15 ms·

Bungie departs from Activision

343 points by kposehn 8y ago

oddevan 8y ago
Welp, that means we won’t be able to blame Activision for any stupid decisions from here on out... I do wish Bungie the best here. I also suspect that the next installment will be more of a “$x/month for everything” instead of the “$x for the game and $x for the expansions” they’ve been doing.
wmichelin 8y ago
Hopefully we see Bungie put out a game at the quality of the original Halo games
- TaylorAlexander 8y ago
  Marathon sequel!
  - crushcrashcrush 8y ago
    This would be amazing. M2:Durandal on my Performa 6400... good memories.
- crushcrashcrush 8y ago
  I agree. Halo: CE was an absolute masterpiece.
  - ezekg 8y ago
    I still play CE from time to time. Such a great game.
    - aaronmdjones 8y ago
      You should check out Halo SPv3 -- Halo 1 campaign, but Halo 2 & 3 weapons/vehicles/enemies, massively expanded Pillar of Autumn & Assault On The Control Room levels, and a whole new reimagined The Silent Cartographer.
cde-v 8y ago
Fingers crossed that Destiny 3 is good, but definitely not pre-ordering anything.
- p1necone 8y ago
  I'm still annoyed that there even was a Destiny 2, when the first one was announced I was promised a shooter in a persistent world with mmo progression that would be supported for years, not a series of sequels I had to buy again and make a new character.
  - gnahckire 8y ago
    This was the biggest con for me. Earning all of my gear in D1 then not having those available for import into D2 was really upsetting. The D1 weapons felt great. It's a shame Bungie keeps leaving gear they designed so far behind every iteration. I wish they at least added something like transmog. I remember going to D1 panel during PAX West one year and Luke mentioning that there were many WoW players that worked at Bungie. I really wonder WTF is going on over there lately.
  - sergiotapia 8y ago
    It's the reason I quit playing about 7 months ago. I have a _lot_ of raids under my belt. I used to speedrun them with randos for fun. I have yet to attempt the latest raid because I thought to myself: "When Destiny 3 comes out, this won't matter." https://raid.report/pc/4611686018467283801 https://raid.report/pc/4611686018467283801 The only way they can bring me back is by announcing a rename of Destiny 2 to Destiny, and confirm there will be no stand-alone sequels. The Destiny universe is my favorite in-game universe. I could go on for hours! Did Rasputin cripple the Traveller because he was going to abandon us like he did the Fallen? Is Rasputin benevolent or indifferent? I hope dearly they try to bring me back. I miss it.
    - maxsilver 8y ago
      I would be happy if they rename Destiny 3 to "Destiny United" or similar, and just allow us to import our old D1 and D2 characters (weapons, armor, etc) into it all at once. But the constant, repeated trashing of earned stuff (and recently, the massive spike in grind-wasting-time required) turned me off. Warmind + Forsaken was peak Destiny 2, but with Black Armory they're already sliding away from that again. I don't blame Bungie for it. I get that everyone on Reddit complained there wasn't enough time wasting, so Bungie added a bunch of time wasting, to make Reddit happy. But it's just too much. I can't imagine what Destiny will look like in 6 months if they keep on this path. "Do 100 hours of homework first, and then we'll let you play with the cool thing you just bought".
JohnJamesRambo 8y ago
And I’m suddenly interested again.
dcow 8y ago
I hope I live to see the death of publishers.
- SeanBoocock 8y ago
  I'm curious why. As a developer who has worked for a big publisher at an internal studio and worked with publishers as an independent developer, publishers still have an important role to play. On the smaller scale, publishers are one, and often the best, way to service tasks that a small team would not be able to fulfill themselves (marketing, pr, QA, localization, etc). As you scale up the size of project, it becomes harder to find the level of investment required outside of a publisher relationship. Not all publishers are created equal and even a "good" publisher might not be the best fit for your team or project. However, I don't see the idea of publishers as some anachronism or necessary evil, and I hope to work with them long into the future.
  - lawnchair_larry 8y ago
    Do publishers have influence over monetization strategies? Are they typically the ones asking for gimmicks like loot boxes? I have heard mixed things on this, but had the impression that the development studio generally dislikes these mechanics, and publishers generally force them to include them.
    - SalimoS 8y ago
      i don't know but for the case of bungie/Activision the idea of everest (the micro-transactions in Destiny) was solely bungie (and they already admit it)
  - kkarakk 8y ago
    A game development company should have publisher as a service not the other way around. publishers pushing game companies to monetise more heavily is a plague on our times
  - rjf72 8y ago
    One major issue I have is that I think the way you 'ought' make money is to make a product that you believe to be good, and put it out there. And for many years, this was the model with video games. But in the last decade or two publishers have MBA'd games. It's design by focus group, selling games piecemeal through DLC that would previously have been a part of the core experience, annoying or otherwise coercing players into buying DLC instead of creating stuff people want to buy, stripping out all but the most bare essentials of a game, rushing products out the door prematurely, etc. And then in terms of what's published they always chase whatever's trending obsessively and generally singularly. Minecraft is the most profitable game ever made in in terms of revenue / costs. But it's something that likely would have never been picked up by a mainstream publisher. No story, no graphics, no dlc, free updates, and you just kind of play with blocks..? Notch would have been laughed out of any publisher's office. It's now the best selling game of all time, behind only tetris. Apparently we like blocks. Then he gets bought up by a big publisher and they start marketing Minecraft 4k, as in 4k resolution... I seriously thought that was a meme or a joke the first time I saw it. Just emphasizes how irredeemably out of touch these publishers tend to be. And then there is what publishers do to the studios they acquire. When EA buys a studio it's as good as signing its death certificate. I have absolutely no understanding of why this is. It makes no economic sense at all to spend substantial sums of money to buy a studio only to completely kill it off, but it happens over and over and over. And it's no acquihires, they tend to lose most of the premium talent. But the list of studios killed off by EA alone is just completely tragic: Maxis, Mythic, Bullfrog, Origin, Westwood, Phenomic, Pandemic, etc..
2bitencryption 8y ago
> Bungie and Activision teamed up all those years ago essentially because the former needed a jump-start to develop Destiny Jump start? I thought Bungie was one of the most wildly successful video game studios out there, at the time? Did they need a jump start?
- manfredo 8y ago
  Being a self published studio isn't just about having a lot of money (though that's often a prerequisite, at least for AAA games). There's also experience with marketing, relationships with console manufacturers, market research, negotiating platform pricing. Publishers' knowledge of these things make it useful for a studio to still team up with a publisher even if the studio is swimming in cash.
- SeanBoocock 8y ago
  As a wholly owned subsidiary of Microsoft from whom they had just been spun out. I doubt they had anywhere near the capital to staff a AAA production, and even if they did why not mitigate your downside by working with a publisher? This is standard practice for most large independent developers and for many of the same reasons that people take on investment in the broader business community.
- Kapura 8y ago
