# weak sci fi ideas in bungie's hyper-generic destiny > destiny does not care about story > ~ kyle bosman the final bosman show 09/10/2014 consider that bungie's video garme world destiny contains weak ideas and a bland look that weakly cries "hyper-generic persistent cross platform fps sandbox multiplayer ip franchise clone featuring social apps and cheesy drip-fed sci fi narrative wizardry with cynical dlc whale-milking @ 30fps" read the 'infinitely expandable universe' as 'an infinite potential to monetize freshly invented random micro-content split into every finer chunks' destiny's reveal trailer - a good example of how not to showcase a video garme. an accidental parody - a pitch video to a bunch of suited corporate investors not smart modern garmers (wherever they may be) warning: contains utterly lacklustre content inappropriate for those who think sci fi can do far better "that moment" guy is hilarious - displaying such unbridled confidence in ir creative genius. yet it's like ir's talking to ir own nodding press agent. the 'epic' music in the background also seemingly reinforces the fact ey knows this project is a 'big deal' yet what isn't a big deal is grown adults making clear well informed choices about the artistic directions they want to travel. "destiny" is falsely epic because the design choices they seem to be making seem (so far at least) mundane and largely uninspiring in fact this scene alone might be one of the reasons modern video garmes cost so much to produce; garmers have to pay for the limitless expansion of mainstream garme developer egos; the way the guy's head spins over the degree to which destiny's are somehow automatically fantastic.. it's a miracle it doesn't fly off and become another big dumb object the stories tell of a golden age long ago.. smells like someone's been over-digesting joe campbell's philosophically spurious monomyth again it was a bright and hopeful time - but it didn't last sounds like ir's talking about some dystopian future past of the vidyagarm industry.. something hit us - knocked us down this is highly vague and non-informative storytelling with information content zero no one knows exactly what bad storytelling welded to bad garme design 101; the question is if *you* don't really know what's happening in your garme universe why should anyone else wait around for you to simply 'make it up on the (dlc) spot as you go along'? rather than having a well thought out world (from the outset) or clever procedural narrative - large garme companies often simply use player feedback aka "our stats tell us that players hated x - so for the next update we'll be sure to nerf x andor shoehorn y into teh garme" the fantasy that you have when creating a new experience is that someone else is going to enjoy it who talks like this - and what on future earth has this to do with a modern audience's understanding of what you're really / actually doing? funny how the very next shot after this b.c.d.a 'bizarre cathartic developer admission' is that of a phone on a desk - phones being checked. that is: "the illusion i want to maintain is that anyone gives a damn about what i'm selling.. hello? bueller?" dig the shot of the neck beardy programmer looking like ir's checking - and immediately ignoring - ir phone. "can't talk now i've got em.. epic stuff to do" build an experience which is meaningful for people this perhaps is entirely the wrong emphasis for the designers. who tell others what that experience is or how / what they should feel about it? surely you should be building the *potential* for sets of experiences which might prove meaningful beyond the immediate garming feedback of eg. a 'good headshot' or some dumb achievement popping up on screen? ("congrats player one: once again you've managed to uncritically swallow whatever pap we're selling you today") how do you keep the player going for fifty or a hundred hours over some number of months? that is how best to treat them like social media addicted novelty-obsessed twittering idiots armed with dumb smart mobile devices and the need to update ir realtime facebook garming status? a classic strategy for cynical companies besides bringing in phones brings to mind battlefield 4's somewhat useless tacked-on 'commander mode' not just to play teh garme but want to play it with ir friends like this is a major revelation (which also means: how can we make players help us generate hype / positive spin for this sci fi clunker?) legends say the traveller sacrificed itself to save us an updated more spherical version of baby jebus? talk about suspension of disbelief the years that followed the collapse of the golden age.. over a minute and a half in and the player *still* has no idea of where exactly they are - or even if this is clearly a 'sci fi' universe you will become legend bored more like. hollow oversold promises which cannot possibly met by the standard cookie-cutter garmeplay mechanics never mind 'legend' try understanding what players mean by 'epic moments' - rich scenes of 