09/12/2014
I’m a gamer at heart and I think I have a pretty good idea of what a gamer wants from their games. Smooth controls, sweet graphics, a great immersive storyline that doesn’t hog the screen including a jump button, and most recently added… responsive online gameplay with voice communication. A gamer can’t really 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 new and shiny to our table. The question on everyone’s mind is whether or not that shiny new thing is going to be worth all the hype. Wait a second though, where did all the hype come from?
That’s how it is. As someone who is pretty skeptical about things in business, I find it hard to believe that a game that has absolutely been in development for 2 years, but potentially 5 years, decided to perform a server dump 8 hours after release. I don’t think so. My question is who has more to gain from this kind of indecency? The marketing team. Ask yourself when there is good news versus bad news, which one grows faster and sticks in the mind longer? Chances are you still remember that juicy secret someone whispered in your ear while you were on the school bus in third grade. Sorry, dirty secrets have a higher retention rate in memory, so the good news doesn’t go 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 scandalous 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 goes that crazy, it backfires. Even in a world full of moving images and audio sequences trying to invade our minds, word of mouth is still the most effective way to get information out to the world. So for those brave few people willing to risk their careers in the name of marketing, they can achieve up to 200 percent more exposure when combined with some bad news. All the marketing techniques in commerce put together cannot produce results like that 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 a minor overlooked thing caused many of the issues seen during launch. Perhaps the deadlines are too strict and big companies are pushing developers to give up the need to produce good quality games in favor of money. Even after an “official” reason is published, all that remains is speculation. All I know is that the game is smooth as silk, but it doesn’t really seem to offer anything innovative. These little hiccups in server connectivity 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 hoping to see big improvements once all the bugs are fixed.
Whether intentional or not, Bungie’s Destiny has me in the magic bubble of hope. The foundation 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 exposure in the marketplace. All they have to do now is make sure that when the veil is lifted, that destination is running 100 percent so it can deliver the goods and shake our socks off.
