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PC Games (Games) XBox (Games) Entertainment Games

Bungie Co-Founder Tries New Approach, Licenses Halo Engine 39

Posted by simoniker from the halo-dolly dept.
Thanks to GamesIndustry.biz for its article discussing Bungie co-founder Alexander Seropian's forming of Wideload Games, a development studio "which has started work on a new PC/Xbox title based on the Halo engine technology." The studio's development philosophy is an attempt to break with the past by using "a very small number of core staff, and hiring independent staffers to actually bring the game through to completion", and Seropian comments of current large-scale development methodologies: "It's kind of broken... it's kind of antiquated - it's how they were making films in the '30s."
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Bungie Co-Founder Tries New Approach, Licenses Halo Engine More

Bungie Co-Founder Tries New Approach, Licenses Halo Engine

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  • I seem to rember other game companies trying this and not getting very far. I'm I just imagining things or am I compleately missing the point?

  • uh.. (Score:5, Insightful)

    by hookedup ( 630460 ) on Monday April 26, 2004 @02:52PM (#8974942)
    independent staffers

    So they are outsourcing?

  • Erm... (Score:2, Informative)

    by alaeth ( 78655 )
    Wasn't Daikatana make by the founder of ID (who also left to start a new company...

    • Re:Erm... (Score:2, Informative)

      by linzeal ( 197905 )
      This Guy [mobygames.com]?

      His magnum crapus Daikatana [amazon.com] is bargain bin, but he worked on some of the more legendary games out there as well so he is forgiven esp since he cut his hair [gignews.com] and made all of us balding geeks less jealous.

    • I wonder if there is anyone left from bungie the company at bungie the studio.
      • Yes. Jason Jones, Rob McLees, Dave Bernal, Chucky Gough, and Hamilton Chu, to name a few off the top of my head. It's just not the same, though...
        • Yeah, there was no command - option start new game cheat in Halo, and I don't remember any vidmaster videos. But there is a bit of the Bungie spirit left, look real close on one of the shotgun shells for an example...
          • Yeah, but that little Easter Egg was courtesy of Matt Soell, and he left the company months ago. (Note the Wideload Games website's logo...)
            • Matt left? Wow, the crew is really splintered now. I met them all at trade shows and although Jason and Alex were always personable, Matt was by far the friendliest to the fans.

  • Films from the 30s (Score:5, Insightful)

    by AtariAmarok ( 451306 ) on Monday April 26, 2004 @02:57PM (#8974997)
    " it's how they were making films in the '30s." "

    ...a decade which gave us The Wizard of Oz, Gone with the Wind, and other landmark films. Sometimes, better writing/creation/etc is better than having the most recent effects technology, in films, games, or elsewhere.

    • Re:Films from the 30s (Score:4, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 26, 2004 @03:12PM (#8975152)

      Every decade has had some great films. The 30s are not unique in that respect.

    • Re:Films from the 30s (Score:5, Informative)

      by Elwood P Dowd ( 16933 ) <judgmentalist@gmail.com> on Monday April 26, 2004 @04:23PM (#8975963) Journal
      Sometimes, better writing/creation/etc is better than having the most recent effects technology, in films, games, or elsewhere.

      What he's talking about is improving writing/creation/etc, not the special effects. He's not saying "black and white movies are crappy" he was just saying that they hadn't properly figured out how to organize a movie production. This is not to say that games are crappy or that movies were crappy, it's just to say that it can be done cheaper and faster with higher quality results.

      Why did you think he'd license someone else's engine if his only concerns were the newest special effects?

    • Re:Films from the 30s (Score:5, Interesting)

      by Pluvius ( 734915 ) <pluvius3&gmail,com> on Monday April 26, 2004 @04:35PM (#8976125) Journal
      He's talking about how, in the 30's, studios had all the power in Hollywood because they had "house actors" that were contracted to be in a certain number of movies, sort of like how the recording industry works. Now-a-days, it's the opposite; actors, directors, and writers work freelance, and studios fight over the most successful ones.

      Rob

  • Making Games. (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Retric ( 704075 ) on Monday April 26, 2004 @03:11PM (#8975130)
    So there outsourcing game development. Which is news because?

