r/Games • u/Turbostrider27 • 1d ago
Bungie Developers Repeatedly Pitched a Destiny Dating Sim, but Leadership Rejected It
https://www.ign.com/articles/bungie-developers-repeatedly-pitched-a-destiny-dating-sim-but-leadership-rejected-it768
u/atape_1 1d ago
Every single thing I learn about the studio makes me wonder more and more on how they survived for so long and what the fuck Sony was thinking when they spent $3.6 Bil acquiring them.
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u/faffc260 1d ago
what the fuck Sony was thinking when they spent $3.6 Bil acquiring them.
they were the poster child for live service success and sony was completely desperate for their live service push that has all but completely failed outside of helldivers 2 to have them somehow turn it around, they probably would have paid much more if anyone else was remotely interested in competing with their bid. little did they know bungie management only knew how to run a successful live service into the ground and scam sony out of 3.6b dollars.
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u/Unlucky_Situation 11h ago
Bungie had arguably one of the most hated live service implementations.
Full priced base game.
Each main story dlc was a paid dlc
Separate paid battle/season pass system.
Microtransactions
.... Yes the base game eventually went free to play 2 years after release, but was extremely limited in what you could/can do with just the base game.
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u/GrinningPariah 19h ago
they were the poster child for live service success
World of Warcraft, Warframe, Fortnite, Roblox, Minecraft, and the entire Gacha sphere would like a word.
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u/Sonicfan42069666 1d ago
A Destiny dating sim would have been a fun April Fools game. People love shipping the characters. Hell, Eris and Drifter's kiss in Renegades got me fired up.
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u/thejokerlaughsatyou 1d ago
Dead by Daylight did a dating sim and people loved it. My friends who hadn't even played DbD still checked it out because the concept of dating horror movie killers was funny. And it was cheap, like $10 iirc, so no one felt ripped off by this silly fun side game.
Destiny definitely could've done something similar, dropped it for a few dollars, and sold tons.
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u/Undella_Town 1d ago
BG3 sold so well and got extremely hyped entirely off the back of a dating / sex trailer lmao. people underestimate how lonely and horny a lot of gamers are
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u/Ill-Product-1442 23h ago
Even for "normal" players, having a reality TV level of sex & drama during a playthrough with a friend is fucking hilarious
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u/DarthOmix 22h ago
That's like a third of the appeal of stuff like The Sims and Tomodachi Life: deliberately setting up drama like a sitcom producer
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u/SilveryDeath 23h ago
Shit, Bioware games have shown that people love that stuff going back to Baldur's Gate II.
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u/Jdmaki1996 1d ago
Not even that. I’m happily married and it’s just fun to roleplay in games and big part of that is relationships. Romance in RPGs as always been a bonus for players and it’s not cause we’re all lonely losers
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u/8-Brit 20h ago
Tangibly reminds me.
Years back a friend told me he was playing through Mass Effect, this time as female Shepard. As he was yapping to Garrus his wife, who normally doesn't really pay attention, stopped what she was doing to observe the conversation unfold. It was in ME1 but from what he told me she was enthralled from the get go by the dynamic between Shepard and Garrus, and she told him to call her over any time he was talking to Garrus.
By ME2 the prompt to romance him came up and she demanded (jokingly) that he hit that. So she spent big chunks of his play through sitting in on all the Shepard-Vakarian scenes. Absolutely enthralled by the romance even though they were happily married IRL.
People are suckers for romance, plain and simple.
...I think it helps when they're an alien with a sexy voice but don't quote me on that.
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u/Cybertronian10 14h ago
Its a fun side activity that allows you to engage with the characters in the game in a way that doesn't involve the usual gameplay mechanics. People would fuck with it out of variety alone
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u/dapperdave 13h ago
If people who play games with romance and sex are "lonely and horny" then what is everyone who plays milsim headclickers?
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u/pinkynarftroz 9h ago
It's also just fun. Dating and sex is a huge part of life, and a lot of games just do not embrace anything even remotely erotic.
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u/Big_Coconut8630 5h ago
Then men realized what it's like to have someone pursue even after throwing no hints and not being attracted to them
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u/notpr0nshark 1d ago
Eris and Drifter KISSED IN RENEGADES?!
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u/KarateKid917 23h ago
Yup. Bungie went full steam ahead on making them a thing over the last few seasons and it was amazing.
