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[Sayers]

Thanks for the kind words, everyone! I've been chasing this one for a long time. Glad to finally be able to publish it, thanks to a bunch of gutsy people who had the courage to fight against the industry's absurd taboos of silence and talk to me about an important, interesting story like this. Getting this out there was beneficial not just to the public but to Bungie too, I think.

Now on to the next story...

Excellent work Jason

 

[Lime]

Bungie should face some kind of legal or restitution repercussions for their work practices in the many games they have shipped. Sounds like they're grinding and grinding once more, based on that article.

 

[Seth Enosh]

Bungie should face some kind of legal or restitution repercussions for their work practices in the many games they have shipped. Sounds like they're grinding and grinding once more, based on that article.

What are you talking about? "Legal" repercussions? Do you know anything about law? What did they do to you?

 

[Zocano]

Bungie should face some kind of legal or restitution repercussions for their work practices in the many games they have shipped. Sounds like they're grinding and grinding once more, based on that article.

You'd have to take literally every other large 200+ person studio to task as well. And I don't just mean in the video game industry.

 

[Interficium]

Getting this out there was beneficial not just to the public but to Bungie too, I think.

This is what the enthusiast press actually believes.

Let's not pretend this is Watergate, Schreier.

Bungie should face some kind of legal or restitution repercussions for their work practices in the many games they have shipped. Sounds like they're grinding and grinding once more, based on that article.

Joke post?

 

[Bold One]

Bungie should face some kind of legal or restitution repercussions for their work practices in the many games they have shipped. Sounds like they're grinding and grinding once more, based on that article.

I'm going to go out on a limb and assume you didnt finish Law School

 

[Orochinagis]

So their engine is faulty?

Gotta read the full article

 

[Orayn]

This is what the enthusiast press actually believes.

Let's not pretend this is Watergate, Schreier.

I dunno, it's not entirely off base to think that a studio could improve their practices as a result the public seeing some of their dirty laundry. Granted, it could also backfire and make them more secretive...

 

[FStop7]

I loved the article.

I wish more of this had been public knowledge prior to Destiny's release. I think in some ways it might have garnered more sympath/patience from the core fanbase. Sometimes the veil of secrecy in game development does more to harm than help.

 

[Bold One]

I dunno, it's not entirely off base to think that a studio could improve their practices as a result the public seeing some of their dirty laundry. Granted, it could also backfire and make them more secretive...

I'm going to go with scenario B, they have more to lose talking now more than ever, as this unfortunate business of their dirty laundry is out in the open for everyone to see/

expect fewer interviews and press time in the immediate future

 

[Zocano]

I loved the article.

I wish more of this had been public knowledge prior to Destiny's release. I think in some ways it might have garnered more sympath/patience from the core fanbase. Sometimes the veil of secrecy in game development does more to harm than help.

A lot of it was telegraphed but not transparently. We knew Staten and Marty had a huge falling out and when your lead writer leaves a year before your supposed 10 year franchise first launches, you know some shit is up. People were going to be ruthless and relentless either way.

 

[Lime]

What are you talking about? "Legal" repercussions? Do you know anything about law? What did they do to you?

You'd have to take literally every other large 200+ person studio to task as well. And I don't just mean in the video game industry.

I'm going to go out on a limb and assume you didnt finish Law School

I mean in terms of labor laws - usually what Bungie has done throughout its existence as a game developer seems very problematic, but I guess their country of residence doesn't give much power to the employees in terms of worker rights. Based on what I've heard with their previous games Bungie has had a track record of grueling work schedules, very long periods of crunch, and sudden contract terminations/firings.

Regardless of what the law in the US states about worker rights for software employees, I still think Bungie as a company should do better in terms of how they treat the people who actually produce the games, based on what I've heard and read. That was the point of what I wrote.

 

[ForsakenLotus]

Surely it isn't normal for a map to take hours to load, 20 minutes to compile minute changes and so forth? That seems insane.

What is it like for other games in development?

 

[Skux]

It always shows. Whether it's references to missing content in the game files or things just feeling incomplete in the game, it always shows when a game has a troubled development cycle.

In what universe does it take 8 hours to open a map? This boggles my mind.

 

[Muffdraul]

really good read. i'm sure they had their reasons for cutting the original story, if it was great they wouldn't have scrapped it.

Great stories sometimes get butchered and pounded into mediocrity because the people holding the purse strings had a bad opinion of it. We'll likely never get to form our own opinion as to whether Staten's version could have flown or not. I know Jason Jones has gone on record in the past as saying he doesn't like a lot of cutscenes in games and I have to wonder if he felt Halo entailed many years of compromising on that and decided to put his foot down on the new project. Or at least side with Harold Ryan.

Personally, I'd bet a million dollars I would have LOVED Staten's version.