  Bungie had only marginal experience supporting online persistence in the style of an MMO. Building the new systems from nothing and building them in such a way that they could scale required tremendous investment. Activision/Blizzard operates World of Warcraft, the largest and most successful game of it's type. And they had the resources to allow Bungie to build something much larger than anything they had ever built before.
minimaxir 8y ago
Direct link to announcement blog: https://www.bungie.net/en/Explore/Detail/News/47569 https://www.bungie.net/en/Explore/Detail/News/47569 (which I submitted hours ago but didn't get any upvotes due to a bad title)
Waterluvian 8y ago
I wish they'd revisit Pathways into Darkness. One of the greatest games of all time that nobody has played. How can you not be intrigued by an FPS adventure horror RPG text-based adventure?
- germinalphrase 8y ago
  That was a great game. I’ve never been fascinated by the secondary world of a game quite like I was with Pathways into Darkness.
  - ethbro 8y ago
    PiD and Marathon show just how far ahead of the market Bungie was. Halo was most people's introduction, but there are amazing ideas all through their back catalog.
    - germinalphrase 8y ago
      That Marathon Infinity came with an object/level editor was a nice gesture. Had lots of fun with that.
- kbenson 8y ago
  Woah, I hadn't heard of that game before. It looks like a cross between Ultima Underworld and DOOM.
- __david__ 8y ago
  I don't think I could go back to Pathways. It was really a product of it's time and while I enjoyed my time with it, I don't think it has aged very well.
  - Waterluvian 8y ago
    I think there's ideas there that are worth revisiting. One of my favourite being the temporal layering of a story via. Talking to the dead soldiers from different squads from different eras.
danaliv 8y ago
I remember when Bungie first sold to Microsoft. In one of the levels in Halo, there’s a bulletin board on a wall with a flyer that reads: FOR SALE - CHICAGO OFFICE - INTEGRITY Glad to see them fully independent again, even if it took almost two decades.
- jfoutz 8y ago
  I never played marathon. Halo was amazing. I have no problems with the versions I played (1-3). Maybe Microsoft became a bad steward?
  - maroonblazer 8y ago
    Marathon was amazing too. It was the first game I played where I glimpsed the possibilities of what video games could eventually become. The feeling I experienced being not-quite-alone on that ship is still quite vivid. I loved Halo and tried to - but couldn't - get into Destiny. Hoping for the best for/from Bungie.
    - lostlogin 8y ago
      I have only stopped hearing the rocket launcher and alien chatter in everyday life quite recently. It seems seems these things can become etched in your memory.
    - theNJR 8y ago
      OH man. Marathon. My trump card during Mac Vs PC debates in middle school. God I loved that game.
    - saberience 8y ago
      I loved, loved, loved the feeling I got from playing Marathon. It's so hard to explain now but those games had a level of atmosphere and story that I still find almost uncomparable in gaming. I remember playing the Marathon 2 demo again and again because I loved it so much. Something about that feeling of being alone in a very mysterious world and getting sucked deeper into the story...
monocasa 8y ago
How much of the Bungie staff is left from the early 2000s?
- javagram 8y ago
  It’s a year and half out of date by now, but https://www.reddit.com/r/Games/comments/672n45/what_the_people_who_made_halo_2_are_up_to_now/ https://www.reddit.com/r/Games/comments/672n45/what_the_peop... A decent number still at bungie, a lot have moved on to other places of course.
ProfessorLayton 8y ago
Does anybody have any thoughts on how this separation squares with Bungie's recent 100M investment from NetEase? [1]. IIRC this is the same company behind Activision/Blizzard's Diablo mobile game. It would seem that the biggest change here is that Bungie cut out the middleman. [1] https://www.polygon.com/2018/6/1/17418862/bungie-netease-investment https://www.polygon.com/2018/6/1/17418862/bungie-netease-inv...
- alexland 8y ago
  I'd think that the NetEase investment gave them the confidence boost they needed to try out on their own and self-publish in most of the world. As with every non-Chinese game company the question is how they can get a piece of the Chinese market, and now Bungie has their answer.
  - madeofpalk 8y ago
    Or, they took that investment knowing that they’re going to split Destiny from Activision and self-publish in the ‘near’ future
tql 8y ago
I thought Destiny 2 had bombed, given that they gave away copies of it (in December?) if you had a Battle.net account
- Sohcahtoa82 8y ago
  It was a way to increase sales of the expansion that came out only about a month before that.
  - EpicEng 8y ago
    Which was done because sales were disappointing.
crushcrashcrush 8y ago
I can't believe how far they've fallen. Take a look at the brilliance of the first Halo to the clusterfuck that is Destiny - I have such vivid memories of the pacing, art style, music that is Halo. All abandoned for a game completely lacking any story (or backstory!) designed as a MMO money grab grind. Excited to see what's next.
- stuxnet79 8y ago
  While I can't comment on the conditions under which the original Halo trilogy was developed in, reading Blood, Sweat and Pixels [1] really gave a great glimpse into the shit-show that was happening behind the scenes during Destiny's development and why the end result was so ... disappointing. Matter of fact that entire book was a greatest hits collection of dysfunctional work environments, it really gave me perspective on what life is like as a dev in other domains (game industry). [1] https://www.harpercollins.com/9780062651235/blood-sweat-and-pixels/ https://www.harpercollins.com/9780062651235/blood-sweat-and-...
  - ethbro 8y ago
    For curiosity's sake, do any professional game developers have stories of working at a place that wasn't a shit show? Is that just the industry? Or are we just hearing about the worst cases?
    - nikdaheratik 8y ago
      Been reading through the full book of this guy who designed alot of the dungeons in World of Warcraft. He's realistic about alot of the challenges they faced but overall had a good experience with the project. Site: https://whenitsready.com/wowdiary/ https://whenitsready.com/wowdiary/
      - plorkyeran 8y ago
        His description of Blizzard makes it sound like a nightmarish hellhole to me. I get being so passionate about what you're working on that you love your job in spite of all the problems, but he seems to view the problems as being somehow necessary for the parts he loves.
ebg13 8y ago
I wish they'd take back the Myth franchise. :\
- nikdaheratik 8y ago
  I don't know if they could do much more with it, but that was a darn enjoyable video game. I've recently read some of Glen Cook's "Chronicles of the Black Company" and I think that was very much in line with the story in Myth in some ways. It was kind of like reading a novelisation of the game, only to find out the novel was written 15+ years ahead of the game!
  - dwd 8y ago
    Myth 2 was a super fun game that took the squad concept that began with the classic Broderbund The Ancient Art of War and made it look and play really good. Hopefully without the pressure of Activision to just get shit out, they'll be able to craft some more memorable games.
  - mikeash 8y ago
    I’m pretty sure the developers read Cook and that was the direct inspiration for Myth’s story.
    - abakker 8y ago
      Its definitely a thing there. http://myth.bungie.org/legends/delusions/blackcompany.html http://myth.bungie.org/legends/delusions/blackcompany.html Thats a pretty great and detailed page about the parallels. Reading into TBC gave a lot of us a lot of fun when playing Myth and endlessly debating the story canon back in the day.
dbg31415 8y ago
