Great post. Not sure if I should reply to the whole thing.. (Fan Creations)

by Fuertisimo, Monday, September 07, 2015, 15:44 (3363 days ago) @ Kahzgul

Love hearing from someone with inside knowledge.

If you don't mind me asking, from my perspective as an outside observer, it kind of seems like Bungie is in disarray about what exactly they want to do with Destiny. It feels like somewhere between the concept and implementation things went haywire, and it almost feels with a lot of the changes they're making are sort of trying to plug some holes in a leaky boat. Does that sound like it might be accurate to you?

Also regarding the addictive gameplay, you said;

My one quibble: I don't think Bungie hates PvE. Or even solo PvE though I admit that HoW is incredibly frustrating to play solo. Rather, it seems to me that the focus of the game's initial design was to create compulsive gameplay rather than compelling gameplay. Experience bars, RNG loot, repetitive strike modes, daily reset timers, weekly reset timers, timed events, events with social obligations... they all fall into the category of addiction-building activities. I'm not saying that these things are all bad, but I am saying that they appear to have been more important in the design space than, say, a coherent plot or interesting characters.

This mirrors my thoughts exactly about the feel the game has, but I am curious, as you are someone who worked in the industry and probably understands these things better than me, what constitutes "good" addictive gameplay elements versus bad ones? For me, I view the current trend of addiction-building with quite a bit of contempt, because it seems to me people aren't building products to entertain, enlighten or delight, but rather to try and separate your money from your wallet. I don't use this word often, but it seems like there is some evil intent there, or at the very least is extremely cynical. Maybe I'm wrong, but I find a lot of it to be manipulative, and even coercive at times.

A lot of things you're talking about are almost tragic, because the Destiny that was initially unveiled and marketed to us way back in the day had a feel of a game that was truly going to be special. I really wish we had gotten that game, rather than the one we did.

Last question I swear, with a situation like Destiny, what happens with the people inside the studio? Not the bosses or the execs but the people in the trenches trying their damndest to make a great game. Do employees clam up and go into denial about problems with the game, or are they as frustrated about the situation as everyone else? I have to imagine it would be crushing to put in so much fantastic work (and a lot of Destiny really is fantastic) only to not have it come together for whatever reason. How do employees handle that?

Otherwise, thanks for the insight. As a journalism major it always warms my heart to get info from the inside :).