Destined

Because it's the "in" thing, video game studio Bungie (the creators of the Halo franchise, and, more recently Destiny and the rebooted Marathon) has laid off a significant number of staff. According to a statement published online, part of the reason for the reorganization of the company was that "Destiny 2 fell short of expectations these past several years."

I played Destiny and Destiny 2 for quite a long time, even if I wasn't all that great at it. They were fun games, at least for a time. One day, after not having played Destiny 2 for some time, I loaded it up again, and within 30 minutes was having a grand old time, running, jumping around the map and shooting aliens in the face. After a couple of hours, when I logged off, I asked myself, "Why did I stop playing this game?"

The next day there was an update, and a new environment opened up. Being the sort of gamer who loves to explore the environments (especially when they are as well-crafted as Destiny's were), I jumped in, and found myself in a mission to fight my way through some sort of spaceship or orbital station... I don't remember which. It was fine, until my character encountered the final boss. And died. I tried again. And died. Over, and over, and over again, I adjusted my tactics, tinkered with my character's loadout, and tried again. Only to be killed by a powerful, and bullet-spongy final boss. Which reminded me of why I'd stopped playing Destiny 2.

Destiny 2 was a very particular type of game, and one aimed at a very particular type of first-person shooter player. It likely goes without saying that I was not that type of player. And so I eventually found myself pushed out of the game, because I didn't have the inclination, or the time, to mold myself into the sort of player that the game was geared towards, and Bungie wasn't ready and or able to make the game more accommodating of other types of players.

According to the "Bartle taxonomy of player types," first laid out 30 years ago by Richard Bartle, I'm an Explorer. I'm the sort of player who love to have their character wander around in new environments and just check them out. Finding a secret or hidden pathway to something I've never seen before is the highlight of a session for me.

And Destiny 2 wasn't built for that sort of thing. It had a number of really interesting places to explore, but many of them were gated behind difficult fight sequences, or were parts of raids and weren't really designed to just roam around and examine in detail. And so I drifted away.

With new companies, the question they have to be able to answer is: Why should people stop playing their current favorite games to play yours? For established companies like Bungie, the question becomes: Why should people continue to play your game, rather than explore what else is out there?" And I think that they didn't take that question as seriously as perhaps they might. And the business is starting to wither as a result.