Bridgewater, Va.- I have a confession to make… I have not consistently played any of my favorite video games in months and for some it’s been years. Returning to video games can be extremely difficult, and I do not like the state of many of these games now.
The gaming industry has majorly transformed to focusing on free to play models in the 2010s leading us to where we are today. Popular games such as Fortnite, Apex Legends, and Call of Duty have become free to play, at least in some form.
It would seem that the free to play model has been working and will continue to be the dominant model for years to come; however, it is not working well for every game.
Destiny is one free to play game that should be talked about. In light of recent layoffs by Bungie, it is important to question the space in which this game exists. Some would argue that Destiny has always had a bit of an identity crisis; is it a PvE game? Is it a PvP game?
The truth is that Destiny exists as a number of genres. It is a Massive Multiplayer Online (MMO) game, First Person Shooter (FPS), Player Versus Environment (PVE), and Player Versus Player (PVP) among others. This makes it difficult to balance and to please all of its players in contrast to a game such as Fortnite which has narrowed itself primarily down to one genre.
While the nature of Destiny is interesting, it has a number of issues that I see as a free to play game. The entry to play is free; however much of the content is locked behind a paywall making the game difficult to progress in without a financial investment. It takes longer to gear up for content, much of which is not available.
For players deeply invested in the content of Destiny that are playing through content on a consistent basis, they feel as though the game is too slow and repetitive; however for players returning to the game from a hiatus or for new players of the game, it feels as though they are so far behind it is almost impossible to catch up.
A title that can resonate to an extent with these issues is Overwatch. Much of its content is free to play and only in recent years has deviated from this with the current PVE gamemode. Blizzard has faced similar challenges as they have laid off employees in the past year and have delayed content that was otherwise promised on a shorter timeline.
They have done well in certain aspects of their game, but lack consistent updates that much of a gaming audience craves. Unlike a popular title like Fortnite, the Blizzard team cannot maintain a rate of updates that come only two to three weeks apart.
I believe that for a game like Destiny 2 to progress and have a future where the fans are happy, they should streamline their content into an affordable model and pick a lane to stay in whether it is PvP or PvE.
