Bungie
Company type | Private |
---|---|
Industry | Video game industry |
Predecessor | Bungie Software Products Corporation |
Founded | May 1991Chicago, Illinois, United States | in
Founders | |
Headquarters | , |
Key people |
|
Products | Microsoft Game Studios (2000–2007) |
Divisions | Bungie West (dissolved) |
Website | www |
Bungie, Inc. is an American
Among Bungie's side projects is Bungie.net, the company's official website, which includes company information, forums, and statistics-tracking and integration with many of its games. Bungie.net also serves as the platform from which Bungie sells company-related merchandise out of the Bungie Store and runs other projects, including Bungie Aerospace, charitable organization the Bungie Foundation, a podcast, and online publications about game topics. The company is known for its informal and dedicated workplace culture, and recently signed a ten-year publishing deal with Activision. Their first project together was the 2014 first-person shooter, Destiny.[4]
History
Founding
In the early 1990s,
Seropian met programmer
The team focused on the Macintosh platform, not Windows-based personal computers, because the Mac market was more open and Jones had been raised on the platform. While Jones was responsible for many of the creative and technical aspects, Seropian was a businessman and marketer.[8] "What I liked about [Seropian] was that he never wasted any money," Jones recalled. With no money to hire other personnel, the two assembled Minotaur boxes by hand in Seropian's apartment.[6] While the pair remained low on funds—Seropian's wife was largely supporting him—the modest success of Minotaur gave the duo enough money to develop another project.[10]
Inspired by the shooter game Wolfenstein 3D, Jones wrote a 3D game engine for the Mac.[11] Bungie's next game was intended to be a 3D port of Minotaur, but Jones and Seropian found that Minotaur's top-down perspective gameplay did not translate well to the 3D perspective, and did not want to rely on modems.[9] Instead, they developed a new storyline for the first-person shooter that became Pathways into Darkness, released in 1993. Jones did all the coding, with his friend Colin Brent creating the game's art.[12] The game was a critical and commercial success, winning awards including Inside Mac Games' "Adventure Game of the Year" and Macworld's "Best Role-Playing Game."[12]
Pathways beat sales expectations and became Bungie's first commercial success.
Marathon, Myth and Oni
Bungie's next project began as a sequel to
After showing the game at the Macworld Expo, Bungie was mobbed with interest and orders for the game. The game was not finished until December 14, 1994; Jones and a few other employees spent a day at a warehouse assembling boxes so that some of the orders could be filled before Christmas.[14] The game was a critical and commercial success,[17] and is regarded as a relatively unknown but important part of gaming history.[19] It served as the Mac alternative to DOS PC-only games like Doom and System Shock.[8] The game's volume of orders was unprecedented for the studio, who found that its old method of mail or phone orders could not scale to the demand and hired another company to handle the tens of thousands of orders. Marathon also brought Bungie attention from press outside the small Mac gaming market.[14]
The first game's success led to a sequel,
Marathon Infinity was released the following year.
After Marathon, Bungie moved away from first-person shooters to release a strategy game, Myth: The Fallen Lords. The games stressed tactical unit management as opposed to the resource gathering model of other combat strategy titles. The Myth games won several awards and spawned a large and active online community. Myth: The Fallen Lords was the first Bungie game to be released simultaneously for both Mac and Windows platforms.[8][20]
The success of Myth enabled Bungie to change Chicago offices and establish a San Jose, California based branch of the studio, Bungie West, in 1997.[8] Bungie West's first and only game would be Oni, an action title for the Mac, PC and PlayStation 2.[21]
Halo and buyout
In 1999, Bungie announced its next product,
On June 19, 2000, soon after Halo's preview at Electronic Entertainment Expo 2000,
As a result of the buyout, the rights to Myth and Oni were transferred to Take-Two Interactive as part of the three-way deal between Microsoft, Bungie and Take-Two; most of the original Oni developers were able to continue working on Oni until its release in 2001.[24] Halo: Combat Evolved, meanwhile, went on to become a critically acclaimed hit, selling more than 6.5 million copies,[25] and becoming the Xbox's flagship franchise.[26]
Halo's success led to Bungie creating two sequels. Halo 2 was released on November 9, 2004, making more than $125 million on release day and setting a record in the entertainment industry.[27] Halo 3, the final installment in the original Halo trilogy, was released on September 25, 2007 and surpassed Halo 2's records, making $170 million in its first twenty-four hours of release.[28]
Independent company
On October 1, 2007,
While Bungie planned on revealing a new game at
Bungie continued expanding, though it did not commit to details about new projects and ship dates.[37] The company grew from roughly 120 employees in May 2008[38] to 165 in June 2009, outgrowing the studio Microsoft developed. Ryan helped redesign a former multiplex movie theater in Bellevue into new Bungie offices, with 80,000 square feet (7,400 m2) replacing the 41,000 square feet (3,800 m2) the company occupied previously.[39]
On April 29, 2010, Bungie announced that it was entering into a 10-year publishing agreement with publisher Activision Blizzard.[40][41] Under Bungie's agreement with Activision, new intellectual property developed by Bungie will be owned by Bungie, not Activision, in a deal similar to the EA (Electronic Arts) Partners Program.[41][42]
On June 30, 2011, Bungie announced the "Bungie Aerospace" project (Slogan "Per audacia ad astra" meaning "Boldly to the stars".) The project is intended to provide independent game developers with publishing, resources, and support, including access to the Bungie.net platform.
