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[SEGAvangelist]

Did people completely forgot Bungie was doing better under Activision than alone ?

Sony takeover isn't a bad thing. By the recent expansion I would say it is welcome.

They were also using a lot of resources from Activision, including entire development teams. I'm curious if Sony would sacrifice some of their talent to help Bungie, or scale down their games a bit instead.

 

[GymWolf]

I don't keep up with Destiny but it seems we went from "Bungie has a lot of say over GAAS projects at other Sony studios" to "Bungie is in trouble" really fast.



It's sort of explained in the OP.
When Sony bought Bungie the original arrangement was that Bungie would be an independent subsidiary of Sony. Bungie isn't considered a part of Playstation Studios, they are basically an independent branch of Sony (like, say, Sony Pictures) with full creative control and the ability to continue existing as a multiplatform dev

Apparently that independence was tied to them meeting certain financial goals. According to the report, if they fail those goals by a wide enough margin it would allow Sony to completely take over management. I imagine that would allow them to fold Bungie into Playstation Studios and treat them like any other of their first party devs instead of this special case.

I see nothing wrong if there is a pre-written contract.

I leave you free if you perform, if you don't perform, i'm literally paying your salaries so i'm gonna fix your shit instead of bleeding money.

Maybe i'm too much pro capitalism...

 

[LordCBH]

it was really smart for Sony to put that clause in the contract about being able to take over management if Bungie fumbles, but I bet they didn't think it could potentially trigger so soon.

I feel like the expectation was post-Marathon. But then bungo whiffed so goddamn hard on Lightfall this year, and then we all got that confirmation that the higher ups basically gated off any suggestions and plans to fix it. The sooner the executive level and upper management level people are gone the better.

 

[Bumblebeetuna]

I think that we’re seeing is that these studios purchased for billions of dollars were on the block for good reason. Bethesda was mismanaging their shit and planning GaaS nonsense. Bungie higher ups are incompetent. We’ll see about ABK. All this fuss about all of these acquisitions and they could all go down as big nothing burgers.

 

[DrFigs]

I think that we’re seeing is that these studios purchased for billions of dollars were on the block for good reason. Bethesda was mismanaging their shit and planning GaaS nonsense. Bungie higher ups are incompetent. We’ll see about ABK. All this fuss about all of these acquisitions and they could all go down as big nothing burgers.

I feel like we pretty much know about ABK. the company was vulnerable because of the sexual harassment allegations and they were struggling to make yearly cods. there was even a lot of doubt about whether mw3 would have come out this year, which would have really hurt the company's revenue.

 

[Mibu no ookami]

They were also using a lot of resources from Activision, including entire development teams. I'm curious if Sony would sacrifice some of their talent to help Bungie, or scale down their games a bit instead.

Sony owns 3 studios in Bellvue Washington. Two which are within walking distance from each other, and the third is within 10 or so minutes.

It would make sense to consolidate these studios, not necessarily in the same company, but in the same building.

 

[SnapShot]

 

[Tomeru]

all the color coded gear, dailies, their UI....

definitely, Destiny set a trend in the AAA space.

Thats stuff they borrowed from other games

 

[solidus12]

Huh?

 

[gothmog]

Sony owns 3 studios in Bellvue Washington. Two which are within walking distance from each other, and the third is within 10 or so minutes.

It would make sense to consolidate these studios, not necessarily in the same company, but in the same building.

You're making too much sense. Everyone knows Sony is evil and just wants to see poor Bungie crushed.

 

[graywolf323]

Huh?

I guess Ryan was feeling left out with Destin making all these hot stupid takes that he was compelled to get one of his own out there

 

[LordCBH]

Huh?

Kinda like Starfield? Or is that hack not ready to have that particular conversation?

 

[Sethbacca]

I really don't get why anybody cares about any of this shit. Most jobs are soul crushing. Like, we're all just out here going "OH NOES" while slaving away to the man ourselves anyway (at least in most cases).

 

[solidus12]

I guess Ryan was feeling left out with Destin making all these hot stupid takes that he was compelled to get one of his own out there

Speaking of stupid takes.

 

[RickMasters]

Reminds me of when they were under Microsoft. Being a subsidiary and wanting to remain independant seems contradictory.

Agreed.


Il also add that It was an odd sale, considering they want to be fully independent. I guess they wanted the financial security of being tied to a large company …perhaps they were spoiled by that MS money for all those years and left with some lofty expectations for themselves….. they clearly valued themselves very highly and Sony was willing to pay what they bungie valued themselves at.