 

[Orochinagis]

Sorry If I am going to post in pieces but

Casualties of this process included characters like Osiris and Charlemagne, an artificial intelligence on Mars who was promoted in early Destiny previews but never appeared in the game.

Charlemagne finally makes an appereance on the Sidequest Sleeper Simulant on the TTK expansion, he is mentioned on the Mars Warsat while Earth and Moon Warsat pieces are Rasputin property.

 

[Twilight Gap]

Surely it isn't normal for a map to take hours to load, 20 minutes to compile minute changes and so forth? That seems insane.

What is it like for other games in development?

Am surprised they even shipped the game after scrapping it. So much time wasted waiting for shit to render.

 

[HTupolev]

So their engine is faulty?

In a manner of speaking. It's damned cool in terms of what it can do at runtime, but the article describes delays when iterating on the source files.

 

[NoHeDidn't]

Can we seriously put to bed this notion of blaming Activision and giving Bungie a pass for the sake of nostalgia?

We now see Bungie is and always has been to blame as should always be the case.i knew they signed a deal with the devil but i didnt think they went to the devil (Activision) with even more money making schemes.

 

[Lingitiz]

Did we ever find out why Microsoft decided to pass on the original pitch for Destiny? My understanding was they were given exclusive first rights following the independence deal.

It's crazy how what seemed like one of the tightest knit studios in the industry has had some of the messiest and high profile departures out there. They're definitely not the company that made Halo.

 

[Alienous]

It's like Bungie have maintained a mentality that isn't sustainable for their size. Severe communication issues about the story 6 months before your targeted release, with hundreds (400+ including testers was mentioned) of people working on it.

Bungie have given off that scrappy "get me some duct-tape, I'll make it fly" vibe, but that doesn't seem sustainable with that many cooks in the kitchen. Three times as many as Halo Reach. Much more than the 60 or so of Halo 2.

I'd be flipping tables if I were Activision.

 

[BreezyLimbo]

Sorry I am am going to post in pieces but



Charlemagne finally makes an appereance on the Sidequest Sleeper Simulant on the TTK expansion, he is mentioned on the Mars Warsat while Earth and Moon Warsat pieces are Rasputin property.

Yeah. In the ARG or whatever Bungie had in the beginning, Charlemagne was a much bigger deal. It was supposed to be Mars' Ai(Charlemagnes vault is mentioned various times in various articles.

Hell, Bungie themselves said you were going to get something from Charlemagnes vault! This was in 2013, presumably before the complete rework-

“The City wants us to recover a piece of Charlemagne, one of the great Warminds of the Golden Age—a vast machine intelligence built by the ancient Powers of Mars. The Cabal do everything they can to try and stop our descent, but we keep pushing, rifles cracking and Traveler energy boiling from our fists until the only thing left standing is us, and the only thing left of the Cabal is the loot they hid in Charlemagne’s vault.

Instead they scrapped Charlemagne and made Rasputin the commanding warmind in Mars. This was also integral for getting 'Thorn', which as you know turned into a year 1 bounty.

Also, from the same link, from one of the devs-

Creating pixel art and sprites, often for roguelike games, under the pseudonym Oryx.

 

[Twilight Gap]

It's like Bungie have maintained a mentality that isn't sustainable for their size. Severe communication issues about the story 6 months before your targeted release, with hundreds (400+ including testers was mentioned) of people working on it.

Bungie have given off that scrappy "get me some duct-tape, I'll make it fly" kinds of studios, but that doesn't seem sustainable with that many cooks in the kitchen. Three times as many as Halo Reach. Much more than the 60 or so of Halo 2.

I'd be flipping tables if I were Activision.

jason jones still stuck in that Halo CE dev cycle.

 

[Orochinagis]

Read all the article, all the DLC main areas was part of the vanilla game but cut down, tweaked, reintegrated and sell it to us as DLC. Why I am not surprised we will see the remaining locked areas on the incoming free dlcs.

Bungie got a lot of trouble after begin independent I have to say, hope they learned from orevious DLC experience and learn from TTK to avoid depending so much in RNG in everything they do as a quick solution to their main problems and say no to activision strict polities of deliver content in a certain date.

 

[AP90]

This is kinda whats bothering me about the whole thing. Its not like Staten was writing this game for a year or something. Since at least 2010 this thing was being worked on, AND NO ONE SAID: "Hey, I dont think this is working. Story might be a little campy Joe. Should do a little editing and work stuff out, we got a couple years"

Thats not how companies work. With all due respect, this sounds much more personal.

This and other comments from other pages.

And I do feel for Staten. Kind of wish I could have played/experienced the original product vs the frankensteined product we got at the end. I had invested 400h by Jan 2015 and stopped playing it after the first expansion as it was not working for me and the story was still shit too me. Not to mention all the drastic changes that kept happening to the game. And I preordered the deluxe digital guardians edition day one which included both expansions too.