On February 17, 2013, Bungie announced Destiny,[46] which launched for the PlayStation 3, PlayStation 4, Xbox 360, and Xbox One platforms on September 9, 2014.[47][48][49]
On January 27, 2016, Ryan stepped down as president and Pete Parsons, who had been the company's chief operating officer and executive producer since 2002, became its chief executive officer.[50]
Bungie.net
Bungie.net serves as the main official portal for interaction between company staff and the community surrounding Bungie's games. When Bungie was bought by Microsoft, the site was originally seen as in competition with Microsoft's own Xbox.com site, but community management eventually won out as the bigger concern.[51] The site has been redesigned several times.[52]
During Bungie's involvement with the Halo franchise, the site recorded statistics for each game played.[53] This information included statistics on each player in the game,[53] and a map of the game level showing where kills occurred, called "heatmaps."[54] On January 31, 2012, Bungie announced that, as of March 31, 2012, Bungie.net would no longer update Halo game statistics and Halo player service records, host new user-generated Halo content, or operate Halo's "Bungie Pro" service. Bungie's cessation of these services on March 31 completed the transition process of all data for Halo games being managed by 343 Industries.[55] Currently, Bungie.net records player's statistics for their game franchise Destiny. In addition to the collection of data and the management of Destiny player's accounts, the website serves as a form of communication between Bungie and the community.
While Bungie had long provided places for fans to congregate and talk about games, as well as releasing new information and screenshots over Bungie.net, it historically had made less effort and been less successful at providing access to the inside workings of Bungie and its staff. As part of a move to become more familiar with fans, Bungie recruited recognized and respected voices from the fan community, including writers Luke Smith, Eric Osborne, and others. The developer hosts a podcast where staff members are interviewed in a round-table, informal atmosphere.[56]
Bungie also has an iOS and Google Play application that allows stat-tracking for their game Destiny on the go.[57]
Culture
Martin O'Donnell described Bungie's workplace culture as "a slightly irreverent attitude, and not corporate, bureaucratic or business-focused";
This informal, creative culture was one of the reasons Microsoft was interested in acquiring Bungie,[60] although game designer Jordan Weisman said that Microsoft came close to destroying the company's development culture, as it had with the now-defunct FASA Studio.[61] Studio head Harold Ryan emphasized that even when Bungie was bought by Microsoft, the team was still independent:
One of the first things [Microsoft] tried after acquiring Bungie, after first attempting to fully assimilate them, was to move Bungie into a standard Microsoft building with the rest of the game group. But unlike the rest of the teams they'd brought in previously, Bungie didn't move into Microsoft corporate offices – we tore all of the walls out of that section of the building and sat in a big open environment. Luckily Alex and Jason [Seropian and Jones, Bungie's founders] were pretty steadfast at the time about staying somewhat separate and isolated.[58]
Microsoft eventually moved the studio to Kirkland, Washington.[58] Despite the move, financial analyst Roger Ehrenberg declared the Bungie-Microsoft marriage "doomed to fail" due to these fundamental differences.[62] Bungie also pointed out that it was tired of new intellectual property being cast aside to work on the Halo franchise.[58] Edge described the typical Bungie employee as "simultaneously irreverent and passionately loyal; fiercely self-critical; full of excitement at the company's achievements, no matter how obscure; [and] recruited from its devoted fanbase."[51]
The Bungie workplace is highly informal, with new and old staff willing to challenge each other on topics, such as fundamental game elements. Staff are able to publicly criticize their own games and each other.
Bungie's staff and fans, known as the "Seventh Column," have banded together for charity and other causes. After
Developed games
Title | Year | Platform |
---|---|---|
Operation: Desert Storm | 1991 | Mac |
Minotaur: The Labyrinths of Crete | 1992 | Mac |
Pathways into Darkness | 1993 | OS X
|
Marathon | 1994 | Mac, Apple Pippin |
Marathon 2: Durandal | 1995 | Mac, Windows, Apple Pippin |
Marathon Infinity | 1996 | Mac |
Myth: The Fallen Lords | 1997 | Mac, Windows |
Myth II: Soulblighter | 1998 | Mac, Windows |
Oni | 2001 | Mac, Windows |
Halo: Combat Evolved | 2001 | Xbox |
Halo 2 | 2004 | Xbox |
Halo 3 | 2007 | Xbox 360 |
Halo 3: ODST | 2009 | Xbox 360 |
Halo: Reach | 2010 | Xbox 360 |
Destiny | 2014 | PlayStation 3, PlayStation 4, Xbox 360, Xbox One |
Destiny 2 | 2017 | PlayStation 4, Xbox One, Windows |
Related companies
Many of Bungie's employees have left the company to form their own studios.
References
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- ^ GamesRadar. pp. 1–4. Archived from the original on May 27, 2012. Retrieved October 9, 2009.)
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External links