Why there will never be another Destiny

gamesindustry.biz:

Ten years ago today, Activision published a new shooter from Halo developer Bungie: Destiny.

Although 'a shooter' is perhaps a tad reductive, since it was above and beyond anything Bungie – or indeed other studios – had produced.

"When Destiny originally launched, there was nothing quite like it – even figuring out how to communicate its genre was a massive communication exercise for the marketing teams," indie developer, consultant, and noted Destiny fan Rami Ismail tells GamesIndustry.biz. "It was an FPS, sure, and structured like an MMO but not quite 'massive'. It was PvE with a big campaign, but also PvP. It took the 'looter shooter' and made that a very successful live service model.

"That combination became one of the 'things to make' for almost half a decade, before Fortnite came along. In that way, like every trend setting game, Destiny was both a boon and a curse. If anything, it was the first major indicator that live service was going to be the thing for the decade since."

"Destiny deserves to be studied as the encapsulation of a very specific period in the development of video games, one that I don't think we'll ever get back to"

IGN managing editor (and GamesIndustry.biz alum) Rachel Weber adds that not only was Destiny the first game to nail the appeal of a shared world shooter, it also demonstrated Bungie's continuing prowess when it came to world-building and storytelling. "

"It stood out as more than just a pretty shader applied to the same old pew pew mechanics. It was a rare idea that appealed to the lucrative competitive shooter and MMORPG crowds, an audience who were the first to make peace with microtransactions and content chopped up into expansions."

Statistics from Circana's Retail Tracking Service help add more context to Destiny's success: since it first launched in September 2014, Destiny has become the 34th biggest video game franchise of all time in terms of US full-game dollar sales across physical and digital – and that's without