Bungie Talked about Bringing Cross Play to Destiny 2

The studio shared its goals, approaches, and experiences in bringing players together.

As part of the 2022 GDC talk, Bungie’s Senior Technical Program Manager Jon Chu shared the company's experience with bringing Cross Play to Destiny 2. Chu provided a case study of the path the team took to bring the players together across seven platforms, talked about the team's goals, the approaches and decisions made along the way, and how Cross Play was released and maintained in the game.

Chu revealed that the biggest reason the studio wanted to build Cross Play was to "deliver on creating a truly unified Destiny universe."

The cross-platform experience had several lessons for Bungie to learn: first, as it made its own engine for the game, the team had to change many core and fundamental parts of the engine, so the scope and extra time needed to be accounted for.

Second, many of the game's pre-existing systems rely on platform APIs and features, which needed to be recreated from scratch.

Additionally, the creators found out that creating a web and mobile experience can enrich the Cross Play experience as this makes it easier to give players more control over the many new systems.

Eventually, Bungie came to the conclusion that cross-platform play has deep implications on how players interact socially and gameplay-wise. It also notes that this might expose players to new toxic behaviors, which need to be dealt with. This is especially important for the company as the company has shown before with its multiple lawsuits.

To see what else Bungie faced while working on the Cross Play feature, check out the GDC video. Also, don't forget to join our Reddit page and our Telegram channel, follow us on Instagram and Twitter, where we are sharing breakdowns, the latest news, awesome artworks, and more. 

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