Bungie

Bungie Studios is a video game developer founded in 1991 under the name "Bungie Software Products Corporation" (or in the non-legal definition "Bungie Software") by two undergraduate students at the University of Chicago, Alex Seropian and Jason Jones. It is part of Microsoft's Game Studios since being acquired in 2000. Bungie is known as the developers of the popular video game series, Halo, Marathon, and Myth.

History

Bungie's first "release" was Gnop!, a clone of Pong, which was distributed for free. This was followed by the tile combat game "Operation Desert Storm. For much of the 1990s they developed a series of increasingly technically detailed first person shooter (FPS) games for the Macintosh.

Their first big break was 1993's Pathways Into Darkness, the first true FPS for the Mac. Bungie would then follow with the Marathon series which introduced a number of new concepts into the FPS genre. Marathon 2 was Bungie's first release onto the PC and following titles would be dual platform as well. Their success gave rise to a large 3rd party developer community as well as a short lived newsletter published through BBS. Following the success of Marathon was Myth which created a new type of game featuring 3rd party combat and stressing unit management as opposed to the resource gathering model of other combat strategy titles. This spawned a large and active online community which is still active on playmyth.net.

In 1999 they announced their next product was a return to the FPS genre, with a world-beating physics and AI system, to be known as Halo. While Halo was featured in the MacWorld 2000 keynote address by then-interim-CEO Steve Jobs (after a closed-door screening at E3 in 1999), plans were to release at the same time on both the Mac and Windows. On June 19, 2000, however, Microsoft announced that they had acquired Bungie Software (see GAMEY) and that Bungie would become a part of the Microsoft Game Division (subsequently renamed Microsoft Game Studios) under the name Bungie Studios. As a result, the original versions were soon delayed and the game was re-purposed for the Xbox, with the Mac and Windows versions only shipping two years later when it was no longer the renowned product it would have been in late 2000.

The Xbox version of Halo, which received the "Game of the Year" and "Console Game of the Year" awards for 2002 from the Academy of Interactive Arts & Sciences, is known as a system seller and as of 2004 is still a videogame bestseller. Halo has been one of the most critically acclaimed games over the last three years, and its sequel Halo 2 has been called the "most anticipated game of all time" by IGN's Xbox website.

The company began life in a dormitory on the University of Chicago, and subsequently moved off-campus to real offices in Chicago, Illinois. After Microsoft's acquisition, they moved into the Microsoft Campus at Redmond, Washington. Lack of space has prompted a move to Kirkland, Washington, which has recently taken place.

While not directly behind the program, Bungie oversaw and 'signed off' on the Haunted Apiary puzzle, named after the address of the 'hacked' bee-keeping website around which the game revolves and briefly appeared in the Halo 2 theatrical trailer. They provided the Haunted Apiary designers with the "Halo Bible", allowing the story to fit to Bungie's specifics.

Bungie mythos

Bungie, like many production companies, puts references to older games in newer games. Unlike others, many of these references hint or imply that a great deal of Bungie's games operate in similar or identical universes. Most well known of this is the connection between the Marathon universe and the Halo universe, which share a great deal of similar names and themes.

While most believed that Bungie would never add a direct connection between these two games (just as they did not for Marathon and Pathways Into Darkness), its interesting to note that the Haunted Apiary puzzle seems to have added a substantial connection between the Marathon universe and the Halo universe. Rampancy can happen to AIs in both universes. However, Bungie later stated that the Haunted Apiary was not directly written by them, although it was written using the Halo Story Bible, and its status as canon is still in question. On Bungie's own website Bungie.net, Bungie also provides the following: "Q. Is Marathon the prequel to Halo?", "A. No, Marathon is a separate story, with wholly different characters, story and gameplay." On the other hand, Alexander Seropian has stated: "I don't think you ever find that out, but it's the same character." Fans of both games will always be speculating on this theory.

To note, the "Halo Story Bible" is the name given to a mythical single compendium in which is stored all available material which is considered canon for Bungie's Halo universe. The existence of any actual physical incarnation of the Halo Bible is questionable, as the actual content of Halo canon spans nearly a decade of development, during which time massive amounts of conceptual as well as functional materials were developed on a number of mediums. More properly, the Halo Story Bible refers to the characters, events, and other happenings of the Halo universe held to be canon by Bungie itself (regardless of whether the item has been documented on a physical source), and material which is not in the Halo Bible- while perhaps entertaining- is considered to have no relevance to the Halo universe.

Another interesting fact about Bungie is their use of the number seven. Many of these are more obvious than others, including 343 Guilty Spark (7 x 7 x 7 = 343), 2401 Penitent Tangent (2+4+0+1=7 or 7 x 7 x 7 x 7 = 2401) Pfhor Battle Group 7, and their official fan club, the 7th Column, but some of these are amusingly subtle: the Marathon colony ship was a hollowed out Deimos - first discovered in 1877 and first photographed in 1977. Also the fact that, in the Halo universe, there are seven Halos, scattered throughout the Milky Way galaxy. Apart from seven, there are some other digits that appear very frequently in Bungie's games: 3 and 10 (and the lesser known 4). (Note how 7 + 3 = 10 and 7 - 3 = 4.) These four digits are collectively called "Bungie Numbers" by the fans.

Bungie as a company has developed its own complex and diverse mythology in addition to that in their games. Several of these include their 7-Step Plan for World Domination, The Shaft, the snack food Tijuana Mama (Containing "Mechanically separated chicken, pork hearts, and protein concentrate", and "300% Hotter!"), the decapitated head of a dog named Ling-Ling (Step Five in the World Domination plan), the entity that resides in their server named Disembodied Soul, the chronically drunk and aggressive webmaster of Bungie.net (Known for dressing as a gorilla with a floppy yellow cowboy hat, as well as disappearing for months on "HTML research missions" and answering the E-Mails of grammatically impaired fans), a cheap absorbent toy fish called the Soffish, and The Cup, the prize at the Bungie Winter Pentathlon (A tradition has emerged that the losing team, out of envy, steals the cup rather than let the winning team touch it. In fact, several Bungie employees doubt the actual existence of The Cup, as it has been stolen and hidden so many times they have never laid eyes on it).

Offshoot companies

Double Aught was a short-lived company comprised of several former Bungie team members. They were best known for creating the Infinity scenario Blood Tides of Lhowon and for the unreleased title Duality.

Wideload Games, creator of Stubbs the Zombie, is another company that came from Bungie. It is led by one of the two Bungie founders, Alex Seropian, and in fact 7 out of the 11 employees have previously worked at Bungie.

External links