Saelune said:
Look at you, making me do research.
I always find it better to be informed, don't you?
http://gamingbolt.com/destiny-interview-we-wanted-to-make-something-that-was-actually-a-game-set-for-all-moods
Right, which says "grow the franchise," but I didn't see anything about a single game for ten years.
Supposedly though, the plan is more akin to Mass Effect where its a series of (shitty) games where your character persists. Either way, Destiny is a deceptive game. It tries to skirt being an MMO among other things and does them poorly. Perhaps the 10 year thing is misleading, but that doesn't stop my other criticisms.
Never played it, not likely to. I don't know how "deceptive" it truly is, but I do know a lot of the claims made about it are false. This makes me wonder if anyone was actually deceived or if they bought into a game based on untrue things having not done any research, believing promises like ten years of support, and are angry that the company didn't deliver things it didn't promise.
As for the rest of your arguments, the idea of EA and Activision as evil is needlessly reductive. They're closer to the moral ideal of Moby Dick, a force of nature that will drag you down if you battle with it.
It loses a little when translated from the original Klingon, but it'll have to do.
EA doesn't give a crap if you hate them or think they're evil. They care about money and will keep soldiering on. This is where they differ from a force of nature, because we have the power to impact that. We have the power to not buy, to starve the beast as it were. And, I mean, we know the nature of the beast. In this case? We knew that there would be paid expansions. We knew that the plan was a game every two years, as later verified by legal documents [http://destiny.wikia.com/wiki/Bungie-Activision_Contract], with paid content interspersed. In EA's case, we already knew Battlefront 2 would be coming. Hell, I knew that before I bought Battlefront 1. The only thing that pisses me off is not the new game, but the fact that they so badly broke the last one. And for that, I won't give them further money.
What ends up happening, though, is that people complain and buy anyway. Activision's recent conference call highlights that. In response to their latest reveal trailer (Infinity and Beyond Warfare) being the most disliked in the history of the franchise, they pointed out that the prior record holder was Black Ops 2, which went on to be their best seller. This isn't even bragging, it's the nature of the consumer relationship. If The Taken King is a paid fix, and that seems highly debatable, then it's one that worked.
This is the nature of the beast. Companies will keep making products that we financially deem acceptable.