2019 marks the 25th anniversary of the release of Marathon. * Marathon (video game) - Wikipedia || https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marathon_(video_game) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marathon_(video_game) I remember running AppleTalk network cables (the ones with the phone line adapters) out of windows between dorm rooms in the winter. Risking life and limb to crawl out on ice-covered ledges just to build a network that allowed us to play Marathon. Modding the game was really fun too, we'd build guns that were more powerful, or guns that shot out drones that could help you. I remember setting one of the enemies to create a clone of itself -- introduction to loops right there as my Macintosh Performa ran out of RAM. I still feel like, even to date, the immersive story telling in this game was some of the best I've seen. Impressive given they were working on computers that had less power than today's phones -- like 1/1,000th of the power of today's phones. I remember running the game on a Color Classic with 33 MHZ and 4 MB of RAM.
matchbok 8y ago
Interesting. Hopefully they start producing quality stuff, but really, the people who made the best games (Marathon, Halo) don't even work there anymore.
- hannasanarion 8y ago
  That's true, but institutional memory is a thing. Those people established and influenced systems that persist. There isn't anybody in the US government who was there for the 1970s, but the US is still fundamentally the same entity that does the same things the same way
rubayeet 8y ago
I wish BioWare would have done the same. EA Games pushed them to make Mass Effect Andromeda a Multi Player Shooter. The result was a mess.
- JeremyReimer 8y ago
  Mass Effect Andromeda was no more a multiplayer shooter than Mass Effect 3 was. The multiplayer was optional. Andromeda had other problems, but it wasn't quite as bad a game as the Internet made it out to be. It just wasn't nearly as good as the opening game of the original series.
  - caconym_ 8y ago
    Not quite optional... I only found after finishing the story of ME3 that since I had not played any multiplayer I'd been denied the best ending, even though I was meticulous in securing the best outcomes in the single player quests, storylines, etc. It absolutely was not clear that multiplayer alone could make that difference, and I was furious. I know they released more content to improve the ending, but I could never go back, because the story was finished. A story I'd been invested in for years, and they pulled the rug out at the last second. My problem with Andromeda was that it was essentially exactly the same setup as the first trilogy but copy-pasted into a new setting, which forced them to scrap all the lore except as it pertained to what the crew brought with them. Why not a prequel, instead? That, or tell a new story.
cryptonerd2212 8y ago
Blizzard would do well to do the same, but I'm afraid that too many of the people that made Warcraft and Diablo franchises great have already left.
- astonex 8y ago
  Blizzard is not a separate company with just a publishing contract like Bungie did. Blizzard was bought out by Activision and is now Activision-Blizzard and treated as a subsidiary company. I suppose Blizzard could try to raise enough capital to buy themselves but I think its unlikely
  - SneakerXZ 8y ago
    Blizzard was not bought. It was owned for more than decade by Vivendi, and it merged with Activision.
- beezischillin 8y ago
  According to one of their community managers, Blizzard is making their own choices independently so all of their trouble is of their own making. https://us.forums.blizzard.com/en/wow/t/activision-and-blizzard-relationship/68419/26 https://us.forums.blizzard.com/en/wow/t/activision-and-blizz...
  - hajhatten 8y ago
    All of the news from the last couple of months would prove the opposite, Baghdad Bob.
  - Crosseye_Jack 8y ago
    I remember Jeff Kaplin saying in an interview they had to go to activision and get the go ahead to make Overwatch and it been nerve wrecking. iirc this was after the mmo had been cancelled internally and the team had given them selfs 3 weeks or so to come up with something or move onto other things. I’ll see if I can dig it out. EDIT: I would swore I saw the info in video interview with in, but in the brief time searching I couldn't find it (Though I haven't had any coffee yet, so i'm not on my game just yet) but I did find an text interview[0] / - Under "Selling Overwatch to the Execs" > It was an easy sell to Blizzard, but pitching it to Activision left the team nervous. After all, they were about to tell the makers of Call of Duty that they had a great idea for a brand new game: a shooter! (Something Kaplan says he only thought about after the fact.) Kaplan ran through the slides of Team 4’s Overwatch presentation to a silent audience, until Activision CEO Bobby Kotick stopped him and asked him to go back three slides. > “I’m thinking ‘Oh no, what was back three slides?'” Kaplan said. > It turned out to be the original hero lineup, which will look familiar to any Overwatch fan: a row of heroes on a white background. The heroes don’t look quite the same as they do today, but the style is already Overwatch. “This is going to be an amazing universe,” Kotick said, and the rest is history. [0] https://blizzardwatch.com/2017/11/05/blizzcon-2017-overwatch-rose-titans-failure https://blizzardwatch.com/2017/11/05/blizzcon-2017-overwatch... I mean Activision ovb didn't kick up much of a fuss as you know we actually have Overwatch :-P but it was just a point that Blizz's first new IP in years still had to go past the CEO of Activision before getting the green light to go into full dev.
jrobn 8y ago
My first Bungie game was Myth. I absolutely loved the series. First time I was drawn into the story and characters. I loved being able give names to the characters and keep them alive. It was slow paced but surprising suspenseful. Online multiplayer in later titles was hilarious. I also remember the teaser to what would become halo. I think originally Halo was going to be a lot more like Destiny...Then the xbox came along and microsoft bought Bungie.
- selimthegrim 8y ago
  Myth had a plot quality and replay value way beyond what I expected for the price point. Not really comparable to even the AI in Shogun, but still more replayable.
  - abakker 8y ago
    Agree. There was a real story going on inside Myth and Myth 2. Both genuine efforts of creativity beyond just the gameplay.
    - saberience 8y ago
      Remembering the story in Myth and Myth 2, the music, and so on, still gives me major nostalgia. I loved the story of the Heron Guard in Myth 2, amazing.
      - abakker 8y ago
        https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8hTgvNsqb9Y https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8hTgvNsqb9Y I love how that track ended up in Halo, also.
- bliblah 8y ago
  Myth is criminally underrated both in terms of gameplay and technological ambition. Real time reflections, Physics based projectiles, wide variety of multiplayer options and customization, hand animated cutscenes, a post apocalyptic medieval fantasy setting it is certainly one of the most unique games I have played. It's one of my favorite games of all time and I wish they would rerelease it or at least add modern OS support for it.
CoryG89 8y ago
Unrelated, but probably the most amazing thing I've ever seen in a video game is someone getting killed by a hyper-accelerated traffic cone on this Halo 3 map from Bungie: Traffic cone ownage https://youtu.be/ym0BtwmCvoc https://youtu.be/ym0BtwmCvoc
- ezekg 8y ago
  This brings me back.
_cerv 8y ago
