Destiny Universe

## Introduction

There has been disputes over what can be considered art for decades. Literature has always been considered an art due to the skill and detail required to create it. When the idea of technology taking over literature rose, many became confused one what could be classified as such. Some people might say that only books such as Frankenstein or The Odyssey are art while others would say that video games could also be considered due to the time and detail put into them. Some people would argue that video games are not considerable because they are leisurely activities and require no active participation. While this is true for some games, others have very detailed story-lines and mysteries that require you to connect information together to understand the game fully. This should be considered art due to the participation required and the detail it needed to be made. With the idea of video games becoming art, this project will focus on how Destiny interacts with the internet.

The wired world has given endless opportunities to authors, readers, and texts. With the emergence of technology, people can interact any way they want. People are now capable of communicating and sharing information on the internet. They are also able to have a relationship with authors of text through simple communication. The authors are now able to respond and help the readers understand their intentions in the text. The text has evolved from being written information to being accessible by everyone on the web. Communities have been created to share and converse over theories and ideas on texts with other readers or authors. The invention of a wired world connects everyone and allows communities for their own use.

Communities have been created on the internet for fans to share ideas or converse and argue. Some people would even use these communities to argue whether a text is of good quality or not. Without the web, information could not be shared or discussed easily and the information would not reach all fans of the text. The internet serves as a knowledge community where people can share ideas or create sub-communities for specific topics. Without our ideas, the internet would not be thriving like it is today. Humanity gave technology the information it need to thrive, just as Prometheus gave fire to the humans. We are not bound to technology but technology is bound to us for we are its creators. Without our intellect, we would not be as advanced as we are today.

The internet serves as a place where people can discuss controversial topics. A popular topic is what can be considered art. Art can be considered anything that requires time, skill, and detail. Art today interacts with the internet immensely and is incorporated within its creation. Technology is common ground for all for of arts.

Destiny is a popular game with a detailed story and an artistic setting. Fans of Destiny will argue that this game is considered art for many reasons. Destiny is a very large game that was not only created with someones mind, but with many people's ideas and skills to form. It also required a large amount of skill in art to create characters and setting but also be implemented into coding. Destiny has a very detailed story that is still being created. Many have tried to unravel the entire story but none truly know what it holds. Without online communities, Destiny would not be a good game because it would be hard for everyone to understand its story. Without technology, Destiny would not have been possible.

## What is Destiny?

Destiny is an open world science fiction game that focuses on space travel and fighting alien races. In this game, you are the hero of the story and your mission is to defend the human race. You are a Guardian who goes on missions with other Guardians to defend your home, the City. You have special abilities and are given the ability to resurrect due

to your Ghost. A Ghost is a tiny shell who follows your Guardian around to help you and revive you. This is only possible due to the Traveler, an unknown machine that hovers inside the orbit of Earth, granting you "light" which gives you super powers. Your goal is to use the light to protect the Traveler and the human race with your abilities. Destiny is a multiplayer and online only game that requires you to interact with other Guardians (players). The game was designed to make you play with others by making missions and raids difficult and sometimes impossible to complete by yourself. Using your ship to fly across galaxies, you and your fireteam seek out the Darkness, the enemy that is coming for your light (the Traveler) and defeat it in hopes that it will not overrun your planet.

## Interpretive Disputes

### Is Destiny Dead?

At the release of Destiny 2, a sequel in the Destiny series, many of the players who were trying out this game noticed a lot of changes from Destiny 1 that were uncalled for and made the game worse. Players were unsatisfied by weapon changes, game play changes, micro transactions felt necessary, Crucible (PVP) became unpopular, and they thought the first DLC was not worth the money and did not fulfill the hype around it. Players dropped left and right and it brought up the question of whether or not Destiny was a dead game. Bungie responded by creating a roadmap of how they will go about making the game better than how it started. As Bungie made small changes to game play and the Crucible, made micro transactions less valuable, and released new game modes and more content they grew their fan base back to normal and is still growing today. Bungie responded with a long and detailed plan to fix the game and were successful. Destiny 2 is only in it's second year so they have a lot left of the game to release. As they release more content and make better changes, their fan base will only grow.

### Haters

Destiny 2 got a lot of hate when it first released, mainly due to the micro transactions through the Eververse Store in-game. People became frustrated because the loot in the game felt dismal compared to what the Eververse offered, but only for real money. This made players mad because the only way to have a cool guardian with the best emotes and the flashiest armor was by buying it. A Forbes article talks all about the hate that was surrounding the game at the time. The article goes in depth about the most important mistakes that Bungie made and why they were huge mistakes for the game.

There is even a YouTuber who goes by "I Hate Everything" who talks about all the problems of Destiny. He does not only hate on Destiny but he has made over 50 videos about his hatred toward the game and has approximately 1.8

million subscribers. People in his comments section will argue for hours debating whether or not the game is bad. This YouTuber makes good points but also makes very bad ones. He simply hates on the game because he does not enjoy it. He admits that Destiny is not really his style of gaming but refuses to avoid hating because of that. He hates the game and makes the videos out of anger instead of just leaving it alone and letting fans enjoy it.

