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Bungie Signs 10-Year Deal With Activision
An anonymous reader writes "Infinity Ward may be suing Activision under allegations of low payment and no royalties, but it seems some developers are still happy to work with the publisher — it has just signed a 10-year deal with Bungie, the studio behind the popular Halo series of FPS games. Activision will publish all of Bungie's games in the next decade — although Bungie will own the IP. The terms of the deal are similar to those brokered by former Infinity Ward chiefs Jason West and Vince Zampella when they signed with EA after being fired in March."
Sign your souls away to us for the next 10 years while we milk you for all you're worth...I mean this will be a profitable 10 years for both of us...
Is Activision going to feed off Bungie's core until it, too implodes?
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No more rehashes of Halo :D
Disagree != mod troll.
Looking forward to Guitar Hero: Halo and Call of Duty 57: Master Chief
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10 years? that must be a huge chunk of change and little regret toward the future. Halo has already been fairly simple so they don't have much to lose tech wise.
all this means is that bungie won't have to gamble with their own money, just Activision's.
they still retain the IP, which means they won't make anything they don't want to.
smart on their part.
Because Bungie is the people, not the corporate entity. Oh, how we'd all laugh if all the Bungie staff tunnelled their way into Respawn.
If you were blocking sigs, you wouldn't have to read this.
Activision - Hey, it beats working for Microsoft!
Haha, I was actually thinking of visiting Croatia, too. Might have to put it off if their board of tourism thinks spamming is a good way to get the word out.
"This is considered plagiarism."
Oni 2. I've been waiting years for a sequel to Oni. Maybe they could call it Offi.
Make love, not reality television.
I read that as their "board of terrorism", need more coffee =/
Awww yeah. They already open sourced Marathon, so why can't they follow suit with Myth? It's still unrivaled as a tactical RTS!
Every time I see this story, there's some ridiculous note about how Activision is screwing Infinity Ward or how Bungie worked to break off from Microsoft, so why would they go back to Activision?
This is a PUBLISHING AGREEMENT. Microsoft owned Bungie, just like Activision *owns* Infinity Ward. A publisher has a degree of control over a developer, yes, but comparing that to an ownership situation like Bungie/MS or IW/Activision is patently absurd. It's not even apples to oranges; it's apples to rocks.
We shouldn't forget in this period of transition that the technical brains behind Bungie is Jason Jones (not the guy from John's Stewart's The Daily Show). Historically, he has shown an inclination to not want to retread ideas endlessly. He created his own game Minotaur before joining Alexander Seropian at Bungie.
When they wanted to create a 3-D version of Minotaur, they apparently found the format lacking and so modified the ancient Greek location to a Mayan pyramid inhabited by a god-like space alien to create the game Pathways Into Darkness. I enjoyed that game, with its semi-RPG like structure a lot. After that, Jones started Marathon, a science fiction themed game that also formed the basis for much of Halo's structure and backstory. What's relevant to me is that Jason Jones was involved in a heavy engine rewrite for Marathon 2 that saw much improved full screen performance, but did not involve himself in the next sequel, Marathon .
Instead, he had already started following the thread of another project that interested him: Real time strategy in a 3-D environment with desformable terrain. This was quite an about face from Marathon, and was quite interesting in its own right. I am not sure how involved Jones was in the making of the sequels but it is clear that he again felt ready to move on and craft something new.
This turned into the project codenamed Blam!, which everyone now knows as Halo. As an outgrowth of ideas in Myth, Halo was originally slated to be an massively multiplayer game where players took on certain roles. The idea was for every gamer to find their niche, like warthog driver, pilot, or sniper.
From a development perspective, it looks like Jones was heavily involved in the first sequel to Halo, but again, I am not sure how involved he was in the next sequel.
For years now, I have been wondering what he is up to. I figured that Jones has followed his same pattern and has decided to follow up on other ideas that interest him. After ten years of Halo and the prospect of endless sequels churned out by Microsoft, I think many people are very interested in what Bungie will do next. Previous comments have speculated that the publishing announcement with Activision will mean that Bungie will have to squeeze out a product very quickly and that the quality may suffer for it. I would contend that they have probably been working on something for several years at this point (there is a joystiq article from 2006 that states that Jason Jones was working with Halo programming lead Chris Butcher on a secret project).
Here's hoping for something exciting.
And by the way, I wouldn't mind seeing something that revives Pathways Into Darkness or Myth again.
Haha, I was actually thinking of visiting Croatia, too. Might have to put it off if their board of tourism thinks spamming is a good way to get the word out.
Right now, there is a Bosnian sitting back in his chair, pressing the tips of his fingers together in front of his face, and saying "Just as planned."
I am the richest astronaut ever to win the superbowl.
Whenever I see the word "Bungie" in type I always read it first as "Bungle"
Son of a bitch! I thought they only lost Oni! Well, those asshats are just going to sit on it unless Bungie buys it back, which I doubt.
Godammit.
Most? You mean Seropian? Like, one guy? Two of the three founders are still there.
Three founders? Who is this third person you speak of? Bungie was founded entirely by Jason and Alex.
The only person still there from even the Marathon days, besides Jason, is Rob McLees. Everybody else is from the Myth days at the earliest, and while they may call themselves "Grizzled Ancients" now, I still consider them newbs.
Signed, a formerly proud Bungie fan since 1992,
-Forrest Cameranesi, Geek of all Trades
"I am Sam. Sam I am. I do not like trolls, flames, or spam."
Myth is "semi" open source right now. It's not really open in any proper sense, but the lead developer on Myth 3 got the rights from Take 2 (who bought them from Bungie) to develop the Myth engine further, mostly to fix up the mess Take 2 left after laying off the whole team just after the game was rushed out the door... But anyway, from him the code and rights to develop it have passed down through several sets of hands to a progressively more informal group of fans who continue to update the Myth engine to this day. See Project Magma for more.
-Forrest Cameranesi, Geek of all Trades
"I am Sam. Sam I am. I do not like trolls, flames, or spam."
I've always hoped in my heart of hearts that they would resume work on the cancelled "Phoenix" project. That thing looked awesome.
-Forrest Cameranesi, Geek of all Trades
"I am Sam. Sam I am. I do not like trolls, flames, or spam."