Destiny's Sword Dev Diary Outlines Problems With Current Gaming Models

If you've been paying any attention to our coverage of Destiny's Sword, you know a big focus of the game is on addressing mental health -- not just of the player's team of characters, but among the players themselves. For a long time now, video games have been progressively seen as becoming ever more toxic and unhealthy -- to the point that governments are attempting to address some of the issues via legislation.

As it turns out, the team a 2Dogs believes that at least some of the blame for that lies with the development of the games. Yes, we are partially talking about the gambling elements present in most of today's games, but the post also addresses other issues -- such as developers purposely stressing players into paying for features.

While covering these subjects the post goes into more than just the potential moral issues around such tactics, but also give an in-depth analysis of the kind of impact such methods have on the mental state of players -- particularly kids.

After addressing these topics, 2Dogs goes on to discuss how to make games better, more interesting, and more encouraging for players in order to keep them playing. A big focus for 2Dogs is to give players room to develop a community that works together.

The system looks to make players feel needed and give them purpose. Effectively, everyone has a different job (or jobs) important to the group. No one can possibly do everything and therefore they will need to rely on each other to really succeed.

The game will also reward players for the way they interact and work together, as well as create a reputation system that encourages players to interact with each other in a positive way.

A really interesting idea on the part of the developers is creating player purchases that benefit others in addition to the player actually making the purchase. This will effectively eliminate pay-to-win as a factor in their game.

Of course, there's a lot more to what 2Dogs hopes to accomplish. Those interested in seeing some of the ideas behind Destiny's Sword, as well as commentary from the developer on the current state of gaming, can read the post in full on the game site.