I worked there for a bit and as its been a few years since I last swiped my badge in Bellevue, but I think there are a few tidbits I can add. - Independence has always been a priority for Bungie, the leaked contract and the relationships with Activision/Blizzard/HalfMoon were always "at most we are peers". Bungie got what they wanted out of this deal, a bit of a mentor relationship with Blizzard and some knowhow on large scale publishing and marketing from Activision. I dont think the endgame was anything less of getting out after Destiny 4+ - Leaving might have to do more with sunsetting and moving on from the Destiny franchise than creative freedom for it. I still have a few friends (Hey guys!) there and there has been a bit of burnout. The community will either reward you with riches and praise for something as simple as a cool looking weapon or dump hate and death threats for what should be a needed stats nerf. So people's eyes started to wander on other things. After the departure of the long time studio head onto his garage game experiment, you saw a lot of exits and shuffling. - Destiny was slated for 4 milestone releases, each with point releases. This was laid out on a conference whiteboard at one point, where every two years you saw a new Destiny release with a core gameplay mechanic added (dogfighting spaceships in the expanses past Pluto?) and point releases that seem to dance from one race story to another. Something about having your future lined up and being contractually obligated to draw out an already gutted story over 8-10 years can be a bit draining, especially when revenue takes a significant hit after Fortnite and you are still expected to maintain the same AAA dev costs. - Some of the old timers hate being known as the "Halo" company and departing means that they don't have to just be the "Destiny" company. These designers, from Jason, down to the tester who makes sure you dont get nausea from an ingame fall, care more about the art and experience than the microtransaction potential. They would rather build new IP that sold itself than something that keeps you on the treadmill. - The culture there was easily the best in the industry for a studio of its size. They put a serious effort to bring everyone to the table, from the Pentathlon and playing some random Wii game with a Senior Executive and getting a bit tipsy, to having lunch and probing questions with Jason as he mowed down a bowl of frozen peaches and quinoa. Bungie did what it could to make you feel like you were a part of the family, even if you didnt work on HaloX or if you were just a Tester, or if you were just a tester. When I was there, I never felt like I was a part of Activision, and from what I gathered in the years since, that hasn't changed much. Artists, designers, and engineers always came before the marketing and profiters. I know they are building something new, and given the frustrations they had with Activision and the lessons learned on Destiny2, its going to be a piece of fun art.
stuart78 8y ago
Just one opinion here, but I've played a /ton/ of Destiny in a fairly casual but consistent way (e.g. no raids or Mic) since launch, and I think it is fairy underrated at this point. There were definitely droughts along the way, but at this point it is a solid game, which when played on Xbox One X is IMHO the finest looking game on consoles. The semi-multiplayer modes are great fun and they've tuned the weekly reset cycle to a point where pretty much every play session is rewarding in some way or another. I'm glad for their independence and look forward to what the future brings, and I do hope that further investment in Destiny (3 or continuation of 2) is part of that picture.
- jasonlotito 8y ago
  Since 2014 I've been playing with mostly one solid group of real-life friends. We've had times where we weren't playing as much, but Destiny would eventually draw us back. Forsaken has been amazing, and we are having a blast at the moment. This is the best Destiny has ever been. The general sentiment among friends (and the community) is that this is a good thing.
- emdowling 8y ago
  I share this opinion. I was so excited for Destiny (fun fact: it came out the same day Apple announced the Apple Watch - I remember playing Destiny then taking a break to tune into the keynote) but it was pretty unpolished on Day 1. I dived back in with The Taken King, which I really enjoyed. I ignored Destiny 2 when it first came out, then picked it up on Black Friday last year with all the expansions. I basically treat it as a single player game and absolutely love it. The combat is so sharp and tight, the missions are enjoyable. I know it has a lot to offer with raids and fireteams and all of that, but I just want a few hours of escapism and for that, it truly delivers.
- Bombthecat 8y ago
  Rumor has it, that they join netease... Which then leads to a mobile version of destiny...
- hatsunearu 8y ago
  >they've tuned the weekly reset cycle to a point where pretty much every play session is rewarding in some way or another. Oh my god this. It's almost impossible for you to rotate through all daily's and weekly's with three characters without resetting before you're done. It's great, it's still the same seemingly mundane stuff (just kill a bunch of shit, collect whatever bullshit) if I read it aloud to you, but it's so damn satisfying. The gunplay is a well oiled machine, and it feels amazing to just screw around.
skilled 8y ago
Now if only Blizzard had the balls to do the same.
- Aromasin 8y ago
  Blizzard and Bungie have a completely different relationship to Activision. Bungie was a game developer with Activision as the publisher; Blizzard was bought by Activision, and merged to become 'Activision Blizzard studios'. We're not going to see anything of the same from Blizzard.
m0zg 8y ago
How do they manage to "depart" from acquisitions and take the IP with them? How does that work, lawyer-wise?
- javagram 8y ago
  Bungie wasn’t acquired by activision, they were an independent developer that had a publishing contract for the Destiny franchise with activision. Seems like the contract was renegotiated at the request of one side or the other.
deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
ponco 8y ago
I remember listening to the Bungie podcast many many years ago right as they sold to MS. For me, the saddest part was the bastardisation of the Halo series. 343i have just never quite had the same spark. Destiny & Activision just showed me to that the creative forces behind the Myth/Halo series were well and truly gone. This is an exciting new dawn. Can't wait for what's next.
miguelmota 8y ago
Hoping they bring back the gameplay quality back that Halo 3 had. Halo 3 was one of the best games ever made
mscasts 8y ago
I hope they can start to make good games again. Game companies seems too politically correct to cater to gamers though.
- SmellyGeekBoy 8y ago
  I'm not sure what you mean by "too politically correct to cater to gamers" here. Series like Hotline Miami, GTA, RDR, Duke Nukem etc don't seem to agree.
Traster 8y ago
I see a tonne of people making statements along the lines of "That's great, now Bungie can back to being the company that makes games like Halo". But can someone explain to me why they think that could ever happen? The Microsoft acquisition was a key part of what made Halo, Bungie was a way smaller company back then and a huge amount of the talent will have moved on. How many companies churn out great series decades apart? I just think people are setting themselves up for a HL3 situation again- huge expectations that never get delivered on.
dasKrokodil 8y ago
I wish they'd do a successor to Oni, this time with multiplayer (which was promised for the first time, but not delivered).
- Dragonai 8y ago
  I love seeing Oni mentioned in discussions about Bungie. It's always held a special place in my heart. Did you ever check out the Anniversary Edition mod? It's a massive community-made enhancement to the base game that adds a ton of fixes alongside a really dope mod framework. The reason I bring this up is because it allows for stuff like Oni Team Arena[0], a fake multiplayer mode that lets you basically play team deathmatch with bots. It's super fun and when I first played it, it breathed a whole new life into the game for me. [0]: https://wiki.oni2.net/AE:OTA https://wiki.oni2.net/AE:OTA
bovermyer 8y ago
So... what does this mean for Destiny 2's presence in the Blizzard Launcher?
- shiburizu 8y ago
  press is reporting there won't be any changes and launcher will still show Destiny. Safe to assume D2 is on its deathbed so they don't have to stick around too long.
  - Svoka 8y ago
    I think it was there after they was giving it away for a month and still no one wanted to play it.
  - bovermyer 8y ago
    ...but I like Destiny 2. =(
deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
redsummer 8y ago
Is there any modern game like Myth II?
bliblah 8y ago
So how does this benefit Activision? It seems everyone is focusing on Bungie but not asking how in the world Activision allowed this to pass. Did bungie just give them a bunch of cash? Giving up destiny is still a huge cash cow with the franchise bringing in well over $500 million since it was released in 2014.