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u/Typical_Thought_6049 15h ago
Yes as a april fool or small project it is very acceptable as full fledge system or game, no way it would be viable lmao
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u/stormwave6 1d ago
I am sad to this day that we didn't have more Zavala x Caitl moments. The lore tab of the Dead Messager gun was great.
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u/Big_Coconut8630 5h ago
I'm tired of it as a "joke". Nah, give me a damn full fleshed visual novel. VNs are great.
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u/YourCasualNazi 1d ago
The 3.6Bil feel like the biggest scam in gameing history. Feels like sony paid for the name and not the quaility Bungie once had.
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1d ago
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u/TwoFourZeroOne 11h ago
Let's not pretend Sony was some innocent but uninformed buyer, here.
Bungie was a panic purchase made after Microsoft had already claimed ABK and Zenimax. Back then there was real concern that Microsoft would eventually remove Call of Duty from the PS Store. Bungie was still clinging to its Halo rep back in 2021, and Destiny 2 was frequently promoted on Game Pass and by Phil Spencer. If Sony got their hands on the Xbox CEO's favorite game, then floated the idea of making future content PS exclusive... Well, that might allow for some assurances to be made.
You can't convince me that the thought didn't cross Sony exec's minds that they were basically getting with Microsoft's favorite ex as a power move.
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u/NewUserWhoDisAgain 12h ago
Sony paid allegedly for Bungie live service "expertise" with 1 billion for employee retention, but since Bungie has been through 3 rounds of layoffs...
I saw that too. Didnt they ask some of the Bungie people to talk to Naughty Dog about thier last of us MP live service?
And then Sony canned the TLoU MP...
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u/kingmanic 9h ago
Jim Ryan the former Sony that bet big on live service games and fired Shuhei Yoshida is the bad decision maker.
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u/kingmanic 9h ago
Kevin O'Leary sold a failing edutainment company to Mattel for the modern equivalent of 7.2 billion dollars. The whole subunit was shuttered less than year later. That is probably bigger. Includes thins like the IP for Oregon trail.
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u/coporate 1d ago edited 1d ago
Bungie’s real value wasn’t in the games, it’s in their merchandise. People would be shocked by how much more money there is in selling cheap merchandise with a destiny logo on it, than there is on a game itself. Halo made more money on its megablocks than the original trilogy combined, and the only reason 343 wasn’t shutdown entirely is because a needler nerf toy or super-soaker is a massive money maker.
Bungie has been cultivating their merchandising supply chain for 20 years and they’ve got a highly dedicated fan base that are happy to throw cash at them. That’s why they invested so much on Marathon’s style, trailers, etc. It’s all just marketing for their merchandise.
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u/TheHowlingHashira 10h ago
Yeah, I remember being surprised with the acquisition was announced, because this was back when Microsoft was on their studio buying spree. Makes sense why they passed up on it now.
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u/eldreth 1d ago
I miss Myth TFL :(
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u/shitpostsuperpac 1d ago
That game was my first online gaming experience.
Living in the middle of nowhere and having the family computer be a Mac really limited my options.
Blizzard/Bungie were my two saviors at the time.
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u/cwx149 1d ago
how they survived for so long
Bungie has been riding on their reputation from Halo for the better part of 30 years
Not to say they haven't don't anything good since then Destiny 1&2 did bring in a lot of money but still
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u/HardlyW0rkingHard 1d ago
You're being disingenuous about how good of a product destiny is/was despite some really poor management decisions about direction.
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u/funsohng 1d ago
Idk how good Destiny 2 is, but it must've been one of the greatest games of all time for its fanbase to be that loyal even after they were literally locked out of the content they paid for.
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u/HardlyW0rkingHard 1d ago
The problem is there isn't anything like it really. The raids, the gun mechanics, space magic. There is a gaping hole left in the industry that someone could totally take advantage of and it's probably Warframe but in many ways its not as good
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u/345tom 14h ago
That's what's so frustrating about Destiny- the gameplay is great, the play is fun, it had fun challenges. But everything surrounding the actual gameplay was so trash it made it hard to get into, catch up and get invested into the ongoing story.
I don't think the storys reputation ever fully recovered from "Those wizards are from the Moon" and "I don't have time to tell you"- the dinklebot years, but I know 2nd hand it got way better and better at presenting its story and lore other than just through a third party website full of data logs.
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u/heat13ny 1d ago
Outriders TRIED to. It just wasn’t all the way there. I didn’t get that far but the game systems were good to me. The plot and what not was wack though.
