Shooter Monthly #8: The Bungie Eulogy, Why Destiny Fell Off, and Can Marathon Save the Studio

This game is going to ship early next year from Bungie and this is the first time anybody has ever seen it. It's the first time they've debuted it. [music] The original Doom was a really significant jump in gaming technology for [music] the time.
And there's one more thing we'll bring to Battlefield.
Set up that chainsaw.
I had to fight for that.
Programming mod. They're building, you know, their own level within Unreal
for Call of Duty. Call of Duty. Call of Duty. Call of Duty. Entirely new Call of Duty.
Call of Duty. Call of Duty. One of the fascinating new additions to your squad is a dog.
Hey, is that about ready?
These things, they take time.
The boys are back in town. Episode 8, shooter monthly. We are in full force today, fully armed with eulogies for

Bungie. I am joined today by my three usual and wonderful co-hosts. Mr. Anos, how are you?
Fantastic. Thank you.
For us,
it's sunny in Stockol. Can't complain. Yeah.
How did you uh do with the World Cup loss?
I am still very happy that uh Jordan has made it for the first time ever. So that is a big win. And then Sweden will fight back and survive. That is my second win and my belief. And then if both of these countries don't make it so far, there's still New Zealand. So I have three countries in the race right now. So let's see.
Lots of loyalty. Um Mr. Sides, Mr. Scid, do you live in You live in Seattle. Have you been
You live in Seattle where USA won the Australia. I went to a Mariners game that night. I have Australian fans around which was cool to see. Yeah, it's sunny, great weather. Uh, I may become the number one taskbar hero player uh in the world here. So, you know, you can come compete with my idling skills. I've

been following World Cup. I don't know much about I'm not a big soccer fan or a baseball fan, but you know, it's fun to do every four years. And it's in Seattle, which is nice.
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In sickness and in health, in soft launch and in live ops, through every meta shift and every platform policy change. That's the kind of loyalty vibes built between your game and your players. AI powered targeting, a real meta [music] layer, rorowass optimization that actually compounds. That's what makes Vibes the fastest growing loyalty platform in mobile games. Till churn do us a part. Vibes. Vybs.co. [music] Speaking of things in Seattle, uh this this might be the eulogy episode for Bungie. We're going to be talking about the end of Destiny, where Bungie is right now, and bringing down you called the shooter MMO space. I don't know. I think we'll engage in a debate. I do

want to start with with a spicy idea uh that I'd like to present to you gentlemen particularly. I'd love to know Mr. Sides what you think of this. I'm troubled by what I see at Xbox. It is a platform that is in decline. It is a bad sign for America. There's no strategy. But the reason they have declined is that they have not tended to their franchise gardens. Mr. Chief has become a joke. He has become unshathed on shitty television shows. His recent franchise entries are like behind modern mechanics. Like no one is playing arena shooters anymore except for Call of Duty. I'm sorry. It's just not relevant. And Gears is outside the hands of Epic Games and suffers. Bungie is in the [ __ ] Appears to want to go down with the marathon ship. What about a rendevous where Bungie comes back into the fold and develops the next Halo? Can you imagine that

announcement? Why is that not the best for both parties? Is to have Bungie return as a developer to Microsoft and to revive the Halo franchise. I'm looking at this from an optimistic perspective. This is some copium you can say. You know, obviously I worked at Bungie, but I've been a Bungeie fan for a long time. Hardcore Halo Destiny player. And so I went back and I looked at the ups and downs of Bungie. You know, Bungie has been through a very storied history and like right they were part of Microsoft. They bought themselves out. There's nothing to say that they couldn't well there's probably plenty to say that they couldn't do that now, but you never know. They've done kind of crazy things in the past of buying themselves out of Sony and figuring out what to do next. Um, granted a lot of these were done when Pete Parsons was CEO and like regardless of how people feel about how many, you know, classic cars he owns, I I do think that Pete Parsons was a very good CEO for Bungie. And Bungie has been through a lot of up and downs. This is not their first down. You know, this may be one of the worst downs they've been in, but Bungie has a history of always coming

back. And so I kind of went back through what they look like and trying to figure out what does the future look like from a more optimistic perspective rather than the depression that I feel as Destiny 2 um you know ends ends its amazing run. So have a short history here of the ups and downs of Bungie. Uh so you know obviously in the '90s they were with Marathon and Myth. These were good games very niche very loreheavy. Bungie was kind of known as lore studio before it became known as more of a gameplay studio. heavily lore focused. And so their first big crisis was 1998. Does anybody remember what happened to Myth 2 in 1998? I won't wait on this for too long, but they had an issue where if you uninstalled the game, it deleted everything in the folder. And depending on where you installed it, you could delete your entire operating system. They had like 200,000 copies that were shipped. They had to take all these back. Massive negative community sentiment. crisis at Bungie. Crisis

number one, I think we would say, um, they bounced back. They're okay. They then they got purchased by from Microsoft for 30 million, which is just like chump change to think about nowadays. And actually, they showed off Halo at Mac World. Halo was not originally designed as a Xbox exclusive. It was probably going to be on Mac. That was their history. Marathon was a Mac exclusive game
introduced by Steve Jobs as we have opening credits to these episodes. People forget.
Yeah. Oh, yeah. in the opening credits. Yeah, Steve Jobs announces it. Uh Microsoft sees it, scoops them up for 30 million. Halo 1 comes out, obviously revolutionary, you know, changed the industry. A lot of millennial memories, uh for people that are, you know, in their 30s, maybe early 40s, remember a lot about Halo. Halo 2 again was probably the highest high of Bungie. They were successful in making a sequel that outdid its predecessor. It was the first one that had Xbox Live. Halo 1, you could play online through a thing called Gamespy, but it was very, very hard to, you know, you had to be a tech

