Bungie: Destiny can surpass Halo, sit alongside Star Wars

Pete Parsons talks to us about future-proofing Bungie and how the studio believes next-gen gaming is “no longer just about the hardware”.

Before 2001, when the first Xbox and Halo took the console industry by storm, redefining what a first-person shooter could be like with a controller (instead of mouse/keyboard), most mainstream gamers probably hadn’t even heard of Bungie. More than a decade later, Bungie is now respected as one of the top developers in all of gaming. The company will forever be remembered for the iconic Master Chief and putting Xbox on the map, but the entire team – many of whom are still present from Halo 1 – hopes to make an even bigger mark with its next monumental IP, Destiny.

GamesIndustry International caught up with Bungie COO Pete Parsons to talk about the studio’s grand ambitions for Destiny’s 10-year arc, how the company is future-proofing itself, what next-gen really means and more.

There can be no doubt that the investment in Destiny by Bungie and publishing partner Activision is absolutely huge. Committing to a brand-new IP for the next decade requires a lot of resources and certainly a lot of confidence. While Parsons would not disclose budget to us, he made it abundantly clear that Bungie and Activision are shooting for the moon. The goal is to create something fans are so passionate about that it surpasses even Halo.

“We like to tell big stories and we want people to put the Destiny universe on the same shelf they put Lord of the Rings, Harry Potter or Star Wars”

 

“We like to tell big stories and we want people to put the Destiny universe on the same shelf they put Lord of the Rings, Harry Potter or Star Wars; we’ve already seen they do that with Halo. We were extremely proud of what we achieved with Halo… I’m pretty convinced we are going to do it again with Destiny in a way that maybe even Halo never achieved before,” Parsons said. “What excites me is a number of years ago we talked with Activision and Activision believed in that vision, and that’s why we like this partnership so much; these guys know big entertainment as well. They prove it over and over again.”

While Bungie’s dream is to reach a Star Wars-like frenzy for Destiny, the studio is making a game first and foremost. There are no plans to create novels or comics or movies… yet. If the property gets as big as Halo, though, Parsons isn’t opposed to it so long as it truly does enhance the universe Bungie is creating.

“If they happen in a way that’s exciting and helps propel the universe forward, I think that’s great. But it’s not the ambition and it’s not something we set out to do. The thing we set out to do is to build an entertainment universe that people want to be a part of and continue to invest in,” he noted. “And we didn’t think of entertainment in the Halo world either – it was never something that we set out to do. Now, do we think it’s exciting if we can help increase people’s experience and investment in that universe? Yeah I think that’s great. We have a number of talented friends who do more than make games and if there’s an opportunity there that helps better the universe or propel it forward, that’s awesome.”

At a quick glance, someone watching Destiny may think it looks quite similar to Halo, but the game’s focus on social connectivity takes the experience another step beyond Halo. It’s really just an evolution of what Bungie set out to do as far back as Marathon. It’s ultimately in Bungie’s DNA.

“It’s no longer just about the hardware. It’s about these wonderful networks on both PlayStation and Xbox… The hardware is absolutely subordinated to those communities, and that’s great for us because that’s what we’ve been trying to do for a long time”

 

“I would say it looks very Bungie-esque. I mean that sincerely. We made Marathon before we made Halo; that’s almost 20 years of making games, and when you look at our games I sure as hell hope that they have a Bungie look to them. Bungie created Halo, not the other way around. We love action games, we love the shooter mechanic. We’re ambitious; we were ambitious and we brought people online with Marathon… And we successfully brought a shooter to the console and changed the way people played, and we changed it again when we brought out Halo 2 and made it online. And much of the code that was in Xbox Live at the time was code that we collaborated on with the Xbox Live team,” Parsons said.