'emergent fun' caused by the natural clash of eg. unscripted player choices in-garme physics vehicle ab/use and large explosions something that has enough ideas in it to last us at least 10 years there aren't enough ideas (let alone interesting ones) to last the length of this stale trailer let alone a decade on the destiny logo: an awkward mixture of a white plastic thong a pair of (oddly risen) spheres and an alien's danging wang-arc seen 'head on' even though you have these crazy ideas you know they're going to be funnelled into a garme that's fun(tm) read as: "despite the fact this garme has zero genuine crazy ideas you know what bland ideas it does have will be cynically funnelled into something samey which will only be 'fun' for around a week or so before terminal player apathy sets in" if it's not scary then it's not going to be good as if! what a load of hype. from what's been seen so far destiny seems the very definition of safe - as reinforced by the by-now desperately standard use 'epic orchestra strings'. enough with the heavy bowing already only fools are impressed on fan vs corporate bean-counter based design consider the excellent 'xbox 720' design concept by david hansson which says 'awesome alien artifact from a distant future civilization' far better than anything in destiny yet the fact the xbone ended up as a black plastic bread bin says a lot about modern 'design by committee' ie. missing a neck vision and backbone read having "just enough crazy to pull this off" as: "not nearly enough crazy to do anything *but* successfully pull off another lifeless sci-fi shooter" destiny design suggestions **+** limit corporate meddling in your design choices **+** make one reason the aliens are attacking the fact they're simply rebelling against the violent militarized colonial expansion of humanity **+** if you really want 'ideas enough to last ten years' hire some decent writers of 'dark sci-fi fantasy' or whatever it's called nowadays **+** have multiple "travellers" in multiple cities / an 'anti-traveller' **+** have the traveller take an active role in teh garme **+** do not only allow masks but use similar facial technologies / aesthetics developed by valve in half life 2. arguably to date nobody's developed more emotionally expressive faces than those worn by npcs in half life 2 **+** the direct effect of expressive (non-realistic) faces is to bodily ground the player through an emotional connection with ir character; simply improving one's 'stats' or grinding for power ups is not really any kind of 'investment'. to have an interesting in-garme 'body' is often more important than eg. how much ammo you can carry (for example of this idea see the oculus rift) **+** have more non humanoid character models / profiles **+** have ir power-ups able to change a player's size **+** "you are a guardian"; also be a traitor? generally speaking: sci fi that starts off from (allegedly) "epic" does not scale down well to "meaningful and interesting garmeplay choices"; perhaps a better emphasis for destiny would be "simple sci fi ideas which scale up well from individual player choices into 'epic scale' sci fi action-adventure"; think "an episodic district 13" not "star wars". epic isn't automatic but has to be earned in which even an investment of 500 million (!) has little to do with the potential use of groundbreaking ideas allegedly seen (historically at least) in science fiction pardon our moon dust bungie but destiny appears to be a moon originating wizard of small conceptual stature also infinitely cutting up your content into sale-able sized bytes to make it appear there's infinitely more to it is an (expensively) cheap industry practice dance! the best thing about destiny the best thing about destiny - perhaps unfortunately - is the ability to simply dance your arts off - not that there's much else to do thing is as a completely incongruous / dissonant element it totally changes the whole tone of teh garme away from what the developers are saying its supposed to be - 'serious sci fi adventure' even if more equally amusing ways to express oneself as a player were introduced it would make destiny a completely different garme from the one that's currently being advertised unfortunately this progression / mutation away from 'what we say destiny is strictly about' to 'what players would like destiny to evolve into (based on nicely odd in-garme elements such as dance)' is not possible since everything's completely locked in / locked down from the outset destiny reconsidered as a service if only destiny was a service like steam is trying to reconfigure garmes into - instead of an old fashioned software platform with a slick 'sci fi' monetizing interface for serving up crass dlc microcontent as the mighty jim sterling says all destiny seems to be at the moment is a [..] solid ultimately pedestrian product level update: destiny n they haven't even finished (or even truly begun) the first one but destiny mark n is already in the works. what a lame yoke // republic of bob