But this situation could be nasty. They still want to be independent even after all that has happened. But they are costing money Sony at the same. So if Sony turns this into a hostile takeover, what will be left? How does that play out? If they are fearful of full ownership they may leave and form a new studio. If Sony play hardball too rough here, they risk losing bungie key talent and owning only a shell of the company. Bad taste in everybody’s mouths effecting the future relationship between bungie and Sony. How does this play out. There’s still a human element to all this. Not all business. How do you impose your ownership on a company you bought that prides itself on its hard fought for ( first from MS and thennfromnABK) independence that it has ingrained into its staffs culture and thinking. I can picture the lunch break dramatics right now. They fact they even feel a sense of threat form a company that owns them….stems from that sense of independence. It bothers them to their core clearly but why sell in the first place, then? And I would not wrong Sony for being aggressive with their management because at the end of the day Sony did buy bungie. There may have been terms in place but clearly some of those terms have come back to bite bungie in the ass…. Arrogant from all that destiny money they made, because let’s be honest they got away with their pricing plans and DLC rolls for a long time till they burned out their own players ( former destiny player here) maybe they thought this wouldn’t actually happen…. What with Sony historically Aleta. Even dev friendly with the business side of things as well as development process.



But then Sony have never bought a studio for the cost of bungie before so maybe some of this is new waters for them too. Owning a studio that makes multiformat games and is multiformat centric might not be something Sony can really manage what with them being so ‘ Playstation first’ with games. They still struggle with PC ports and release dates and maybe that’s intentional…. But it’s the opposite thinking of a platform agnostic company like bungie.


Maybe these two are a bad fit and somebody else like Amazon should have bought them.


And bad morale can certainly effect your employees and their ability to work at their best. How will this impact marathon? Will Sonys other studios…. Watching this friction, still feel like bungie should be the ones deciding whether their gaas games are fit for release? After showing they not only are failing with their own game, destiny 2 and it’s audience but now also possibly go high-tailing it out of there if sony gets full control…. Over something they already bought……




Always ( quietly to myself) said that bungie and Playstation are a bad fit. It wasn’t like their ‘organic’ acquisitions they are known for. Maybe This one was always driven by Sonys want/need to be in the gaas space.maybe they saw bungie as a shortcut into that. They wanted bungie expertise after all For sonys own gaas games. And of course cashing in on established Sony IP by making gaas versions and selling on brand power, established fan bases and bungie tweeked and approved monetisation mechanics.

 

[Unknown Soldier]

all the color coded gear, dailies, their UI....

definitely, Destiny set a trend in the AAA space.

I still think it's kind of wild that Hogwarts Legacy copies the Destiny gear system and UI almost exactly. Of all the gear systems and UI they could copy, it was that one. At least I immediately knew what to do so I guess that made it easier to manage lol

 

[Ogbert]

They should put Bungie on Killzone.

 

[MacReady13]

Kinda like Starfield? Or is that hack not ready to have that particular conversation?

He doesn't need to defend Starfield- read the comments from the Xbox fanboys! They've done his job for him! It's hilarious the way these idiots bend for their chosen company!!!

 

[intheinbetween]

Poor souls..

 

[semiconscious]

Always ( quietly to myself) said that bungie and Playstation are a bad fit. It wasn’t like their ‘organic’ acquisitions they are known for. Maybe This one was always driven by Sonys want/need to be in the gaas space.maybe they saw bungie as a shortcut into that. They wanted bungie expertise after all For sonys own gaas games. And of course cashing in on established Sony IP by making gaas versions and selling on brand power, established fan bases and bungie tweeked and approved monetisation mechanics...

reminds me of the shortcut to success that some baseball teams engage in, where, rather than growing their own talent, they snatch up a few past-their-prime heavy hitters. sometimes it works, but most times it don't...

 

[DeepEnigma]

They were also using a lot of resources from Activision, including entire development teams. I'm curious if Sony would sacrifice some of their talent to help Bungie, or scale down their games a bit instead.

Source?

 

[SEGAvangelist]

Source?

Had to do some digging, but here:

Activision Talks About Why It Broke Up With Bungie And The Destiny Series

The Destiny franchise was failing to sell up to expectations, Activision management says.

www.gamespot.com

"[Bungie was] tying up one of our scarcest resources--developer talent," Johnson said.

