09/12/2014
I am a gamer at heart and I think I have a good idea of what a gamer wants from their games. Smooth controls, sweet graphics, a great immersive story that doesn’t hog the screen including a jump button and most recently added… responsive online gameplay with voice communication. A gamer really can’t ask for more than that, but we always find ourselves looking at developers asking what the next big thing is. Destiny is trying to bring something shiny and new to our table. The question on everyone’s mind is whether or not that shiny new thing will be worth all that hype. Wait a second though, where did all the hype come from?
That’s how it is. As a person who is quite skeptical about things in business, I find it hard to believe that a game that has been absolutely in development for 2 years, but potentially 5 years, decided to do a server dump 8 hours after release. I don’t think so. My question is who has the most to gain from this kind of indecency? The marketing team. Ask yourself when there is good news versus bad news, which grows faster and sticks in the mind longer? Chances are, you still remember that juicy secret someone whispered in your ear while you were riding the school bus in third grade. Sorry, dirty secrets have a higher retention rate in memory, so the good news doesn’t carry that far.
I’ve seen people do it plenty of times. Miley Cyrus at the 2013 MTV Music Awards is a great example. It was so outrageous that everyone was talking about it, even people who didn’t listen to her music. It’s the move of a marketing genius… if one person can pull it off without it becoming rampant. What I mean by that is if the plan gets that crazy, it backfires. Even in a world filled with moving images and audio streams trying to invade our minds, word of mouth remains the most effective way to get information out to the world. So, for those brave few willing to risk their careers in the name of marketing, they can achieve up to 200 percent more exposure when coupled with some bad news. All the marketing techniques in the trade together cannot produce results like that if given the same amount of time.
On the other hand, Destiny is doing a lot of new things that require a lot of things to work perfectly all the time. It is incredibly likely that one minor thing that was overlooked caused many of the issues seen during launch. Maybe the deadlines are too tight and big companies are pushing developers to put aside the need to produce good quality games in favor of money. Even after an “official” reason is released, all that’s left is speculation. All I know is that the game is silky smooth, but it doesn’t really seem to offer anything innovative. These little server connectivity hiccups make me feel like I have to return my new computer the same day I brought it home. I don’t want the game, I’m just disappointed, but I’m still hopeful to see big improvements once all the bugs are fixed.
Whether intentional or not, Bungie’s Destiny has me in the magical bubble of hope. The base and idea of the game is so good that once the game is at its best it should be amazing. Plus, there’s the added effect of feeling like a low dog story. At the end of the day, all the hype, both good and bad, has given the game more market exposure. All they have to do now is make sure that when the veil is lifted, that destination is working 100 percent so it can deliver the goods and knock our socks off.