A #DestinytheGame search on Twitter reveals an interesting phenomena of the 21 st century. A gargantuan community of people are playing Destiny, and they can't stop. This is not at all strange. In this age of fascinating technology, we are all used to viral videos and large congregations of online personas gathering on a single platform for communal gaming. But what is so special about this particular game, and why are so many people playing it?
Destiny is a video game developed by Bungie LLC and was released on PlayStation 3, Playstation 4, Xbox 360, and Xbox One in September 2014. This first-person shooter, massive multiplayer online (MMO) game, was rumored to have made publisher Activision more than $500 million in revenue on the first day of its release. In the first week of sales, reports claimed that more than 11 million game-play sessions of Destiny were recorded. And this was just in North America. In general the game received positive reviews despite many complaints over the fact that Destiny has no story to speak of.
In addition, players have found game-play to be extraordinarily difficult.
At its core, the game is an MMO but, unlike a classic MMO such as World of Warcraft, players cannot see or interact with everyone in-game. Instead, Destiny auto-matches players with one another and communication can only take place between the players in their designated group. Once all members of the group are matched, players can go on raids, or missions, to kill alien invaders who have occupied the solar system. Winning, which is admittedly difficult, results in gaining new items and character upgrades. This sequence of game progression is certainly not unique.
So how does an impossible to win, seemingly ordinary game with no storyline amass all the mania currently surrounding it? There is no definitive answer, but one can speculate on several factors.
First, there is die-hard fan loyalty within the gaming community. Bungee LLC previously worked on the blockbuster video game Halo, a first-person shooter published by Microsoft in 2001. The Halo franchise (games with a set plot and storyline) was a massive success, reportedly selling over 60 million copies worldwide. Much of the hype over Destiny pre-release is a direct result of this history.
Second, Destiny is open world – that is, it can be explored much like other sand-box games. Bungie designed the game world to be dynamic and to take on “a life of its own” . Everything within the game world is affected by the players’ actions. The world is persistent, meaning that it changes even while a player is not in-game.
This concept of a perpetually changing world that promises much to discover is certainly an incentive to go exploring, if only to marvel at the things the latest technology can create. It also helps that the world of Destiny is exquisitely drawn.
But here's the catch. Because the world is persistent and the player must always be connected to a server, it means that you can never pause.
Ever.
If you die during a battle (and battles are as tough as they come), you have to start over. Destiny is merciless and does not restore the inventory items that you have used up. If you lose the level and you are out of ammo, you remain out of ammo when you start over. Coupled with just the right amount of rewards doled out for actually winning, the missing pause function ensures that players keep on playing.
The game, like its world, is consistently under development, with updates and added missions still rolling out post-launch. Whatever else Destiny might have to offer its millions of fans is still a mystery, but even at this early stage the evidence shows that we can expect something remarkable.