He continued, “And we did it again with Bungie.net in terms of bringing people together outside the game. And we did it with user created content for Halo 3. We have every intention on defining what the next generation of shooters look like – that it has a Bungie aesthetic to it to me is exactly what we want to be doing. What’s different though is we’re taking a huge, for us very logical, leap forward. We are saying, ‘How do we take the core mechanic that we’re known for, add to it elements like how do you use space magic, how you put deep server-side investment into that while retaining the visceral simulation of a shooter, and then how do we put that into a persistent world?’ Those are big challenges that we’re taking on, and how do you make all of that super complicated matchmaking happen completely under the surface?”

Parsons doesn’t want people to think of Destiny as an MMO, however, just because people are coming together in the game’s public space. “So when you think about the public space, we think less about MMO attributes and more about stringing together storytelling. Here are a whole bunch of people moving from one place to another but for a moment in time we all come together and say ‘hey should we take down the enemies together?’ I could just sit there and people watch. I don’t need to join in, or I can join and get a reward for it. So for us, it’s about how do we bring people together? How do we move social more to the center of what we’ve done? And I would argue we’ve been trying to do that for a long time, but the technology and learning wasn’t there,” he acknowledged.

Indeed, this social aspect may be the “killer app” of next-gen gaming, if you ask Parsons. Everyone knows that games look pretty nowadays. Improving the social connection, though, could be the next big step.

“For us, that is next-gen,” Parsons remarked. “We’re going to be on all consoles, and we’ve been working on this game for five or six years, maybe even longer, so long before there’s even been a thought of next-gen we’ve been thinking about what kind of universe we want to create. I would argue that next-gen games are going to be wonderful in terms of visuals, but I believe that unlike prior console generations that have really been about the hardware, it’s no longer just about the hardware. It’s about these wonderful networks on both PlayStation and Xbox; they created these wonderful, vibrant, gigantic communities.”

“The hardware is absolutely subordinated to those communities, and that’s great for us because that’s what we’ve been trying to do for a long time. Every advancement they make there just helps make our universe better. That’s what’s really exciting about next-gen. I think the big advancements are how do we keep bringing people together? How do we make a game that’s not just about ‘here are a bunch of people in the same room together’, but it’s about what we want to do, which is to give you really finely crafted storytelling and competitive multiplayer and remove the barriers between those two,” he added. “Think about all of our previous games in the LAN parties… Those were all attempts really to bring people together. At the end of the day we were shipping three separate games on the DVD – we were shipping campaign, cooperative and multiplayer, and they are arguably different games. Well, now we don’t have to do that; now we can actually have people crossing each other at different points. You can build your avatar for weeks, months or years while enjoying storytelling and then move into multiplayer in that same build.”

This focus on social interaction and merging the worlds of campaign and multiplayer have been somewhat liberating for Bungie as well. Instead of obsessing about what the next-gen platforms would be like, the studio was more concerned with preparing for the future and setting up the 10-year arc it has planned for Destiny. The future-proofing Bungie engaged in automatically meant that the company could be prepared for whatever platform was thrown its way.

“We knew we were making this game on a 10-year arc and we did a bunch of planning around that. We had to plan what our team would look for such an ambitious project, what we had to do with our technology to be future proof. We didn’t say we have to plan for the next-gen consoles, but we said we have to plan to be on any platform possible,” Parsons said. “We didn’t set out to think just about the consoles, so we actually changed our development philosophy. What we decided to do was make one central design build, and then understanding how we export that to each of the individual platforms – that’s the right way to future proof our technology, particularly when you’re making a much more living, persistent world. That allows us not only to think of the platforms of today and tomorrow but also other platforms as well.”

“We’ve always admired people like Pixar, and we are finally in that moment where we have this raw, amazing talent that I think rivals entertainment creators anywhere across any entertainment ever”

 

Part of that future planning involved developing a new, proprietary engine for the Destiny universe. Parsons noted that the investment in technology is already paying off, making development much smoother for the team.

“This is an enormous universe that we are building and that we will continue to build over time, so yes the engine helps us gain a lot of efficiency. The Halo set of tools was really powerful but really at times unwieldy, and we knew that we would need to be able to make content at a rate that was much faster and achieve much more collaboration between designers and artists. Now we can have designers and artists working in the same space. Really improving our workflows in our content pipeline was job number one. Also, every time we build a new object it goes into a library to be used or referenced at a later date, which is exciting for us,” he said.