343 points by kposehn 8y ago

Welp, that means we won’t be able to blame Activision for any stupid decisions from here on out... I do wish Bungie the best here. I also suspect that the next installment will be more of a “$x/month for everything” instead of the “$x for the game and $x for the expansions” they’ve been doing.

wmichelin 8y ago

Hopefully we see Bungie put out a game at the quality of the original Halo games

TaylorAlexander 8y ago
Marathon sequel!
- crushcrashcrush 8y ago
  This would be amazing. M2:Durandal on my Performa 6400... good memories.
crushcrashcrush 8y ago
I agree. Halo: CE was an absolute masterpiece.
- ezekg 8y ago
  I still play CE from time to time. Such a great game.
  - aaronmdjones 8y ago
    You should check out Halo SPv3 -- Halo 1 campaign, but Halo 2 & 3 weapons/vehicles/enemies, massively expanded Pillar of Autumn & Assault On The Control Room levels, and a whole new reimagined The Silent Cartographer.

cde-v 8y ago

Fingers crossed that Destiny 3 is good, but definitely not pre-ordering anything.

p1necone 8y ago
I'm still annoyed that there even was a Destiny 2, when the first one was announced I was promised a shooter in a persistent world with mmo progression that would be supported for years, not a series of sequels I had to buy again and make a new character.
- gnahckire 8y ago
  This was the biggest con for me. Earning all of my gear in D1 then not having those available for import into D2 was really upsetting. The D1 weapons felt great. It's a shame Bungie keeps leaving gear they designed so far behind every iteration. I wish they at least added something like transmog. I remember going to D1 panel during PAX West one year and Luke mentioning that there were many WoW players that worked at Bungie. I really wonder WTF is going on over there lately.
- sergiotapia 8y ago
  It's the reason I quit playing about 7 months ago. I have a _lot_ of raids under my belt. I used to speedrun them with randos for fun. I have yet to attempt the latest raid because I thought to myself: "When Destiny 3 comes out, this won't matter." https://raid.report/pc/4611686018467283801 https://raid.report/pc/4611686018467283801 The only way they can bring me back is by announcing a rename of Destiny 2 to Destiny, and confirm there will be no stand-alone sequels. The Destiny universe is my favorite in-game universe. I could go on for hours! Did Rasputin cripple the Traveller because he was going to abandon us like he did the Fallen? Is Rasputin benevolent or indifferent? I hope dearly they try to bring me back. I miss it.
  - maxsilver 8y ago
    I would be happy if they rename Destiny 3 to "Destiny United" or similar, and just allow us to import our old D1 and D2 characters (weapons, armor, etc) into it all at once. But the constant, repeated trashing of earned stuff (and recently, the massive spike in grind-wasting-time required) turned me off. Warmind + Forsaken was peak Destiny 2, but with Black Armory they're already sliding away from that again. I don't blame Bungie for it. I get that everyone on Reddit complained there wasn't enough time wasting, so Bungie added a bunch of time wasting, to make Reddit happy. But it's just too much. I can't imagine what Destiny will look like in 6 months if they keep on this path. "Do 100 hours of homework first, and then we'll let you play with the cool thing you just bought".

JohnJamesRambo 8y ago

And I’m suddenly interested again.

dcow 8y ago

I hope I live to see the death of publishers.

SeanBoocock 8y ago
I'm curious why. As a developer who has worked for a big publisher at an internal studio and worked with publishers as an independent developer, publishers still have an important role to play. On the smaller scale, publishers are one, and often the best, way to service tasks that a small team would not be able to fulfill themselves (marketing, pr, QA, localization, etc). As you scale up the size of project, it becomes harder to find the level of investment required outside of a publisher relationship. Not all publishers are created equal and even a "good" publisher might not be the best fit for your team or project. However, I don't see the idea of publishers as some anachronism or necessary evil, and I hope to work with them long into the future.
- lawnchair_larry 8y ago
  Do publishers have influence over monetization strategies? Are they typically the ones asking for gimmicks like loot boxes? I have heard mixed things on this, but had the impression that the development studio generally dislikes these mechanics, and publishers generally force them to include them.
  - SalimoS 8y ago
    i don't know but for the case of bungie/Activision the idea of everest (the micro-transactions in Destiny) was solely bungie (and they already admit it)
- kkarakk 8y ago
  A game development company should have publisher as a service not the other way around. publishers pushing game companies to monetise more heavily is a plague on our times
- rjf72 8y ago
  One major issue I have is that I think the way you 'ought' make money is to make a product that you believe to be good, and put it out there. And for many years, this was the model with video games. But in the last decade or two publishers have MBA'd games. It's design by focus group, selling games piecemeal through DLC that would previously have been a part of the core experience, annoying or otherwise coercing players into buying DLC instead of creating stuff people want to buy, stripping out all but the most bare essentials of a game, rushing products out the door prematurely, etc. And then in terms of what's published they always chase whatever's trending obsessively and generally singularly. Minecraft is the most profitable game ever made in in terms of revenue / costs. But it's something that likely would have never been picked up by a mainstream publisher. No story, no graphics, no dlc, free updates, and you just kind of play with blocks..? Notch would have been laughed out of any publisher's office. It's now the best selling game of all time, behind only tetris. Apparently we like blocks. Then he gets bought up by a big publisher and they start marketing Minecraft 4k, as in 4k resolution... I seriously thought that was a meme or a joke the first time I saw it. Just emphasizes how irredeemably out of touch these publishers tend to be. And then there is what publishers do to the studios they acquire. When EA buys a studio it's as good as signing its death certificate. I have absolutely no understanding of why this is. It makes no economic sense at all to spend substantial sums of money to buy a studio only to completely kill it off, but it happens over and over and over. And it's no acquihires, they tend to lose most of the premium talent. But the list of studios killed off by EA alone is just completely tragic: Maxis, Mythic, Bullfrog, Origin, Westwood, Phenomic, Pandemic, etc..

