My name is James. I've played Destiny since The Taken King, but I've been playing Bungie games longer than that. Halo is why I bought my first console. Destiny 2 is why I bought my first PC. It's also why I can honestly say that gaming is a hobby of mine. What I cannot say is that gaming is my business. I'm not a business person and I'll never pretend to be. But I do know this: the philosophy driving a company directly shapes every decision it makes. If leadership believes profits exist to enrich shareholders above all else, the bottom line becomes the filter for nearly everything. If leadership believes the customer comes first, you see that reflected in product quality and support. Philosophy isn't abstract — it determines where resources go and what gets built. Sony and Bungie have a choice to make. And that choice is philosophical. Right now, the live service gaming industry is struggling because many companies made the same bet: build games that maximize engagement, maximize monetization, and maximize recurring revenue. Make something that never truly ends. Something cheap to maintain, constantly monetized, endlessly expandable. And yet, it's failing because this isn't selling cars or groceries. This is selling people leisure. Leisure is our time — our personal commodity. For some people it's cooking, fishing, or travel. For a lot of us, it's gaming. And when you ask someone to invest their leisure in a game, there's an expectation attached to that investment. We expect our time to matter. We expect our money to feel worthwhile. We expect an emotional return on our investment. That emotional investment is the entire reason live service games can work at all. Most people already spend the overwhelming majority of their lives working just to survive. Time is limited. Money is limited. So when someone finally turns their attention toward a game, they want to believe the world is worth investing in. They want to believe it will last. They want to believe the memories, experiences, rewards, and relationships they build inside that world won't simply disappear one day because a financial projection changed. This is where Sony and Bungie still have an opportunity to do something extraordinary. Destiny and Marathon could become more than successful live service games. They could become the first true forever games, but that requires a real shift in thinking. [b]The first step is rebuilding community goodwill. [/b] Too many players now feel that the relationship between developers and the community has become transactional. Cosmetics, monetization, and FOMO systems have started to feel less like additions to the game and more like the purpose of the game. That needs to change. The best rewards should come from playing the game. Players should feel respected when they step away and welcomed when they come back. The goal shouldn't be extracting every possible dollar. The goal should be building a community people genuinely want to be part of for years. [b]The second step is building the forever game itself[/b]. Preserve Destiny's history. Bring the raids back — permanently. Rebuild PvP around what made it special: movement, gunplay, and meaningful skill expression. Rebalance systems with intention instead of endless escalation. Create rewards that feel aspirational again. Stop designing around temporary engagement spikes and start designing around permanence. Around meaning. Around investment. [b]And finally: communicate. [/b]Not through marketing language or carefully managed statements — honestly. Explain decisions. Admit mistakes. Listen visibly. Players can forgive bad calls far more easily than they can forgive feeling ignored. If Sony and Bungie want to be the best live service developers in the industry, they need to do what too many companies are afraid to do: Actually invest in the players first. Treat goodwill as something valuable. Treat emotional investment as something real. Treat players like people instead of metrics. You'd be amazed what Guardians can do when they truly believe the people building the world believe in them too. If you are engaged with them, I can guarantee, they will be engaged with you. — James | WokedUp#4445