The extreme level of preparation Bungie is able to commit to Destiny and its own future is a nice luxury, one that most studios don’t really have, and one that Bungie didn’t have either for quite some time. There was a lot of uncertainty during the Halo days.

“We have a pretty good understanding of what we want to do over a ten-year period with Destiny, which is not to say we know exactly where the gameplay and story will go, but we’ve future proofed ourselves on a number of levels with technology and how we built the team and how the team interacts, and what we think our narrative arc looks like. Imagine many many thousands of pages on how we future proof ourselves in a way we never did for Halo because we didn’t know what came after Halo 1. And we didn’t know what came after Halo 2. It was like ‘alright it’s Return of the King for Halo 3!’ That was the pitch to the team. So what happens is you’re not prepared in the way that you want to be, so you can do things like paint yourself into a corner with canon and do all these things that sort of set you sideways,” Parsons admitted. “So I think we’ve learned a bunch there, but were continuing to learn a lot and I don’t think you ever stop making mistakes and learning – it’s just the nature of our business.”

In the end, Parsons is just eager to let Destiny do the talking for Bungie. It’s being released at a time when there’s more interest in games than ever before, and the medium is able to stand toe-to-toe with just about any other entertainment out there. “We’ve always admired people like Pixar, and we are finally in that moment where we have this raw, amazing talent that I think rivals entertainment creators anywhere across any entertainment ever, and Activision is helping us bring that reality to life,” he said.

 

[source]

Activision: Microsoft has to prove Xbox One’s premium price is worth it

Eric Hirshberg talks to us about next-gen, how consoles will continue to be a stable market, and why ATVI is very careful with investments in mobile

Activision Blizzard is sitting pretty. While some have struggled in this extra long console cycle, Activision is the only publisher that’s consistently seen its revenues and net income increase each year. It’s a testament to the strength of core brands like Call of Duty, Skylanders and World of Warcraft, but it also speaks to a very careful and deliberate strategy from management.

It’s this same strategy that often yields the company much criticism from some industry pundits. While rival publishers like EA are making substantial investments in digital and mobile, Activision has been dipping its toes, rather than fully diving in. In a recent phone interview with GamesIndustry International, Activision Publishing boss Eric Hirshberg noted that many “misinterpret” his company’s very careful approach to mean that it’s not interested in other growing markets like mobile. At the same time, he stressed the continued importance of the console sector, and gave his frank opinion that Microsoft will have much work to do in convincing consumers that $499 with a Kinect bundled in will be worth the investment.

The full interview below also goes into detail on the massive investment in Call of Duty: Ghosts, Bungie’s Destiny, and how games have become “the entertainment medium of choice for a generation.”

Q: As a publisher, does the $499 price point on Xbox One concern you?

It’s up to them to win the value argument. If you do a focus group of a gazillion people and you show them two prices for two competitive products, 100 percent always prefer the lower price. I think from a first impression standpoint the win goes to Sony, at least as it relates to pricing. Microsoft is going to have to win the hearts and minds and convince people that the higher price point is worth it, and that it provides really meaningful capabilities that will be meaningful to consumers. And it’s a long game, so I am sure that’s what they intend on trying to do.

Q: One of the reasons for that higher price point is that they’re packing in the new Kinect whereas in PS4 the PS Eye is sold separately. You guys have some good studios working on some high quality products. Does the inclusion of Kinect appeal to you? Will it make a difference in the long run to that platform?

I think it’s the same answer; I feel they have to show why that’s a good thing and why it’s worth the premium and deserves inclusion and why it’s something that gamers are going to come to really value and appreciate. … It’s going to be a fun battle to watch, but I think they definitely have to win hearts and minds in terms of the value of it.

Q: When you look at the Wii U, does its sales level change the way you think about that platform is a publisher? You guys have always been a bit slower to jump on new platforms compared to a publisher like Ubisoft.

