Bungie Co-Founder Tries New Approach, Licenses Halo Engine

Thanks to GamesIndustry.biz for its article discussing Bungie co-founder Alexander Seropian's forming of Wideload Games, a development studio "which has started work on a new PC/Xbox title based on the Halo engine technology." The studio's development philosophy is an attempt to break with the past by using "a very small number of core staff, and hiring independent staffers to actually bring the game through to completion", and Seropian comments of current large-scale development methodologies: "It's kind of broken... it's kind of antiquated - it's how they were making films in the '30s."

Comments

Hasn't this been done before

[the morgawr]

I seem to rember other game companies trying this and not getting very far. I'm I just imagining things or am I compleately missing the point?

Re:Films from the 30s

[Pluvius]

He's talking about how, in the 30's, studios had all the power in Hollywood because they had "house actors" that were contracted to be in a certain number of movies, sort of like how the recording industry works. Now-a-days, it's the opposite; actors, directors, and writers work freelance, and studios fight over the most successful ones.

Rob

Halo Engine... *snicker*

[Txiasaeia]

Am I the only one who was completely underwhelmed by the Halo engine? I know that this guy helped develop it, but who needs another game where the enemies do sommersaults and shout out in falsetto-monster voices? Not that I'm bitter about Halo... *twitch*...

Having said that, I completely agree with the state of the industry vis a vi "ten core staffers, lotsa outsourced help." Video games by the same developers tend to be hit and miss, mostly because the "core staff" varies so much -- see Bioware, Troika and Interplay (Fallout/2/BOS) for example. Now look at Studio Ghibli in regards to animation/anime - every single movie these guys have churned out is bloody fantastic. We need more video game devs like Ghibli.

pre-industrial revolution

[bigbigbison]

I don't think this will be as cost effective as one might think. Basically the videogame industry is still in the pre-industrial artisanal (sp?) era. Everything is still made by hand. If you want to make a chair, you still need to build the chair peice by peice. There is no equivelent to a factory-made chair. So rather than the unskilled labor we now have in most factories, we have skilled craftsmen and artists.

Untill technology exists for the equivelent of unskilled labor to design the chairs, wheels, and furniture of a gaming world, the costs of developing games will still be high.

I forsee a day soon when a start up will open that specializes in creating the props of vidoegame worlds so that game designers will have a situation similar to that of the players of the Sims where they have a wide variety of chairs (or whatever) to pick from and they just plop it into the game pre-fab without having to employ someone to exclusively make such props.

Now certainly there is something to say for props that are build explicitly for the game. They provide a sence of stylistic unity. But I really do see a day when pre-fab props will come to be used.