As it works to correct some divisive changes made in Destiny 2: The Edge of Fate ahead of the big Star Wars expansion Renegades, developer Bungie has brought in new Destiny global franchise director Hilary Hidey.
Hidey shared the news on Twitter at the start of the month. "I’ve loved this franchise for what seems like forever, and I’m so excited to work on its future," she writes. In response to a fan, she affirms that she has been a dedicated player since the Destiny 1 days.
Per the Moby Games bio linked in her Twitter profile, as well as her LinkedIn employment history, Hidey most recently left BioWare following a stint on Dragon Age: The Veilguard, specifically as part of the "Mass Effect strike team" brought in to get the long-struggling RPG over the line. Bloomberg previously reported that this Mass Effect team was responsible for essential overhauls and some of the most-loved segments of The Veilguard, including its finale.
Hidey had been lead producer on Mass Effect 5 – "The Next Mass Effect," as she puts it on LinkedIn – until just last month when she transitioned to Bungie.
Her previous roles include senior brand manager, product manager, and miscellaneous "additional contributions" across a range of games orbiting Bethesda, BioWare, and EA generally.
Hidey was senior brand manager on Starfield, contributed to the Bethesda-published games Hi-Fi Rush and Ghostwire: Tokyo, and worked on multiple expansions for The Elder Scrolls Online as well as the Elder Scrolls: Legends card game (RIP, sweet prince). The Evil Within 2 and Dishonored: Death of the Outsider also benefited from her work.
Her game dev career began with Mass Effect 3 in 2012, which then led her to Dragon Age: Inquisition and multiple DLCs.
What's her role at Bungie? A position like global franchise director could take different forms depending on the attached studio, game, or IP. According to archived and mirrored Bungie job listings for a Destiny 2 global franchise director – which specify global franchise marketing director in some sections – "this role is ultimately accountable for the publishing success of the Destiny IP.
"This role will also work as a key contributing member of the Destiny 2 Leadership team to champion vital consumer insights and analytics to maximize commercial and marketing impact, customer satisfaction, and franchise success," the job description reads. It sounds like a manager of managers overseeing big moving parts to keep the train moving in the right direction.
Hidey's recruitment comes at a pretty dire time for Destiny 2, with player counts down and player sentiment looking equally grim on most days (we only have good Steam player data as ever, and Destiny 2 has a humongous console audience, so at best we can loosely estimate based on SteamDB charts). Plenty of people are still having fun with the game, but a whole lot – including literally every Destiny fan I know and multiple high-profile content creators – are not.
The 11-year-old MMO is no stranger to the "It's so over / We're so back" metronome, but this particular Over Arc, entrenched in seismic and half-baked systemic changes that simultaneously pruned most of the game's fun content and saddled the remainder with a tedious Power grind and a worse economy than the 1930s', has been one of the game's lowest points ever.
Bungie has made some good changes since The Edge of Fate's release, which saw some of the worst reviews Destiny has ever received, but it's mostly just fixed problems the game didn't have before this expansion. The real fix-it patch will fall to Destiny 2: Renegades, the December expansion – which is fighting fires of its own because its overt, somewhat jarring Star Wars veneer has come at a time where many players are already interrogating the identity of the game as a whole and searching for the fun they used to have and not, you know, light sabers.
It would be ridiculous and unfair to lay this at the feet of any one person, but I think the response to this high-level appointment from much of the Destiny 2 community speaks to the state of the game. There's hope that Hydey's role in the Veilguard 'closer' team at BioWare could signal a similar turnaround at Bungie, with player sentiment essentially boiling down to cautious hopes and a hearty "good luck," but let's not put too many eggs in the basket of one role.
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