There’s some truth to those complaints. Almost ten months after release, Destiny remains one of the hottest games on the market, but the player base isn’t exactly happy. Even dedicated players admit that some weapons need rebalancing, and the lofty $40 price tag for Destiny’s next expansion, The Taken King, struck many fans as arrogant (confusion over the Taken King’s collector’s edition, which forces players to re-buy Destiny in order to access exclusive content, and some thoughtless remarks by Destiny creative director Luke Smith didn’t help).
In short, Bungie has a communication problem, and it knows it. In order to help with its community relations, Bungie’s hired Chris Shannon - better known online as Cozmo - to serve as Destiny’s community manager. Shannon knows what he’s doing; in 2012, he founded the Destiny subreddit, and has managed the forum as it’s grown into one of the largest Destiny communities on the Internet.
That’s a canny move on Bungie’s part - nobody knows what the community wants better than the community itself - and it should work out well for both parties. For his part, Shannon’s ready to hit the ground running. Shannon’s a self-proclaimed “product of the Halo generation,” with a background that stretches back to the time of “late night LAN parties,” and both he and fellow community manager David “DeeJ” Dague hope that Shannon’s new role will help solve some of Bungie’s ongoing communication issues.
Shannon describes his position like this:
Hopefully, this will work out; if things go according to plan, Shannon’s addition to the Destiny team should make things easier as The Taken King rolls out a number of user-focused changes. Meanwhile, the Destiny subreddit will now be handled by long-time user K_Lobstah. Cosmo promises redditors that he’s not going anywhere, however; as he says in his farewell post, “Don’t think of this as a goodbye to a head moderator, but more hello to your new Community Manager.”
Sources: Reddit, Bungie
