Why there will never be another Destiny

Ten years in the past right now, Activision printed a brand new shooter from Halo developer Bungie: Destiny.

Though ‘a shooter’ is probably a tad reductive, because it was above and past something Bungie – or certainly different studios – had produced.

“When Destiny initially launched, there was nothing fairly prefer it – even determining easy methods to talk its style was a large communication train for the advertising and marketing groups,” indie developer, advisor, and famous Destiny fan Rami Ismail tells GamesIndustry.biz. “It was an FPS, certain, and structured like an MMO however not fairly ‘huge’. It was PvE with a giant marketing campaign, but in addition PvP. It took the ‘looter shooter’ and made {that a} very profitable dwell service mannequin.

“That mixture turned one of many ‘issues to make’ for nearly half a decade, earlier than Fortnite got here alongside. In that approach, like each pattern setting recreation, Destiny was each a boon and a curse. If something, it was the primary main indicator that dwell service was going to be the factor for the last decade since.”

“Destiny deserves to be studied because the encapsulation of a really particular interval within the improvement of video video games, one which I do not suppose we’ll ever get again to”

Rachel Weber, IGN

IGN managing editor (and GamesIndustry.biz alum) Rachel Weber provides that not solely was Destiny the primary recreation to nail the attraction of a shared world shooter, it additionally demonstrated Bungie’s persevering with prowess when it got here to world-building and storytelling. “

“It stood out as greater than only a fairly shader utilized to the identical outdated pew pew mechanics. It was a uncommon concept that appealed to the profitable aggressive shooter and MMORPG crowds, an viewers who had been the primary to make peace with microtransactions and content material chopped up into expansions.”

Statistics from Circana’s Retail Monitoring Service assist add extra context to Destiny’s success: because it first launched in September 2014, Destiny has turn into the thirty fourth largest online game franchise of all time by way of US full-game greenback gross sales throughout bodily and digital – and that is with out microtransactions and DLC expansions.

The unique Destiny was the thirtieth best-selling recreation between September 2014 and July 2024, beating Fallout 4 however behind Elden Ring. Destiny 2, in the meantime, is 61st – that is once more for full-game gross sales solely.

Bungie caught the trade’s consideration on the time and, as with every different video games sensation, Destiny impressed others to comply with in its footsteps.

The Destiny impact

Ampere Evaluation’ Piers Harding-Rolls says Destiny stands as probably the most profitable franchise to mix the looter shooter style with the dwell service mannequin, whereas Bungie’s dealing with of the shift to free-to-play in October 2019 turned “a dwell service blueprint for retaining a cheerful userbase.”

The analyst says you see the affect of Destiny in titles resembling EA and BioWare’s Anthem and Ubisoft’s The Division. Even in 2024, we’re seeing releases that draw inspiration from Bungie’s title, resembling Sony’s Helldivers 2 and Nexon’s The First Descendant. However whereas a few of these video games have fared properly, Harding-Rolls notes that the majority publishers have “underestimated the funding and experience wanted to ship one thing of the dimensions and success of Destiny and Destiny 2.”

“There are many video games that had been influenced by Destiny and likewise there had been numerous video games that impressed Bungie to construct Destiny. Most video games impressed by the Destiny franchise have been unable to ship its longevity and long-term engagement,” he says, citing Anthem, Marvel’s Avengers, Outriders, and Babylon’s Fall as prime examples of Destiny-inspired video games that struggled or outright failed.

“Most of those video games failed as a result of they did not have the depth of content material, the polished product or the gameplay high quality delivered by Destiny. They weren’t adequate to drag avid gamers away from their chosen dwell service video games for an extended time period.”

“Everybody’s leaned on the ‘Bungie magic’ and the rabbit hasn’t at all times come out of the hat in the way in which everybody had hoped”

Mat Piscatella, Circana

Weber provides: “The cursed ghost city that was Anthem encapsulates all of the errors the businesses chasing the Destiny greenback made. There have been the tales of a troubled, directionless improvement, technical issues that made it an unreliable expertise whether or not you had been making an attempt to play solo or with mates, and an entire underestimation of how briskly gamers would burn by means of content material.

“We cannot ever see another Destiny. It is had ten years of fixed change, highs and lows, and a number of expansions – you are never going to be capable of promote that components to a boardroom of moneymen. The dangers are too big, the problem is just too massive, and – as Harmony has proven – the persistence required is just too excessive.

“Destiny deserves to be studied because the encapsulation of a really particular interval within the improvement of video video games, one which I do not suppose we’ll ever get again to.”

Circana’s government director for video video games Mat Piscatella says that, whereas Destiny confirmed how titles may maintain gamers and their wallets for lengthy durations of time, titles resembling Fortnite, Minecraft, Roblox, and Grand Theft Auto On-line have since “perfected the components.”

“Most video games impressed by Destiny have been unable to ship its longevity and long-term engagement”

Piers Harding-Rolls, Ampere Evaluation

“Since then, Anthem, Remnant 2, The Division, Borderlands 3, and naturally Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League have all entered the market following not less than elements of the Destiny components,” he says. “None of those video games fairly reached the success Destiny achieved. I am unsure that any future titles will both.

“Whereas the gameplay parts, social hooks, and loot elements of the sport will at all times be enticing to gamers, I am unsure we’ll see another self-contained recreation prefer it achieve the identical approach attributable to altering participant tastes and the aggressive choices from issues like Fortnite.”

