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Activision/Bungie game revealed by court (4 MMO sci-fantasy FPSs, more) [OP Updated]

I really don't know. Were people surprised that Kamiya, Sakaguchi, Mikami, and the IW founders went on to make games in the same genre as DMC, FF, RE4, and CoD?

I don't get why people are surprised when creators do what they know. The biggest example of this is Kickstarter. People were all over Takedown and Grim Dawn for being the same old thing.
 

wildfire

Banned
makes me wonder if this IS Titan or if it will actually compete against Titan.
I've been thinking about this too because while it makes sense to have two MMOs one fantasy and scifi with different game mechanics it doesn't make as much sense for Activision to bet the farm on two scifi MMOs releasing within the same time frame (unless one is console exclusive and the other is PC exclusive [which would be dumb])
 

Robot Pants

Member
Short Recap:
-Bungie will receive a $2.5 million bonus if Destiny achieves a GameRankings.com rating of 90 or higher on Xbox 360 as measured 30 days after release.
Hope this industry collapses on itself and burns in the fires of hell. Then can be rebuilt.
grampva.png
 

LQX

Member
Hope this industry collapses on itself and burns in the fires of hell. Then can be rebuilt.

Why, why, why though? I don't get comments like this. What is wrong with giving incentives for doing a good job. This benefits the consumer and Bungie employees to make the best game they can. Even in sports, you get a bonus for making it to the playoffs.
 

volturnus

Banned
Why, why, why though? I don't comments like this. What is wrong with giving incentives for doing a good job. This benefits the consumer and Bungie employees to make the best game they can. Even in sports, you get a bonus for making it to the playoffs.
There's nothing wrong with compensating for doing a good job, it has always been normal for contracts in the entertainment industry, the problem is that defining good or bad work by a standard such as GR/metascore suppresses creative freedom, forcing developers to make features and choices that will appeal to the masses using safe formulas and copying ''hits'', which is what publishers wanted all along, another quick-buck-clone.
This is harmful not only to the developers, but to gaming enthusiasts (most neogaf, RPS, gamasutra and GB users, for instance) and to the industry and its reputation as a whole.
And that's without mentioning gaming ''journalism'', which already suffers from low standards, lack of research and a 8-10 scale. Making such incompetent ''professionals'' responsible for the devs' bonuses is terrible on its own.
 
So what should bonuses be tied to?

I mean, the whole point of trying it to critics, in theory, shouldn't bind the developers hands with regards to creativity... right?
 

volturnus

Banned
So what should bonuses be tied to?

I mean, the whole point of trying it to critics, in theory, shouldn't bind the developers hands with regards to creativity... right?
Bonuses should be tied to public opinion, but without the gaming press. Just hire a company to do some market research 3 months after the release in gaming message boards and outlet websites. Pick 5000 random users that wrote more than 50 words about the game and see if the majority of them had a positive opinion or not.
I'm pretty sure Obsidian would've got its bonus for F:NV this way.
 
Btw, when did Marcus Lehto leave Bungie and then come back? Wasn't it after 2010? It seems people are assuming he's attached to Marathon, but if he wanted couldn't he have switched to that project?

I'm assuming we'll get a big annoucement at e3, and now I'm figuring it's part of MS's conference instead of activisions.

I'm also assuming that the PA report is going to have a major blowout/interview with the studio as soon as it get's released. I don't think that awesome photoshoot just happened for funsies ;).

What photoshoot happened? But yeah, I suspect e3 as well and Im hyped.

I'm pretty sure it became public records once it was brought up during the trial. It wasn't leaked in a traditional sense.

Ah ok, that makes sense...but then I wonder why they seem surprised this leaked out? Wasn't it inevitable if it was being used in the court case? Unless of course maybe this all happened very suddenly and was court ordered against Activisions/Bungies will.

They're worth it without a doubt. They hold up amazingly well even all these years later.

