Bungie reflects on the short-lived Destiny alpha, teases the July beta

So far, so good

After being frustratingly hush-hush about Destiny, Bungie put the game out in the wild in a big way this past E3, culminating with the recent weekend alpha. In an interview with the PlayStation Blog, senior environmental artist Jason Sussman reflected on the short-lived demo, explaining that the studio was ready to show players exactly what the game was.

“We need to think about how we can explain this game to players because it’s really big — how do we do it? Well, by getting the alpha out there we get to show people the game early as well as testing all of our systems so that when the game is finally out there, we’re putting our best foot forward.”

Outside of the usual real-world stress testing, Bungie will be using the collected data to monitor and observe player behavior and activities in preparation for the upcoming beta, taking particular note of player activity in the Crucible, Destiny‘s PvP multiplayer.

Sussman ends with a tease of what to expect in the July beta, saying: “The beta test later in the year will contain different content — there will be a difference but what’s key is that every bit of information we’re gathering and the tweaks and adjustments we’re making will carry through to the Beta test.”

High time if you ask me, but as frustrating as the silence was, I have to admit, I haven’t had so much fun burning an entire weekend on a game in quite a while. After hitting the beta level cap for all three classes, consider me appropriately hyped for beta. So far, so good Bungie. It’ll be nice to see how this pans out in July.

How Bungie is using the Destiny alpha to polish its sci-fi epic [PlayStation Blog]