guru to be able to do that. Xbox Live came in. Halo 2 killed it. There was the uh one of the big community sentiment hits then was called thing called the standby glitch. You could essentially pull out your Ethernet cord of your Xbox and if you were the host, you had full control of the game and no one else could actually connect and you could just kill and destroy everybody. I think about like if Twitter existed at these times, the type of brutal sentiments Bungie would be getting hit with. We didn't have an outlet back then. It was mainly us and our friends yelling at each other or you'd get into a match and someone would stand by and you would Yeah, NeoAF. Yeah, you can go on NeoAf and scream about it.
But again, no Twitter wasn't like it is today.
Uh Halo 3 comes out, they do the Microsoft split, which we look back and we kind of say like, oh yeah, you know, they split from Microsoft. That is not like an easy thing to do, nor is it a very confident thing to do. Imagine working at the company and this is, you know, in the early 2000s. It's like 2007. You're working at Bungie and they're like, "Hey, we're leaving Microsoft. We're leaving, you know, our

uh essentially payroll. We're leaving this, you know, imagine how you would feel as an employee there." Probably how a lot of maybe employees feel now working at Bungie. So, this is not the first time that they've kind of gone through these kind of difficult things. Then you go on, they they still had a contract with Bungie or with Microsoft. So they were making Halos. They made ODST. ODST was originally supposed to be a DLC for Halo 3, I believe. So it was kind of a smaller product. It released to a $6 price point. Huge community backlash. Again, the community hates Bungie for being the money grubbing people that they are. And they charge $60 for it. A lot of negative sentiment. Granted, they needed money. They just split from Microsoft. They needed revenue somehow. Then the final Halo comes out in 2010. Halo Reach well received. This is the last Halo that Bungie worked on before it became taken over by 343. Very successful. Also in 2010, they announced the Activision deal. So the Activision deal was they had a 10-year publishing relationship with Activision showing Destiny. And at the time when Bungie announced Destiny

and said, "We want to make this for 10 years." They were kind of laughed at. Like that's an insane prediction to make. And they they did it. Like I mean they're known for this hubris, especially working at Bungie. There's a lot of bungee hubris when you work there. But historically, they've been able to meet these goals that they put out 10 years. They were laughed at and they ended up doing it. Uh we found that out just a couple years ago when they made it through 10 years. So then 2013, there's a famous internal thing called the Destiny supercut. I don't know how public the idea of this super cut is, but it was about a 1-hour long one and a half hour hour long video of Destiny. It was kind of cinematic, but it showed gameplay. It was essentially what the flow of Destiny looked like, the story, all these things. This was shown internally to execs and it was a disaster. This was about 14 months before launch of Destiny 2. Insane disaster. Yet again, another crisis for Bungie. And so 14 months before they scrap it all and they rewrite everything. So internally, this super

cut does exist. I have watched it. I was one of the things I wanted to do when I first got there was watch the super cut. I think it's actually in Jason Shrier's book, uh, Blood, Sweat, and Pixels. I'm pretty sure they talk about it if you've ever read that book. Great book by Jian Shrier. So, they had the super cut. Everybody's freaking out. 14 hours. Actually, some of the leadership of Marathon were working on this when uh it was happening. So, I I spoke to them a lot just cuz I love the history of the gaming industry and it's really interesting to hear all these things. But we get to 2014 Destiny launches and at the time it was kind of hard to understand how do you review a game like Destiny? You know, they're really only MMO FPS. They didn't use that. They used the term shared shared world shooter. They didn't want to use MMO FPS for whatever reason. The only really other MMO FPS was a game called Planet Side that they did eventually have Planet Side 2, but it's extremely niche, extremely niche game. Um, I loved playing it, but not it wasn't very big. So, it eventually launches. You have Dinklebot. If anybody remembers Dinklebot, that was Peter Dinklage was the voice for your ghost. Again, made

fun of heavily. Very negative sentiment around it. They actually redid all the lines of the ghost. I forgot who did it. I don't know. I I know it's a mainstream guy. I can't remember who it is, but they redid all that work um in order to get rid of Peter Dinklitch's voice. And also, the narrative sucked. Destiny 1's narrative was heavily criticized, which is historically what Bungie was known for. Even Halo had very good narrative with gunplay. I think the reviews were the '7s at the time because people were looking at it as like the single player with multiplayer game. like Halo had been because there wasn't really a framework for how do you look at this type of live service game. They were on the forefront of doing these types of things. And so I I do think we have to give Budgie some credit there. And then they released Vogue called Vault of Glass. This was a raid about 7 days later that truly changed Destiny and changed the way that people played this game. You know, you had this long-term goal to look forward to. You know, looking back, obviously it's pretty basic, but at the time it was an incredible experience. So, we go into

there. We go to the first couple expansions, The Dark Below and House of Wolves. These are first expansions. They were meh. They were seemed okay. Uh, this was also during the DLC time. Like, we had map packs for Call of Duty. This was during the era where like the industry didn't really know how to monetize live services yet. So, it was still this DLC model. These weren't looked at as very successful, felt overpriced. Uh, there was a lot of power creep occurring, and that didn't really exist in shooters at the time. you know, this was in, you know, if you played World of Warcraft, you understood this kind of expansion, power creep, um, loop, but it just didn't really exist. So, there was a lot of negative sentiment there. Not a crisis, but some negative sentiment. Then we get to what I think is the best expansion of Destiny 1 called The Taken King, but there was a massive crisis. Again, another crisis for Bungie. The Taken King is announced. Luke Smith does this famous interview with Eurogamer where the Taken King was being charged $80 for the collector's edition. Now we look like that's literally everywhere,