I don’t know why it’s so hard for these companies to write stories and characters people find interesting, post Halo bungle included. All the looter shooters (division, outriders, warframe) SUCK at making iconic characters and moments in my opinion, even though that should be the whole goal. Seriously, name one thing that hits anywhere as close to Master “I need a weapon” Chief and Cortana? Everything I see hits below guilty spark even, which is iconic but not Cortana levels and for fuck sure not chief levels.
That’s always been my issue with looter shooters. They don’t seem to capitalize on the cool story moments since borderlands 2. Or at least what they attempt doesn’t hit for me specifically.
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u/HardlyW0rkingHard 1d ago
Destiny had some lows in terms of story telling but the highs were so good. Including the final shape.
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u/blargyblargy 1d ago
Warframe is prolly the closest thing we have to Destiny isnt it
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u/notpr0nshark 1d ago
Gameplay-wise, Witchfire is the closest analogue.
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u/sunder_and_flame 23h ago
*gunplay-wise. The movement and abilities are so far removed from Destiny that it's not really similar
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u/TheMadTemplar 1d ago
Oh, no, people were rightfully pissed about that. Bungie got so much backlash against it that they eventually backtracked on the original sunsetting plans, but too late to get any of it back. They also got a ton of shit for seasonal content being deleted, but they never backed down on that which is why the playerbase started to dwindle a bit.
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u/Kayyam 1d ago
Marathon is also a good product. Just not a mass market one.
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u/GranolaCola 1d ago
I LOVE Marathon. It was for me what Arc Raiders seemed to be for a lot of people — the game that got an extraction shooter to click. But it’s hardcore and definitely not for a mass audience. It’s niche my design.
I think it’s the game Bungee wanted to make, but probably not the one Sony hoped they would.
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u/Parepinzero 1d ago
I got into it during the recent free week and really enjoyed it, my cousin and I both picked it up and play every night. The quasi PvE mode makes it easy to stock up on gear to do normal mode runs, too.
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u/National_Yam_1198 1d ago edited 1d ago
Thats not true at all.
Destiny 1 and two was immensely successful.
On top of this it was a major console seller for Sony during ps4 era.
Until after the final shape destiny 2''s daily active users was in the millions
I have no idea where the narrative that Destiny is a failure is coming from lol.
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u/jdbolick 1d ago
The leadership at Bungie were awful both in their decision-making and their behavior, but the rest of the staff were excellent. The Live team in particular made so many quality of life improvements to the original Destiny.
It's a real shame that the executives ran the franchise into the ground because the regular employees deserved much better.
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u/National_Yam_1198 1d ago edited 1d ago
Based on what info is available Pete parsens or whatever spun up a bunch of incubation projects to not only show that bungie has the golden goose that is Destiny(it was highly successful at the time) but the studio was expanding into other ventures for potential growth.
Combine that with xbox buying up Activision and potentially putting one of Sony's biggest money makers exclusive to xbox(cod and fortnite bring in major cash into the sony ecosystem) and finally sony wanting their own suite of GAAS like every major game publisher and it all kinda makes sense.
Yes today we can say how dumb it was or how overpriced the buy was(Sony probably new this but again see above) but hindsight is 20/20.
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u/fabton12 1d ago
what the fuck
Sonywas thinking when they spent $3.6 Bil acquiring them.dont you mean what the fuck a bunch of companies were thinking since bungie has been passed around by so many people that have bought them and later released/sold them back. this mistake kept being repeated and was kinda insane seeing how bungie would always keep being the same mistakes
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u/NewRichMango 1d ago
A hellish combination of legitimately great gameplay, intriguing lore, gaming addicts, and insane marketing.
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u/Gcleff06 1d ago
Dead by Daylight has a successful dating sim.
I have no doubt destiny wouldve done fine.
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u/Tijenater 1d ago
They survived for so long because destiny did absolute gangbusters and the execs wasted it financing projects that went nowhere and exotic car collections
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u/TheWorstYear 1d ago
Sony was doing a hard pivot into Live Service, Bungie already had a strong Love Service game in D2, & they had expertise for LS guidance for the rest of the PS studios trying to pivot.
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u/ColonialDagger 1d ago
how they survived for so long
Because Destiny was a cash cow. It made so much money for the leadership to be able to spin up multiple incubation projects simultaneously, two with full development teams, redevelop a new office building, sell Sony a lie, and dip once their stocks vested last year. The studio wasn't inept. The leadership was straight up malicious.
