GDC 2025 Session Viewer
Turning Around a Playerbase in Crisis: A 'Destiny 2' Case Study
Alan Blaine (Principal Designer, Bungie)
Pass Type: All Access Pass, Core Pass - Get your pass now!
Track: Production & Team Leadership
Format: Lecture
Vault Recording: TBD
Audience Level: Intermediate
Even in the most successful live service game, there will inevitably be doldrums - player sentiment will be slowly dropping, or player population will be. These can usually be dealt with using one-off measures without harming the ongoing development of the next release(s). When both happen at the same time - you have a major problem that can kill your game if not dealt with swiftly! But you cannot derail development for the future either without jeopardizing your revenue streams.
Destiny 2 has encountered this kind of crisis point a handful of times over the past 7 years and have developed a framework for addressing player concerns without disrupting the dev cycle - The Player Retention Strike Team.
In this session, Alan Blaine (Principal Designer) walks the audience through lessons learned in one of these crises - how to know when you are approaching this kind of crisis, how to set up a strike team to deal with it, and the inner workings of that team itself.
Takeaway
Attendees will gain knowledge about metrics that signal the need for a PRT strike team, how to staff it and give it appropriate goals and guardrails, as well as how to run the team itself - what rituals to use, deciding what to work on, how to communicate internally and externally, what metrics can signal success, and what artifacts can be useful to the team.
Intended Audience
The lecture is primarily intended for mid-to-senior level project leaders, creative and design leads, producers, and product managers, as well a community and social media managers, and any developers working on live service games.