Destiny: too big to fail

http://media.edge-online.com/wp-cont...am-610x343.jpgEerily similar previews for Bungie and Activision’s new multiplayer shooter appeared online yesterday evening. Destiny’s reveal was light on footage, short on details but long on promise and threat. Our visit to Bungie’s Bellevue studio was a glimpse into how games will be made in the next generation and beyond – not as games but as brands, as destinations, as hobbies in themselves; each one the only game you’ll ever need.Both Bungie and Activision joked that Destiny was among the industry’s worst-kept secrets and writer Joe Staten spoke openly about the Activision/Bungie contract which surfaced during the Zampella/West court case last year. Even then it was a contract detailing the most ambitious game series imaginable – a decade’s worth of content signed up and paid for years in advance, and a brand designed from the ground up to be too big to fail.It used to be that Hollywood and the games industry would make a piece of media – The Matrix, Halo, Call of Duty – and be so surprised by the title’s success they would leap into action and build a whole world of spin-offs and sequels. Halo was a game, not a series; the Haloverse came later, but Destiny is pre-built to last a decade – four biennial games, four DLC expansions – each game a ‘book’ in the Destiny story and each book containing multiple chapters which will expand as new missions and maps unlock in the weeks and months after release.

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