Meanwhile at Bungie...

Microsoft’s purchase of Bungie back in 2000 may be one of the smartest moves the company ever made. More than any other facet of the Xbox’s launch, this was the golden ticket into the console business.



The reason is simple; Bungie had successfully created the blueprint for console shooting games on consoles, moving the model from the slightly plodding, confined late ‘90s model of Goldeneye to the running, jumping, open shooting, multiplayer model we have today. It was one of the most important developments in gaming history, and one of the most lucrative.

During the decade that followed the launch of Halo: Combat Evolved, shooting games became the world’s biggest billing entertainment products, culminating in multi-platform giants like Call of Duty. More than any other developer, Bungie made that happen.



Before that Microsoft deal, Halo was a technical curiosity, a Mac game that Steve Jobs used to wow crowds at one of his presentations. Now it’s a multi-billion dollar franchise, a sci-fi world that can hold its head high among any of them, the entertainment bedrock of the Xbox brand.

So yeah, whatever Bungie is planning next is important..

Since the company spun off from Microsoft in 2007, and announced its multi-year, multi-game publishing deal with Activision, the big question has been: can Bungie once again re-imagine console gaming?

Earlier this week we found out some information about the company’s publishing deal with Activision; how there is a game codenamed ‘Destiny” set for launch late in 2013, followed by subsequent releases in 2015, 2017 and 2019. In addition, Bungie has agreed to create four downloadable expansions known as “Comet,” which will release in the fall of 2014, 2016, 2018 and 2020.

The first Destiny game will be available on Xbox 360 as well as “the next successor console platform released by Microsoft,” and is likely to go multi-platform subsequently.

The contractual details, spilled by the LA Times as part of the appalling legal dispute between Activision and former Infinity Ward honchos co-founders Jason West and Vince Zampella, describe the series as “sci-fantasy, action shooter games”, a development that can be of little surprise. Activision and Bungie, perhaps better than anyone, understand that this is where the money can be found. Previous rumors about the game have insisted that it will be an MMO. IGN's wiki on the game describes it as most likely being "a massively multiplayer first-person shooter set in space", and has been described as "WoW in Space". The public court documents stipulate both server maintenance and community management at Bungie. A subscription system and a beta, common aspects of massively multiplayer games, are also mentioned in the documents.


Different times pose different challenges. Of course, the Bungie of 2001 is a lot different than the one that exists now. Many of the core people have moved on, some staying put with Microsoft off-shoot 343 Industries, others having tried their hands at forming their own studios. Bungie is a much larger company than it was back then, even if the irreverent and creative culture is said to still be strong. No company survives success, entirely intact.

Much more importantly, gaming has changed immeasurably since the late 1990s, when Halo was first imagined. For every dollar spent on console shooters in 2000, thousands are now spent. Top-flight shooting franchises like Call of Duty, Battlefield and Halo are more valuable than top-flight movie franchises. A lot of very smart people are heavily invested in thinking about evolving the shooting genre, in getting a tiny edge on the competition.

On the whole, these innovations are incremental, most usually in tweaking multiplayer modes. Or, as is often the case with successful entertainments, they have become bigger, louder, crazier. Developers seek ways to create goofy RTEs such as ‘Oh look, I’m on a horse blowing up tanks’.



Smaller franchises make the effort to get a piece of the frenzy, usually offering some angle of their own. 2K Games' Spec Ops: The Line is coming this summer, with its take on gritty realism, and Ghost Recon: Future Soldier releases this week, a welding together of stealth mechanics and plausible military technology. But while these games may sell a million, or two million or even five million, they won’t sell the 15-20 million copies that we see with a Call of Duty, and their measure of success is a long way short of Bungie's

You could argue that shooters have reached their commercial zenith, at least in this generation, that the form has become corrupted by its own success, its own desire to wow. All forms of entertainment either innovate or become decadent. There is no doubt that shooting needs to move forward, and that a new console generation is a good time for that to change to take place. Bungie, among others, wants to be the company to make that leap.

But here’s another crucial difference between now and then. Halo was developed independently of Microsoft, but marrying the game to the Xbox came about when Bungie became enveloped into the Xbox project as a first-party developer. Microsoft still owns a stake in Bungie, but this new distance is a factor that ought to be considered. It will not be the only company seeking to re-invent shooting for the next generation of consoles, and much depends on the nature of those consoles and the intimacy that comes with extreme access.



Is there any room for innovation in story-telling and multiplayer, areas where Halo dominated in the last ten years? And if the innovations of the next generation are in business models, like free-to-play, is this an area where Bungie’s skills can be expected to come to the fore? If the massively-multiplayer shooter angle is correct, this looks like the area where innovation will come through. Such games are in their infancy, but likely to dominate in the decade ahead.

There are many great developers, like Infinity Ward and Respawn and 343, who are also looking to crack the code. Bungie is one of many developers approaching the new consoles with new ideas about how gaming is going to look for the remainder of this decade.

It may be that Bungie’s greatest individual contribution to gaming happened back in 2000. But that doesn’t take away this company’s ability to create grand vistas and outstanding experiences. Imagine the huge stock-pile of ideas the company has accumulated during its long relationship with Master Chief, innovations that just didn't sit well in the Halo universe, but which will shine in a new franchise. Activision certainly believes so and no doubt, so will millions of Halo fans who have already enjoyed more than a decade of Bungie’s creativity.

In the video documentary 'O Brave New World', various company leaders step forward to talk about the challenges of creating a whole new world, of leaving behind the certainties of Halo and the comfort of association with a proven universe. The firm says it wants to create a new universe that's bigger than anything attempted before, and which is not merely a progression from its work of the past ten years Nobody can doubt the levels of ambition. As Bungie audio director Martin O'Donnell says, "We're always going to make what we want to make. We're going to make a game that we want to play.We did [the Halo series] because that's what we wanted to do, but now we want to do something new. We want to do something different."

As Joseph Tung, executive producer says, "I believe that it absolutely will be a game-changer in the way that Halo was a game-changer."






Colin Campbell is a games journalist based in Santa Cruz, California. Follow him on Twitter or at IGN.









by Colin Campbell