Game Informer Chris Butcher Interview

Game Informer sat down with Chris Butcher to discuss networking and matchmaking for Destiny, go read it!

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Maybe it’s 1,000. Maybe it’s 5,000. Maybe it’s 20,000. You compare that to the population of a console game and it’s tiny.

Stealth Halo 4 joke?

mesh-based network

More or less what I expected, but it's nice hearing all the reasoning. It's a reasonable distributed approach.

What's interesting is what they say about the distributed model. It sounds like the actual networking is still handled in small peer-to-peer games, but they talk about things being responsive due to being handled locally. Asynchronous (relative to Halo) networking confirmed, seemingly. Hopefully they don't push it too hard and turn it into Halo 3 BTB.

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Ok so someone smarter than me need to explain this... But it sounds like cross platform play is possible? The whole one world thing. Sure you could restrict it based on console but that's certainly not what he makes it sound like. I mean if it's all done over servers couldn't it be possible?

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Ok so someone smarter than me need to explain this... But it sounds like cross platform play is possible? The whole one world thing. Sure you could restrict it based on console but that's certainly not what he makes it sound like. I mean if it's all done over servers couldn't it be possible?

It sounds like the servers are handling matching, but the individual game instances are still hosted by consoles.

Not like that matters. Limitations to cross-manufacturer play have more or less never been about whether it would be technically possible for the hardware to communicate. The only reason your PS3 can't communicate with your 360 is that the manufacturers and devs don't tell them to communicate.

Cross-platform play can be a little difficult in that different versions of the game sometimes run differenly in ways that make networking hard (especially if you don't plan for it from the start), but the hard barrier is mostly political.

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If you’re kind of in an underdog type of situation, then we make sure that we give you both the investment rewards, but also call out that you’re doing a really good job in this particular match. For example, when we play in the studio playtests there is always the guy that has the sniper rifle and likes to sit up high. So he’s getting a lot of kills and that’s really satisfying for you to take him down. Maybe you get three kills on him over the course of the match but it’s satisfying to you and the game rewards you for doing it because you’re an underdog in that situation.

Makes the hair on my neck tense up slightly.
Backpats all round is not my favourite brand of competitive multiplayer, but it's hard to know what he really means when speaking so generally.

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I actually took that quote more to mean you'll get more exp for taking out someone who is doing really well than for taking out someone who has just stood in a corner all game.

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Game Informer Chris Butcher Interview (Destiny)