On Destiny 2 and Burnout

june 29 2023

There's a definite tendency in the Destiny 2 community to mobilize into two groups. The first group says that Destiny 2 is the worst video game in the history of video games, always on the brink of disaster, shit game by a shit company. The second group insists that any problem you have with Destiny 2 is solely due to your own burnout, and you should just stop playing the game and stop complaining. Obviously both of these viewpoints are ridiculous. Destiny 2 is just a video game, and Bungie is just a company. There's a lot to praise about Destiny 2 and Bungie, but there's also a lot of fair criticism.

Objectively, Destiny 2 is in a fine state. Lightfall's story wasn't received well, but its gameplay features mostly were received well. I didn't like the campaign, but I liked Strand and a bunch of other minor QoL fixes that made the game more fun to play, and once the initial wave of criticism died down, I think a lot of other people came to agree. Lightfall aside, Destiny 2 is constantly topping Steam's Top 10 List, and even though people complain daily, they also play daily.

The game is fixed firmly in the seasonal cycle— people get hyped when the season starts and log in excitedly every reset, then the seasonal fatigue slowly starts to set in and hits like a truck as soon as the story updates are done. That's when people start to find anything and everything they can complain about. Reasonable complaints (rising microtransaction prices, server instability) are twisted into unreasonable complaints (Destiny 2 has worse monetization than a gacha game; Bungie employees all deserve to be fired because they haven't simply hit the "fix servers" button).

But "you're just burnt out, stop playing" should not be used as a get out of jail free card to plaster over everybody's complaints. I get that it's annoying to constantly see people sling unreasonable criticism everywhere, but some criticism is valid, and even healthy for the game. Not every issue people have can be chalked up to their own personal burnout, and even if it was, so what? There are people who are still burnt out, yet love the game and want it to be better. I criticize Destiny and Bungie a fair amount, but my criticism really does come from love, and I've done my best to keep my critique fair and balanced.

In addition, some of this burnout is kind of Bungie's fault. There's a reason some people joke about Destiny 2 being FOMO: The Game. Destiny 2 is chock full of time-gated content, rotating content, rotating maps and activities and store content... Bungie wants you to start playing and continue playing every week, or better yet, every day. The seasonal content model only made this worse, and people are really starting to feel it. I know they said that in the future, they're looking to shake up their seasonal content so that it feels less stagnant, but even with varied seasonal content, a lot of the other FOMO-inducing game structures are still present.

I get that as a company, the goal is to get people playing your video game as long as possible. They want you to log in and play every day. Some of this is business, but I'm sure some of it also comes from a genuine place. They want people to enjoy the game! They want the game to be a source of fun and comfort for people, and for them to play it a lot because they enjoy it! But good intentions or not, Bungie has (unintentionally or not) locked themselves into a game structure that is very reliant on FOMO.

This leads to burnt out players who desperately need to stop playing the game, but feel like they can't, because quitting for even one week feels like missing a lifetime of content. It's even worse for content creators, who literally cannot take a week off most of the time because of the seasonal drip-feed model. I'm not saying that a lot of streamers' response to this system is good or even productive in any way (a lot of "I'm not burnt out! I'm not burnt out!" as they slowly shrink into a corn cob), just that it is an unfortunate fact of life.

So no, not all of people's problems with the game can be explained away with burnout. Their reactions to these problems are certainly exacerbated by burnout, and burnout likely makes them notice things that they would normally let slide, but burnout is not the only issue here. Dismissing every bit of criticism with "then just stop playing the game" is a frustrating act of burying your head in the sand. To tar every single criticism (and critical player) as Reddit Bros Who Hate Destiny And Bungie is also unhealthy and unproductive.

It feels like a lot of people on the internet (and especially in the Destiny community) have completely forgotten that nuance exists. I talked a lot about this in my Lightfall review, too— it was frustrating to me that the campaign was either the worst thing people ever played or actually a perfect masterpiece, with no room in between. It's really the same thing here. Instead of taking the time to articulate your problems with the game or engage with someone in good faith about not agreeing with their complaints, it's a warzone of opinions that only serve to alienate everyone.

Anyone who doesn't hate Bungie and everything they stand for is a shill and bootlicker. At the same time, anyone who has any problem with the game at all is just a burnt out hater. Not to sound like a Video Game Centrist, but there seriously has got to be a middle ground.

Some people, like me, may genuinely struggle to distinguish burnout symptoms from critique, and how to deal with it. Here's a question I ask myself: am I complaining, or critiquing? Complaining is a perfectly healthy thing to do, and sometimes we all need to bitch about a video game. You don't like how they did something and you're not in the mood to write a five paragraph essay justifying why. That's okay! But you should do this in private, on a locked Twitter account or in a private Discord chat. Be as brutal as you want there.

When you're talking in public, you should be critiquing. Not all critique is negative, by the way. A critique is simply an evaluation, an analysis, an assessment. When you're in a public space or even interacting directly with the devs/writers, you should always seek to have an explanation for your issue. It doesn't even have to be detailed or long! "I didn't like this season because I didn't think the conflict was compelling." That's it. That's enough! "I don't like the Eververse store because I think the prices are too high." Perfect!

If you're having trouble actually explaining why you have an issue with something, take some time. Come back to it later. Seek out other opinions, both ones that agree with you and disagree with you. If you're still unable to explain your issue or even point to someone else's explanation (a real explanation, not just parroting a Twitch streamer saying the game sucks), then chances are it might just be burnout and you might just need to complain a little bit. And that's okay! But again, I really recommend doing this in private.

I hope this was helpful, because I believe in Destiny 2 burnout and I believe in the sacred right to be a hater and I believe in thoughtful and fair critique. I do think we have room for all of these things at once— we just have to find the right way to balance them.