“We’re in the business of blowing minds and providing huge experiences. It’s a critical year and it’s a critical transition, and we’re going to spare no expense to make sure that we have the best game”

 

I don’t think we’re slower to move; we’re a very choiceful company. We’re very choiceful in the number of titles we make. We scrutinize opportunities very carefully, and when we go into them we go big. And I think that’s been part of the formula for our success. We were there with a lot support for the Wii U at launch with a Call of Duty game, with a Skylanders game and with several other titles. We want to see Nintendo be successful and we want to do anything we can to help them be successful. Obviously the Wii U is struggling – that’s not a secret, I don’t think there’s any other way to read the narrative right now – but they’re a really good company and they’ve got some incredible IP that has yet to come, that they honed for that platform. We have a vested interest in making them successful.

Q: With the Call of Duty it seems like every year the stakes get higher. Is it fair to say that this year will be the biggest investment ever in Call of Duty?

I think that’s a fair deduction. We don’t talk about our budgets but we’re developing for [many] different platforms with next-gen and current-gen and it’s a very complex development process. And then you have all the stakes that come with a new generation of hardware, the expectations, needing to set the gold standard for next-gen, win people over and make sure that our audience comes with us to the next generation. Look, it’s not for the faint of heart. When you’re on top you’ve got the rest of the industry gunning for you – excuse the pun – and you also have the toughest competition of all which is ourselves and our past success and exceeding our gamers’ expectations.

An underwater mission in Call of Duty: Ghosts

And that’s where we focus. It’s easy to get lost in the echo chamber and it’s easy to get lost in the several different tempests in several different teapots at any given time within the industry. We have a 30-million person community to satisfy and they are playing our game in record numbers and our business has never been stronger. The engagement has never been stronger in the length of the tail on Black Ops II and the level of engagement we’re seeing this long after launch, the success of the DLC and the season pass. Things are really good and we’ve got a really passionate player base that we think is the best in the world and we are never going to let them down.

Q: One of the reasons I ask about the investment is that with these new consoles publishers are going to have to spend more money on AAA games and even though Activision is in the good position of having a lot of cash, you still need to be cost-effective as a company. Are there certain things that you and the studios can look at to mitigate costs, whether it’s engines or anything else?

Obviously we need to realize whatever efficiencies we can and be responsible stewards of our company’s money and our shareholders’ money, but at the same time the most responsible thing we can do as leaders in the business is to deliver a kick-ass experience on every single platform, and to continue the Call of Duty juggernaut. There is no way out of town that doesn’t include quality, that doesn’t include excellence. There’s no way to save yourself to greatness in this business, and we’re in the business of blowing minds and providing huge experiences. It’s a critical year and it’s a critical transition, and we’re going to spare no expense to make sure that we have the best game.

Q: Do you have an idea of when the revenue mix switches from the current-gen in favor of next-gen?

It depends on speed of adoption rate and how well the first parties do of winning hearts and minds. The PS2 was relevant for how many years into the current cycle? It had a long tail. You could see something like that happening again. We’ve always been platform agnostic; what we care about is delivering the best experience for gamers wherever they want to play and however the delivery mechanism plays out. We put all that stuff secondary. … It’s a high-stakes strategy but it’s where I want to be because it’s all about creative excellence. That’s where you win or lose, whether or not you provide a great experience for people.

“I think it’s a very fair assessment to say that we haven’t gone as big in some new platforms as some of our competitors have, but we’ve got a pretty good track record of figuring out how to get into businesses at the right time”

 

Q: It seems like digital for Activision mostly means DLC and map packs and add-ons for games that are already sold at retail, whereas at other publishers it may be more about full digital downloads or the mobile market. Is Activision making more of a push in that area?

Everything you just listed we’ve had various levels of investment in, so it’s not that we are against those things. I think a lot of times people mistake our focused strategy as a company as some implicit criticism of a new medium or new opportunity. And it’s not that – it’s just that we’re very choiceful and that’s so the things that we do do we can do the best possible job at. We don’t want to fracture our focus, we don’t want to fracture our resources, we don’t want to fracture the attention of our best, most creative, most talented people.

