Campaign could have far-reaching consequences

“Destiny,” the shooter that will have everyone talking for months, has taken in close to $500 million within the first day of its release. That’s an insane figure, the result of a large amount of preorders and a huge marketing campaign. It’s also a record-setting event that could have consequences for how developers choose which games to publish.

Activision Blizzard announced Wednesday that it had sold in — i.e., shipped to market — more than $500 million in copies of the futuristic shooter. That’s an impressive figure, especially given that Activision is rumored to have spent hundreds of millions of dollars to market the game.

The game itself, developed by Bungie, has every sign of being a billion-dollar franchise and a wild ride for people playing online. “Destiny” revolves around a futuristic world where humans and aliens battle each other for supremacy. Within this world, players can choose how to progress their characters in an RPG-like fashion.

What’s more, “Destiny’s” online mode appears to react to player decisions and battles. The game won’t let players interact with everyone possible, but will rather pair up gamers through almost instantaneous matchmaking, which means highly skilled players won’t always be able to slaughter low-level parties. The dynamic should, in theory, make for more even matches and a fairer game experience.

Yet for all the promise “Destiny” has to offer, the game has been pushed for the better part of a year by Activision, which launched a huge campaign for preorders even before 2014 began.

Though Activision hasn’t yet revealed how many copies of “Destiny” have actually sold, the company already declared the game to have the most successful launch in history as well as the highest day-one digital sales ever.

That’s a big deal for high-end developers and publishers who watch how each game is marketed. There’s every reason to suspect those same big gaming companies will take lessons from the “Destiny” launch and craft huge marketing campaigns of their own for games they think will sell well.

There’s nothing inherently wrong with this approach, but I fear those marketing practices will continue a detrimental gaming trend where publishers spend more time on a smaller amount of games with similar characteristics. Despite a growing amount of wonderful indie games, the gaming industry seems to tailor big-release games like “Destiny” to fit a well-worn mold.

After all, “Destiny” is a science-fiction shooter where humans battle other races and baddies for control of the earth. “Gears of War,” “Halo,” “Resistance,” “Killzone,” “Borderlands,” and a slew of other game series have the same or similar premises, and they all have similar gameplay, with a few gimmicky exceptions.

That doesn’t mean “Destiny” won’t be a great game, however. By all signs, “Destiny” is a fun shooter and a must-grab title in time for the holiday season. I just hope developers and publishers will find a way to attract gamers to a larger variety of games instead of the next big shooter.