Ok cool, excited to play these then, though Im never great with real old school shooters with little sense of direction.. Also, are there mods available for the old Marathon games, like texture packs, etc?
 
K

kittens

Unconfirmed Member
Ah ok, that makes sense...but then I wonder why they seem surprised this leaked out? Wasn't it inevitable if it was being used in the court case? Unless of course maybe this all happened very suddenly and was court ordered against Activisions/Bungies will.
I'm guessing it was poor communication between Activision, Activision's legal team, and Bungie folks.
 

Krilekk

Banned
This is literally terrifying to me. I write reviews for G4 and (as of late last year, I believe), we're included in Metacritic/GameRankings numbers. My own personal, probably-biased-one-way-or-another-because-there's-no-such-thing-as-an-objective-review is going to affect the jobs and well-being of hardworking developers? That's not supposed to affect a review, but this is bullshit. There's a lot of unwritten pressure there. I would probably decline to review a title I knew had a clause like this.

Metacritic ratings directly affect sales, that's why this is pretty common for the last five or so years. It's not important that your opinion is biased, if you have a lot of biased opinions you will get an objective Metacritic rating.
 

SparkTR

Member
I don't believe there is a market for an MMO first person shooter game. If there is, it is a very small one.

It's a largely untapped market, but it has tons of potential. The reason why it's so barren is because technology hasn't progressed enough to make it doable until recently (especially in regards to network infrastructure), yes Planetside 1 and Battleground Europe have existed since the early '00s, but the actual gameplay they offered was nowhere near comparable with standard multiplayer shooters. People tolerated those games because they offered experiences that could be found nowhere else such as massive combined arms battles and persistent large-scale combat arenas.

Looking at Planetside 2, Firefall, Dust514, Project Titan and now this, it seems it's going to be hot property in a few years time. Seriously, look at Total Biscuit's preview of Planetside 2, it's mechanically and visually comparable to any modern shooter despite the fact that it supports 1998 players in a single battle. I'm not saying Destiny is going to be anything like that (it probably will be like Dust514, 64 player battles with some persistence), but it shows just how much progress has been made in this subgenre.
 
K

kittens

Unconfirmed Member
I wonder if Destiny will have a single player campaign at all.
 
I wonder if Destiny will have a single player campaign at all.

They will probably fuse single and multi player together, and make something that is always online, always connected but still offers a single player experience, but with added world of everyone else playing as well. Kinda like The Crossing mixed with Guild Wars.
 
more I think of this the more I think it will be like a Bungie version of Borderlands with gun loot, MMO hooks, but a much deeper storyline and more then 4 players on a server
 
SALES, of which the bonuses are paid out of.

But in this case, their bonuses are tied to sales. Beyond the standard royalty rate, at certain SALES thresholds, their royalty rate goes up significantly. Effectively, a bonus.

A tiny amount (compared to what they get for sales) ALSO gets paid to the studio if they are reviewed at a certain level.

It is not an all or nothing thing at all. If Bungie has any sense, they will make the game they want to make, which they think will sell a TON of copies. That is how they make a lot of money in this case.

Honestly, if anything the review bonus is a consolation prize in case the game reviews well, but doesn't sell.
 
Btw, when did Marcus Lehto leave Bungie and then come back? Wasn't it after 2010? It seems people are assuming he's attached to Marathon, but if he wanted couldn't he have switched to that project?



What photoshoot happened? But yeah, I suspect e3 as well and Im hyped.

Lehto was the project Lead on Halo Reach, maybe "returning" is him returning to developing something other than Reach?

BTW, this is the photoshoot, http://penny-arcade.com/report/edit...nd-dated-the-penny-arcade-report-tours-bungie

As said, I really doubt they just wanted pretty photos. I'm hoping PAR gets a good interview with Bungie, as I'm really liking the interviews and editorials they've done so far.
 

wildfire

Banned
A more thorough TLDR breakdown can be found here

http://www.develop-online.net/featu...tipulations-behind-the-Bungie-Activision-deal

NO ZAMPELLA WEST INCIDENTS
Key staff had to sign a new, long-term employment contracts with Bungie that Activision had approved the terms of. It stipulates that ‘key members’ will lose their equity in the studio if they leave before Destiny project number two, due for release Fall 2015 on PC, PS4 and Xbox 720.

