More Details Leak About Bungie’s ‘Gummy Bears’ Live Game For Sony

During the last round of Bungie layoffs, Sony carved out a portion of the studio to continue work on Gummy Bears, now under Sony directly, and I suppose that makes this group technically not Bungie anymore.

But without a name, and previously developed under Bungie, here we are, and now we have some new details about Gummy Bears thanks to an exclusive report from The Game Post. And I can corroborate at least some of this myself, based on what I’ve heard. The highlights:

• The biggest point of news is that it will feature a “Smash Bros.” type percentage damage system which yes, does involve being knocked back further at a higher percent, and the potential to fall off the map. I’d heard there were some similarities to Smash Bros, but I didn’t realize they were going all the way like this. Hopefully it’s not violating any Nintendo patents! (according to Nintendo, at least).
• But at its core, the game is a team-based MOBA, not a fighting game, which will have Support, Attack and Defense classes. It also may have souped-up Towers that aren’t as static, with the ability to move or get different abilities.
• The “vibe” of the game is described as “lo-fi” and appealing to a much younger demographic than Bungie’s past games like Halo and Destiny, or future game Marathon. But also younger than something like League of Legends or DOTA, it seems. This aligns with the concept art we’ve already seen for the project previously.
• The report also reinforces what I’ve heard that even within a beleaguered Bungie, the game is viewed as very fun internally, the most enjoyable project in incubation. Not that I’ve heard Marathon is bad or anything, but Gummy Bears is the one that keeps being brought up as going great.

So, could this be a hit? A few things to consider.

First, unlike Marathon, which is still a shooter, this is going to be far outside that core Bungie space. Second, as ever, the PvP market in any sense is very, very hard to break into. Yes, we just saw the massive success of Marvel Rivals but that is…a Marvel game, and a very good one.

I am also reminded of Sony being very positive about Concord ahead of launch, citing early tests as being fun. I believe they said something similar about Fairgame$, a multiplayer game that has essentially disappeared.

Aiming a PvP multiplayer game at a younger audience is also a risk. There are indeed other PvP games for this crowd (though played by all ages), something like say, Splatoon. Or Fall Guys. Or Among Us, but these are all wildly different genres. Square Enix’s Foamstars, released for PlayStation, eventually went free-to-play and last month, it was announced that seasonal updates were coming to an end. So that’s not great.

There are just too many factors to know whether or not Gummy Bears will be a hit. A Smash Bros. MOBA live game? I mean, who knows. Bungie needs a win, and Sony needs another win (besides Helldivers 2) in the live service space, especially after Concord. But this still may be very far off.

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