Why Paul McCartney Doesn't Play Video Games

Paul McCartney was recently on The Daily Show with Jon Stewart. He spends some time making jokes about the “thunderous applause” from the audience as well as the music career, but it doesn't take long to explain his involvement with the game Destiny and why he doesn't play video games.

The Daily Show

According to Gamespot they picked out one of the only few quotes McCartney gives about why he doesn't play video games, saying...

However, before getting to the talk about his gameplay experience, Stewart joked about McCartney's start in the music industry, first rattling off a list of notable entertainment hosts and shows that McCartney and the rest of The Beatles appeared on, but then Stewart shifted gears to get a chuckle out of the audience by asking “How about Destiny? Was that the start?”

They discuss how games actually have grown to become massive franchises. Destiny's brand worth was acquired by Activision who granted Bungie a $500 million budget over the course of the few games that the publisher will sell. Activision made back their $500 million investment within just a few days from selling in Destiny to retailers. The sell-through to customers was a bit slower, but the game managed a steady base of sell-throughs since its release in September for the Xbox One, Xbox 360, PS3 and PS4.

Paul McCartney's Destiny song, “Hope for the Future”, was popular enough to receive a music video that was made out of in-game footage that featured a holographic McCartney. The music video was criticized almost as badly as the game managed to get ripped apart by the Honest Trailers crew.

McCartney didn't tackle the soundtrack of Destiny alone. He worked with long-time Bungie composer, Marty O'Donnell. O'Donnell had previously expressed a lot of excitement in regards to working with the music legend, even though McCartney isn't very deeply embedded in gaming culture. Despite O'Donnell being fired from Bungie just before the release of Destiny, his efforts weren't put forward in vain; the composer walked away with an award for the game's soundtrack at Geoff Keighley's The Game Awards 2014.

I'll be honest, I haven't actually listened to the song because I really don't care about Destiny. This game literally has less features than Halo 2 (i.e., Halo 2 had more vehicles, dual-wielding, split-screen, LAN play, various difficulty settings and more multiplayer modifiers). It seems insane to think that a decade old FPS has a deeper level of gameplay mechanics than Destiny, but that's just how the dice have fallen.

Nevertheless, Bungie's pedigree warranted them a lot of press from a lot of outlets and it helped them move enough units to stay relevant in today's market. The added prestige from having Paul McCartney work on the game's soundtrack only elevated Destiny's prestige. You can pick up the song right now from the iTunes app store.