Wedbush Morgan analyst Michael Pachter suggests Destiny’s affect may even be seen in different genres.

“No two video games are similar – besides perhaps Battlefield and Name of Responsibility – however it’s clear that Destiny begat Overwatch, Apex Legends, and perhaps some parts of Fortnite,” he says. “The variations in characters (for Destiny, significantly with the introduction of alien races) retains the RPG ingredient of the sport recent, and there is numerous variability of weapons, making the sport appear [new] every season. I believe that we haven’t seen the top of RPG shooters.”

The way forward for Bungie

Given the seen affect Destiny has had on a few of the highest-profile multiplayer video games over the previous ten years – and particularly over a few of the largest failures – it will be straightforward to argue that Bungie’s title alone set the trade on its present path, shifting an increasing number of to a dwell service mannequin.

Piscatella disagrees with this – “It is at all times been its personal bizarre factor in a approach” – as an alternative arguing that the largest affect Destiny has had on the trade lies in Bungie and its relationship with publishers.

Destiny was printed as the primary title in a ten-year deal between Bungie and Activision Blizzard, the primary settlement the studio had secured after reclaiming its independence from Microsoft. The partnership ended two years early, nonetheless, with Activision claiming Destiny “was not assembly [its] monetary expectations” however that the cut up was a “mutual settlement.”

Bungie survived 4 years as an unbiased earlier than it was acquired by Sony for $3.6 billion, a part of the PlayStation agency’s bid to determine itself within the dwell service house. Stories have urged that, whereas Bungie was initially given stage of autonomy, Sony has thought-about taking on if the studio fails to fulfill its monetary targets.

“I am unsure [the Activision deal] went the way in which anybody actually wished it to,” says Piscatella. “And searching now on the post-Sony acquisition period, it is also been a bit bumpy, to say the least. There have been the a number of waves of layoffs in fact, and the transition of staff from Bungie to Sony roles.

“Destiny has been the factor that has tied these eras collectively. Everybody’s leaned on the ‘Bungie magic’ and the rabbit hasn’t at all times come out of the hat in the way in which everybody had hoped.”

Regardless of all this, Destiny 2 appears to be faring properly. Harding-Rolls tells us the most recent enlargement, The Closing Form, noticed participant numbers throughout PlayStation, Xbox, and Steam attain practically seven million, and whereas this has dropped off since launch, there’s a strong variety of gamers returning each day.

Circana’s Participant Engagement Tracker reveals that the common lively Destiny 2 participant spent greater than 25 hours on the sport in August – a determine Piscatella tells us has remained pretty regular since January 2021, albeit with spikes across the launch of latest content material.

“It is a devoted participant base, though one which has contracted a bit in quantity [over the years],” he provides. “All issues thought-about, Destiny 2 stays a robust franchise, however one which has been shedding a little bit of its participant base over the previous few years. However these gamers which might be taking part in stay as devoted to it as they’ve ever been.”

That is another space through which Destiny has demonstrated Bungie’s capability to do one thing few studios can deal with in fairly the identical approach: catering to a number of totally different audiences concurrently.

“Destiny should usually be some of the thankless video games to work on on the planet,” Rami Ismail says. “It is huge, however as a result of numerous methods audiences can interact with it, that viewers is cut up alongside very sturdy ideological traces. You’ve got acquired PvP, PvE, even PvPvE, after which in every of these classes, you’ve got acquired every little thing from fashionistas and glitchmakers to meta hunters and problem gamers, informal gamers and hard-hardcore gamers, loremasters and influencers – they usually all need one thing else.

“Destiny has at all times been tremendous attention-grabbing to observe from the attitude of a director and designer, however I do not envy them. That is a monster to tame.”

Rami Ismail

“Destiny is bizarre as a result of the sport would not work with out all these elements, however it can also’t fairly work due to all of these elements. It usually finds itself swerving wildly between totally different viewers teams, angering anybody group solely lengthy sufficient to fulfill the others – and I usually marvel how for much longer the group and the sport can supply that elasticity. To date, they’ve at all times managed to maintain that (simply) inside bounds, however with the severity of the layoffs and the restrictions on their out there legacy data and expertise, I hope they will hold that up.

“Destiny has at all times been tremendous attention-grabbing to observe from a director/designer perspective, however I do not envy them. That is a monster to tame.”

So what of the longer term? Harmony’s collapse noticed ‘Destiny 3’ trending on social media final week, so it is clear that demand for Bungie’s sci-fi shooter is not drying up any time quickly. Whether or not or not a 3rd recreation may seize the identical success of its forebears stays much less clear; the trade has modified a lot, different dwell service video games dominate, and (as established above) the unique Destiny went past what anybody anticipated.

“Destiny has developed to this point past that first launch a decade in the past that I am certain even Bungie could not have predicted how layered the sport would turn into due to the expansions and sequel,” Weber concludes.

“I am certain at this level Destiny is all the way down to the true devoted by way of participant numbers, and post-PlayStation’s Harmony fumble they will be sweating about the way forward for the sport underneath Sony’s management… I actually hope Bungie’s subsequent challenge, Marathon, survives Sony’s technique and builds on that basis of long-term like to hold that clan of Hunters, Titans, and Warlocks alive.”