but at the time this wasn't necessarily a big thing. And it had you had to pay $20. We had to pay 80 bucks, which was $20 over the price point, and you got exclusive cosmetics. The problem was this also included base Destiny. So if you already own Destiny, you were buying the product again. So there was a lot of negative sentiment around having to pay $80 for something you already own just to get $20 of these exclusive cosmetics. Later, they eventually created a $20 bundle. And in the interview, L. Smith essentially is like, you know, hey, like, pay up. When you see this, you're going to throw your money at the screen. That was the pride and accomplishment or whatever, pride and achievement that was used for uh Battlefront 2 narrative. It was one of those lines that really stuck with the community. Luke Smith later comes around, he apologizes, he calls himself an assass. And so assat started to become a fun word that the community used at the time. But this was a difficult thing for them. And remember, they're still under Activision at the time. So, you have to understand there there's pressure coming from Activision. Bungie is trying to figure this out. Taking King comes out. What a masterpiece. What an amazing amazing

expansion. Brought back a ton of players. Was again the moment, you know, players come back. You know, Destiny Destiny's kind of down. Taken King comes in, launches. It's amazing. Gear reset, new raids are amazing. Everything is awesome. Uh, following up is Rise of Iron. Small little expansion, but Destiny 1 is going down. Destiny 2 has been announced, so we're getting ready for that. Now we go to the Destiny 2 launches 2017. Brutally negative, painful. Destiny 2 sucked at launch and it also only launched on console. It didn't launch on Steam until later, but it sucked. They removed a lot of the core identity of Destiny. You know, the class identity wasn't there. Weapons didn't have random roles. They had static roles. You had this dual primary meta that really sucked. And it was really rough. It launched pretty well. I mean, it's Destiny, you know, it's Bungie has a lot of still a lot of name brand there, and so it launches pretty well, but it dies. Retention is brutal during the time. I mean, it is one of

the steepest drops in DAU I've ever seen in any game. They're in a crisis mode. And again, under Activision, they're in this crisis. They got a couple of expansions, Curse of Osiris and Warmind, still nothing good. There's this whole XP controversy where Chris Barrett uh you know talks he's in an interview I think it was with Kotaku and he talks about uh they're throttling your XP. So the more you play the less XP you would get. This was sort of essentially one of their strategies to control life services at the again at the time there wasn't a lot of strategies of how you do this. They were trying to figure it out. Really really rough time. These two DLCs comes out and they don't do much at all to the player base. And then the greatest Destiny 2 expansion comes out. Bungie's against the wall and they release an expansion called Forsaken. Forsaken is one of the greatest expansions ever. They bring it back an amazing raid called Last Wish. They bring back random reper rolls. They put in a bunch of new class identity. Massive, massive undertaking. Multiple studios that worked at it at Activision, not just Bungie. It was also um High

Noon was a studio that worked there. And there was another one that I can't remember. But this is it. If it wasn't for Forsaken, Destiny 2 would not exist. Like it is just a fact. it was over for Destiny. So again, Bungie's in a crisis, the back against the wall. They figured it out. Another revolutionizing expansion. Uh, Forsaken was just the best. It brought in Seasons, which is still used, well, is was still used to this day for their live service model. And it's h everything's hunky dory. Everything's great. You know, they then move on. Bungie splits from Activision. Again, another split from a major company. They've split from Microsoft and now they're splitting from Activision, which again, we talk about it like, oh yeah, they just split. It's easy to say, but imagine working there. Like, that is brutally difficult. They lose their entire publishing arm. There's no publishing, no marketing. All of that existed as part of as part of Activision. They're a publisher. So, they have to figure out how to do this. So, they split out. And it's a very challenging time. 2019, they split.

Destiny 2 goes free to play. We get Shadowke keep big undertaking converting a game from premium to freeto play. This is these are again heroic efforts that we got through in 2021. They announced the next three expansions of Destiny. Witch Queen, Lightfall, Final Shape. This is ultimately something that allowed them to continue their strong ride, but it also provided an end date to players in Destiny. The final shape. Looking back, this was probably a good thing for the game, but in general, it did give an end to when Destiny was done. So, they announce this Witch Queen comes out. Amazing expansion. Another banger, probably second place to Forsaken. Everybody's riding high. Now, they get to um A Crisis. They get acquired by Sony. Sony acquires them in 2022 post Witch Queen. Then they release their first expansion, Lightfall. This is the first expansion released under Sony. Uh Lightfall is a disaster. Lightfall is awful. Again, the narrative

is brutal. no noob subclass that we wanted. The narrative team was really in a lot of difficulty, internal strife, a lot of pointing fingers, a lot of challenges internally at Bungie. Little bit of a crisis, not as bad as one before. Then we get to 2024 final shape banger expansion, one of the best raids. It's the end of the 10-year legacy. And now what? Now what happens to Destiny? And this is kind of what's led us to where we are now. This is 2024 when Final Shape comes out. So 2024 onward and again Bungie is back. Final shape killed it. Uh and now 2024 to 2026, we've kind of been in a downward spiral and we get to the point where 2026 Destiny is no longer being updated. Final update come out called Monument of Triumph. Added a bunch of stuff, a lot of a lot of good community sentiment, but this is the end. And so in short, you know, Bungie's been through a lot. every crisis they've had, they've tend to crawl themselves out of with something that was just amazing. The question becomes,