    On a side note I think there trying to save money buy only hiring talent when they need them. So if the soundtrack is done they can save money by not having them hang around any longer ect. Then again it's hard to work with a development team that is constantly changing. I am going to vote for underpaid development teams working 80 hour weeks hoping for a success time will tell. VS. the consultant's that are just trying to rack up development but shout be interesting.

    • Flawed Analogy (Score:5, Insightful)

      by NickFusion ( 456530 ) on Monday April 26, 2004 @03:49PM (#8975549) Homepage
      The reason films can be made by, and in some respects need to be made by large numbers of mobile freelancers is twofold:

      Movies shoot in locations around the world, and a production company may find themselves in vastly different physical locations from film to film, requiring local talent to fill out the pool.

      Movies are by-and-large made with very standardized technology, the Pananflex, HMIs, 10ks, there is a standard lingo for stardard equipment that make it possible for a freelancer from Boston to interact with a film crew from LA.

      This didn't use to be the case, in the early years of film, the technology was very mutable, standards were still forming, very chaotic, and very creative. Things are now more formalized, and frequently formula-ized.

      I doubt the game industry will find it self "shooting on location," so the first bit of the analogy falls flat.

      As for the second, until graphics performance hit's it's peak (maybe it has), and it's widely regarded industry-wide that there is no percentage in building a new engine from scratch (some movement in that direction, re Doom/Unreal engine liscencing) you're not going to see the kind of standardization that allows a freelance workforce to interoperate seamlessly between companies.

      As it currently stands, a worker becomes more valuable the longer he stays with a developer, and new people have a large amount of developer specific information to absorb before they can function.

      As to which model, old Hollywood/new Hollywood, is to the advantage of the worker, well, that's a tougher call.

  • Great. (Score:2, Insightful)

    by vasqzr ( 619165 )

    Now, we'll have 100's of crappy FPS games on the Xbox!

    Anyone remember all the Doom/Quake clones in the mid late 90's on the PC?
  • At the very least it is an interesting idea, and the fact that it is being done by someone who (one would assume) knows their way the engine they are using, and who has the experience of being involved in the making of a very successful games means that the project should have a fair bit of potential.

    Personally I am excited to see him trying a development process that is, if not entirely new, new to the games industry.
    I look forward to seeing what the game they come out with is like.

  • Wideload Games? (Score:3, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 26, 2004 @05:06PM (#8976501)
    Do you need to have a big ass to apply for a job there?

  • Halo Engine... *snicker* (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Txiasaeia ( 581598 ) on Monday April 26, 2004 @05:23PM (#8976695)
    Am I the only one who was completely underwhelmed by the Halo engine? I know that this guy helped develop it, but who needs another game where the enemies do sommersaults and shout out in falsetto-monster voices? Not that I'm bitter about Halo... *twitch*...

    Having said that, I completely agree with the state of the industry vis a vi "ten core staffers, lotsa outsourced help." Video games by the same developers tend to be hit and miss, mostly because the "core staff" varies so much -- see Bioware, Troika and Interplay (Fallout/2/BOS) for example. Now look at Studio Ghibli in regards to animation/anime - every single movie these guys have churned out is bloody fantastic. We need more video game devs like Ghibli.

    • Re:Halo Engine... *snicker* (Score:1, Funny)

      by Anonymous Coward
      We need more video game devs like Ghibli.

      Whew... for a second there I thought you said Gigli .
    • > Video games by the same developers tend to be hit and miss, mostly because the "core staff" varies so much -- see Bioware, Troika and Interplay (Fallout/2/BOS) for example.

      Bad example. Bioware has churned out nothing but hits (The Lost Vikings, MDK, BG/2, NWN+2xpacks, KotOR), while Troika's games never had universal appeal (across the RPG spectrum; Arcanum, ToEE both have loyal followings despite unaccessable gameplay), and Interplay is a publisher; Black Isle is the dev house you meant, which made s
      • I'm pretty sure The Lost Vikings was a Blizzard game, and that MDK was a Shiny game. I could be mistaken though...
        • Whoops, my bad - TLV is definately a Blizzard game, but I was thinking of MDK2 and not the original. Bioware also did (a PS2 version of MDK2?) MDK2:Armageddon and Shattered Steel - none of which did as well as their main franchises, but I'd say that since Baldur's Gate they've been routinely successful.