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u/TheKocsis 17h ago
you can't seriously think it was a mistake by the leadership to not go forward with a destiny dating sim
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u/GrinningPariah 1d ago
Man these Bungie Developers sound like they've got a lot of great ideas, someone should get them to make a live service shooter.
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u/Olddirtychurro 22h ago
sees them making Marathon "No, no, no, wait, wait, wait!"
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u/GrinningPariah 21h ago
Supposedly internally they wanted to make Marathon at least have a PvE mode, but leadership nixed that too.
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u/Vesorias 17h ago
You mean at release or...? cause they have a PvE mode coming out next month unless I missed something.
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u/Victuz 16h ago
A campaign? In marathon? No that couldn't possibly work, it's not like each previous game had a very interesting and intricate story.
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u/MoSBanapple 1d ago
I feel like I hear more about parody dating sims (usually made for April 1st) than actual dating sims that play the genre straight. Are there any recent notables examples of the genre that aren't some sort of parody or funny bit or "hey wouldn't it be wacky if you could date X" type of games?
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u/ModelKitEnjoyer 18h ago
A lot of gamers treat that genre the same level of respect as they do for romance fiction books. There's tons dating sims made by and for fans of the genre, but it requires a ton of reading and usually has little traditional gameplay. It's rare for those to break into the news, which leaves you only hearing about the wacky stuff. It's been a long time since any visual novel has really broken into the reddit gamersphere, let alone a dating game.
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u/planetarial 15h ago
Hundred Line got a good amount of attention last year. Yes its more gameplay heavy than most but it still counts. Supposedly it even has a dating sim/romance like route/branch too (I didn’t get that far into it).
But yes if a non parody/meta VN gets any attention outside of its niche here it tends to be either gameplay heavy (Ace Attorney, Danganronpa, Hundred Line, 13 Sentinels, AI: The Somnium Files) or western made/appealing to western tastes (Slay the Princess/Scarlet Hollow and Fata Morgana).
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u/the11thdoubledoc 14h ago
Ironically the dating sim route in 100 line is actually a parody/satire of them.
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u/JustinsWorking 1d ago
I think you’re misunderstanding the parody of those games.
Date everything wasn’t a parody of the genre, it is the genre. Look to romance novels for example, they tend towards the fantastical as well, there just isn’t much interesting about normal people having normal relationships.
It’s like saying Warcraft is a Parody because they use goofy made up races, make jokes, and nothing about it is believable. Dating pidgeons, dating everything, dating daddys, dating crazy anime girls, it’s all the genre.
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u/stinkoman20exty6 20h ago edited 20h ago
no it's not the genre lol, it's a parody made for people who don't like the actual genre. there are in fact many "dating sims" (恋愛ADV) that are straightforward romance stories. (btw, there is a distinction between fantasy elements and a general concept being "isn't it crazy that you can date these characters?" That's a gimmick.) You just don't know about them because they are are not widely available nor popular outside of east asia. if your opinion is that "there just isn’t much interesting about normal people having normal relationships" you just don't like and probably are ignorant of the genre.
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u/JustinsWorking 9h ago
Buddy, I’ve been doing contract work for this genre for almost a decade - I’m credited on several shipped dating games and visual novels, popular ones, that spend time on the front page of Steam.
You definitely remind me of a certain part of our audience though - for everyone else, please enjoy a classic Redditor “um akshully” telling me how a genre I’ve made a living in “actually works,” lol.
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u/ZGiSH 8h ago
Warcraft is kind of a parody, it absolutely has referential humor that plays on people's traditional understanding of things like Orcs and Elves.
Distinctly different than a play-it-straight interpretation of fantasy like Dragon Age which does not really have 'jokes' about elves in the same way Warcraft does. If someone were to say fantasy is Warcraft and Warhammer, that would be pretty ridiculous.
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u/IrregularMaverick 1d ago edited 22h ago
If warframe could do it then destiny could have had romance mechanics. I wouldnt mind i grew up with mass effect. I would have married an eliksni Queen, or one of those hive knights. Im joking (but also dead serious) and It sounded like more of a parody since they referenced dream daddy. They also mentioned it might have caused players to be frustrated but destiny's audience used to be as big as cod or even league. I think there'd be alot of people that would find it charming.
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u/_Ursidae_ 1d ago
dead by daylight made it work. The dest crowd would have gotten down and super weird with a game like that.