Haters will comment on Bungie workers' social media accounts, make harsh Reddit posts, YouTube videos, and try to tilt players by bashing the game for no reason. They try so hard to make the community toxic by spreading their hatred. They seem to play the game just to hate it. They are constantly looking for a reason to complain and blame Bungie for their hate. Bungie tries to respond but they can't take steps backwards but instead improve on what the have already created. These solutions are timely and some plays refuse to understand. Haters arent critiquing the game but are simply criticizing the game to make them feel better.

### Are Guardians Good or Bad?

In Destiny 2's latest DLC, Destiny 2: Forsaken, the newest set of missions was to avenge Cayde-6, who was a favorite character in the Destiny world to many fans, by hunting down Uldren Sov and his gang of killers. At the end of these missions, you finally catch Uldren and are about to kill him. He starts to talk about how he is going to die and ask you if you are going to pull the trigger. He brings up the question of who is doing the right thing, "The line between light and dark is so thin... Do you know what side you're on?" He makes us question our actions that we call justice and think about how we could be the bad guys. When Bungie pissed of its fan base by killing off their favorite character, they use our anger to make us question if we killed Uldren out of anger or justice. A Reddit Post argues that Bungie is leading our Guardians down a dark path that will eventually lead to our fall. It is interesting the Bungie wants to create a darker game than it used to be. Before this DLC, no one would have ever thought that we were the bad guys in this fight. We have demonized every other race and grouped them all into "The Darkness" without ever considering why they are attacking us. We only kill them because they are trying to take our light and we want to defend the Traveler and all of humanity. Destiny has always been a game that made you feel good about serving justice by killing every enemy in sight. But now we have to reconsider if we were the enemy all this time. The controversy continues as the truth will not be revealed until future updates and more DLC's.

## Knowledge Communities

### Players Come Together

Destiny is a very large game with so many details, eastereggs, lore, and hidden secrets that are discovered every day. Bungie has tried to give its fans something more than just shooting the bad guys for fun. A whole story and timeline were created but the game play only gives us so little compared to what all is out there. Some of these secrets could easily be stumbled upon or could take hours or even days of looking and researching. None of this would be available to all players if the internet was not available.

The cooperative and collaborative forums and wikis have made it possible for everyone to share their adventures and stories. One of the most groundbreaking concepts of this game is how you rely on other guardians to achieve goals and complete difficult tasks. Destiny forces players to play with each other and communicate to become the best guardians in the game. Without this, Destiny would not have been a good game because it would be the typical FPS with nothing different than the others.

One of the popular websites used for unraveling the story and secrets of Destiny is Reddit . A large portion of the fan base uses Reddit to discuss Destiny news, updates, lore, weapons, characters, and spoilers. Players from all over the world contribute their thoughts and theories about Destiny through this social media.

Another popular web page where players can collaborate is on the Bungie Forums. Here, players can talk about

their ideas about the game and Bungie members can respond to them to help their fans. Without the communication of Bungie workers, players would feel like their voice is not being heard and could lead to a drop of players. Bungie tries to listen to their players so that they can make their games fun for everyone.

YouTube is very popular for knowledge communities for this game because players will create videos of their game play and experiences to share with the world. Some players also create long videos explaining lore and characters back stories. Most of these videos contain lots of research and gathering of information from all over the web to form ideas and theories about the game. The campaign of Destiny does not reveal the whole story to give players a reason to research and study the game. Popular YouTubers such as MyNameIsByf and Myelin Games create lore videos weekly to help players understand the game at a more in depth level. These videos fill in the holes that Bungie does not tell in the campaigns and help the fan base appreciate the thought and detail Bungie put into the game.

Polygon is another website that offers news and updates about Destiny that would be difficult for the average player to discover. This website serves as a place to reveal spoilers and future content that helps players know what to expect as the game progresses. Polygon also reviews patch notes and helps fans understand what is going to change with each update and future updates. Fans will comment their thoughts on each article to discuss the game and what the article is about. This serves as a place where players can read and learn more about the game, making it more enjoyable.

Some players do not care for these knowledge communities because they would rather Bungie give it all to them in the campaign. Although this might seem more simple, some players would argue that this is what makes the game enjoyable because the story has rich content and makes the game better. They would rather learn about the game by discovering small secrets and connecting the dots, almost like a mystery, to create the story that Bungie has laid out for us to discover.

## Remediation

### Fan Art

Destiny is one of the most beautiful video games in the market. The sci-fi and astronomy used in the game is breathtaking and will leave you in awe. Many players enjoy this game and the scenery of it and it inspires them to

create their own image of Destiny. Fan art is a very popular form of remediation because so many players admire the textures and colors of the game. It is easy to find that fans love to recreate certain characters, scenes, and worlds to visualize the game in a different way. People share their artwork of Destiny on websites so that everyone can easily find them and admire the art. Players use their creativity to design the Destiny Universe in their own eyes and share it around the world.