one, can Marathon have its forsaken moment? This is one of the one of the things that we don't know about. And the second is, will Sony allow it? Will Sony actually put their money behind the team and provide them the resources they need to do this? And I think this is where we run into the theories of what the future looks like. a lot of a lot of fear and a lot of excitement of if Sony, you know, backs off, then that's probably it. You know, Bungie can maybe pull themselves out, buy themselves back, figure it out. Bungie has done it before. So, the the kind of perspective I'm trying to give is like this is not the first time Bungie has been through something this uh devastating. They've been here before. Uh the team, it looks much different than it used to, but I I I have some faith that they'll be able to pull it out. Historically, if you want to be from a data perspective, they have done this. Uh, and that's kind of where I end. I think there's still optimism for the future. This is not the first time that Bungie's been in this crisis.
Thank you for that rundown, Mr. Sides.
It went a little bit longer than I

thought. It felt good though. I was just going, "Oh, thank you. Thank you." If I could add one comment on the nuance side of things. All this occurred on the Destiny side of things, but Destiny had little to no real what I would say hard competition. They didn't have like a Fortnite moments of a new entry versus if they're the PUBG. They didn't have someone like Fortnite come in their space come in to really push them. And taking a step back, they're essentially walking away from a game with an established audience with little to no competition to go allin on a game with not as much of a player base, but in a space that's blood red with competition. So that's the only detail that I think we should all consider in terms of what they have going for them and against them in terms of another comeback or win back. But I I totally think they can do it. It's all about if they get the support from their partners in Sony.
I I do think that's one of the things is that Halo didn't really have

competition. Destiny didn't really have competition. Bungie has historically built these games that competitors couldn't even compete with. And so I think the question is is like is the next thing something that competitors aren't prepared for? You know, Marathon does have competitors. Of course, there were arena shooters when Halo came out, but it was different. You know, MMO FPS's weren't really a thing outside of Planet Side. So, Destiny owned that space. You had Warframe, you had Dision, you had games come in that tried to compete, and you had Anthem. They have their own established player bases, but nothing that really competed with Destiny. This is a question I'm curious to ask you guys because we say it didn't have competitors, but when I put this chart together and I started to think more about where the game is right now in terms of how you interface with the portal, which is how you interface with their key activities, which give you rewards, it feels like a very traditional RPG. And so when I think about it, it really just has become a looter shooter. And so, okay, now we can benchmark it against looter shooters. You know, it's carried this idea of the MMO. I think a lot of the early tower, which was the

social space, that every game designer in the last 5 years of my career has used the tower as the social space they modeled their hubs after. I've had to compete with that. They have such fun memories of it. It's gross the way you've done, [clears throat] but it really feels more and more menu based over time naturally because menus always win. And the the uh conclusion I I've made is like okay well in that context what did Destiny represent where really we only see Hell Divers and I would argue Warframe really succeed once human has won in China. The Division has its moments. Borderlands 3 isn't a live service game. Outr Rididers wasn't able to stick. like what what does Destiny represent or did it unlock that these other games couldn't or still do like Warframe and Hell Divers? One thing that I quite see about Destiny is uh based on what uh just size just said, Bungie has an insane amount of experience in making

amazing gunplay. And that's the thing when you look at the competition Destiny has delivered the core experience in terms of like the gunplay is unmatchable compared to the other shooters that are in the space. Not to mention also I think people downplayed a little bit about the interest of the audience uh in the lore of Destiny. This became very very the proof of this cuz I was actually one of the people that that are a bit doubting this the how how much are shooter player interested in lore overall and then I think the fin the final shape was kind of the the proof of that. Uh so in my opinion and based on the data like the final shape was the conclusion of like a 10-year arc or so in terms of the narrative of the game and then you saw the big big drop afterwards on this and I think part of it is because Destiny has delivered a lore that is very very interesting to the players which again most probably resulted in the the results we see today since they concluded the the arc that

they've had in that update and a lot of players dropped afterwards and it's very hard to regain them. It's it's very risky in a shooter to provide the players a very very clear dropout point unless you're extremely confident with yourself in terms of bringing them back which is Fortnite is a master at that I think Destiny got there. It reminds me quite a bit of um if you guys remember Endgame the Marvel movie because that was actually one of the things that I was looking at. Did Marvel make as much money as much revenue since Endgame? And the answer is no. Basically, they had that 10-year buildup and then once you get to that movie, it's like, "Wow, I'm done. I don't need to reinvest in all of this." And they tried so many things. They tried smaller shows, recasting characters,
it just does not work. [laughter]
So, I think there's that. There's the key element actually, which is also eventually resulted in the challenges that Destiny ran into. When you look at the other uh shooters in that space

other than Warframe, uh Destiny 2 went freetoplay and then basically started selling DLC packs. And I think this is what I found interesting. Destiny 2 is clearly wasn't built to be a free-to-play game. If you look at the way they've done cosmetics, basically applying the skins to ignore the stats.
Yeah. Transmog. Transmog.
Yeah, transmog. Yeah. So that came so late. I think maybe 3, four years after the game launched. It had so many steps for you to apply them versus when you play Diablo I. And I think
Diablo I should be one of the games you compare Destiny
2 quite a bit for. But um that's actually one of the things when you look at when you see the cosmetic business for Destiny 2 was not built for a free-to-play game. This is why they relied quite a bit on the DLC packs. You look at a game like Hell Divers 2 and they found a very smart way of staying premium. right now they're still sitting at a price point, but they're selling DLC packs in the form of war bonds. And I think that is the the majority of uh