(There is only one loophole that allows staff to get their equity back, and the Destiny project will need to make $1 billion in operating income for such a loophole to possibly come into effect).

NO INFINTY WARD INCIDENTS
The Destiny project will legally have entered ‘critical risk’ if 33 per cent of the Bungie staff leave the studio within any twelve month period prior to the master copy of Comet number four (due 2020).

In this phase, Activision has, in certain circumstances, the authority to assume control of the game’s IP, as well as a licence to use the proprietary ‘Destiny Game Engine’.

More LOLs can be found inside.
 
Why, why, why though? I don't get comments like this. What is wrong with giving incentives for doing a good job. This benefits the consumer and Bungie employees to make the best game they can. Even in sports, you get a bonus for making it to the playoffs.

Making the playoffs depends on you and your players. Not the outside, every day people who seems to consistently give zeros now on sites like metacritics before a game is even released. How is that good for Bungie?
 

Mooreberg

Member
I am really mystified by the review based bonuses on games that are going to sell well no matter what. Did Modern Warfare 3 sell less for having an 88% average on Game Rankings?

They already know they are going to market the ever loving shit out of this thing, why act like matching the review average of a Half-Life or GTA game is going matter?

The Bungie vs. Activision lawsuits in half a decade should be pretty entertaining.
 
A more thorough TLDR breakdown can be found here

http://www.develop-online.net/featu...tipulations-behind-the-Bungie-Activision-deal

More LOLs can be found inside.

That makes sense. They are paying for a current development team to make a game and if the vast majority of the team leaves then they aren't getting what they paid for.

Think of it like if you paid a shit ton of money to Double Fine to make a game and then Tim Schafer and Ron Gilbert left the company during development.
 
Wow. Lock most of the staff down till 2020. I hope they love it there.

I wonder if they went to the employees and tried to get a sense of how many were really in it for the long haul. I assume most of them are at-will and could leave for any reason if they wanted to.
 

goldenpp72

Member
This is weird, when Bungie left MS I felt sad and got the feeling MS must have mistreated them, so when they went independent I thought it would be good for them. All the info here just screams sell out, at least reading bits.
 
Not sure if everyone here is aware, but I try to keep my website (MisriahSolutions.com) updated with the latest Destiny info.



Exhibit 7: The Destiny Contract

Probably not a lot of new info for any attentive Gaffers, (since the contract has had plenty of coverage elsewhere already) but I did my best to collect the rest of the scraps together. You might be interested in my thoughts on what Marcus Lehto is (and isn't) up to...
 

KageMaru

Member
This is weird, when Bungie left MS I felt sad and got the feeling MS must have mistreated them, so when they went independent I thought it would be good for them. All the info here just screams sell out, at least reading bits.

You see sell out, I see creative control and lucrative. ;-)

This is a very good contract for bungie.
 
Why, why, why though? I don't get comments like this. What is wrong with giving incentives for doing a good job. This benefits the consumer and Bungie employees to make the best game they can. Even in sports, you get a bonus for making it to the playoffs.

So an 89 on metacritic/gamerankings isn't a good job?

Maybe that's too subtle... the problem is that Metacritic and Gamerankings aren't actual measures of quality. I've heard it suggested that they're used because of a high correlation with sales, but if you're a publisher and you want to reward based on something that correlates with sales why not just use... sales?

But yeah, aggregated review scores are awful metric. What's the difference between an 89 average game and a 90 average game? Do you have control over which you get? Would you want to risk $2.5M on something you can't control or influence?

In my perfect world reviewers band together and stop giving grades, but given that every Tom Dick and Harry has a game review blog with 6 hits a month you could never get rid of them all.
 
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