The release of Halo: Reach will see a lucrative partnership between development studio Bungie and publisher Microsoft coming to an end, as Bungie embarks on a 10 year deal with Activision. The old couple is parting ways amicably however, and community manager Brian Jarrard has said that Microsoft deserves respect for the way they nurture their studios.
I don’t think we’d be here where we are today without tremendous fan support, but Microsoft deserves a lot of credit for nurturing our studio, giving us enough rope,” said Jarrad in an interview with Develop.
“We’ve learned a lot. A lot of Microsoft people have come over to work with Bungie, and I think we’re a better studio because of it. Bungie was once a young start-up scrappy outfit from Chicago – a few guys just throwing games together – and we’ve become a refined professional developer over the years, and Microsoft has helped us do that,” he continued.
Jarrard described his time with Bungie under the Microsoft umbrella: “I’ve been here over 8 years, and when I started we were in this sort of cubicle-filled office building in one of their office parks. We were in there with a lot of other first party development teams.”
”Initially, a lot of Bungie guys who were there from day one found that assimilating into Microsoft was not easy.”
“The way that we build games, the way that the team works, means that being in that oppressive Microsoft office was not conducive to the type of work that we do. I do believe that we felt like we wouldn’t be able to do good work there – maybe we would have died a little bit inside had we not been set free into our own studio.”
Things would change however, as Microsoft gave the studio much more freedom, helping to create the studio as it is today. “Going from there to get our own custom-built space that was miles away from Microsoft’s corporate office, for me, was the most significant step,” said Jarrard. “It gave Bungie its creative freedom, it fostered our own culture, our teamwork and our ability to feel autonomous and not just a part of the Microsoft corporation.”
So, Halo lovers around the globe should give a respectful nod towards Microsoft for having a hand in fostering one of the best development studios of this generation.
Source: Develop Online
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