PVE games end up doing that. The DLC packs is the safest route for PvE games unless they're built from the beginning to be free-to-play games like Warframe. But yeah, to go back to original question, Phil, I think Bungie delivered amazing gunplay. I don't think any of the competitors were even remotely close to that. And I think the lore that managed to keep an engaging audience. They're actually aged with the game. I think I've read a couple of reports saying that the Destiny 2 audience was it gets a bit older than the other games around. So
quite a good things with Bungees done over there.
I think that's a really keen insight, man. I agree with you. I mean, we're just looking at that. It was a huge drop after the final shape. It it was like almost half of his equilibrium where it was beforehand.
Yeah. I think there's a couple things to that. I think that, you know, promising the future makes playing now feel worth it. Even going back to Destiny 1, Vault of Glass promised that future even though a majority of players did not get to experience the raid because it's very challenging. You you didn't have like matchmaking or group finding like you do

now. The concept of like preparing yourself, being raid ready was enough of an engagement factor to get you there. And with the final shape, there was always like, okay, if I play now, I know it's going to pay off. I know it's going to pay off. Once the final shape ended, it was like, what am I doing? I'm just finding more guns. For what reason? Like, there's no longer a future that's promised to me. And I think this is what really led to like the massive retention hit because the the core loop and the gameplay did change in all that, but not so drastically compared to other eras in Destiny's life cycle, but there was no longer that future uh to really look forward. you know, maybe if they did another one of those like, hey, this is the next 5 years, the next three expansions, if they would have done something like that, there could have been something there to hold the audience, but that didn't really exist. They tried it with episodes. It just didn't work to be fair that this is post layoff Bungie, and so there is a, you know, less team to build the stuff they need to build. Um, and so there there could be just like physics to the game development there that that played a factor. But yeah, this concept of

promising the future, you know, was very important. becoming raid ready. Even if you weren't going to do the raid, that was engaging. I think Fortnite does, you know, I think one of the reasons with Fortnite is like, you know, your stuff is permanent. You know, that game's going to last forever. If I spend money today, it'll still be valuable in the future and there's no real fear that it's going to end. And I think that's a key thing to live services. How do you ensure players feel like the future is there? I think that's where a lot of life services fail.
I agree. I think it's the combination of as you said uh Chris like they they made it very clear that the future is is not so appetizing and they finished the story wasn't so clear what you're playing for next combined with what I think
the seasonal approach that Destiny had carried that risk within it as well because you
you upgrade your weapons all the way to the end and then they expire per season. So you had this natural prestiging systems that they don't really connect the seasons to each other as much. So when you lost the lore that is pushing

you forward between the seasons, extra pressure came on these systems and I don't think they withtood the retention challenge that you have there. So I think
I think what you mentioned is also quite interesting. I think they mentioned the final shape and the three updates before it as a way to fix retention and it worked and it worked for a year and a half or two, but it was a bit of a risky move beyond that. And maybe that was the time to okay, we're leaning too much into the lore right now. We should make sure that the systems follow up on that. I think that's the one of the challenges that Destiny faced quite a bit. You can argue that Diablo 4 has a similar system, but I feel at least with the 4, you start the character from scratch. The grind in my opinion is much more
I found at least more fun. But yeah, I'm wondering what your thoughts on that too.
Yeah, this kind of promise of the upcoming three expansions I think was a you know retention play at the time. Again, they had just split from Activision. You know, they they needed some some future promise here and they needed to show confidence to players that like leaving Activision wasn't the

end. They needed to show this. I think the, you know, the original strategy was like once Final Shape is done, there's something new. That's something new. Could have been Marathon, could have been something else. It's like who knows what it could have been. But the the issue was the final shape occurred and then there wasn't anything not only for Destiny but for Bungie period. And so that was a big challenge of like promising this stuff and and aligning you know development schedules that are never going to hit the dates they say it was just a massive risk. Uh granted if they didn't take that risk who knows if they would have made it to the final shape. And so I I think looking back I think it was the right move, but I think there's a lot to learn from how you promised the future and be prepared for once that future arrives.
Being prepared for the future, how it arrives is such an interesting thing to say looking at the circumstance that they're in right now. I find it really fascinating that they're going all in on Marathon while Destiny 2 is actually like when you look at the number of users today, it is something you can not only salvage but you can run a business

with. most probably and I think this is a challenge we have in HD to be honest that I respect mobile a bit more with so in mobile when it beame a game like becomes a bit old it is generating revenue but on a hu huge amount of revenue it has a dedicated player base that is not also huge but it's also very engaged in your game mobile studios tend to move these games to smaller studios in somewhat cheaper countries so you can actually open up another studio that runs the live service for your game, you don't have to kill it. Especially in this case, like if you're releasing Destiny 3, you want all the players from Destiny 2 to move to Destiny 3. So, it doesn't make sense to keep it going. But now, you just released Marathon, you have a new game, you have another game, one of the the biggest games out there. it would have made sense maybe to prepare for maybe a cheaper way to run the live service to make it sustainable for the engaged audience rather than just flat out stop it which I think is a challenge that almost all uh AAA HD

