I Joined the Best Dance Crew in 'Destiny'

I'm waiting for my close-up on one of the boulders on the jagged shores of Venus, looking at the yellow, alien clouds. Usually, Destiny players pass through here as they're leveling up their characters, or on their way to the Vault of Glass raid, where they can get rare, high level guns, but I'm here with the top brass of the Husky Raid clan, and we have a totally different agenda: we're shooting a music video.

"Move a little to the right. Nope, that's too far, go back a bit. Okay, now you three look at me and turn your heads as I go by, then get up… That's good, but let's do it again," Kyle "BoisterousBiddy" Davidson said, wisely choosing to get a safety shot so he has more options later in the editing process.

I, like many other Destiny players and fans of weird gaming feats in general, learned about Husky Raid from its debut music video, which has almost 900,000 views on YouTube Davidson's channel, and another 94,000 on the Husky Raid's official channel, where it was reposted after Husky Raid realized this was going to be a thing.

The dancing in the video below starts at 2:00.

In-game movie making, or machinima, as it's called, has been around since the rise of 3D graphics in the mid-90s. Red vs. Blue, a sitcom shot within Halo's multiplayer mode, is one you might have heard of before, and a show that Husky Raid members cited as an influence. That influence really comes through in Husky Raid's show Destiny Cops, but it's the group's music videos that drew me in.

Husky Raid's first video, where they dance to Gwen Stefani's "The Sweet Escape," is remarkable for a few reasons. It's all done in one continuous shot—no cuts. It involves five dancers and a another player whose perspective serves as the camera, so if one of them made a mistake, they'd have to start the whole thing over.

Husky Raid, which has encyclopedic knowledge of every item in the game, also employs rare weapons with specific visual effects to create a kind laser and pyrotechnics show. They don't only have to fire the weapons accurately and in synchronization, but secure the right weapon for each member of the dance crew in advance.

"One of the greatest strengths we have is that we play Destiny far too much, more than we should," Will "SuperStartop" Ramos told me. "We already have a very good idea of what guns look cool when you shoot them, or what costumes or pieces of armor look good on Guardians when you equip them. So a lot of that just comes from background knowledge having played Destiny quite a bit."

Just like with real video production, shooting is a slow and technical process when compared to the final product, as I saw when I joined Husky Raid for a part of its latest shoot. Unlike that first video, this one was edited with many cuts, allowing Husky Raid to shoot at several locations. Instead of using an existing song, the video is for a cover of Macklemore's "Downtown," rewritten by Davidson with Destiny-inspired lyrics, composed by Chris Ratsabout (the unofficial sixth member who composes most of Husky Raid's original music), and performed by Husky Raid members. Husky Raiders Davidson and Jason "VoidJedi" Appel rap.

This, as you might imagine, take a lot of time and effort, but damn is it cool when they're done.

I'm easy to spot because I'm the only player who's not level 40 and decked out in fancy gear. Also, the username above my head is eman854. Blink, and you'll miss me, but here's just a taste of what getting one of those shots looked like from my perspective. Note that my gameplay capture device didn't record the in-game chat, which Davidson, who also choreographs the videos, used to give us directions. Note that it's also super boring to watch machinima being made.

I'm the character in the center without a name over its head. Davidson, the cameraman, is VoidJedi, using Appel's account (Husky Raid members trust each other enough to exchange accounts for filming purposes).

Overall, Husky Raid spent X hours filming this latest video, and x hours editing, and keep in mind that this doesn't include the time it took to choreograph the dances and create the music. It's one of those things I'm so happy exists, but it's hard to explain why.

One reason, which devoted Destiny players are sadly all too familiar with, is that the game originally launched without enough content. Once players reached the level cap, there wasn't much left to do, though that has changed over time, especially with the release of The Taken King expansion. Husky Raid are huge Destiny fans, obviously, but when I tried suggesting the possibility that none of this would have happened if Destiny was a better game at launch, they immediately knew what I was talking about.

"Are you asking if we have to make our own fun at this point? I think some of it definitely came out of that, especially before The Taken King came out," Ramos said.

Now Destiny's developer Bungie is leaning into this and adding pieces to the game that have more to do with what Husky Raid is doing than playing in a traditional way. It recently started selling emotes, dances or movements your character can perform when you press a button. They serve no practical purpose, and buying all 18 of them would cost about $38.

Some players hate that Bungie is monetizing Destiny (which cost $60 to begin with) this way, but the emotes are hard to resist, especially if you're shooting a music video and one of them is "the Carlton," the signature dance of The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air's Carlton Banks.

"We're kind of disappointed in having to pay for the emotes, but obviously that isn't stopping us," Appel told me over email. "We just think that microtransactions are a slippery slope, and we have to be careful with that. We have bought MANY emotes, haha, not all of them, but a lot. We feel like they help us a lot and have really opened up for more creativity in our videos. Like I said, we're just sad we have to buy them."

Bungie is well aware of Husky Raid and their special needs. The group used to take advantage of a bug that would keep the player's gun holstered to shoot their video, giving them a cleaner frame. When that bug was fixed in a patch, Bungie community manager David "DeeJ" Dague got in touch to let Husky Raid know that Bungie is working on tools that will help them shoot videos.

Husky Raid took this as confirmation that Bungie was working on features many Destiny players were hoping for and Ramos tweeted the news. Bungie didn't like that.

"We immediately pulled it back and we were all in group chat yelling at Will," Sean "g1vMEE uh HAN" Meehan said."Our excuse for anything now is that Deej hates us and he's trying to make our lives miserable."

"He doesn't hate everyone, he just hates me," Ramos said.

"Yeah, he hates Will and we hate Will because of that," Sean said,

Consider it a learning experience for a group that hasn't tried machinima like this, with any game. As Appel explained it, the whole thing started with "The 1st Annual Mars Interplanetary Freestyle Sparrow Championship" a community-run event where players were invited to show off their skills riding the game's hover bikes. The group edited a video, put some music behind it, and had so much fun it moved on to The Sweet Escape video and later the Backstreet Boys video, my personal favorite, which so far racked up 1.9 million views on YouTube.

Backstreet's back in the video below at 1:05.

"It takes effort but the effort is all from things we love doing," Appel said. "We all love video games, Kyle is extremely creative, Scott is a great writer, Sean works in editing and video, etc. We would love to one day make more money, but that's not what it's all about right now, we're just having fun."

That last part is really clear after spending some time with Husky Raid. The core group all know each other from high school, and while it has grown since, that's what hanging out with them in Destiny felt like. Just of group of friends fucking around, only they have something really cool to show for it when they're done.