### Fan Fiction

Destiny players admire the detailed story in the game and decided to make their own. Fan fiction is a popular topic for players and has grown to be admired by players on the web. Instead of writing, these players share these stories on the web for everyone to see. People write romances, comedies, stories about war, etc to create their own universe of characters inside Destiny. A popular series that is still being written is Condor I: The Venus Extrapolation. In this Series, Josh, "a Titan who's tired of the City," is helping his fireteam out and taking on the Taken on Venus. The author of this fan fiction has not finished this project completely but there are other series that are. Most authors focus on the characters and the battle scenes. Since the game heavily relies on cooperating with other players, fireteams are very important in the game and in fan fictions.

Another series of fan fiction uses Destiny as its setting but applies aspects of Dungeons and Dragons to the story. This is an interesting series due to D&D being involved. Basic things such as initiative and strength are used for battles to determine how the mission will play out. This Fan Fiction is very popular because it intertwines two games but also makes a story out of it. Destiny and D&D both use lots of story telling and background info so it is interesting to see how these aspects of these games are used in Fan Fiction.

### Destiny D&D

Dungeons and Dragons is a popular role playing game that involves dice and character creation to create a story, missions, and battles. This game is played with large groups to ensure a victory for their team. Like Dungeons and Dragons, Destiny uses this aspect of a team to force players to interact and defeat enemies together. Dungeons and

Dragons can be played in any setting, varying from Star Wars to Lord of the Rings. in some cases, Destiny is used in many D&D campaigns. Players from Destiny decided to use ideas from their favorite game in D&D to be able to feel like they are a true Guardian. This idea required a large process to write the stats for each class and subclass. The producer of one of these guides, Kitty, uses ideas from Destiny and incorporates them into D&D. When you choose a certain class, you are given specific abilities, armor, proficiencies, and a super ability (like in the game). Players of Destiny have loved this game so much that they decided to make another game out of it.

### Memes

Memes are very popular and are typically used to make fun of something or to just to laugh at. Destiny players make memes about the game to make others laugh or to point out obvious glitches and mistakes made by Bungie. For example, in Destiny 2, a grenade launcher called Edge Transit had a glitch to where the drop rate for this item was ridiculously high. People began to notice this and make memes about this weapon because it was funny how often they would get this weapon. Players would use basic meme ideas such as Oprah's iconic saying "You get a car! You

get a car! Everyone gets a car!" and instead replaced "car" with "Edge Transit." Some players will even create YouTube videos filled with memes. One of these videos has small clips of gameplay that are funny or are bugged and then followed by lots of screams. Players find bugs annoying because it causes them to die, making a quality meme to share to the Destiny community. Although it is frustrating, many players find these occurrences hilarious. Memes have taken over this game and have made the small annoying bugs worth the anger.

Players have also shared their memes on social medias including Reddit, Facebook, and Twitter. On all of these, memes are shared and enjoyed by common players to laugh at. These social medias could be considered knowledge communities because of how players will share their memes back and forth. Destiny serves as a game where players can come together and bond, whether that be through memes or just simply enjoying the game.

## Additional Links

Destiny Wikipedia

Bungie

Destiny The Game

Destiny Reddit

## References

1. ↑ Mary Shelly, "Frankenstein"
2. ↑ Homer, "The Odyssey." Course Packet, HUM 211
3. ↑ Ian Bogost, "How To Do Things With Video Games." Course Packet, HUM 211
4. ↑ Course Presentation: The Art of Video Games
5. ↑ Polygon article on Destiny 2 Release
6. ↑ Destiny 2 Year 1 Road Map
7. ↑ Forbes Article on D2 Haters
8. ↑ 8.0 8.1 8.2 I Hate Everything YouTube
9. ↑ D2 Twitter Hater
10. ↑ Destiny 2 Reddit Hater
11. ↑ Reddit Forums for Destiny 2 - https://www.reddit.com/r/DestinyTheGame/
12. ↑ Polygon Destiny Patch Notes - https://www.polygon.com/2018/11/27/18114747/destiny-2-season-5-patch-notes-black-armory
13. ↑ Condor I Fan Fiction - https://www.fanfiction.net/s/13084520/1/Condor-I-The-Venus-Extrapolation
14. ↑ Destiny D&D Guide - https://kotaku.com/a-team-of-role-players-is-transforming-destiny-into-a-d-1827975291
15. ↑ Destiny Meme Video - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M304yifEUgQ
16. ↑ Destiny Memes Reddit - https://www.reddit.com/r/DestinyMemes/
17. ↑ Destiny Memes FB - https://www.facebook.com/DestinyHumor/
18. ↑ Destiny Memes Twitter - https://twitter.com/hashtag/destinymemes?lang=en