studios face we I don't see this model ever happening it's it's very binary it's either the game is running a live service or not running a live service there's no okay here's maintenance mode with a smaller and you know what a smaller dedicated team
usually is actually like they deliver things that surprises you, man. Like they've been fans of the game. You start a studio with Young Blood in a smaller like country. They're usually quite excited to work on these big games and they'll surprise you with the amount of effort they can put into it. But uh I don't think it's something we do enough of.
I 100% agree. I think like Division 2 kind of does this. I I play a lot of Division 2 and although their seasons are not, you know, these grand grand gestures, like they have these systems, they take these risks, you know, they're they're kind of given this space where let's say Destiny 2 for example, if you offloaded it to, you know, a new studio in a cheaper area, the passion and the excitement that is that comes from these new developers and looking at the game differently could potentially lead to something like, oh [ __ ] like this thing

worked out great and it bounced back or whatever. Like Division 2 had a very good year leading up to its 10 year anniversary. It's at a smaller studio Motive I believe it's called. Um and the fact they didn't do it for Destiny 2 I think will if this truly is the end of Destiny. This will be the I think the question that I will always want to know the answer to is because this for sure was discussed like there's no way this wasn't a wasn't a strategy that was discussed at Sony and Bungie. But the decision to not do it and why, you know, there there's got to be some logical reason there that we just don't see yet. Uh I refuse to believe that they just decided not to do it for no reason. Because yeah, that would be my guess is like look, Seattle, Bungie, we were an expensive studio. You know, there's no there's no doubt about that. Very expensive studio to run, especially in Seattle with very high salaries. And so, you know, moving it to a cheaper country and letting them take their hands at it in a way, getting rid of the old guard that to be fair, you know, after working on a game for 10 years, you may not look at it the same way that new people do.

And the fact they didn't do that will be a question that I have, you know, [snorts] forever until until there's an answer. The Division is one example, which is a good example, but there's two other examples, both from Ubisoft as well, that I think can be pointed to as things to emulate and follow suit of from. One of them, of course, is For Honor. The game is still going, but I think the biggest example is Rainbow Six Siege.
When it came out, the game wasn't nearly as popular as as it was now. It was actually, I think, Sunset It, but then a new team internally within Ubisoft, a younger team, people that weren't even from shooters took creative control and like a phoenix out of the ashes, Rainbow Six Siege now has, I think, this has been stated by the by them has like over 2 million DAUs on it alone. And in my mind, there's no reason why Destiny 2 or whatever you want to call it can't do that. Either for a team within Seattle or a team somewhere else owned by Sony

or contracted by Sony or Bungie can't not do that. I think it's almost leaving money on the table to not even entertain that idea publicly.
Like I feel zoned out. It's too much from the three of I'm trying to [laughter] well I've been trying to figure out how I'm going to I'm going to pivot into like I do want to talk about the core mechanics of like what is Destiny? This is what I don't think people understand. Destiny is a looter shooter with Thank you. an emphasis on PvE with some elements of PvP in separate modes. That in and of itself is very unique to the looter shooter space. Borderlands has no PvP at all. Division has PvP zones, but not to the point of a first-person shooter in where the Division is third person, and it's mostly focused on what we call bullet sponge mechanics, which is fine for what it is, but Destiny stands alone really in terms of it has very strong emphasis on hitboxes, on damage multipliers, shooting feel, ADS,

movement, hero classes. There's so many things in Destiny 2 that really makes it stand apart from really everything else. I mean, it's an incredibly deep RPG.
Also, RPG mechanics. Yes.
You know, Destiny 2 is not necessarily unique in the way that it's a live service RPG, you know, like it it has a lot of the same elements of all these other things. The thing is that it is something that you cannot quantify. The gameplay is soing good. I mean, it is so good that it allows for these core loops to exist.
It still has power progression. like it has a lot of things that if you told this to shooter fans a long time ago that there's going to be PvP game power Scorpion involved or PvE elements, I don't think anyone would be interested. And I'm curious as to why Destiny gets away with it. Like if it was just core gameplay, are you telling me that like Bunch could put the core gameplay into anything? But at the end of the day, like core gameplay didn't just get Destiny 2 up and running. It created a live service that what over its lifetime

I mean this franchise what probably does north of a billion. I don't have numbers off the top of my head. Feel free to come after me for that one. I should have looked this looked this up. But clearly there's something I think they've unlocked with their mechanics. Part of it just seems that doing power scaling is a sustainable way to do a content lock service. The way they did expansions felt like they unlocked additional parts of the character, which is like a very traditional old school expansion RPG playbook. Like that's what it felt like this team was running. It was running the World of Warcraft expansion with material, feature upgrades, power score, movement, and then introducing more seasonal mechanics like the artifacts, which we could spend a time talking about, which was essentially just like, you know, seasonal boosts that you were able to get that would also come and go. But I mean, right now we're looking at weapon perks, weapon mods, intrinsic traits. I mean, it's an unbelievable number of stats.
Mhm.
Who was this audience pulling from? build crafting, you know, that's a that's a big part of it. Weapon perks

and all of this and so, but again, like so does Diablo. So does Diablo. So do a lot of these games. Like it's not necessarily unique in that perspective.
What it did in a unique way is basically what you're saying, Phil. It's like, well, it's a maybe an MMO RPG, maybe it's Diablo with guns, a mix of both, etc. Why did it become so huge? I think like for example just to answer the question you said so lifetime revenue for Destiny 1 is estimated around like 600 million or so. Lifetime revenue for Destiny 2 is one and a half to two billion estimates right now according to Claude. So we can check the details later.
Yeah. But what I'm saying in terms of audience I think what they've done in a quite unique way is they they've done a lot of these RPG-esque systems but they managed to pull from the shooter audience. Right. The shooter audience is the biggest audience in the market. This game managed to pull from that audience combined with the RPG players. Like the overlap of Destiny 2 players that play all the other shooters combined with