And it’s hard to argue with the results. It’s been a winning strategy. It leads to Call of Duty still defying gravity long after people thought it would have stopped. It leads to bold new IP like Skylanders and big new investments in things like Bungie and Destiny. So when we go into something we want to go big, because that’s how we know we succeed the most. We’ve built great capabilities in mobile, for example, and we put out some very well rated mobile games, three or four of which made to the tops of the charts last year. The way we’re strategizing about that right now at this moment in time is that those are best served as extensions of our core franchises, but that doesn’t mean we don’t see the obvious potential of mobile.

It’s just that in terms of where we are focusing our energies right now is in a different area. But we are building capabilities, we approach things cautiously and thoughtfully, and then when we pull the trigger we go big. I think it’s a very fair assessment to say that we haven’t gone as big in some new platforms as some of our competitors have, but we’ve got a pretty good track record of figuring out how to get into businesses at the right time when the market matures to a place where you can make a big impact both for gamers and for the business. That’s our orientation and I think sometimes people misinterpret it.

Q: Focusing just on mobile for a moment, Bobby Kotick said on a recent earnings call, “While we’re going to continue to look at it, and we think that over the long term there’ll be opportunities, right now we just don’t see anything that would suggest that changing the way we approach investing against mobile would be a good idea.” There are games out there that literally make millions of dollars per day. Wouldn’t Activision want a bigger slice of that pie?

It’s not that there aren’t games that are not making a lot of money. It’s just that there are only really a handful that are monetizing on that level out of the 300,000 or 400,000 games on the App store. And also, we haven’t seen on the App store that sort of franchise effect, meaning getting to that upper echelon seems to be a very different thing than staying there or being able to create any loyalty or a repeat audience, which is different than what you see in consoles and other platforms where you really can build a franchise. That’s expressed by the fact that the top mobile games change out every couple of months. There are a couple notable exceptions to that and that’s encouraging.

But I would look at it differently and say when Bobby notes that he doesn’t see anything that would change our investment, it doesn’t mean we’re not investing. It means we’re taking a very particular approach where we are building capabilities as opposed to something like making a giant acquisition, for example. We’ve built a lot of capabilities. We’ve got a lot of capable people making mobile products and mobile games working here at Activision right now on really great products, some of which are highly rated and have done really well on the marketplace, so we’re definitely investing and making good things.

Q: We had an interesting conversation a few months ago with industry veteran Gordon Walton, formerly of BioWare and Disney’s Playdom, and he said of Activision, “They’ve haven’t said we’re going to fundamentally change our company, so they’re going to be that last guy standing in the console world. One day they’ll be the big fish at the bottom of the pond, and there’ll be almost no food left and no water, and it’s going to be hard to breathe. That’s how that ends; it ends in catastrophe.” Isn’t that a valid concern, that if the console world starts shriveling, Activision would be in trouble?

“The console market has proven itself to be one of the more stable ones in all of entertainment. It has shown far more staying power than any other gaming platform ever”

 

This person doesn’t work at Activision? I have no comment on that.

Q: But what it speaks to is if the console market ends up becoming a much smaller niche market…

That’s a big if! The console market has proven itself to be one of the more stable ones in all of entertainment. It has shown far more staying power than any other gaming platform ever. Yes, we can hypothesize about meteors hitting the earth that would render anybody’s business strategy ineffective. And I would also point to our history, at a time long before I was at the company, where people used to prognosticate that Activision was slow to respond to PC gaming and to MMORPGs as well. I think we’ve shown a pretty good ability to make the right moves at the right time, to a) bring people games that they want to play, and b) do it in ways that we can realize a good return on our investment. I don’t see that changing.

Q: Activision still makes a number of licensed games. You have Spider-Man, The Walking Dead (which was panned), Deadpool, Nascar and others. Is this at all lucrative? Should Activision back away from licensed games the way some other publishers have?

