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State of the Asylum

Posted By: Forrest (cache3.avtel.net)
Date: 6/21/2000 at 12:31 a.m.

First, an artical I wrote called "The 'Death' Of Bungie". This'll be going up here on MBO soon...

Lasciate Ogne Speranza, Voi Ch'Intrate

It means "abandon all hope, ye who enter within." In Dante's Inferno, it was said to be inscribed over the gates of hell. It once hung over the door to a basement that was Bungie's one and only office. And now, most appropriately, it may soon be hanging over the door of a Microsoft office.

But it's not quite accurate. Don't abandon ALL hope - yet.

Let me begin by saying that this is a Bad Thing. A Very, Very Bad Thing. It's just a matter of how many 'Very's to put before that. The problem is thus: Bungie has always been a company whose products I could buy without consideration. I could simply assume that they would be good, and I have never been wrong on that assumption. Microsoft, on the other hand, is just the opposite: I have always been able to assume that their products will suck, and likewise, I have never been wrong on that assumption either.

Microsoft has, occasionally, bought out the producer of a good product, and continued to product decent products in that vein for a while. I don't doubt that Bungie will churn out at least a few good products after this, but I do seriously doubt that they will be the insanely great products they have always made.

Why is this? It's not just because Bungie was bought by Microsoft. It's because Bungie was bought, period. Someone once wrote a soapbox article about how Bungie rocked so hard because they were completely independant. They didn't have to answer to any publishers, because they published their own games. They didn't have to answer to any shareholders, because they were privately owned. But now they are nothing but a second-party developer for the biggest conglomorate on Earth, and the spirit of Bungie has died because of that.

No matter what anyone says, Bungie is not independant anymore. Jason says that Microsoft is allowing Bungie their autonomy, but listen to that wording - allowing. If Microsoft ever doesn't like something Bungie does, or wants them to do something, they can always just order Bungie to do it. For this reason, Bungie will never be the same.

The point of this is, I can no longer trust Bungie like I used to. Every product that comes out of them will be met with close scrutiny, and every little fault will be railed upon. Zero tolerance policy.

Now what about the future? Lets look at this on a game-by-game basis:

Gnop! - Freeware. Can't do much about that. No change.

Operation: Desert Storm - hasn't been sold in years, though us folks at Bungie.org recently got our hands on an original boxed copy of it. No change.

Minotaur - Lets hope MS keeps selling the Sack. Other than that, no change.

Pathways Into Darkness - Again, please keep the Sack.

Marathon - Open source. This is ours now. Lets hope MS doesn't act like the bunch of a-holes they and forbid us from using the original Marathon content in our creations. If they do, screw 'em and use the stuff anyway.

Myth - Now here's where things get different. The fragile Myth community can hopefully survive this drastic change, despite my previous "scorched earth" death wishes. With the exception of the Mill going down (and I'll talk to Fm about that), things haven't really changed much in the community. I've lost a lot of my passion because of all that's happened, but hopefully that will come back. Also, hopefully, Bungie.net will stay how it is. The future of Myth, however, is in jeopardy. We can hope that Take Two doesn't release a slew of crappy Myth clones, but my money says they will. They've also liscensed the Halo engine for two titles and, there's rumor of a seige-warfare-oriented Halo-based fantasy game coming soon. Can anyone say Myth III? Lets just hope it doesn't suck.

Oni - This looks to have essentially no change to it, but from what I've seen it doesn't seem quite up to normal Bungie standards. Time will tell though, and it might be the first non-Bungie game I've bought in a while.

Halo - Here's where things get iffy. I don't doubt that the game itself will totally rock, but the question is publishing. Up until now, it's been "coming soon for Mac and PC." Now it's "we've yet to decide for what platforms." That sounds a bit too much like the "no comment" response to the rumor which preceded this whole event.

With Halo and beyond that, I get very skeptical. If Bungie goes console-only, I will be quite pissed. If Bungie goes X-Box only, I will be extremely pissed. If Bungie still releases for PCs - but not Macs - I will be so unimaginably pissed off I can't describe it in words appropriate for the tone I'm trying for in this article.

The title of this article reminds me a bit of "The Death of Superman." He died. He came back. But he was never quite the same...

Now, I'd like to point you all to:
http://www.bungie.org/bungie_qa_irc/bungie_qa_log_20000620.txt

Read it and try not to weep.

Finally, the Mill. Fm is gone for good and his database software can't be had by anyone else for under US$10K, but the files are still here on Bungie.org, and we're working on getting a frontend for them up in some way or another.

Don't worry, folks. Be happy. Life goes on.

(And it's taken me three days of rage, numbness and absolute insanity, topped off with a night of good old Chimeran carnage, to be able to say that).

Messages In This Thread

  • State of the Asylum
    Forrest (cache3.avtel.net) -- 6/21/2000 at 12:31 a.m.

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