some of the RPG players. And I think that's the thing that they've done a bit unique in this way. There's pure PvP players that this game attracted knowing that there's a PvP part of the game, but again, the shooting was so rewarding. And then again, as the shooter audience evolved to become less monogous, like early on the focus in the shooter live service was get a player in, keep them in the game as much as you can, cuz as soon as they left the game, they're never coming back to yours. And now what you see, because there's a lot of competition in the market, the shooter audience just moves from one game to another. They play one game for the season, get back to their old game. Some of them have a main game they come back to. And Destiny 2 fits perfectly because again, as we mentioned, there's not a lot of competitors in that space combined with how it fits with the other games that the shooter audience is playing. Like if you're so much into hardcore shooting PVP games, Destiny 2 can be your kind of in between session that could relax you quite a bit. for an example. I'm using

like there's there's so many use cases that you can pull out from the shooter audience without a lot of competition here, especially after you went free to play and you're selling DLC packs.
This is your explanation for the fertility phrases that players are not monogamous anymore.
It's microplastics. Yes. [laughter]
To back off Frost mentioned, this is more anecdotal in terms of where the audience is coming from. Phil, people always talk about women make up x amount of the player base or make about x amount of the gamers out there. Destiny was the first game that I saw that was reflected upon his player base. Like more women in my life knew and played Destiny were even obsessed about Destiny than any other quoteunquote mainstream game that I've seen out there. People in my family would ask me, "Hey, is there a game like Destiny out there?" when they found out about Destiny Sunsetting. And my response was, "No, I'm sorry. There really isn't." And they that bummed them out. So Destiny was really not unique

and not just for its features on gameplay and fantasy, but also for the audience it was able to attract almost organically in terms of how big it got, how receptive the game was to all sorts of gamers.
That sounds right to me. Eiffel Tower, iconic, Tower of London, historic. The two towers, simply epic.

But none of them tell you anything about mobile app intelligence, downloads, revenue, active users, and my personal favorite, weekly cohorted retention. Get the real story, get the real data, get Sensor Tower today. Using clunky payment systems in your game, that's like fighting a boss with a wooden sword. App Charge gives you the power up you need. Seamless inapp purchases, global payments, and analytics that don't require a PhD. Monetize smarter, not harder. App charge, because your game deserves better loot. [music] I think that the question is is where does this genre go now, right? because it's also clear to me that this genre has been able to evolve into, I would argue, a real life service model. From what I understand from rumors suggesting that DLC was the vast majority of Destiny 2's revenue, that to me would suggest this genre has also failed to really take the live service transition. Although, like I see Hell Divers as like

a shining city on a hill. We've talked about the war bond system beforehand, or maybe we should. The First Ascended didn't last long. Division 2 is kind of fried.
There's Warframe. Warframe will outlive us all.
Warframe will outlive us all. I think there's that's fair. And then there's like the weird Eastern European shooters like War Thunder.
I don't know if you want to put in that category. I think they they represent something different. But it's amazing to me how far they got. It really was just running the MMO playbook. I mean, I was expecting to go on this podcast and have a deep dive into their mechanics, their energy system, their stat system, their different progression mechanics. And don't me wrong, like they have a lot of interesting things. the addup artifacts which are seasonal unlocks which reset. They're clearly trying to build a service cadence here. By the end of the day, I'm like, "Wow, expansions really drive most of this. There's a lot of gameplay altering features introduced during expansions. You've got your power increase at the expansion moments. You have deep customization for your all your slots. You're moving into tiers, open tiers. Like, it's such a literal transcription of the RPG playbook into an FPS. Um,

it's it's remarkable. It's an MMO with guns. Like I mean honestly like they need ended up having more mystical action elements too, right? Gunplay was one element, right Chris?
I mean it was one element but it's a huge element. I felt like me mattered a lot more in this title than any other Bungie title. A lot of action combat moves.
Yeah. I mean I think like if you hear the history of World of Warcraft, right, it was like guys from EverQuest, you know, invented World of Warcraft. When you look back at like Destiny, you know, Luke Smith, one of the early, you know, early designers of it was, you know, a scarablord in World of Warcraft, which if you know what that is, it's insane that he was one of them. It's a crazy achievement in World of Warcraft. So, you can you can see how like this kind of MMO leads to new MMOs. And so, I think the hope for the future is that somebody that, you know, was a hardcore Destiny 2 player becomes that creative director of a next title that brings in the inspiration and continues on, continues it forward. Um, it's like even EverQuest, you know, Ultima before that.

