of stuff that Destiny doesn't need to worry about. Destiny isn't needing to come up with and be a test case for good online multiplayer. Destiny isn't Bungie's first attempt to get a FPS working on a console controller. Destiny will surely be influenced by the past decade's successes and failures in FPS story telling. Then there's all the well developed middleware. Bungie isn't having to code their entire physics engine from scratch, or make all their trees one by one, or build any number of other things from the ground up because those things have been established and matured over the last decade. In many ways it is amazing that Halo did as well as it did for being the first of its kind.

Personally, I can't wait to see what happens when you take the people who made Halo, and add in money, resources, and experience. I think we're in for a treat. Maybe I'm wrong. Maybe Destiny will simply be a more serious Borderlands with some clever behind the scenes matchmaking. Well, I can't really come up with how THAT would be such a bad thing either! :)

I remember when news of the Bungie-Activision contract got out, the opinion of a lot of people in the b.org community was that Bungie made out like bandits, or that it was at least a win-win: Bungie gets ACTV's money and platform while retaining "full creative control" or whatever the phrase was. What if that calculus was wrong? What if the long game is a decisive win for ACTV and loss for BNG, as BNG is forced to pump out Destiny titles on an even more abbreviated schedule than CoD which has now been driven into the ground?

The story was always that Bungie shopped around and found a partner who would give them what they wanted. If Destiny was planned to succeed on a Halo-like 3 year development schedule and Activision only gives two years, then yes, it's going to show. But if Bungie went in with the concept of a game that was meant to be developed in two year chunks then there shouldn't be any problems. And, of course, none of us even know how often Destiny DLC and games will come out. It is possible that we're worrying about timing issues that simply don't exist.

http://www.fool.com/investing/general/2013/11/30/activision-may-soon-lose-the-call-of-duty-cash-cow.aspx

Couple of things:

1. If Destiny has a stellar launch and CoD: Ghosts continues to underperform (current figures are not looking good), could we see a switch such that Destiny gets the coveted Fall release slot and CoD shifts to Spring?

Highly doubtful.

2. The article gets something wrong: CoD titles are released every year, but they have two years of development since there are two developers, Treyarch and IW, that alternate games.

but since that's the case...

3. What is the danger for Bungie here, given that Bungie will ostensibly be on the same two-year cycle (which the article claims caused stagnation with CoD) but will, additionally, be developing DLC expansions in the off years? If the development of the expansion doesn't interfere with the development of the next game, will it be a substantial release? If the expansion is substantial enough to affect the next game's release, how concerning is that given it's eating into an already brief, CoD-ish 2-year cycle?

Remember, Destiny has been in development for quite some time now. My money says Destiny 2 will only be on the nextgen platforms, possibly with some kind of Mass Effecty character import feature, so the unique story of your Guardian will continue on through future installments.

I remember when news of the Bungie-Activision contract got out, the opinion of a lot of people in the b.org community was that Bungie made out like bandits, or that it was at least a win-win: Bungie gets ACTV's money and platform while retaining "full creative control" or whatever the phrase was. What if that calculus was wrong? What if the long game is a decisive win for ACTV and loss for BNG, as BNG is forced to pump out Destiny titles on an even more abbreviated schedule than CoD which has now been driven into the ground?

I have faith that Bingle hasn't bitten off more than they can chew. Given the care that goes into the level of polish they're known for, I find it hard to believe they would squeeze themselves into a schedule too tight to maintain. There is too much that could go wrong.

Related Q1: how important is "full creative control" when you're forced to output feature games on what amounts to a 1.5-year dev cycle? How easy is it to break new ground each time?

Related Q2: does releasing Destiny onto not just different platforms, but different generations, sound like something Bungie would want to do? Or does it sound like something ordered at the behest of a publisher? As above, how does this constraint affect "full creative control?"

Creative control, I think, reads as "retains all control of canon and content". As in, if there were some kind of feature, microtransactions, for example, that Activision wanted to see implemented, they might be bound to produce in that respect. But again, they'd have all the decisionmaking power in how that manifests ingame.

If we take a look at Skyrim and Borderlands 2, (arguably larger among the gameplay influences as far as we can currently tell) with respect to DLC, I think there's plenty that can be done within an established gameplay formula to keep things fresh and to push the form. What-Iffing is counterproductive speculation, IMO.

~m

Bungie's got a development planned for the long haul. That must factor in feature and engine enhancements, much like Blizzard does with WoW. If you set things up ahead of time, you can make it easier to add or tweak abilities in the future. I may be reading between the lines, but it seems that the technical challenges are more on the networking and server side. I don't think Destiny will have the same risk of being overtaken by technological advancements or gameplay changes as COD.

The Halo series innovated, but mostly outside the core gameplay. Forge and Theater are great innovations in the console, and the main gameplay in Halo is far better balanced then COD. Bungie did a good job of giving every weapon a chance to shine in its particular niche. The difference is that Halo is a far slower game, with more emphasis on skill and map control. They also had a very good matchmaking system that was almost frustrating, because every match ended up with people near your skill level, so lots of games ended in ties or very close.

343 tried to incorporate some of COD's innovations with the weapons and character customization, but I really feel that they fell flat with the weapon balance and skills. The DMR, plus either Forerunner vision, jump pack or cloak were what everyone equipped. Spartan OPS could have been great, if they had put a little more thought into the missions instead of "go here, push button, fend off enemies" sequence. Still, the episodic content was fun and engaging, and I enjoyed the plot continuation.

I guess the point is that Halo's core gameplay wasn't designed for the weapons customization and lack of map control inherent to COD. Trying to blend the two may be possible, but Halo 4 didn't succeed and that is why it dropped off vs. Reach. COD doesn't innovate, or even bring in larger maps because the gameplay can't support it.

What good is a killstreak that calls in a helicopter if your team is already flying one? What good are larger maps if you can't walk across them in time? Ghosts brought in the slide from Destiny, and some of the movement from battlefield plus their own inferior "levelution" and it adds nothing to the game. There is nothing they can add from the other FPS or even the 3rd person stuff that won't break their gameplay unless it is too watered down to matter, just like Halo 4's weapon balance.