Bungie in 2008: reflection on Halo 3 (very lengthy gamasutra interview)

[Tieno]

It's impossible to get a completely comprehensive look at a developer with just two interviews, but with this set of two interview sessions conducted earlier this year, Gamasutra hopes to present a more rounded look at Seattle-based Bungie, the studio behind one of the most successful franchises in history - Halo.

To begin with, Gamasutra presents the full version of a discussion with environment artist Mike Zak and community and PR director Brian Jarrard, originally excerpted in Game Developer magazine. It touches on everything from the interplay between art and engineering to the mood at Bungie following its October 2007 emancipation from Microsoft.

This is followed by a discussion with Chris Butcher, an engineering lead at Bungie, who was responsible for implementing the innovative and robust online features in Halo 3.
http://www.gamasutra.com/view/feature/3681/bungie_in_2008_reflecting_on_halo_.php?page=1


On MS and independence...

What is the mood of going independent again? What is the mood like at Bungie now?

MZ: There's an enthusiasm, in a way. You really feel like you're controlling your own destiny. Being part of such a big organization such as Microsoft, where you're a part that plugs into this massive, massive organism that has revenue streams well beyond anything you're ever going to have visibility into... you're just...

The Indonesian version of Windows, or something...

MZ: Well yeah. When you're all sitting in one room and know you're all working on the next great thing, you get serious about what you do with your time. Not that we weren't serious before, but it definitely gives you a different voice in the back of your head. I feel more diligent and have a sense of ownership and pride. We only have ourselves to blame if we don't deliver the best we possibly can.

I've heard a little bit from different people who know what they're talking about. There was a sense Bungie could never fit properly into Microsoft. Did you ever feel that way? It's not necessarily a negative thing; it was just a reality.

MZ: Well, yeah. I don't know if that statement... it could be as true for any discipline, because Microsoft is a giant umbrella, like I said before, that has all these different quote-unquote "cost centers".

Microsoft is an engineering company, first and foremost, and games are entertainment and content-driven. So that was a new business that they're ramping up. But that doesn't necessarily mean that Microsoft is not capable of having an incredibly successful entertainment segment to their business.

BJ: To their credit, they did a really good job of getting Bungie our own building. Essentially, we were in a bubble. We were mostly independent the entire time, with all of the perks of having a partner. They respected what Bungie had culturally.

When they bought Bungie, they didn't try to assimilate us and break our will and make us all drink the punch. They let the team maintain what made Bungie, Bungie. I think that's one of the smartest things that they did.

On testing...

Halo 3 had ambitious four-player co-op. That must require a lot of testing, and if the levels aren't really basically ship-quality, then you can't test them accurately.

CB: Yeah, Halo 3 is a very difficult game to test, because it has so many features and so many challenges. Like, what if I'm playing Forge with 16 people and the host leaves and then the host migrates twice, and then we save a film of that whole experience? And if I'm watching that film back at a party with three other people... how do you test that? That's like a ten-stage process.

There's just a tremendous ball of all of these features that interact with each other, which is one of the things that's great about the game, but also makes it very difficult to test. The only reason it was really possible for us was... I guess there were two reasons.

One was that we have a really great test team that understands from a very early stage all of the features that go into the game and all the challenges they will be for testing. They're able to help us understand what would be necessary in order to test the game.

The other thing is that we have a pretty strong focus on automated testing of the game. We have stress farms of 400 Xboxes that just run the build overnight. I like to tell people that the E3 announcement build of Halo 3 that was in 2006, we finalized the build about five days before E3.

In those five days, it had two years of testing on it, just because of the number of Xboxes we had running continuously for 100 hours before we showed it. So we were pretty confident in that build before we showed it. It was going to be solid.

[Tieno]

So their next game will be multiplatform?

Don't know if you're serious, but no, since they still have an exclusive relationship with MS.

[Mupepe]

nice read!  thanks.

[WrikaWrek]

Cool interview.

[cool breeze]

Are they gonna hurry up and make Oni 2 now? They have a lot of material from GitS:SAC to work with now.

[Tieno]

Are they gonna hurry up and make Oni 2 now? They have a lot of material from GitS:SAC to work with now.

No, they don't have the rights to Oni.

[demi]

Their next game is a Wii puzzle game

[cool breeze]

No, they don't have the rights to Oni.

Then they can do a licensed GitS game.  It can be the same way that God Hand 2 is going to be a Hokuto no Ken game.

[tiesto]

I liked Halo 3 fair enough, it definitely had the best single-player campaign of the series, although the last 2 levels were pretty stupid (well, the flood level was horrible). Not deserving of 10/10 across the board but also not deserving of the constant backlash it gets.

[Darunia]

I liked Halo 3 fair enough, it definitely had the best single-player campaign of the series, although the last 2 levels were pretty stupid (well, the flood level was horrible). Not deserving of 10/10 across the board but also not deserving of the constant backlash it gets.

levels 4-7 were fucking amazing, best levels in the series. Shame that the last ones were Flood-centric again. The very last level actually wasn't so bad, but 8... yuck.

[pilonv1]

Their next game is a Wii puzzle game

Halo Blox

[bork]

No, they don't have the rights to Oni.

Then they can do a licensed GitS game.  It can be the same way that God Hand 2 is going to be a Hokuto no Ken game.

 

[cool breeze]

It is the way Platinum Games/Sega will work around making a sequel to God Hand.  Sega published the last big HnK game, so they have connections to get PG on board to work on what inspired God Hand.