 

[Orochinagis]

This all above.

And I do feel for Staten. Kind of wish I could have played/experienced the original product vs the frankensteined product we got at the end. I had invested 400h by Jan 2015 and stopped playing as it after the first expansion as it was not working for me and the story was still shit too me. Not to mention all the drastic changes that kept happening to the game.

Expansion 3 and still no idea about the Traveler status after you heal it on the third mission on the moon or the Stranger ingame.

 

[Monocle]

I'm going to devour this article like a steak.

 

[RadicalVelocity]

So embarrassing, but there some of it finally is. Though some of you gleefully awaiting the paladins of activision coming in to clean bungie of its personal plague confuse me. Might be disappointed as one bad mess becomes even worse, haha.


Good work Jason (press sneak fantastic)! Looking forward to the next.

Edit: Chris Butcher gave the tools a low grade in his analysis of bungie's new engine. Whatever it was, it was too high. Shoulda been a W, not a C or F. Hope they can extract... Well, they need a good order(s) of magnitude improvement there. Hope that's what they've focused on prior to Destiny 2

 

[TrojanBlade]

There it is. Knew Bungie messed up something along the way when I played it. We were promised something epic, and ended up getting an incoherent bits and pieces of a vague game. My worst purchase this gen. Thanks a lot Bungie!

 

[Roddslayer]

Wow what a great read. It all makes perfect sense and the pieces of the puzzle are falling into place. I feel for everyone involved. It sounds like a lot of relationships were ruined or seriously scarred in the process of making this game.

Here's hoping the tools and such get streamlined to help pump out content at a greater, easier pace.

 

[blame space]

Shooting shit is so fun in destiny. Good article, I can't imagine how frustrating working on a game must be.

 

[BreezyLimbo]

Shooting shit is so fun in destiny. Good article, I can't imagine how frustrating working on a game must be.

Yeah. I mean, it's common knowledge that things get cut all the time, but for Staten to have his whole vision butchered and frankensteined...Maaan.

 

[HigherLevel]

I had a feeling when we first started hearing rumors about Destiny and their massive number of employees compared to the Halo days(I think there were around 120 people max on Halo 3) that the company many of us loved would no longer be the same.

Many of the people behind what made Halo great had already left before the departures of Joe and Marty. Destiny is a fun game with friends, it's highly flawed but there is still fun to be found, but all of the guys that made Bungie who they were are gone now besides Jason Jones and a few others. It's sad to see this story because for a decade they were my favorite developer and I felt like they were different from many of the other companies in the industry.

Also this was a really great read, it's good to see more stuff like this when the majority of gaming media won't really say anything negative anymore because publishers are so obsessed with every bit of info release on their games.

 

[FStop7]

i feel sorry for bungie staff reading this. sounds like management can never make up their minds or come up with realistic goals and schedules, then everyone has to crunch for months on end to make things work.

maybe that's just par for the course in big console gamedev, though bungie seems to be worse at it than most.

It's common across all business but especially bad in game development.

What's really inexcusable is the toolset. It's straight up abusive to the devs and the customers. It has to be fixed if Destiny is going to survive more than another couple of years.

 

[Hawkeye 131]

I knew it was only a matter of time before someone did the research and wrote this article. That said well done Mr. Schreier what exceptional, intriguing and well written piece. Pretty much confirms the vast majority of rumors we've heard about the game's troubled development. I sincerely hope Bungie can get it's shit together and really deliver on the potential with Destiny 2. The whole reduce, reuse and recycle design philosophy needs to change, they clearly need a more coherent and straightforward design and content plan. The hack n' slash and stitch it back together again sounds like it only just barely worked maybe with the help of a little luck too. The repetative mission structure of the first two DLC's where you run backwards and forwards through areas you've already been 100 times before combined with the ridiculously and rather needlessly grindy gameplay loops is downright amateurish. Although they've fixed a lot of the problems with the game the story is by and large still the weakest part of the game. Game has been two steps forward one step back since launch.

 

[koryuken]

Thankfully, I am not giving them any more money to feed their 1 game a year dev cycle. Reading about the part where they "developed" the first expansion via a 6 week crunch was awesome.

Using micro-transactions to make up for the losses they made on DLC and to finance Destiny 2 was an awesome gem as well. SMH, shifty practices all around.

 

[Dalek]

Thanks for the kind words, everyone! I've been chasing this one for a long time. Glad to finally be able to publish it, thanks to a bunch of gutsy people who had the courage to fight against the industry's absurd taboos of silence and talk to me about an important, interesting story like this. Getting this out there was beneficial not just to the public but to Bungie too, I think.

Now on to the next story...

You should be very proud of this article. You have a great writing style that is very rare in most writing I see-You really tell a great story in your words. I was imagining what it must have like to be in those offices during this development.

