Modern media franchises tend to develop some pretty complicated lore, and somebody’s gotta keep track of it all. For Bungie, that’s gonna be a ‘Destiny historian’ – a new job that the company has just started hiring for. This person will help keep the lore of the FPS games consistent, and while this sort of job isn’t ubiquitous in the industry, it’s actually more common than you might think.
“Bungie is seeking a historian to catalog the Destiny universe’s narrative and world building rules,” the job description says. “As a historian, you’ll facilitate the creative process with an encyclopedic knowledge of the IP and develop references leveraged by all Destiny storytellers in conjunction with the creative leadership team.”
Bungie is not the first company to implement a role like this. Blizzard has had various lore keepers for years, and there are multiple folks keeping up with the Apex Legends and Titanfall story over at Respawn. And as other members of the industry have noted, there’s often someone whose duties include maintaining the lore, even if that’s not explicitly their job title.
Destiny’s lore is fairly infamous largely because of how difficult to access it’s been. That’s part of the appeal, but – to varying degrees over the years – it’s made it difficult for new players to understand the story without hitting up giant lore breakdowns from YouTubers like MyNameIsByf. Bungie’s gone so far as to bring in prominent community lore keepers to help shape the story.
We just posted a "Destiny Historian" job at #Bungie. I've never really heard of a role like this at other companies, I think it sounds pretty cool – and I thought my Twitter might agree: https://t.co/wmcRhndNOx
— Max Nichols (@maxnichols) June 29, 2021
Just, uh… Byf would really appreciate it if you’d stop telling him to apply.