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5/10/2014 2:22:06 AM
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Will Bungie Need Its Full Workforce?
So Bungie now has around 500 employees. That's a lot. It's understandable that they would be working together on the start of a brand new project. But do they really need all these people?
See, we all know that the Bungie Activision contract was send out a couple years ago. But how many of you have [i]actually[/i] read it? I know I didn't... until tonight. And I found something rather interesting.
[quote]Until such time as Licensor has completed and delivered Destiny Game #2 and at least Three Hundred Seventy Five Million Dollars ($375,000,000) in cumulative Operating Income has been achieved, Licensor shall not engage in any development activities (either for itself or on behalf of another company) on any other interactive entertainment software product. At such time as Licensor has completed and delivered to Activision Destiny Game #2 and at least Three Hundred Seventy Five Million Dollars ($375,000,000) in cumulative Operating Income has been achieved, Licensor may commence development activities on any interactive entertainment software product that is neither a Destiny Property related product nor an Action/Shooter Game and shall be permitted to publish or commercially release itself or grant the rights to another company for the purpose of developing, publishing or commercially releasing any such product at any time thereafter, whether or not such commercial release is during the Development Term, provided that Activision shall have a right of first negotiation to publish and distribute such product in accordance with the procedures applicable to Future Destiny Games as set forth in Section 19.
P. 13
Section 7.2
[/quote]
What this says is that after Destiny 2 and successful sales, that's when Bungie can start working on a non-Destiny title. Now, prior to this some news sites said something about '5% of the company can work on Marathon.' That isn't what I'm referring to.
I'm just curious as to what people think of future titles. With two Destiny games down, and likely two expansions, Bungie will have hit a groove and undoubtedly moved on completely to next-gen consoles. I don't know much about the process of developing a game, but it seems to me that the initial push would be the one that requires the most people. Once Destiny is off the ground and you already have lots of assets made from previous titles you can adapt for future use.. what to do with those extra hands that helped get it started?
I'm wondering if Bungie plans on cutting up their workforce into teams like some other developers do, such as Ubisoft. We've already had a taste of Bungie trying to expand with Aerospace (which I guess we aren't supposed to talk about anymore)., and while that didn't work out too well this is definitely a different situation.
So discuss. Do you think this bit of the contract means anything? If so, do you think they'd start a new universe or go back to an old friend such as Marathon? How much of that workforce would go over?
Oh questions questions.
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I wonder how long it will be until nobody is left at Bungie who worked on Halo CE.
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Edited by Sarsion: 5/16/2014 1:02:31 PMIf they're not allowed to work on other projects until post-Destiny 2, then somehow, with evidence of firing both Marty and Staten (come on, there's a clear the pattern here, it's undeniable), I think Jones and Ryan (the only two left on the board of directors at Bungie, not including those with too much influencing power at Activision) are just going to get rid of any "dead weight" that they'll no longer be needing in order to stay afloat. They've already sank over half a billion worth of dollars into Destiny 1, if the recent reports are correct. Activision will NEED that amount of money back at LEAST. I don't necessarily believe that they'll make it back; I personally think they're screwed, but I could easily be proven wrong. They're just not making sound decisions these days, especially with the marketing and game itself looking incredibly masturbatory, but that's another story for another thread. I enjoyed the company Bungie used to be; they're no longer the fun indie group of dumb college kids, they're industrialized and have NO idea how to handle that, as evidenced by their clear lack of HR if they're just firing people left, right and center. I remember this sort of thing happening a few years ago too, so I'm astounded it hasn't been resolved structurally. I wouldn't be surprised if they cut their workforce down by anywhere from a third to half to try and cut down costs in the future depending on the financial success of Destiny 1. I foresee another APB/Realtime Worlds debacle on our hands, and it's a real pity, but if this is the new Bungie, I'm glad it's on the way out.
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old news.
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You quoted the contract, good on you. I do it all the time when Destiny PC comes up, and it causes an uproar of noobies saying it's outdated.
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499 Mary is gone.
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The more people the better. People need work and the more people means a better statistical representation of a community that wants to improve and continue to build a hopefully successful game. Plus is shows how much Bungie has grown towards their goal of World Domination.
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From what I read in articles, most of Bungie's 500 employees are actually testers. I guess they are really focused on having a super-polished game as open-world games, or semi-open world games, tend to have a lot of bugs. Personally I hope they dip their toes in a new genre and try to innovate more. With Destiny it seems like they played it safe by not innovating much on the gameplay side of things; however, at the same time, they are gambling a lot by betting that the game will be a critical success with what it has to offer. I also hope that in the future they work on multiple projects although this might not happen because they say the studios works best when it is focused on one IP.
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1 ReplyIt's hard to say. It all depends on how many Destiny games Bungie plans to release over the next ten years, I guess.
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That's a really good question. I could imagine a Marathon remake done by a smaller team within the studio, but even that's unlikely. For all we know, part of the studio might be setting up the frame work for the expansion and even the next game right now. As for Aerospace, I think they are working on the Companion app for Destiny.