 

[Zocano]

Yeah. I mean, it's common knowledge that things get cut all the time, but for Staten to have his whole vision butchered and frankensteined...Maaan.

I love Staten's work and am really excited to see what he makes in the future ):

 

[koryuken]

Thanks for the kind words, everyone! I've been chasing this one for a long time. Glad to finally be able to publish it, thanks to a bunch of gutsy people who had the courage to fight against the industry's absurd taboos of silence and talk to me about an important, interesting story like this. Getting this out there was beneficial not just to the public but to Bungie too, I think.

Now on to the next story...

Great article, thank you for taking the time.

 

[Monocle]

Yeah. I mean, it's common knowledge that things get cut all the time, but for Staten to have his whole vision butchered and frankensteined...Maaan.

Staten deserved better. I hope his current work environment is worthy of his talents.

Thanks for the kind words, everyone! I've been chasing this one for a long time. Glad to finally be able to publish it, thanks to a bunch of gutsy people who had the courage to fight against the industry's absurd taboos of silence and talk to me about an important, interesting story like this. Getting this out there was beneficial not just to the public but to Bungie too, I think.

Now on to the next story...

Thanks for your great work.

 

[koryuken]

Staten deserved better. I hope his current work environment is worthy of his talents.

Agreed... Bungie sounds like a sweat shop.

 

[Altairre]

I don't always agree with Jason Schreier but he's one of the best in the business and I respect him more and more as I follow his work. Really great article, keep it up!

 

[Dalek]

The one thing I wonder about with this wacky engine they have Destiny running on is why is there a 3 second delay when I pull my inventory up. Should the PS4 be capable of instantly pulling that up with no delay? Sometimes it'd be great to pop an ammo synth in a flash

 

[Pez]

Makes sense that the mechanics for Destiny are so polished, they had an extra year to get that part right at least.

But to echo a few of the other posts here, Destiny was the reason I finally made the jump to next-gen and I was really disappointed in the game. The story being none existent being problem #1.

Destiny 2 will be great, I'm sure, but I don't like the direction the company seems to be going in with the beginning of this gen.

 

[BreezyLimbo]

The one thing I wonder about with this wacky engine they have Desinty running on is why is there a 3 second delay when I pull my inventory up. Should the PS4 be capable of instantly pulling that up with no delay? Sometimes it'd be great to pop an ammo synth in a flash

It's because that stuff is tied to the server, as to not cause item-dupe glitches. That's why it has to load up the inventory every time you open it(Unless you recently got that item in which case it'll show up immediately.)

 

[Diablohead]

So their engine is faulty?

Gotta read the full article

not faulty but more like it's cumbersome and slow to do things which should be simple to adjust.

The one thing I wonder about with this wacky engine they have Destiny running on is why is there a 3 second delay when I pull my inventory up. Should the PS4 be capable of instantly pulling that up with no delay? Sometimes it'd be great to pop an ammo synth in a flash

That delay is the game server checking your equiptment, the icons and menu system is all there instantly in memory but the check on your item stock held on the server will vary.

Same issue with loading somewhere from orbit, sometimes you can connect and load in 20 seconds and sometimes it takes a minute because you hit a que.

 

[Dalek]

It's because that stuff is tied to the server, as to not cause item-dupe glitches. That's why it has to load up the inventory every time you open it(Unless you recently got that item in which case it'll show up immediately.)

Interesting. I really wish I could use the trackpad on the PS4 to swap between primary weapons/secondary weapons. Have my shotgun ready, and then just swipe to the right to pull out my sniper rifle.

 

[watership]

It's common across all business but especially bad in game development.

What's really inexcusable is the toolset. It's straight up abusive to the devs and the customers. It has to be fixed if Destiny is going to survive more than another couple of years.

I seem to remember comments from Bungie staff that Jones was stingy with tool sets. Giving limited access going as far back as Myth. These comments were all in jest, like ribbing him. This could be a Bungie thing, Halo gamers know that there were always limited options, for visual and audio. Bungie knows better what a best for you, than you do.

 

[Keihart]

What a mess, jeez, and i was just wondering where all that money went.....
That is some ass leadership.

 

[Fjordson]

Wow, really great article. Makes me kinda sad though, as someone who used to love Bungie. They could do no wrong in the Halo days (and even before then) but Destiny was such a huge disappointment. And reading stuff like this doesn't give me a ton of hope for future Destiny.

I really wish they hadn't gone the shared-world route with the IP. Would love to be getting new quality single-player campaigns from Bungie with someone like Staten on board in the Destiny universe. And it seems like it would have been easier on Bungie as a company. Sounds like they just aren't properly equipped for an online game like this where you have to always be pumping out new content and supporting the game.

And this is just the beginning. I can't imagine how daunting it must be being on that team knowing you have to support Destiny as an IP for an entire decade.