          -lw
    • I didn't know hte engine was to blame for the somersaults, I thought that was the designers of the monsters.

  • pre-industrial revolution (Score:5, Interesting)

    by bigbigbison ( 104532 ) on Monday April 26, 2004 @05:29PM (#8976788) Homepage
    I don't think this will be as cost effective as one might think. Basically the videogame industry is still in the pre-industrial artisanal (sp?) era. Everything is still made by hand. If you want to make a chair, you still need to build the chair peice by peice. There is no equivelent to a factory-made chair. So rather than the unskilled labor we now have in most factories, we have skilled craftsmen and artists.

    Untill technology exists for the equivelent of unskilled labor to design the chairs, wheels, and furniture of a gaming world, the costs of developing games will still be high.

    I forsee a day soon when a start up will open that specializes in creating the props of vidoegame worlds so that game designers will have a situation similar to that of the players of the Sims where they have a wide variety of chairs (or whatever) to pick from and they just plop it into the game pre-fab without having to employ someone to exclusively make such props.

    Now certainly there is something to say for props that are build explicitly for the game. They provide a sence of stylistic unity. But I really do see a day when pre-fab props will come to be used.

    • Well, everyone's been waiting for a public domain cache of virtual goods. As someone mentioned to me not too long ago, artists are generally pretty stingy with their work. There's not exactly an equivalent for the open-source programmer in the artists' world.

      As for cache for cash models, I think you're also going to run into some problems given that so many games have to tailor the art to their peculiar aesthetics. A shotgun approach to design (e.g. here's the sci-fi chairs, here's the fantasy chairs, e

  • Sounds like Epic and UT2004 (Score:5, Informative)

    by shoptroll ( 544006 ) on Monday April 26, 2004 @05:49PM (#8977022)
    Isn't that how Epic Games did UT2004? They hired a ton of independent programmers, designers from UT2003's online community to do work on it. Onslaught was originallly a mod that was presented to Epic for further work. Take a look at the credits in the back of the manual.

    Of course I think this is how Epic tends to do stuff as well. The bots from the original UT were coded by someone who made bots for Quake 1 I belive.

    • Re:Sounds like Epic and UT2004 (Score:1, Funny)

      by Anonymous Coward
      "Take a look at the credits in the back of the manual."

      I didn't see the .torrent file for that when I downloaded the game. What does it say?

  • It's the Actors, not the workers (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Marc_Hawke ( 130338 ) on Monday April 26, 2004 @05:57PM (#8977113)
    There have been many slashdot stories, among other things, asking about superstar developers. Why you can list a million publishers, development companies, etc, but only rarely do you know the name of a lead artist, or AI programmer.

    It seems to me, his reference to the movie industry is not about the (grips, gaffers, etc) but the actors.

    Their 'plan' is to make super-star developers. So, you get "American McGee's Alice" happening more often.

    "Halo Remix, starring John Johnson on AI, with Bill Billiams on Textures, and directed by Tom Thompson. With Special guest in Organic Modelling Nick Nicholby!"

    The block buster games will start to be created by the famous 'rock-star' developers....and the dev houses and publishers will be no more important than "Universal" vs "DreamWorks".
  • Ok, so obviously people assume they are going to outsource their development to India. I didn't RTFA, so I don't know if it was confirmed. But, here's another method of outsourcing development. Take for example what DICE just did with BF1942.

    They just brought the whole Desert Combat team on board to produce an official Desert Combat mod. So perhaps they might be outsourcing and getting more of the modding community officially involved, which seems like an infinitely wise move for them. It may not be th

  • What!? Why the hell would anyone want to do that!? The Halo engine sucks! Not to be a flamebait, but there's nothing special about it! Graphics and Lighting are still owned by Valve's Half-Life engine and idSoftware's Quake 3 engine. I don't really see why anyone would want to license this... but I guess since he used to work on it, he may know it a lot better and have some better ideas on how to "twink" it into being better.

    I'm sorry. I'm not a fan of Halo. There's just nothing there that I can't get mo

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