Posted Today 12:00 PM - By Patrick Klepek
The Future Of Bungie -- Halo Creator Talks New Games And Signing With Activision
Activision and Bungie dropped a bombshell surprise on the video game industry early this morning when the two announced a 10-year partnership for a brand-new intellectual property (Bungie, Microsoft and Sony have all since issued statements). In this case, however, Bungie will own their next project, while Activision's signed up to publish.
Bungie is about to move into a post-Halo world.
So far, Bungie's been mum about specifics. They're willing to say it's an "action game," but that's about it. I spent some time on the phone with Bungie community and franchise director Brian Jarrard this morning to discuss the post-Halo future of Bungie, a future now tied to Activision.
Brian Jarrard: Sorry, I'm a few minutes late.
G4: It's okay. I expect you guys are a little busy today.
Jarrard: Yeah, been making calls for a while now.
G4: Well, you guys are just calling and individually giving out Halo: Reach codes.
Jarrard: I thought that's what you wanted to talk about. Here, let me read your code to you. B-Y...
G4: Give me the sense of what you're feeling right now. Is it relief? You guys said this was a nine-month deal, so where is your head at? Where's Bungie's head at?
Jarrard: Honestly, it is exciting for us to know that our future is solid now, that these crazy ambitious ideas we have for our next big game universe and sort of the next decade of what we want to do can now be a reality. That's a huge burden off our shoulders, and I know for people like Jason [Jones, co-founder of Bungie], it's going to be reinvigorating to know that we don't need to worry about that anymore. We can just fully focus on what Bungie does best and that's building out what will be our next big universe.
Just for perspective, the long-form agreement for this contract just got signed this week. We decided that we needed to get the news out there because we can't keep things like this under wraps; that never seems to work.
G4: You guys were worried about a leaky ship at some point?
Jarrard: Yeah, and, you know, we also talked a lot about this -- it's important to us that we quickly get our heads right back down and finish working on Reach and we didn't want this to turn into something that would start to overshadow our beta our become an issue at E3. As soon as the deal was 100% final and signed, it just made sense to go and get it out there, and we just wanted to get right back to business and keep making games.
G4: You talked about Jason working on the game already. Did not having a deal make the development process on that so far difficult until the ink was signed and you knew exactly where this game was going?
Jarrard: I don't know; not entirely. In this state, I think it certainly comes up [with Bungie's] leadership, in terms of just making sure that they can make the whole greater studio feel confident that when Reach is finished that we have something to move onto and everything is great and secure and that we're still marching towards world domination, so there's a portion of our leadership team that's definitely been working super hard to make that happen.
Honestly, if I had to speak for Jason, I'm sure he doesn't lose a lot of sleep over it because he assumed people would sort it out, and he's just going to keep his head down. But I do know the whole studio now collectively can just rest easy and know that when Reach is done, that we have a great relationship, a great framework and some great plans to do some really awesome work.
It's just peace of mind, I think, for the broader team now. I don't think there was any doubt that it was gonna happen, but not only do we have that stuff secure, but we were able to pretty much get the exact deal that we sought to get and retain all the things that are most important to Bungie. That alone has been super exciting and invigorating, as well.
G4: Crucial to that has been the discussion of the few studios that can retain control over the IP. Would you guys have signed with anyone if you couldn't have retained that full control?
Jarrard: That was one of our most important criteria. In fact, when we divested from Microsoft back in 2007, we drafted a constitution for our studio that the whole team signed. One of our articles states that we will own what we create, and it's a core tenet of our studio, and it wasn't something that we were really willing to negotiate or budge on at all. Ultimately, that's one of the reasons why Activision ended up being the final partner that we landed with, because they were able to come to an agreement that still met the terms that are important to us. And, in return, we certainly feel that they're one of the leading publishers in the entire industry, and when it comes to taking our next big game and bringing it to market in a huge way and getting us the biggest possible audience across multiple platforms, it was hard for us to find a better partner than that.
G4: It sounds like, from everything about this, from the 10-year thing to control of the IP, you have very ambitious plans. How many publishers could really even sign up for something like this?
Jarrard: Not very many. Not really. We did talk to a lot of different people over the past year, but, yeah, ultimately, you're right. There's just not many people that are going to be in a position to want to take that kind of a leap. It's a massive -- it's a pretty landmark agreement, just in terms of the tenure and scope and ambition but also the fact that Bungie does get to retain IP ownership, and we are still independent, and we do have creative control. There's just a lot of great things in place that are pretty unprecedented in a traditional publisher-developer relationship. So, you're right; I don't think there's many publishers out there who could even be at the scale of this type of agreement, but I also don't think there's very many developers out there who could demand this type of agreement and get it.
G4: The 10-year part of the deal is one aspect people are latching onto pretty quickly. Walk me through, as much as you can: Why 10 years? Is that an arbitrary number? How did you guys arrive at a decade being part of the agreement?
Jarrard: Well, we basically spent about a decade on Halo thus far, in terms of that universe and the types of experiences and stories that we've told, and we're looking at the next decade in a similar way, in terms of building a universe and a framework that we think is gonna live for along time and is gonna spawn a lot of interesting stories and experiences for our fans. We kind of have a 10-year plan. It's not arbitrary. We already have things that are scheduled out, as crazy as it is to think about, and, like, how old my kids will be in 10 years, but we have that stuff all scheduled out, and we have a pretty good plan that we believe in, and where we're going to take fans over the course of a decade, and how they're going to experience this new universe.
The Future Of Bungie -- Halo Creator Talks New Games And Signing With ActivisionG4: It sounds like you couldn't have put together a deal like this without having thought that far out, even though you haven't published the first part of this new IP and knowing things might change; rather than the process with Halo, where it was kind of figured out as it went along.
Jarrard: Yeah, you're right. I mean, Halo didn't start that way and, you know, we learned an awful, awful lot about all of this stuff. Our studio today has learned so much through the last decade working on Halo, just in terms of not owning that IP, what that's meant for our creative people and the relationship with Microsoft and how that's worked out for us. Not having that plan and having to retroactively kind of squeeze stuff in, we've learned a lot of, and we think that we can do even better if we have a really good vision going into it of how these things fit together.
And you're right, things might change, but we had to have a real plan. We have to have a real pitch and some real substance to be able to attract a deal like this with a publisher like Activision. Clearly, we get our foot in the door just because of who we are and our track record and our ability to release predictably solid games that will make money for shareholders and what not, but this is a massive investment for their company as well, and it's a big commitment to our vision, so we had to be able to demonstrate something that we felt they could believe in and get excited about, and, thankfully, we did.
G4: You mentioned the deal was just signed recently. Did the Infinity Ward situation give you any pause, or because the deal was so different from the normal structure, did it not play a role?
wonder if they had to sign with blood?
R - above post
