Nearly 11 years after the launch of Destiny 1, former Bungie CEO Harold Ryan believes the live-service recreation mannequin is not “appropriate for all games.”
Ryan, who spent over 15 years at Bungie earlier than finally leaving in 2016 to discovered his personal firm, ProbablyMonsters, says in a new interview with GamesIndustry.biz that “I think that model is appropriate for some games, but I don’t think it’s appropriate for all games.” He provides: “I believe consumers are telling us it’s not appropriate for all consumers.”
Looking on the video games business, the live-service fatigue is actual. Many live-service video games have sadly been shut down after failing to satisfy expectations. Concord is probably probably the most well-known latest instance, and a very applicable one since developer Firewalk Studios as soon as belonged to ProbablyMonsters earlier than being acquired by Sony Interactive Entertainment in 2023.
Ryan continues: “Would I ever make another service-based game? Sure. If I see the right game idea and the right audience, am I happy to build that and bring that to market? I am. But I think [for] sustainable careers, I think for the industry, it’s pretty clear that we can’t just pick a business model and say that’s a reason to make a game.”
Elsewhere within the interview, Ryan explains that after ending Destiny 1, he “wanted to try and have a bigger impact on the industry,” noting he “believed that game developers deserve more predictability, more respect in the workplace.” He provides: “The way, it seemed, to do that was to build teams and games to sign with major publishers.”
However, though “we did that,” and “we did that successfully for a while,” Ryan says “that’s not the model that I think works today, and we’ve had to evolve.” One of the ways in which ProbablyMonsters has performed so is in its method to placing out video games, with Ryan noting that “we have multiple short-, mid-, and long-term games in development in the company,” with plans to ship new ones in numerous genres yearly going ahead.
This additionally follows a number of ProbablyMonsters-owned studios – Battle Barge, Cauldron, and Hidden Grove – being shut down. All three, Ryan says, have been “built in our old model.” Teams are actually smaller and “more integrated with each other and with the central teams,” with a concentrate on flexibility, since “if there’s a north star for the structure, it’s [that] there isn’t a single right way to get a game into players hands.”
Reflecting on his preliminary objective with ProbablyMonsters to develop “the next generation of AAA game development studios,” Ryan says: “Signing triple-A games to publishers really was a means to an end of securing what I believe was a reliable, predictable path for securing funding for games. And today it’s not. And so the goal is still to get to the point where we can have long-lasting, respectful careers for game developers, and I think the whole industry is trying to find the right path there.”
1,769 hours into Destiny 2 on Steam, The Edge of Fate has killed my curiosity in enjoying with one of many worst leveling techniques I’ve seen in an MMO.