While High Moon and Vicarious Visions will continue to work with Bungie on Destiny content for a "transition period," they will be freed up after this to work on other Activision projects. Earlier today, Activision Blizzard said it plans to increase the number of developers working on games like Call of Duty, Candy Crush, Overwatch, Warcraft, Hearthstone, and Diablo by about 20 percent in aggregate over the course of 2019. It could be that High Moon and Vicarious Visions shift some of their efforts to these projects, but that hasn't been confirmed at this stage.

I thought I remembered Raven Software even developing for Destiny, but couldn't find anything on that.

 

[Silver Wattle]

Always thought Sony were idiots for spending so much for this studio, nice to get confirmation.

 

[Kurotri]

I think that we’re seeing is that these studios purchased for billions of dollars were on the block for good reason. Bethesda was mismanaging their shit and planning GaaS nonsense. Bungie higher ups are incompetent. We’ll see about ABK. All this fuss about all of these acquisitions and they could all go down as big nothing burgers.

This is where I'm at as well. After Starfield, Redfall and Deathloop the whole Zenimax purchase is already a nothingburger to me personally.

 

[Gravemind]

Huh?

The better question is who would even care.

 

[Hudo]

Huh?

Based Sony. Saving everyone from this abuse of an IP.

 

[FalsettoVibe]

Huh?

We should stop posting what this moron and others like him say. Nothing good ever comes from it and they don't deserve the attention.

 

[lefty1117]

seems to me that the gaming industry is overdue for unionization. These developers are treated like chattel to feed shareholders. The benefits are a fraction of the cost of the salaries they're shedding, if they were that expensive they would have canned the beneys first. I've got a pretty close view of the shareholder chase for margins and what it does to corporate employees, who always bear the brunt of the fallout. It's gross

 

[Clear]

seems to me that the gaming industry is overdue for unionization. These developers are treated like chattel to feed shareholders. The benefits are a fraction of the cost of the salaries they're shedding, if they were that expensive they would have canned the beneys first. I've got a pretty close view of the shareholder chase for margins and what it does to corporate employees, who always bear the brunt of the fallout. It's gross

How is unionization going to change the fact that noone in the industry is owed a job?

Reality is that development costs money, people need to get paid for years, before the thing they are working on has a chance to return a penny.

Self fund, self publish, is the only way to avoid becoming indebted to investors. IF you don't... Ultimately you are turning yourself into somebody else's business opportunity!

Its interesting to me that noone seems surprised when people backing kickstarters and all sorts of crowdfunding start to get impatient about when the thing they want gets delayed, or are angry when it falls short of expectations. And these investors are also fans, they opted in because they were genuinely into the project. So why are people surprised when businesspeople who aren't interested in much beyond the bottom line start to make demands?

Just saying, videogaming runs on money

 

[Mibu no ookami]

How is unionization going to change the fact that noone in the industry is owed a job?

Reality is that development costs money, people need to get paid for years, before the thing they are working on has a chance to return a penny.

Self fund, self publish, is the only way to avoid becoming indebted to investors. IF you don't... Ultimately you are turning yourself into somebody else's business opportunity!

Its interesting to me that noone seems surprised when people backing kickstarters and all sorts of crowdfunding start to get impatient about when the thing they want gets delayed, or are angry when it falls short of expectations. And these investors are also fans, they opted in because they were genuinely into the project. So why are people surprised when businesspeople who aren't interested in much beyond the bottom line start to make demands?

Just saying, videogaming runs on money

Gamers are one of the biggest problems in gaming. They don't want to pay for anything but want developers to not crunch, have knitting classes e.t.c.

Most gamers don't have job experience. They don't know that payroll costs go up every year because everyone wants a raise to at least keep up with inflation. All of the costs generally go up in gaming, but the games largely stay the same price.

People want a subscription service that has tons of games but doesn't cost much without realizing that actually means significantly less revenue to cover the salaries of people creating games.

They don't understand that investors/publishers need to get a certain ROI otherwise the risk involved in publishing games is greater than the worth. If gaming doesn't produce margins, the money goes somewhere else.

Games can be delayed for all sorts of reasons. Maybe you lose a key member of a team to a sexual harassment issue, someone passes away, or just finds a better paying job. Now all of a sudden you're missing sprints while you try to find someone else to bring in and get up to speed. But everything falls on leadership and they get the blame.

So just pay someone more money right? Well, you've already budgeted for the game, now your budget is rising because of competition in pay... and your ROI has tanked. You don't even know if the game is going to sell to projections...