We have a small division that concentrates on licensed games and I think we make right size investments against those opportunities. It’s not obviously a primary focus of the company but it is a group that does well. Those games are nothing new, and a number of those games you referenced like Spider-Man are part of contracts and have been with the company for a while.

Q: I know you have Call of Duty in China, but Western gamers are pretty accustomed to the free-to-play model now. Is there any consideration to take a huge brand like Call of Duty and make a F2P version here?

There is no plan to do that currently. Obviously we are doing this with Call of Duty in China because that is by far the accepted mode of doing business in the Chinese game market. If free-to-play becomes appropriate for other markets, the learning that we’re doing in China and the development work that we are doing to turn it into a robust and well executed free-to-play game will of course be beneficial.

Q: Infinity Ward’s Mark Rubin seemed to indicate to me that Sledgehammer and other studios continue to collaborate on Call of Duty. Can you clarify what the different studios are working on and if Sledgehammer is contributing to Ghosts?

Sledgehammer is not involved in Call of Duty: Ghosts, but they are still involved in the Call of Duty universe and we haven’t made any announcements about what they are currently working on yet. As with most Call of Duty games in our recent past they’ve become very big productions, and it creates opportunities for multiple studios to contribute.

Q: So I guess it makes business sense to spread out resources among studios when you have a brand as big as Call of Duty? I know Ubisoft has put multiple studios on Assassin’s Creed for example.

Well that’s obviously what we did on Modern Warfare 3, and we have other studios contributing to Ghosts. It’s something that we do on an as needed basis and luckily we’ve got great developers who are able to contribute to making great games. The scope of the games is very ambitious and there’s a lot of things we’re trying to pack into them. We’ve long gotten credit for being a very complete package in gaming with many different game modes and lots of different ways to enjoy the franchise. That takes a big investment in human resources and talent. Raven and Neversoft are contributing to Ghosts and doing a great job alongside Infinity Ward.

Q: A major trend at this E3 was games based on persistent worlds, where the lines between campaign and multiplayer modes become blurred. That includes action-adventure games like The Division, driving games like The Crew, but also games that seem like rivals to CoD, like Titanfall. What do you think about this trend? Is it reflective of what players want from action games now, or games in general? Can CoD maintain its campaign/multiplayer split in the long-term?

Can Bungie be successful with a new IP all over again?

I think that there’s a general tendency to look at continued innovations and iterations on themes as somehow being destructive to things that came before it. I think what oftentimes happens is colors get added to the palette; they don’t wipe the other colors out. I think you are seeing a response to both the popularity of multiplayer from the current generation as well as some of the new capabilities in next-gen hardware with some people experimenting with bringing those two worlds together.

I think that certainly describes some of the innovations that we are attempting in Destiny, for example. But whether or not that will somehow be destructive to the popularity of a really incredibly fun game mode like multiplayer in a game like Call of Duty, I don’t see any reason why it would. But I don’t look at it that way. I look it as what’s the right thing to do for this game? What’s the right thing to do for this audience? For Call of Duty there are plenty of innovations that we have planned for multiplayer. Bringing it closer together with campaign isn’t one of them. But that’s because we are responding to the audience, the usage and the spirit of Call of Duty. So that’s why we are adding things like dynamic maps and character customizations, because we think that’s going to make it a better game.

Destiny is obviously a ground-up new intellectual property, and one of the things that Bungie wanted to play with was live encounters with other players in that shared world shooter idea. And I think that’s a really cool idea, which hopefully also will be really compelling, but I don’t think one replaces the other and I don’t think they’re mutually exclusive or destructive to one another.

Q: Destiny has huge expectations around it given the 10-year deal with Bungie and their pedigree with Halo. Halo, as a property, emerged as an entertainment phenomenon, spawning books, web shows, and maybe one day still a Hollywood movie. Do you envision that sort of entertainment future for Destiny too?

