Bungie has clarified communications on the future of Destiny, explaining that they did not have a ten year plan for the game.
Rather, Bungie community and marketing relations manager Eric ‘Urk’ Osborne refers to it as a ten year partnership arrangement, and that the narrative went out of control. You can read his exact quotes below:
Those things were so distracting, and not about the experience we were creating. It just became the narrative. I mean, I drive a Honda Civic. I don’t know shit about $500 million. A ten-year plan? It’s a ten-year partnership agreement. It has nothing to do with the development of the game proper. To think that somehow, before Destiny had shipped, we had some ten-year plan written down somewhere? It’s comical. We allowed the narrative to get constructed that Bungie is just a corporate entity and not a bunch of humans, a collection of people who are just trying to make a really great game.
Bungie did seem to freely allow the press and fans to refer to the arrangement with Activision for Destiny as a ten year plan, as exemplified here. However, most recently, Bungie’s lawsuit with its former composer, Marty O’Donnell, revealed that there were laid out plans for five games releasing between now all the way through to 2020.
If the plans were for each Destiny expansion to be as huge as a self-contained game, it would noy be in Bungie’s best interest to reveal it. Of course, they cannot deny the contract with Activision exists, so they have to couch it in this language. For many gamers, this distinction may well be irrelevant, as they loyally buy Call of Duty and Battlefield games year after year. In any case, this shift in communications is certainly an interesting move.
How do you feel about Bungie and Destiny in light of all this? Share your thoughts with us in the comments.