It's a really difficult business and you have some companies who deserve significantly more praise than others. I think Sony is one of those companies. I'd much rather work for a Sony studio than EA or Activision.

You want to be inspired and do great work, but everyone wants to get paid too and no one wants to be fired.

 

[Bernkastel]

And yet, the "new" Bungie was able to make a game that retained almost all the DNA of the original Bungie Halo series, i.e. Destiny.

Frankly, it's irrelevant that the old Halo devs left. The O.G. team cultivated the studio's technologies, workflows, and overall development culture. That's something that remains with the company even after people leave... and the proof is in the pudding given that Destiny is Halo^2.



And? Those who remained made and continued to develop Destiny 2.

You seem to think you're making good points but you're not.

I even left this comment on my post that perfectly illustrated my point.

Why do you think Destiny 1 soundtrack was so much better than Destiny 2?

Spoiler

None of the people who made this work on Bungie any more by the way

I have the flac version


Get it before it gets taken down. This shit is god tier even if you don't play Destiny.

Not a single person from Bungie's original writing and audio team remained. They fired the whole writing team in 2013 and hired new writers. Only Clay Carmouche (who joined in 2011) remained until Taken King.

[Kotaku] The Messy, True Story Behind The Making Of Destiny

And we finally know something more http://kotaku.com/the-messy-true-story-behind-the-making-of-destiny-1737556731?utm_campaign=Socialflow_Kotaku_Twitter&utm_source=Kotaku_Twitter&utm_medium=Socialflow In the summer of 2013, months before they were supposed to ship their next video game, the...

www.neogaf.com

This was always known to almost anyone playing Destiny before 2016. I even mentioned this to you all the way back in 2021.

You have no idea what you are talking about. The original Destiny sounds way better than the mess we got in 2014.


The writers that Bungie hired after that still put parts of his script in the Grimoire cards because they liked it so much.

None of this is relevant. How does the subquent quality (or lack thereof) of Destiny’s creative direction matter to the former writer’s work on Halo since 2014 and the future of the Halo franchise? It doesn’t.

What matters is the current creative lead’s work on Destiny has since been mostly abandoned

There was a sense of mystery that you got from the lore of Destiny 1 like Halo, because it was still based of the original script. The new writers who are responsible for Destiny 2 can't capture this "mystery".

Spoiler

Remember District 9 was based on the story of a cancelled Halo episodic game and Rouge One essentially copied Halo Reach. And its the same thing with Music, Destiny 2 music can't can't capture the Bungie feeling like there Halo games or even Destiny 1, and now even Michael Salvatori left.

The O.G. team cultivated the studio's technologies, workflows, and overall development culture. That's something that remains with the company even after people leave... and the proof is in the pudding given that Destiny is Halo^2.

Can't believe you wrote that with a straight face.

You mean many of them went to work for Firewalk Studios... a studio that *checks notes* Sony also owns... and bought from ProbablyMonsters.

People come and go in this industry. It doesn't mean that the DNA and talent is gone.

Jason Rubin and Andy Gavin are gone from Naughty Dog, but Naughty Dog is far more successful in the years since their departure. Which isn't necessarily a slight against them.

Don't know why you always bring up this example. Whenever people bring up "the original people all left" for a studio, they are comparing them with their past output. Listen to Destiny 1's Music of Spheres if you didn't get my point.
Firewalk is a separate studio built from the ground up, they were to ProbablyMonsters what Black Isle was to Interplay. I was talking a lot of the OG Destiny 1 devs who joined ProbablyMonsters

C Paul Johnson - ProbablyMonsters | LinkedIn

I am an award winning Audio Director, Composer and Sound Designer. I live my life at the… · Experience: ProbablyMonsters · Location: Bellevue · 500+ connections on LinkedIn. View C Paul Johnson’s profile on LinkedIn, a professional community of 1 billion members.

www.linkedin.com

 

[Pop]

Huh?

So many American gaming "journalist" hacks go to bat for Xbox. Its absurd, like they are apart of the payroll

 

[Katatonic]

Huh?

Who the hell wants to be associated with this guy and his ilk?

 

[Sushi_Combo]

Huh?

That tool needs to take that Spencer dick out of his mouth.

 

[Pfroebbel]

They should put Bungie on Killzone.

Win Win Win
Bungie could make a smaller Project and prove that they still can do good Shooters, even without Service Bullshit and we get finally a new Killzone and Killzone gets the Halo Treatment

Hell, that would be great for Sony in so many ways