2bitencryption 8y ago

> Bungie and Activision teamed up all those years ago essentially because the former needed a jump-start to develop Destiny Jump start? I thought Bungie was one of the most wildly successful video game studios out there, at the time? Did they need a jump start?

manfredo 8y ago
Being a self published studio isn't just about having a lot of money (though that's often a prerequisite, at least for AAA games). There's also experience with marketing, relationships with console manufacturers, market research, negotiating platform pricing. Publishers' knowledge of these things make it useful for a studio to still team up with a publisher even if the studio is swimming in cash.
SeanBoocock 8y ago
As a wholly owned subsidiary of Microsoft from whom they had just been spun out. I doubt they had anywhere near the capital to staff a AAA production, and even if they did why not mitigate your downside by working with a publisher? This is standard practice for most large independent developers and for many of the same reasons that people take on investment in the broader business community.
Kapura 8y ago
Bungie had only marginal experience supporting online persistence in the style of an MMO. Building the new systems from nothing and building them in such a way that they could scale required tremendous investment. Activision/Blizzard operates World of Warcraft, the largest and most successful game of it's type. And they had the resources to allow Bungie to build something much larger than anything they had ever built before.

minimaxir 8y ago

Direct link to announcement blog: https://www.bungie.net/en/Explore/Detail/News/47569 https://www.bungie.net/en/Explore/Detail/News/47569 (which I submitted hours ago but didn't get any upvotes due to a bad title)

Waterluvian 8y ago

I wish they'd revisit Pathways into Darkness. One of the greatest games of all time that nobody has played. How can you not be intrigued by an FPS adventure horror RPG text-based adventure?

germinalphrase 8y ago
That was a great game. I’ve never been fascinated by the secondary world of a game quite like I was with Pathways into Darkness.
- ethbro 8y ago
  PiD and Marathon show just how far ahead of the market Bungie was. Halo was most people's introduction, but there are amazing ideas all through their back catalog.
  - germinalphrase 8y ago
    That Marathon Infinity came with an object/level editor was a nice gesture. Had lots of fun with that.
kbenson 8y ago
Woah, I hadn't heard of that game before. It looks like a cross between Ultima Underworld and DOOM.
__david__ 8y ago
I don't think I could go back to Pathways. It was really a product of it's time and while I enjoyed my time with it, I don't think it has aged very well.
- Waterluvian 8y ago
  I think there's ideas there that are worth revisiting. One of my favourite being the temporal layering of a story via. Talking to the dead soldiers from different squads from different eras.

danaliv 8y ago

I remember when Bungie first sold to Microsoft. In one of the levels in Halo, there’s a bulletin board on a wall with a flyer that reads: FOR SALE - CHICAGO OFFICE - INTEGRITY Glad to see them fully independent again, even if it took almost two decades.

jfoutz 8y ago
I never played marathon. Halo was amazing. I have no problems with the versions I played (1-3). Maybe Microsoft became a bad steward?
- maroonblazer 8y ago
  Marathon was amazing too. It was the first game I played where I glimpsed the possibilities of what video games could eventually become. The feeling I experienced being not-quite-alone on that ship is still quite vivid. I loved Halo and tried to - but couldn't - get into Destiny. Hoping for the best for/from Bungie.
  - lostlogin 8y ago
    I have only stopped hearing the rocket launcher and alien chatter in everyday life quite recently. It seems seems these things can become etched in your memory.
  - theNJR 8y ago
    OH man. Marathon. My trump card during Mac Vs PC debates in middle school. God I loved that game.
  - saberience 8y ago
    I loved, loved, loved the feeling I got from playing Marathon. It's so hard to explain now but those games had a level of atmosphere and story that I still find almost uncomparable in gaming. I remember playing the Marathon 2 demo again and again because I loved it so much. Something about that feeling of being alone in a very mysterious world and getting sucked deeper into the story...

monocasa 8y ago

How much of the Bungie staff is left from the early 2000s?

javagram 8y ago
It’s a year and half out of date by now, but https://www.reddit.com/r/Games/comments/672n45/what_the_people_who_made_halo_2_are_up_to_now/ https://www.reddit.com/r/Games/comments/672n45/what_the_peop... A decent number still at bungie, a lot have moved on to other places of course.

ProfessorLayton 8y ago

Does anybody have any thoughts on how this separation squares with Bungie's recent 100M investment from NetEase? [1]. IIRC this is the same company behind Activision/Blizzard's Diablo mobile game. It would seem that the biggest change here is that Bungie cut out the middleman. [1] https://www.polygon.com/2018/6/1/17418862/bungie-netease-investment https://www.polygon.com/2018/6/1/17418862/bungie-netease-inv...

alexland 8y ago
I'd think that the NetEase investment gave them the confidence boost they needed to try out on their own and self-publish in most of the world. As with every non-Chinese game company the question is how they can get a piece of the Chinese market, and now Bungie has their answer.
- madeofpalk 8y ago
  Or, they took that investment knowing that they’re going to split Destiny from Activision and self-publish in the ‘near’ future

tql 8y ago

I thought Destiny 2 had bombed, given that they gave away copies of it (in December?) if you had a Battle.net account

Sohcahtoa82 8y ago
It was a way to increase sales of the expansion that came out only about a month before that.
- EpicEng 8y ago
  Which was done because sales were disappointing.

crushcrashcrush 8y ago

I can't believe how far they've fallen. Take a look at the brilliance of the first Halo to the clusterfuck that is Destiny - I have such vivid memories of the pacing, art style, music that is Halo. All abandoned for a game completely lacking any story (or backstory!) designed as a MMO money grab grind. Excited to see what's next.

stuxnet79 8y ago
While I can't comment on the conditions under which the original Halo trilogy was developed in, reading Blood, Sweat and Pixels [1] really gave a great glimpse into the shit-show that was happening behind the scenes during Destiny's development and why the end result was so ... disappointing. Matter of fact that entire book was a greatest hits collection of dysfunctional work environments, it really gave me perspective on what life is like as a dev in other domains (game industry). [1] https://www.harpercollins.com/9780062651235/blood-sweat-and-pixels/ https://www.harpercollins.com/9780062651235/blood-sweat-and-...
- ethbro 8y ago
  For curiosity's sake, do any professional game developers have stories of working at a place that wasn't a shit show? Is that just the industry? Or are we just hearing about the worst cases?
  - nikdaheratik 8y ago
    Been reading through the full book of this guy who designed alot of the dungeons in World of Warcraft. He's realistic about alot of the challenges they faced but overall had a good experience with the project. Site: https://whenitsready.com/wowdiary/ https://whenitsready.com/wowdiary/
    - plorkyeran 8y ago
      His description of Blizzard makes it sound like a nightmarish hellhole to me. I get being so passionate about what you're working on that you love your job in spite of all the problems, but he seems to view the problems as being somehow necessary for the parts he loves.

ebg13 8y ago

I wish they'd take back the Myth franchise. :\

nikdaheratik 8y ago
I don't know if they could do much more with it, but that was a darn enjoyable video game. I've recently read some of Glen Cook's "Chronicles of the Black Company" and I think that was very much in line with the story in Myth in some ways. It was kind of like reading a novelisation of the game, only to find out the novel was written 15+ years ahead of the game!
- dwd 8y ago
  Myth 2 was a super fun game that took the squad concept that began with the classic Broderbund The Ancient Art of War and made it look and play really good. Hopefully without the pressure of Activision to just get shit out, they'll be able to craft some more memorable games.
- mikeash 8y ago
  I’m pretty sure the developers read Cook and that was the direct inspiration for Myth’s story.
  - abakker 8y ago
    Its definitely a thing there. http://myth.bungie.org/legends/delusions/blackcompany.html http://myth.bungie.org/legends/delusions/blackcompany.html Thats a pretty great and detailed page about the parallels. Reading into TBC gave a lot of us a lot of fun when playing Myth and endlessly debating the story canon back in the day.

