homeDestiny Ghost Skill
Destiny is a massive, open-world, first-person shooter made by Bungie, a game development studio with a near cult-like following. Prior to the release of Destiny 2, one of our Creative Directors at AKQA approached me and asked if we could turn an Amazon Echo into the Ghost character from the game. Ghost is your in-game AI sidekick - it is constantly by your side, answering questions, resurrecting you after death, and even cracking jokes.
We spent a few weeks building a prototype using a plastic Ghost figurine, a Bluetooth speaker, and a small Alexa Skill which could pull real-time game data from Bungie’s live APIs. A few days later, we demoed the prototype for Activision and Bungie leaders, receiving incredibly positive feedback and excitement.
Our team spent roughly six months researching Destiny lore, dissecting complex game mechanics, and designing first-of-its-kind voice UX, at a depth not seen before. Our work was so influential that Amazon invited us to present our work at the 2018 Game Developers Conference.
We also worked closely with Nolan North, the voice actor who plays Ghost, to record thousands of lines of dialog which could be stitched together in real time to provide millions of unique voice command responses, all in the voice of the in-game character.
Finally, our team worked very closely with hardware and OEM vendors to ensure that the collectible IoT devices being sold met Activision’s quality standards across the board.