http://weblogs.variety.com/the_cut_scene/Here's the second in our series of interviews conducted for Variety's videogames impact report. As promised, I'm providing transcripts here on The Cut Scene of some of the most interesting interviews we did for that special issue. First was Leigh Alexander's talk with "Metal Gear Solid" creator Hideo Kojima. Now here's an excerpt from my chat with Bungie CEO Harold Ryan. Note that this interview was conducted before E3, so there's no mention of the non-announcement controversy.Has Bungie been working on "Halo" games non-stop for pretty much the past decade until the release of "Halo 3" last fall? Was there ever a chance to even take a break and work on other projects in that time?We were always in pre-production and concepting future titles while developing current ones. With a small break, the studio was always moving onto one or two new games when shipping another.
We had several internal game pitches that went to playable game prototypes that were non-"Halo" games and non-first person shooters. They either weren’t compelling enough or the monster that was "Halo" needed all the resources, so they were set aside.
Was there always pressure from Microsoft to do another "Halo?" Did you guys at Bungie always want to do those sequels?From Microsoft's point of view, Bungie was succeeding at "Halo," so having us continue it made sense.
From Bungie's point of view, "Halo" was the baby of the studio. We raised it, cared for it, and nurtured it. We built it because we loved it. Closing out the story with "Halo 3" and finishing the trilogy was important to us. But when we shipped "Halo 1," it certainly wasn’t our goal to make two more versions.
There were open questions we wanted to answer ourselves that drove us to "Halo 2" and then we had some stuff farther along just sitting on paper that was the beginning of "Halo 3." We did pretty much know we were doing "Halo 3" when "Halo 2" shipped.
Unlike some other big videogame franchises, you guys did get a few years between "Halo" games. Did Microsoft ever pressure you to put them out even faster?[Microsoft] looks at Halo as money and more Halo equals more money. If I could come up with a "Halo" game every year, they’d be happy to take it. I think that would be a mistake.
We always pride ourselves in pushing our games to the point where a lot of people still playing for at least a couple of years thanks to the DLC and the community.
Even now we're sustaining the game, managing the community, making multi-player maps. We’ve got a good 30-40 people working on it for a full year after we ship the game.
A Bungie game to us is high quality, fun to play, and we maintain and support it. All Bungie games have community features built in and around them. Sustaining it is part of what makes the game a Bungie game.
Do you get any financial benefit from that? Do you get any cut of Xbox Live subscription revenue for how many people are playing "Halo 3?"From a business point of view, we don’t get anything directly out of people being on Xbox Live. We make most of our money from sales directly. For us, it’s about keeping the Bungie fan community happy.
Let's talk about the divestiture from Microsoft. When did that process first start, if only as an idea? And why did you want to do it?The discussion goes back three or four years. The reasons for it are a mix. For one thing, any time you’re owned by someone you have less at least perceived control of what you do. It's harder to maintain your identity. One thing important for the Bungie ... is needing to have that sense of team where you look around the room and say "I'm part of Bungie."
Microsoft did allow a fair amount of freedom to maintain that culture while inside. But it got harder and harder over time. We had to figure out how to build and retain bungie as a place where top creatives would want to come and work and be part of the team.
Another reason was the pressure to stick with Halo. We can still make "Halo" games and we still are working on "Halo" games. But there is more latitude for us to put our focus on other IP, other universes, other things.
We wanted to get that push back where we could feel we’re going to really lay it on the line and push to come up with the next best thing in entertainment. It feels better to do that as an indie.
It certainly seems like the trend in the industry is the opposite -- that successful developers get acquired by publishers and stay there. It seems like it's the only financially viable option, in fact. So what's different for Bungie than so many other big name developers?The three studios I know the acquisition of well are Lionhead, Bungie and Bioware. In all those cases, it came down to the fact that the core competency of the studio was making great games. It got to the point where the leads of the studios were creative leads and just weren’t interested in running HR anymore or accounting and finance. The other issue is to make sure you come up with a foundation to sustain your burn rate. If you ship a game every three years, the intervening years can be a long time to cover costs.
But there are a couple of things about Bungie that make us somewhat unique. One is that Bungie has a strong sense of team. Nobody is taking a few bucks off every unit because of a special deal.
Another is that we have a strong finance group in from day one. I didn’t go into the divestiture deal untilwe had a financial plan that could keep us going.
So in the past year do you see a difference at Bungie?Having seen Bungie internal and external to Microsoft, as it's structured now I think the creative energy is much more enhanced by being external.
Of course, if we mess it up for the next 10 years, I'm sure we’ll have to find alternate funding.
It was really easy when we working on "Halo" one, two and three to put other projects away. Every studio that starts out with one hit game has the same growing pains. You borrow one guy and another and the next thing you know the original concept doesn't have enough resources and you kill it.
We're making that process better. Now we have a full concept team running throughout the production ofthe other two games we're running right now internally. We're not making a bet on any one game keeping us afloat.
Was negotiating the divestiture deal distracting for you or Bungie as a whole while working on "Halo 3?"My point of view and honest belief was that it was the best way to ensure the highest quality of "Halo 3" that we would achieve. It was the best way to attract new talent and retain it in studio. But managing that was a second job for me. It was another 40 hours a week for two-and-a-half years
So when you were hiring or retaining people in the past few years, they knew Bungie would be leaving Microsoft?Yes.
Do you see Bungie's decision to leave Microsoft as part of a broader issue about developers getting more independence and respect as creative talent?... The fact is there’s so much to compete with in a development studio owned by a publisher when you're trying to get innovative mindshare. The big corporate game publishers that own lots of studios are more driven by their fiscal year and other things like that than the the crazy guy or team sitting there going, "Give me three more months and this’ll be perfect.” To do that, they're going to have to get back to where Bungie is now.
Some of the publishers that figure out how to actually tell their board to wait three months or stay out of it will find it's just as profitable. If you want to get creative people doing their best work... Well, the thing attracted me is that people aren’t here for the paycheck. They're here to make something awesome. They're here to see their best creative work partnered with that of their peers and turned into a great game. That requires an independent identity.
And you're confident that will result not only in great games, but a successful business?We’ll see. I do believe it’s about having the right people. Bungie has collected all the right people so we can ship high quality software on a reasonable schedule. Hitting that cycle and hitting the software quality bar doesn’t matter until you have a core game that’s awesome. On the other hand, you need to have all sides working together so it's not an amazing game idea that crashes all the time. Getting all that together so your games are reliably a positive experience for consumers as well as an innovative and amazing experience is a tough feat.
