Destiny's brain: inside Bungie's next-gen nerve centre

High profile global online games are no joke. Bungie sure isn't laughing.

As IGN notes in a report on a trip to Bungie's Destiny Operations Center, or DOC, the system responsible for monitoring Destiny's real-time functions looks more like NORAD than a games studio.

The room monitors the game's live servers, and looks decidely similar to the real-time WoW station at Blizzard. Two people supervise the unit at all times, watching performance and checking for problems. Destiny has two data centres, so if one goes down, the other will be able to pick up the slack, and, God willing, players shouldn't suffer downtime.

The staff in the DOC range from "former game testers, to AIDS researchers, to architects of Xbox Live, to folks who worked on the Large Hadron Collider."

Serious business. The game releases on September 9 for PS4, Xbox One, PS3 and Xbox 360. It's currently in test, which opened to all this morning. Check out our Destiny beta guide to getting the most from it.