Staff at Bungie apparently pitched the idea of making a dating game based on its smash hit sci-fi shooter Destiny.
That’s according to former community manager Lianna Ruppert, who responded to a post on Twitter from a fan asking for a dating sim. She said that some developers actually made one, but management was against the idea, saying that “nobody wanted romance or silliness”.
“[It was] very Dream Daddy inspired,” she said. “It was fun getting to be a small part of it.”
Former senior narrative designer Robert Brookes provided some extra colour, saying that this was made during the ‘Carnival’ event at Bungie where developers had a week to have fun making prototypes.
“It was never a full-fledged project,” he explained. “That said, we did pitch that as a full-fledged project every year.” He added: “Myself and two other narrative team members (who both CAME from romance game design) had an entire pitch deck for one complete with costs and real hard metrics on returns. Never got anywhere.”
Bungie recently announced that work on Destiny 2 would come to an end shortly, with Bloomberg saying that a significant number of staff could be made redundant as a result.
It was recently reported that Bungie was going to end development on Destiny 2 and that significant layoffs could be on the way as a result.
The company released the extraction shooter Marathon in March of this year, though this appears to have fallen short of Sony’s expectations.