We make games first. It needs to be a great game and great experience first. If there is a reason that another medium can enhance the game experience or enhance the game universe, that’s something we will play with, but we’ve been cautious about that historically because you can ruin a perfectly good game franchise with one bad movie, for example. There are plenty of case studies to prove that.

I think there’s also a misperception in my mind that if a game really makes it and becomes a phenomenon, then it can become another medium, it can become a movie or a television series. I don’t look at it that way; I think games are the entertainment medium of choice for a generation and I think that making a great game franchise is challenging enough.

Q: Skylanders seems to represent an area of the industry that’s seeing less representation these days. Other than some Nintendo games and Disney’s Infinity, the kids market isn’t getting a lot of attention. There aren’t as many games being created for that demographic. Do you think that’s something that helps Skylanders stand out?

It’s funny the way you articulated the question, because you just described all the reasons why people used to say we shouldn’t get into the kids market. It literally used to be ‘people are getting out of the kids market, and the Wii is faltering, so why are you guys getting into the kids market?’ when I would defend our decision to make Skylanders. Now you are reversing it and saying it’s an unfair advantage. I think Skylanders is successful not because it is a kids game without a lot of competition, because to your point, a lot of kids games – no matter how thin the competition – haven’t succeeded of late. Skylanders is successful because it’s a really magical idea and it’s brilliantly executed. We have created a really compelling new genre that brings toys and games together, and a new play pattern for kids that brings interactive play and analog play together in a really fresh way. The games continue to innovate and… we are going to have to deliver really compelling ideas each and every year.

 

[source]

A Big, Leaked Update About The Next Game From The Halo-Makers At Bungie. Plus: More Gaming Secrets.

Three weeks ago, a job opening appeared for a Vancouver-based senior online systems programmer for Bungie’s technically-still-unannounced new franchise Destiny. While the studio is unnamed, it is presumably the satellite Vancouver office of Demonware, which handles the online infrastructure for Activision’s titles and also lists Bungie as one of the firm’s partners on its website.

Demonware’s involvement is a tad interesting considering that the terms of the leaked Bungie-Activision contract suggested that Bungie is responsible for Destiny‘s server and service maintenance operations, and indicated they had some autonomy in choosing the datacenters for the game. Additionally, the Demonware posting mentions that a preference for PS3 experience for applicants, seemingly implying a PS3 SKU for the game is indeed in development—something that was not necessarily a given in the contract.

Until sometime in the past few weeks, among the first ten entries of Google results for a very simple search of Demonware and Bungie was a since-removed blog post (Google text cache pictured below, annotated for reference) about a visit to Bungie’s headquarters for the studio’s Bungie Day on what appears to have been a publicly accessible copy of Demonware’s internal blog. Ironically, the confidential information-filled post has the warning that “If you cannot find [information contained within this post] on Google you should not talk about it to non Demonware employees.”

The author, a senior Demonware employee, begins the post with a confirmation that the firm has indeed been involved with Destiny from the project’s early stages, with a handful of principles helping with the game’s features; however, very few people outside of Bungie—Demonware included—have seen the game in any sort of presentable state. The Bungie Day presentations would be the Demonware employees’ first chance to get a real glimpse at the game.

His account of Bungie Day includes a remarkably frank description of the day’s first event:

The day started in the Bungie offices (a converted cinema) with a bizarre “Knighting of the Noobs” ceremony, where anyone who started at Bungie within the last 6 months was presented with a signed wooden sword, and asked to kneel in front of Harold Ryan (President) while he read a pseudo oath, culminating in “be brave”, a term they have trademarked for the game.

Following this, the group went to a local movie theater “for a few hours of presentations covering everything from game story, factions, art, engineering, tool chain, graphics, audio, player investment mechanisms, player progression, UI, and web and mobile apps.” Many presentations featured video footage, but the author lists “a live scene walk through demonstrating lots of atmospherics, huge amounts of trees and foliage (SpeedTree), particle effects, dynamic lighting and dynamic time of day ending in a sun set” as the highlight of that portion of the day.