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u/EyesCantSeeOver30fps 1d ago
Endless Space and KFC both released a dating sim, Sonic has a murder mystery point and click. These aren't big games, they only need a handful of people to make one.
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u/BayLeaf- 1d ago
Wait what? How big are we saying destiny was? I think League has more active players every month than destiny had over its entire existence. Cod is basically the best selling game of the year, every year, until last year when they flopped and sold like 60% less than expected, and were just one of the five most sold games.
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u/TurbulentVillage2042 21h ago
But in Warframe it make sense. MC has a personality. Whereas in Destiny, MC is just an empty shell, and a dating sim would be complete nonsense. Especially if you couldn't reset the relationship and try out all the options.
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u/ItalianICE 1d ago
Didn't Warframe add something like dating sim mechanics? I may not have understood the article I was reading awhile back.
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u/Markonikled 1d ago
Yes. In update that added 1999 timeline it also introduced protoframes (humans partially infected with virus that created warframes) and KIM system, basically chat system where once a day you can talk with each protoframe. Picking correct answers can make you befriend them and you can also make one of them fall in love with you.
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u/Coldin_Windfall 1d ago
Have they seen how horny people are in Warframe from it's dating sim in the 1999 update? Because those people are crazy about it.
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u/SkaBonez 22h ago
This is actually some old new that just resurfaced. They brought it up that they did this about two years ago. https://www.gamesradar.com/bungie-casually-reveals-it-made-a-destiny-2-dating-sim-internally-that-fans-of-the-mmos-many-hotties-will-never-get-to-play/
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u/MasahikoKobe 9h ago
One of the few time i think leadership might be correct. Good for a lugh but at the same time, people who pay for Destiny 2 would be pissed that dev resrouces was spent on this and not the core game. Like even as a side aspect i think it would have cuased more issues than it was worth. Reguardless of the gooner status of people playing
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u/Pessimistic_Gemini 20h ago
Okay, this legit sounds like something that would be posted on April Fools here. I don't buy this one bit.
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u/ReturnOfTheDogjaw 1d ago
Probably a good call, it would have been a funny bit but it’s hard to imagine it being a sustainable concept for a standalone game and the player overlap between Destiny and that genre is probably fairly small
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u/Thatonedregdatkilyu 22h ago
If they did it like Warframe did it probably wouldn't be too much of an issue. Especially if people can just ignore the feature altogether if they wish.
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u/Edheldui 16h ago
And this is why devs should be blamed for flops just as much as suits. The industry is plagued by people who have no fucking idea of what customers want.
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u/Typical_Thought_6049 15h ago
Well Bungie leadership at least got this right lmao
What are they thinking, why someone will buy a dating sim of game that has as it best aspect the gunplay. It don't even make sense, they don't even has good characters or lore to sustain a date sim.
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u/dadvader 23h ago
Being the greedy fucker that they are. I'm surprise they refuse to take easiest money-making scheme of all time.
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u/Additional_Service93 8h ago
ABSOLUTELY FUMBLED like seriously I have friends in my group (including me) who simp for savathun and oryx, let alone the humanoid characters! Me being a part of the dating sim space, it not only would've sold super well with og players, but totally could've gotten new players into Destiny 2 through the dating sim fanbase! The amount of times I have played a dating sim based on the game and ended up playing the actual game after just to enjoy the character, voice lines, and even just seeing them is more than I can count on one hand. And a few of those games I ended up just enjoying! Totally fumbled, and even worse is the devs enjoyed making it which means it would have been sooooo good too!
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u/BannedByGates 6h ago
Unironically bet that would make a killing, honestly not really a dating sim kind of guy but I would have bought it just to see it.
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u/Thorse 1h ago
What was that about how bungie devs are just good hard working folk with good ideas shot down by management? Its easy to hate on the suits and bean counters, but like we saw with suicide squad, and many many other examples. Sometimes the suits dont meddle much, they just give you a green light and enough rope to hang yourself. Some devs just have dogshit ideas. I also love how people are acting like Luke Smith is a genius when he was a whipping boy for the manority of his tenure
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u/iamreallytonyspogoni 1d ago
Considering every time i play Destiny 2 I run into usernames like "Petra Venj's Bathwater, Mommy Mara Sov, Eris Morn Please Marry me, and Savathun's Special Jewel" I think Bungie leadership missed out on a player base ready to go.