Article 3YPS7 Destiny's creators made the game less addictive – and players rebelled

Destiny's creators made the game less addictive – and players rebelled

by
Alex Hern
from Technology | The Guardian on (#3YPS7)

What's the difference between a game that's compulsive and one that's merely fun? After an attempt to cut game time, Destiny 2: Forsaken lets players decide

Online sci-fi shooter Destiny, released in 2014, had a strange effect on some of its players. Unlike World of Warcraft, or most other games that people play every day, it didn't have hundreds of hours' worth of different planets to visit, enemies to defeat or characters to get to know. You could play through the entirety of Destiny's story in 10 hours; beyond that, it offered only a small selection of daily "strike" missions and an arena to challenge other players in shootouts. Yet people played for hours every day. A significant portion of players spent a thousand hours or more with the game over two or three years, as recorded by the ironically titled WastedOnDestiny.com.

Aside from the draw of spending time with friends, this compulsive factor stemmed from Destiny's loot system. Sure, you'd be playing the exact same missions, strikes and raids, in the same places, shooting the same enemies. But every time you did, there was a small chance you'd get lucky and score a covetable weapon or piece of armour.

Continue reading...
External Content
Source RSS or Atom Feed
Feed Location http://feeds.theguardian.com/theguardian/technology/rss
Feed Title Technology | The Guardian
Feed Link https://www.theguardian.com/us/technology
Feed Copyright Guardian News and Media Limited or its affiliated companies. All rights reserved. 2024
Reply 0 comments