Since releasing games like Marathon and Myth back in the 90s, Bungie has continued to trend in an upward direction, fueling major industry franchises like Halo and Destiny. Many of these releases were in partnership with a publishing company like Microsoft, though Bungie charted a new course for itself in early 2019 when it announced the publishing deal with Activision over the Destiny franchise was being terminated.
For the first time, Bungie was on its own and now responsible for handling much of the work no related to game development, such as marketing and publishing. While many wondered how this would work, Bungie has thrived by making sweeping changes to the immensely popular shooter Destiny 2 as well as taking on the development of a second bran new IP known only as Matter thanks to a trademark filing. For now, Bungie has remained extremely tight lipped on the project, though it hasn't stopped fans from looking at unconventional places to find any sort of new details.
Recently, job postings may have given fans an early glimpse at what Bungie may be working towards with its upcoming new IP. According to the leaked listing, Bungie is looking for an individual who can take on a Gameplay and Combat Design role with the studio. The listing also indicates that experience with character-focused action games is also of importance to this job.
The nine-month contract position indicates the position isn't for Destiny but a multiplayer action game currently in early development. The last piece of information reveals that the goal of the game will be to bring players to gather in unique ways while also creating "amazing teamplay moments."
Naturally, this information seems to indicate that Bungie is working on its own Overwatch, Apex Legends, or Valorant style game. These two titles are arguably the leaders in this category and would definitely be too titles which other companies would want to check out in order to do something similar. Both offer diverse rosters of characters mixed with high action multiplayer battles. Over the past few years, hero-shooter style games have only increased in popularity and offer a strong link to esports as well.
It's unknown if this upcoming IP will continue to link to the Destiny franchise in some way, as the game does feature a colorful cast of characters which could work in a hero-shooter context. Either way, the studio will likely be increasing the speed at which it creates content, announcing a massive studio expansion earlier this year. Not only is the Bellevue, Washington studio doubling in size, but a second branch is opening in Amsterdam by 2022 to handle much of the publishing and marketing duties.
Matter is currently in development.
Source: Greenhouse.io