Destiny Team Doesn't 'Worry About Other Games Very Much,' Including COD
There’s a very nice, wide-ranging interview about Destiny with its Director of Production Jonty Barnes at Official Xbox Magazine today.
In it, writer Edwin Evans-Thirlwell at one point asks Barnes if Destiny has been influenced by Call of Duty, specifically if the company has shared “any knowledge with Activision as regards Call of Duty, or is it (Destiny competitive multiplayer) very much your own, distinct creation?”
It’s a sensible question, since Activision is publishing both, but I can’t help but detect a little bit of challenged pride from the OG Halo-maker in Barnes’ response.
“We don’t worry about other games very much. I mean, we play a lot of games and we learn from them and we play all genres – obviously our team is rather large and we’re very passionate about games, and we only hire those who are very passionate about games. When it came to the implementation of the online infrastructure, it’s very complex with Destiny. We want to get players playing together, we want to have these collisions and disruptive encounters that people want to collaborate together on and have really good fun.”
Barnes did say the game is benefitting from Activisions resources when it comes to online infrastructure.
“And so when we looked at doing that architecture we had a lot of expertise in house. But we are partnering with Activision’s DemonWare organisation in terms of making that a really robust environment and obviously we’re partnering with PlayStation Network and Xbox as well to make sure that that’s all working really well,” Barnes said.