Over the last four years, Activision has probably
dropped about half a billion dollars in marketing for
Warframe. Yup, you heard me right. And they didn't
mean to. They, of course, meant to be marketing
Destiny. And sure, they did that in the process. But when
you look at the growth numbers for both games, it kind
of looked like their chief competitor benefited more.
♪ "Penguin Cap" by CarboHydroM ♪
You may think it's hyperbolic, and, admittedly, it is.
A little bit. But not that much. In an age where most
MMOs have bled users, and Activision has taken to
giving away copies of Destiny 2, Warframe's user
number continues to rise. And part of that's on the back
of Destiny players who have burned out and wound up
looking for something to scratch that same itch. And
there is a lot to learn from that, whether you're a
developer, a publisher, or just interested in how the
games business works, because a couple of
fundamental things had to have happened for this to be
true. First, the marketing they did had to have a
compelling enough message to get people interested in
what they were selling. Second, Destiny had to kind of
fail to deliver on that message. And third, there had to
be another game out there that could get a lot closer to
fulfilling that desired experience for players. But each of
these steps originates from the same place - from the
problem of not really knowing what your game is. Now
that may seem like a simple thing, and it may seem like
the most basic aspect of game development, but you
would be shocked how often developers and publishers
push games out the door without really having a solid,
communicable idea of what experience, at its core,
they're giving people. And Destiny, for as much as I
loved it, had this problem from day one. So let's
compare Warframe and Destiny side-by-side, starting
with Warframe. For the player who cares about the "feel"
of the game, Warframe is basically ninjas in space. For
those who care about what the long-term goals or
gameplay will be like, it's a free-to-play, crafting-based
looter shooter. For those who want to know what
category the game fits into, it's an instantiated MMO.
And for those who care about narrative or world-
building, it's a dark sci-fi future. For Destiny, making
those distinctions is a lot harder. And it's because it
seems as though all throughout development, no one
could make up their minds about what the game was
actually supposed to be. Not only were there seismic
shifts in the game's direction during the development
process, but all the way through launch, what the game
was seemed ultimately unclear. Now if you go back into
some of the early interviews about the game, you'll hear
the developers talk about it as if it's a "ten-year game":
a game which will never have a sequel, or a game you'll
play for the rest of your life. Now of course, us, with
the benefit of being in the future from said interviews,
we know that Destiny 1 only made it three years before
Destiny 2 came out, meaning within a year or so of
those interviews, they had to be working on the next
one. But more telling still is something else that stands
out in all those interviews. While talking about it as if it's
a forever game, they insist it wasn't an MMO. Now you
say you have a perpetual multiplayer-based game, yet
you are adamant that it isn't an MMO. Okay. Then what
is it? And it's this sort of conflicted message that
impacts the development. If you're thinking of your
game as an MMO, then you're thinking about it as a
service. You're thinking about the continuous release of
content, endgame feature that players can grind on
perpetually, or special events and holiday surprises. And
if you're thinking of it as a standard console release,
then you're thinking about expansion packs. And neither
of these are wrong by any means, but both can be
disastrous if you just flip-flop between the two. Or, if
how the development team is thinking about the game
doesn't match up with how the game feels to its players.
And the same is true of the narrative. Often the Destiny
marketing talked about almost like Mass Effect - an epic
space opera with depth, meaning, and a dramatic
narrative arc. But in that same marketing, you've got
Cayde-6, voiced by the charming as heck Nathan Fillion,
stopping to tell you a story at a crumbling bar in the
middle of a war zone. And these types of dueling tones,
when not used very carefully, can undercut your world's
seriousness. Because if a main character can't even
take their own world seriously, how are we, the
audience supposed to? And this total uncertainty shows
in everything from the confused voice direction for
Peter Dinklage, to the hiring of David Cross to write
jokes for the series, then using none of the material, all
the way to the song by Sir Paul McCartney.
Not exactly being the clearest stage being set here. And,
of course, Warframe's story isn't perfect either, but even
at its most convoluted, the tones it uses to tell said
story is consistent throughout.
If you don't know where the heart of your story is,
whether it's a serious emotional tale with lighter
moments, or a light-hearted romp through a wacky
universe, you're going to have disconnects everywhere.
Beyond the narrative, it affects the visual aesthetics of
the game, the sound design, even enemy behavior. Each
of those has to match the tone of the game. But if no
one's really pinned down what the tone is, it's going to
be all over the place. Having a cohesive vision of your
game is one of the most important things to game
development. Early on, it should dictate development.
And later, it should be realistically assessed against play
test to understand how to market your game and help
craft ongoing content. Of course, this doesn't mean that
vision shouldn't be flexible or can't shift with iteration. It
absolutely should. But there should always be a vision.
And there should never be multiple visions conflicting
with one another. And sadly, that's a place where
Destiny failed. And it's why Warframe got to eat their
lunch. While Destiny didn't have a cohesive message for
players, and therefore, by definition, couldn't meet their
expectations, Warframe's simple offer of fast-paced
action and things to grind for in a perpetual dark sci-fi
future just happened to be everything the Destiny
marketing campaign ended up promising. While no one
can argue that Bungie has always had some of the
finest-tuned shooter gameplay and some of the
best-feeling guns in the business, their issue with
Destiny was that no one knew exactly what the heart of
it was. And without a solid, focused idea of the game
you're working on, your team will end up floundering,
players will end up disappointed or confused, and
someone else will profit off your hard work and
hemorrhaged players, even if you're one of the biggest
developers in the business. All this isn't to say that the
Destiny franchise is simply bad or that Warframe
doesn't have problems itself. I am looking at you, new
player experience. And personally, I've pumped
hundreds of hours into Destiny 1 and 2. But when
Activision hands back a franchise they've spent a billion
dollars on, something has gone deeply wrong. And
when players are looking for an alternative that cost a
tenth as much to make, something is clearly missing.
It's our hope, though, that with their publisher out of the
picture, they can find the core of their game, right the
ship, and transform Destiny into the game everyone
knows it could be. And until then, Zoe and I are off to go
farm us some Ivara Prime Blueprints.
ZOE: Meow (Translations to English on screen)
MATT: What do you mean they don't exist?
ZOE: Meow | MATT: Wait, who you calling a noob?
ZOE: Meow | MATT: Well that hurts my feelings.
♪ “Sub-Zero” by Emunator & Ergosonic ♪