dbg31415 8y ago

2019 marks the 25th anniversary of the release of Marathon. * Marathon (video game) - Wikipedia || https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marathon_(video_game) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marathon_(video_game) I remember running AppleTalk network cables (the ones with the phone line adapters) out of windows between dorm rooms in the winter. Risking life and limb to crawl out on ice-covered ledges just to build a network that allowed us to play Marathon. Modding the game was really fun too, we'd build guns that were more powerful, or guns that shot out drones that could help you. I remember setting one of the enemies to create a clone of itself -- introduction to loops right there as my Macintosh Performa ran out of RAM. I still feel like, even to date, the immersive story telling in this game was some of the best I've seen. Impressive given they were working on computers that had less power than today's phones -- like 1/1,000th of the power of today's phones. I remember running the game on a Color Classic with 33 MHZ and 4 MB of RAM.

matchbok 8y ago

Interesting. Hopefully they start producing quality stuff, but really, the people who made the best games (Marathon, Halo) don't even work there anymore.

hannasanarion 8y ago
That's true, but institutional memory is a thing. Those people established and influenced systems that persist. There isn't anybody in the US government who was there for the 1970s, but the US is still fundamentally the same entity that does the same things the same way

rubayeet 8y ago

I wish BioWare would have done the same. EA Games pushed them to make Mass Effect Andromeda a Multi Player Shooter. The result was a mess.

JeremyReimer 8y ago
Mass Effect Andromeda was no more a multiplayer shooter than Mass Effect 3 was. The multiplayer was optional. Andromeda had other problems, but it wasn't quite as bad a game as the Internet made it out to be. It just wasn't nearly as good as the opening game of the original series.
- caconym_ 8y ago
  Not quite optional... I only found after finishing the story of ME3 that since I had not played any multiplayer I'd been denied the best ending, even though I was meticulous in securing the best outcomes in the single player quests, storylines, etc. It absolutely was not clear that multiplayer alone could make that difference, and I was furious. I know they released more content to improve the ending, but I could never go back, because the story was finished. A story I'd been invested in for years, and they pulled the rug out at the last second. My problem with Andromeda was that it was essentially exactly the same setup as the first trilogy but copy-pasted into a new setting, which forced them to scrap all the lore except as it pertained to what the crew brought with them. Why not a prequel, instead? That, or tell a new story.

cryptonerd2212 8y ago

Blizzard would do well to do the same, but I'm afraid that too many of the people that made Warcraft and Diablo franchises great have already left.

astonex 8y ago
Blizzard is not a separate company with just a publishing contract like Bungie did. Blizzard was bought out by Activision and is now Activision-Blizzard and treated as a subsidiary company. I suppose Blizzard could try to raise enough capital to buy themselves but I think its unlikely
- SneakerXZ 8y ago
  Blizzard was not bought. It was owned for more than decade by Vivendi, and it merged with Activision.
beezischillin 8y ago
According to one of their community managers, Blizzard is making their own choices independently so all of their trouble is of their own making. https://us.forums.blizzard.com/en/wow/t/activision-and-blizzard-relationship/68419/26 https://us.forums.blizzard.com/en/wow/t/activision-and-blizz...
- hajhatten 8y ago
  All of the news from the last couple of months would prove the opposite, Baghdad Bob.
- Crosseye_Jack 8y ago
  I remember Jeff Kaplin saying in an interview they had to go to activision and get the go ahead to make Overwatch and it been nerve wrecking. iirc this was after the mmo had been cancelled internally and the team had given them selfs 3 weeks or so to come up with something or move onto other things. I’ll see if I can dig it out. EDIT: I would swore I saw the info in video interview with in, but in the brief time searching I couldn't find it (Though I haven't had any coffee yet, so i'm not on my game just yet) but I did find an text interview[0] / - Under "Selling Overwatch to the Execs" > It was an easy sell to Blizzard, but pitching it to Activision left the team nervous. After all, they were about to tell the makers of Call of Duty that they had a great idea for a brand new game: a shooter! (Something Kaplan says he only thought about after the fact.) Kaplan ran through the slides of Team 4’s Overwatch presentation to a silent audience, until Activision CEO Bobby Kotick stopped him and asked him to go back three slides. > “I’m thinking ‘Oh no, what was back three slides?'” Kaplan said. > It turned out to be the original hero lineup, which will look familiar to any Overwatch fan: a row of heroes on a white background. The heroes don’t look quite the same as they do today, but the style is already Overwatch. “This is going to be an amazing universe,” Kotick said, and the rest is history. [0] https://blizzardwatch.com/2017/11/05/blizzcon-2017-overwatch-rose-titans-failure https://blizzardwatch.com/2017/11/05/blizzcon-2017-overwatch... I mean Activision ovb didn't kick up much of a fuss as you know we actually have Overwatch :-P but it was just a point that Blizz's first new IP in years still had to go past the CEO of Activision before getting the green light to go into full dev.

jrobn 8y ago

My first Bungie game was Myth. I absolutely loved the series. First time I was drawn into the story and characters. I loved being able give names to the characters and keep them alive. It was slow paced but surprising suspenseful. Online multiplayer in later titles was hilarious. I also remember the teaser to what would become halo. I think originally Halo was going to be a lot more like Destiny...Then the xbox came along and microsoft bought Bungie.

selimthegrim 8y ago
Myth had a plot quality and replay value way beyond what I expected for the price point. Not really comparable to even the AI in Shogun, but still more replayable.
- abakker 8y ago
  Agree. There was a real story going on inside Myth and Myth 2. Both genuine efforts of creativity beyond just the gameplay.
  - saberience 8y ago
    Remembering the story in Myth and Myth 2, the music, and so on, still gives me major nostalgia. I loved the story of the Heron Guard in Myth 2, amazing.
    - abakker 8y ago
      https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8hTgvNsqb9Y https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8hTgvNsqb9Y I love how that track ended up in Halo, also.
bliblah 8y ago
Myth is criminally underrated both in terms of gameplay and technological ambition. Real time reflections, Physics based projectiles, wide variety of multiplayer options and customization, hand animated cutscenes, a post apocalyptic medieval fantasy setting it is certainly one of the most unique games I have played. It's one of my favorite games of all time and I wish they would rerelease it or at least add modern OS support for it.

CoryG89 8y ago

Unrelated, but probably the most amazing thing I've ever seen in a video game is someone getting killed by a hyper-accelerated traffic cone on this Halo 3 map from Bungie: Traffic cone ownage https://youtu.be/ym0BtwmCvoc https://youtu.be/ym0BtwmCvoc

ezekg 8y ago
This brings me back.

