Destiny, the new
first-person shooter from Bungie, the company that until recently
was behind the enduringly popular Halo series, just had the biggest
first day of any new video game ever, with
more than $500 million in retailer orders during its
first 24 hours. A few other video games, like last year’s
Grand Theft Auto V (which sold a whopping $800
million worth of games on opening day), have posted better
single-day numbers, but they have all been sequels to existing
franchises. This is the best start for a new series in video game
history.
It’s also a game that suggests where the future of gaming is headed: customizable single-player experiences in the context of a massive social universe, with narratives that sprawl across years and continents of virtual space.
Destiny is essentially a mashup of the massively multiplayer online role playing game (MMORPG) and the traditional first-person shooter (FPS). Just as in most RPGs, players customize the look and capabilities of their characters, but then embark on more traditional FPS-style missions. We’ve seen RPG/FPS hybrids before, of course, with games like Borderlands, but Destiny adds a larger social aspect to the game: Even when you’re playing single-player missions, you’re playing online, on servers populated by other players. They can play with you, co-op style, but often they’ll just be nearby, pursuing their own interests. Maybe you’ll join up for a moment to crush a massive boss, or maybe you’ll just do a little dance and move on (yes, Destiny characters have dance moves).
There’s an overarching story and mythology involving planetary conquest in a post-Utopian inner solar system, but unlike in a traditional single-player adventure, there's no clear end point. Instead, Bungie says the plan is to tell a universe-wide story, with literally game-changing events and new installments, over the course of a decade. Destiny is an attempt to create an expansive virtual universe, and allow each player to experience it in their own way—as whoever they want to be, and whoever they want to be with.
The result of this unique hybrid game design
is a dual emphasis on personalization, in which players
make choices that determine how they want to play and who they want
to be within the game, as well as on player-driven social
experience, in which players exist in large part in the
context of their relationships to others in the world around them,
determining for themselves what sort of social unit they want to be
part of.
After finishing up with The Independents last night, I played for a few hours, and my early impression was pretty good. It’s a great looking game, with solid shooting mechanics and a surprisingly deep character upgrade system, a lot of which I haven’t even cracked yet. If you liked playing Halo, you’ll like the gameplay here.
But what struck me most was the social aspect. It’s not nearly as crowded as most of the traditional massively multiplayer games I’ve looked at, and since I was playing solo, there wasn’t the same kind of tight, team-based interaction of typical team-based shooters and co-ops. Instead, there was the unusual sensation of being in the middle of some familiar single-player shooter mission—and then, unexpectedly, running into another player. Usually the encounters were brief; sometimes they lasted for several minutes. But each was a brief reminder that games—even the sort of video games that have long been thought of as strictly for anti-social loners—are social experiences, and that there was, in fact, someone else out there, doing his or her own thing, just as I was doing mine. Judging by yesterday’s revenue figures, there seem to be a lot of them.
Here's Reason's Nick Gillespie on why Grand Theft Auto V is the new Great Expectations.
On Monday, Senate
Democrats voted to advance a 
The 
The Kurdistan Workers' Party,
or PKK, has been active in the Kurdish parts of Turkey since the
'70s. It has a sometimes sordid history: Its politics were
Marxist-Leninist, and its willingness to kill prisoners and
civilians earned a 
Grand Canyon National Park has
unrivaled views, and a steady flood of tourists eager for a look,
and for a place to get a bite and sleep while they're visiting. So
why can't the National Park Service (NPS) get companies to bid on
taking over the hotels and restaurants at the rim—facilities that
you think would be gold mines for anybody with a bit of business
sense?
Xanterra has managed facilities
at the park for decades, paying the government 3.8 percent of gross
revenues for the privilege. But it also shouldered the cost for
improving the facilities in anticipation of being
compensated...eventually. The contract is now up for rebidding, and
the company doesn't seem very interested in continuing its
relationship with the NPS (neither Xanterra nor the National Park
Service responded to questions by press time). In fact, nobody
seems interested in the current terms—
Fraser Nelson over at The Spectator has
crunched the numbers and finds that if Britain were somehow to
become the 51st state (OK by me) it would the 
Two years ago, Ruben Chavez, Arthur
Fisher, and Joshua DeLosSantos, members of a Christian evangelical
group known as Bible Believers, attracted a hostile crowd while
preaching hellfire and damnation at the Arab International Festival
in Dearborn, Michigan. The crowd, which consisted mostly of
children, pelted the three evangelists with water bottles and other
trash. Police responded by threatening to arrest Chavez and his
friends for disorderly conduct unless they left the festival.
According to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 6th Circuit,
banishing the provocative preachers from the public festival was
perfectly appropriate and did not violate their First Amendment
rights.
