Bungie hires creator of terrific Destiny subreddit as newest community manager

Destiny developer Bungie recently brought on a new community manager directly from the game's community, a hire that's apparently intended to enhance the studio's ability to assess feedback — and improve its often contentious relationship with Destiny's player base.

Chris Shannon, who goes by the handle "Cozmo23" online, is the newest community manager at Bungie, he and the studio announced today. Shannon will be working with the studio's existing community team, which includes community managers Eric "Urk" Osborne and David "DeeJ" Dague.

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Shannon said in his introduction on Bungie's website that his relationship with Bungie's games began back in the Halo days. Shannon founded the Destiny subreddit in December 2012, back "when all we knew about Destiny was what we saw on some leaked concept art," he noted in his goodbye post. The subreddit has become a tremendous resource for anyone interested in the game and its community, filled with fervent discussions about Bungie's latest updates, plenty of Destiny tips and tricks, and clips of incredible in-game exploits.

"I now aim to better serve the larger Destiny community alongside those who create and maintain the game," said Shannon in Bungie's post. "My job is to be your voice, or at the very least your interpreter, filtering the firehose of information on Bungie.net — as well as on social media."

That's an area that definitely needs more attention; at times, Bungie has seemed to turn a deaf ear to the concerns of Destiny's community. Today, Dague himself essentially admitted as much.

"When it comes to acknowledging the important things you say or celebrating the awesome things you do, we barely scratch the surface," said Dague.

To Bungie's credit, even before hiring Shannon, the studio already seemed to be improving in this respect. Shortly after the release of House of Wolves, Bungie patched the game to address complaints about difficulty and loot scarcity. And the changes we've seen so far for Destiny 2.0, launching alongside The Taken King, also indicate that Bungie is listening more intently to the game's fan base.

The Taken King will be available Sept. 15. For more, check out our hands-on impressions from E3.