Destiny one year on: Bungie's 12 months at the final frontier of gaming

Last year Bungie set out to unite two completely different gaming audiences inside one seamless online experience. Here's what happened next ...

On 9 September 2014, in a converted multiplex cinema in Bellevue Washington, a team of over 200 people launched a brand new kind of video game. They had spent four years preparing for this moment; among their ranks were some of the most experienced software engineers in the industry. But they had no idea what would happen next.

Months later, David "Deej" Dague, the community manager at Bungie Software looks puzzled when asked about that night. "I'm not sure I have any memories of the first two weeks after launch," he says, sitting in the darkened entrance hall to the company's vast office, surrounded by cabinets hosting dozens of awards. "All I know is, the game was pretty stable."