So, [laughter] I think that's kind of what the the hope for the future is. But, yeah, I mean, at the end of the day, it's an it's it's an MMO RPG with guns. Like, it's not necessarily groundbreaking from that perspective.
All very well executed though, must be said,
very much so. I mean, the high polish. Bungie had a almost annoying focus on polish. Let's say goodbye to Destiny uh potentially for any new genre entries for the next couple years. I I would like to hear from you guys. If you were to enter this genre in this day and age, who do you think is going to do it and what does it look like? Is it a revolutionary mechanic? Is it running this playbook? Is it, you know, amount of Saudi money we couldn't even fathom? What is it going to take to do another one, another success in this genre? especially if we've really concluded it's an RPG MMO with guns.
So, I'm gonna lift from one of Jason Shrier's recent video logs on his YouTube channel, very underrated. I suggest you check it out. He mentioned

Project Blackbird, which was from Bethesda Online Studios, formerly of, and that was a game made by a team with a lot of MMO RPG experience. and he mentioned that a game like that could have filled the gap that Destiny 2 is potentially leaving behind. So my answer to your query, Phil, is a team wellunded with an MMO RPG background with experience and and a love for shooting. Not a lot of them out there. And what's it going to take to get there? A lot of money.
My prediction, it's not coming out of North America. That's my only that's my only prediction there.
I think from the beginning built to be freeto play again like Warframe is a very good example of a slow burn that reached a lot of success in this genre but I don't think they would have made it if they were premium and then moved

over. So I think if someone wants to truly make a game in this genre and want it to be a 10, 20 years old life service, I think they need to build it from the beginning to be a free-to-play game and not run into the challenges that uh Bungie run into with transforming this game into a free-to-play game. It's always tricky, especially with uh PvE games. And then the second thing I would say is um maybe it's fine if it's not free to play and then you don't want it to be evergreen. Like I think it's an interesting world we're in right now where like it's it's kind of sad that Destiny 2 ended but it had a very very very good run. A lot of people were engaged in it. They were really happy. I think what we're really really sad about is there's no Destiny 3 yet. And I think maybe that's the national transformation. Like if you want to make a game that is premium in this genre and you want it to last for a while, maybe don't aim for the full 10 years. Aim for 5 years or so. Release the game afterwards sequel. Move your audience into that. And I think that's a

great run too. I don't think this has to be a sad story. More like what's really sad is there's no continuation right now. So maybe the next big thing is going to be Destiny 3. Let's see how Bungie is going to pull this off. I believe what Chris Sid said. They've done so many revivals in the past, so maybe that's the way to go. Or maybe they're going to make a new Destiny that's free to play, but that's going to be at least five or seven years from now. So, very, very different world. We know that NIS worked on the mobile version, which did not go anywhere very quickly. Uh, do you think there's anything to giving NIS an HD swing? Like it feels like Bungie, again, if we just think of Bungie as an asset and what's best for Bungie as an asset, they are capped by the amount of labor they have. They're about to downsize because of their cost. Their mobile game didn't work out. You know, I suggested going back to Halo, I think, would be important for the studio. Do you think

there's something else to kind of like licensing out or doing close collaborations like that Destiny game, but on HD with NEI, similar to Marvel Rivals? You think they should consider just like pushing a little bit more about their their library is incredible, right? It's Marathon was an old IP. I mean, they can't touch Halo. Isn't there a pinball game?
There's Myth. What is it? On hasn't heard of in a long time. I mean, to be fair, maybe maybe that is Sony's strategy is to license out these products because, you know, if from a Sony's perspective, you know, since they've acquired Bungie, Bungie hasn't really delivered on any, you know, if I was a Sony employee, I'd be like, what what the hell? Um, and so there could be something where they're just going to peacemail out the IPs, you know, give Destiny to somebody else. Maybe um, you know, there's a a negative sentiment towards Bungie. I'm not really sure, but yeah, I mean, from a Sony perspective, Bungie has not delivered. But I'd be frustrated if I was Sony, you know.
Do we have anything more positive we could end on?
I'm still positive outlook here. Like I

still think Bungie has this stuff. You know, they historically they have always come back. You know, of course there will be a time where they won't. I just don't know if this is it. They've been in crisis many times. Many, many times.
What What do you think is the lesson Bungie takes away from this?
You know, one of the things about having so many crises is the question of like, do they know their do they learn the lesson? And so I'm not really sure what the lesson is, especially, you know, when we say the word bungee, you know, it's just a collection of people. And if those people are the same ones that, you know, learned the lessons in the past, if they're still there, you know, there's a lot of people that may not still be there. Even though, you know, Marathon was made by plenty of people that worked at Halo and yada yada yada. Um, it's still not it's not the same team. Obviously, I I don't know if the people who need to learn the lessons are still there anymore, nor if they have the context of why that lesson needs to be learned. Uh, so I'm not sure.
That's fair. Mr. Anos, anything they should take away? What should Bungie

learn from the saga? If anything,
the saga of juggling Destiny to a marathon in a
in [clears throat] a postco world, a business model could go a long way
and we'll see that I think I think a bit more by the end of the year with how much focus and marketing Activision is already putting into the DMZ mode in MW4. I I don't think it's been confirmed what that business model will be. I have no idea what it is, but Activision going so strong already. Essentially, the first gameplay footage we saw of Modern Warfare 4 is of his TMZ mode, which is an indication of how much they're putting into it. So, I'll be curious to see at what stage Marathon will be come the end of the year, whether it will will remain premium or transition to a more free-to-play type of mode based upon how wellreceived the DMZ mode will be in MW4.

And if there's any lesson that I would try to get out there as it relates to Bungie and Destiny 2 and Marathon is when you have established a clear market with a product, you should not give it up. You should really ride it for as long as possible because it's so hard to make money in this industry. That is something I think Ubisoft understands intuitively. Shout out to Ubisoft in in what they can. Haha. That's Shooter Monthly episode 8. Uh, we'll see you next time for large scale Battlefield review.
I think we can talk about some DMZ. That' be good.
DMZ out.
Bye-bye.
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