_cerv 8y ago

I worked there for a bit and as its been a few years since I last swiped my badge in Bellevue, but I think there are a few tidbits I can add. - Independence has always been a priority for Bungie, the leaked contract and the relationships with Activision/Blizzard/HalfMoon were always "at most we are peers". Bungie got what they wanted out of this deal, a bit of a mentor relationship with Blizzard and some knowhow on large scale publishing and marketing from Activision. I dont think the endgame was anything less of getting out after Destiny 4+ - Leaving might have to do more with sunsetting and moving on from the Destiny franchise than creative freedom for it. I still have a few friends (Hey guys!) there and there has been a bit of burnout. The community will either reward you with riches and praise for something as simple as a cool looking weapon or dump hate and death threats for what should be a needed stats nerf. So people's eyes started to wander on other things. After the departure of the long time studio head onto his garage game experiment, you saw a lot of exits and shuffling. - Destiny was slated for 4 milestone releases, each with point releases. This was laid out on a conference whiteboard at one point, where every two years you saw a new Destiny release with a core gameplay mechanic added (dogfighting spaceships in the expanses past Pluto?) and point releases that seem to dance from one race story to another. Something about having your future lined up and being contractually obligated to draw out an already gutted story over 8-10 years can be a bit draining, especially when revenue takes a significant hit after Fortnite and you are still expected to maintain the same AAA dev costs. - Some of the old timers hate being known as the "Halo" company and departing means that they don't have to just be the "Destiny" company. These designers, from Jason, down to the tester who makes sure you dont get nausea from an ingame fall, care more about the art and experience than the microtransaction potential. They would rather build new IP that sold itself than something that keeps you on the treadmill. - The culture there was easily the best in the industry for a studio of its size. They put a serious effort to bring everyone to the table, from the Pentathlon and playing some random Wii game with a Senior Executive and getting a bit tipsy, to having lunch and probing questions with Jason as he mowed down a bowl of frozen peaches and quinoa. Bungie did what it could to make you feel like you were a part of the family, even if you didnt work on HaloX or if you were just a Tester, or if you were just a tester. When I was there, I never felt like I was a part of Activision, and from what I gathered in the years since, that hasn't changed much. Artists, designers, and engineers always came before the marketing and profiters. I know they are building something new, and given the frustrations they had with Activision and the lessons learned on Destiny2, its going to be a piece of fun art.

stuart78 8y ago

Just one opinion here, but I've played a /ton/ of Destiny in a fairly casual but consistent way (e.g. no raids or Mic) since launch, and I think it is fairy underrated at this point. There were definitely droughts along the way, but at this point it is a solid game, which when played on Xbox One X is IMHO the finest looking game on consoles. The semi-multiplayer modes are great fun and they've tuned the weekly reset cycle to a point where pretty much every play session is rewarding in some way or another. I'm glad for their independence and look forward to what the future brings, and I do hope that further investment in Destiny (3 or continuation of 2) is part of that picture.

jasonlotito 8y ago
Since 2014 I've been playing with mostly one solid group of real-life friends. We've had times where we weren't playing as much, but Destiny would eventually draw us back. Forsaken has been amazing, and we are having a blast at the moment. This is the best Destiny has ever been. The general sentiment among friends (and the community) is that this is a good thing.
emdowling 8y ago
I share this opinion. I was so excited for Destiny (fun fact: it came out the same day Apple announced the Apple Watch - I remember playing Destiny then taking a break to tune into the keynote) but it was pretty unpolished on Day 1. I dived back in with The Taken King, which I really enjoyed. I ignored Destiny 2 when it first came out, then picked it up on Black Friday last year with all the expansions. I basically treat it as a single player game and absolutely love it. The combat is so sharp and tight, the missions are enjoyable. I know it has a lot to offer with raids and fireteams and all of that, but I just want a few hours of escapism and for that, it truly delivers.
Bombthecat 8y ago
Rumor has it, that they join netease... Which then leads to a mobile version of destiny...
hatsunearu 8y ago
>they've tuned the weekly reset cycle to a point where pretty much every play session is rewarding in some way or another. Oh my god this. It's almost impossible for you to rotate through all daily's and weekly's with three characters without resetting before you're done. It's great, it's still the same seemingly mundane stuff (just kill a bunch of shit, collect whatever bullshit) if I read it aloud to you, but it's so damn satisfying. The gunplay is a well oiled machine, and it feels amazing to just screw around.

skilled 8y ago

Now if only Blizzard had the balls to do the same.

Aromasin 8y ago
Blizzard and Bungie have a completely different relationship to Activision. Bungie was a game developer with Activision as the publisher; Blizzard was bought by Activision, and merged to become 'Activision Blizzard studios'. We're not going to see anything of the same from Blizzard.

m0zg 8y ago

How do they manage to "depart" from acquisitions and take the IP with them? How does that work, lawyer-wise?

javagram 8y ago
Bungie wasn’t acquired by activision, they were an independent developer that had a publishing contract for the Destiny franchise with activision. Seems like the contract was renegotiated at the request of one side or the other.

deleted 8y ago

[deleted]

ponco 8y ago

I remember listening to the Bungie podcast many many years ago right as they sold to MS. For me, the saddest part was the bastardisation of the Halo series. 343i have just never quite had the same spark. Destiny & Activision just showed me to that the creative forces behind the Myth/Halo series were well and truly gone. This is an exciting new dawn. Can't wait for what's next.

miguelmota 8y ago

Hoping they bring back the gameplay quality back that Halo 3 had. Halo 3 was one of the best games ever made

mscasts 8y ago

I hope they can start to make good games again. Game companies seems too politically correct to cater to gamers though.

SmellyGeekBoy 8y ago
I'm not sure what you mean by "too politically correct to cater to gamers" here. Series like Hotline Miami, GTA, RDR, Duke Nukem etc don't seem to agree.

Traster 8y ago

I see a tonne of people making statements along the lines of "That's great, now Bungie can back to being the company that makes games like Halo". But can someone explain to me why they think that could ever happen? The Microsoft acquisition was a key part of what made Halo, Bungie was a way smaller company back then and a huge amount of the talent will have moved on. How many companies churn out great series decades apart? I just think people are setting themselves up for a HL3 situation again- huge expectations that never get delivered on.

dasKrokodil 8y ago

I wish they'd do a successor to Oni, this time with multiplayer (which was promised for the first time, but not delivered).

Dragonai 8y ago
I love seeing Oni mentioned in discussions about Bungie. It's always held a special place in my heart. Did you ever check out the Anniversary Edition mod? It's a massive community-made enhancement to the base game that adds a ton of fixes alongside a really dope mod framework. The reason I bring this up is because it allows for stuff like Oni Team Arena[0], a fake multiplayer mode that lets you basically play team deathmatch with bots. It's super fun and when I first played it, it breathed a whole new life into the game for me. [0]: https://wiki.oni2.net/AE:OTA https://wiki.oni2.net/AE:OTA

bovermyer 8y ago

So... what does this mean for Destiny 2's presence in the Blizzard Launcher?

shiburizu 8y ago
press is reporting there won't be any changes and launcher will still show Destiny. Safe to assume D2 is on its deathbed so they don't have to stick around too long.
- Svoka 8y ago
  I think it was there after they was giving it away for a month and still no one wanted to play it.
- bovermyer 8y ago
  ...but I like Destiny 2. =(

deleted 8y ago

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redsummer 8y ago

Is there any modern game like Myth II?

bliblah 8y ago

So how does this benefit Activision? It seems everyone is focusing on Bungie but not asking how in the world Activision allowed this to pass. Did bungie just give them a bunch of cash? Giving up destiny is still a huge cash cow with the franchise bringing in well over $500 million since it was released in 2014.