After the theater presentation, the Demonware employees got a chance to have some hands-on time with Destiny at Bungie’s offices, with the author describing his experience with the game thusly:

This is not a dedicated server game, but there is some simulation and coordination running in their server infrastructure. The game was up and down a lot, playing in a team of 3 we did manage to experience entering a zone to find other players already taking on the bad guys, it’s cooperative so we helped out (mostly [name removed], I just died) before both groups went their separate ways. Which is a pretty cool experience, making you feel you are part of a much larger populated world.

…At the end of the day I was excited about the game, I like the feel of being in a large world with different destinations and the interactions along the way. It actually brought back a sense of exploration I recall from playing [Elite] many years ago, although there was no opportunity to shoot aliens in the face in Elite. I’m not fully sold on the appeal of being able to change the colour of a weapon, but I guess it works in China, and customization and individual identity is a big theme for the game.

He also gathers that the general consensus from others is that Destiny is “still quite like Halo” and “there is a lot of work still to be done.” And he concludes with a confirmation of an old rumor that the project previously codenamed “Tiger” is now referred to as “Destiny.”

According to the copy on a Destiny-related marketing job posting at Activision’s Santa Monica HQ from two weeks back, the publisher hopes to establish “the biggest new entertainment property in the history of video games.” The leaked contract stated that the first game’s budget could be as much as $140 million including marketing, and in any case, the game quite likely has one of the highest budgets for a new intellectual property ever.

With a massive budget and an apparent fall 2013 release date, it seems plausible that Activision would like to start building hype and officially announce this new franchise sometime soon. Perhaps in the coming weeks Geoff Keighley will tease a look at “Bungie’s next universe” that will be officially unveiled at the VGAs?

* * *A few months ago, Take-Two filed a fairly broad new trademark registration for “Links,” presumably in relation to the long-dormant golf franchise owned by the company. One of three sports IPs acquired from Microsoft in late 2004, Links is the only one of those three brands (the other two being Top Spin and Amped) that Take-Two never actually brought to market; however, Indie Built, the Utah-based developer of the golf series, was working on an Xbox 360 version of Links prior to its closure in April 2006.

A new Links game wouldn’t be the first time Take-Two released a new entry in a presumed-dead sports franchise after shuttering its developer—last year’s Top Spin 4 was handled by Mafiacreators 2K Czech, three years after Take-Two closed the PAM Development, the Parisian studio behind the first three Top Spin games. What form a Links revival would take is a bit of a mystery, particularly as 2K Sports launched its first free-to-play mobile and social games.

In May, Take-Two filed another new registration for another venerated albeit inactive franchise, “Midnight Club,” primarily in relation to online and digitally-distributed products. The new filing could mean any number of things—Take-Two simply wants to protect the logo, some sort of digital re-release is on the way, or a perhaps even a mobile or free-to-play iteration of Rockstar Games’ street racing series.

* * *Several weeks back, reports questioning the future of Activision’s current Spider-Man house Beenox popped up in the French-language Quebec City paper Le Soleil, prompted by founder Dominique Brown’s decision to reduce his involvement in the studio’s operations for the very first time in its history. While the province’s favorable tax incentives suggest that a closure of any sort is unlikely, the studio does very much appear to be in turmoil.

Since the beginning of the year the Quebec City studio has lost: a programmer of seven years, a PR officer of four years, a concept artist of nearly four years, a game designer of nearly five years, a 3D animator of four years, a 3D artist of nearly three years, another programmer of nearly five years, an administrative assistant of four years, a game designer of seven years, a lead game designer, an associate producer of four years, a recruiter of five years, a lighting artist of three years, a producer of seven years, an art director, a lead narrative designer, lead level designer, another PR officer, another game designer, and an audio lead.

That is 20 out of around 170 employees at the two-team studio departing in 10 months. In addition, a Le Soleil report claims that a handful of ex-Ubisoft employees leading a new project that fell into disarray were recently asked to resign after their working methods apparently came into conflict with Beenox’s corporate culture.

Source: Kotaku