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

uh..

[hookedup]

independent staffers

So they are outsourcing?

Films from the 30s

[AtariAmarok]

" it's how they were making films in the '30s." "

...a decade which gave us The Wizard of Oz, Gone with the Wind, and other landmark films. Sometimes, better writing/creation/etc is better than having the most recent effects technology, in films, games, or elsewhere.

Re:Films from the 30s

[Anonymous Coward]

Every decade has had some great films. The 30s are not unique in that respect.

Re:Films from the 30s

[Elwood P Dowd]

Sometimes, better writing/creation/etc is better than having the most recent effects technology, in films, games, or elsewhere.

What he's talking about is improving writing/creation/etc, not the special effects. He's not saying "black and white movies are crappy" he was just saying that they hadn't properly figured out how to organize a movie production. This is not to say that games are crappy or that movies were crappy, it's just to say that it can be done cheaper and faster with higher quality results.

Why did you think he'd license someone else's engine if his only concerns were the newest special effects?

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

Flawed Analogy

[NickFusion]

The reason films can be made by, and in some respects need to be made by large numbers of mobile freelancers is twofold:

Movies shoot in locations around the world, and a production company may find themselves in vastly different physical locations from film to film, requiring local talent to fill out the pool.

Movies are by-and-large made with very standardized technology, the Pananflex, HMIs, 10ks, there is a standard lingo for stardard equipment that make it possible for a freelancer from Boston to interact with a film crew from LA.

This didn't use to be the case, in the early years of film, the technology was very mutable, standards were still forming, very chaotic, and very creative. Things are now more formalized, and frequently formula-ized.

I doubt the game industry will find it self "shooting on location," so the first bit of the analogy falls flat.

As for the second, until graphics performance hit's it's peak (maybe it has), and it's widely regarded industry-wide that there is no percentage in building a new engine from scratch (some movement in that direction, re Doom/Unreal engine liscencing) you're not going to see the kind of standardization that allows a freelance workforce to interoperate seamlessly between companies.

As it currently stands, a worker becomes more valuable the longer he stays with a developer, and new people have a large amount of developer specific information to absorb before they can function.

As to which model, old Hollywood/new Hollywood, is to the advantage of the worker, well, that's a tougher call.

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.

Sounds like Epic and UT2004

[shoptroll]

Isn't that how Epic Games did UT2004? They hired a ton of independent programmers, designers from UT2003's online community to do work on it. Onslaught was originallly a mod that was presented to Epic for further work. Take a look at the credits in the back of the manual.

Of course I think this is how Epic tends to do stuff as well. The bots from the original UT were coded by someone who made bots for Quake 1 I belive.

It's the Actors, not the workers

[Marc_Hawke]

There have been many slashdot stories, among other things, asking about superstar developers. Why you can list a million publishers, development companies, etc, but only rarely do you know the name of a lead artist, or AI programmer.

It seems to me, his reference to the movie industry is not about the (grips, gaffers, etc) but the actors.

Their 'plan' is to make super-star developers. So, you get "American McGee's Alice" happening more often.

"Halo Remix, starring John Johnson on AI, with Bill Billiams on Textures, and directed by Tom Thompson. With Special guest in Organic Modelling Nick Nicholby!"

The block buster games will start to be created by the famous 'rock-star' developers....and the dev houses and publishers will be no more important than "Universal" vs "DreamWorks".