Bungie

Creation

Bungie was officially founded in May 1991 by Alex Seropyan and Jason Jones. The name of the studio "Bungie" is a subject for disputes and disagreements. Many of the company's employees believe that information on the origin of the name is strictly classified. Although the bonus disc, which can be found in Halo 3 Legendery Edition, claims that the name of the studio is something related to a “dirty joke”, the same company representatives answered before when they asked questions related to other studio secrets . According to Marathon Scrapbook , company founder Alex Seropyan “thought a lot about how to call his company, in the end he chose Bungie, because it sounded funny.”

The first game of the studio was called Gnop! (The word Pong is the opposite) and was offered for free. The team began to develop their games for the Macintosh platform, not for computers running Windows, because the Mac market was more open and Jones grew up on this platform. After Gnop! Bungie took up the development of Operation Desert Storm , which sold 2,500 copies, and in 1992 came the Minotaur: The Labyrinths of Crete computer role-playing game with the same circulation.

Then Bungie began developing its first three-dimensional game, Pathways into Darkness , which was released in 1993 . Pathways was designed by two people: Jason Jones and his friend Colin Brendt. The game became a hit, and attracted attention and money to the company. Soon, Bungie moved to her first studio. Martin O'Donnell recalled that the studio "smelled awful" and resembled the atmosphere from Silent Hill .

Marathon, Myth and Oni

The next project, Bungie, began as a sequel to Pathway into Darkness , but it became a development futuristic first-person shooter called Marathon . The first game was a success and it was decided to continue the game, Marathon 2: Durandal , which later became the first game developed by Bungie for Windows 95 . In the series, some elements first appeared, including the cooperative mode, which were transferred to the next games of the studio.

Thanks to the success of Bungie, a large developer community has emerged, as well as a short-lived publication distributed through the BBS . After the success of Marathon , the studio released the Myth series of games. In these games, emphasis was placed on the management of tactical units, as opposed to the model of resource collection in other combat strategies. Together with Myth, editors were supplied that allow players to create their own modifications of the game ^[5] . The Myth Games have received several awards and spawned a huge and active online community, and (like the Marathon series) still continues to be active, evolving, and players are still playing it and discussing it on forums. Myth: The Fallen Lords was the first game of the company that was released simultaneously for Mac and Windows.

In 1997, Bungie, in California, founded Bungie West, its second studio. The first and only game developed by Bungie West is Oni for Mac, PC and PlayStation 2 platforms.

Halo and Microsoft buying

In 1999, Bungie announced its next project, Halo , a first-person shooter for Windows and Macintosh. The first public presentation of Halo was at Macworld Expo 1999, the game was announced by Steve Jobs (after a closed demonstration at E3 in 1999).

In the summer of 2000, Bungie was acquired by Microsoft for an amount that was estimated at that time from about $ 20 million to $ 40 million. Bungie became an independent studio at Microsoft Game Studios ^[3] . Most of the staff, about 50 people ^[3] , continued to work in Redmond . The rights to Myth have been transferred to Take Two ^[6] .

As part of the franchise, Halo sold over 18 million copies of games according to company estimates ^[2] .

Independent Studio

On October 1, 2007, a joint press release from Microsoft and Bungie was published stating that the studio is separated from the parent company and forms the limited liability company Bungie, LLC ^{[7] [8]} . Under the terms of the deal, Microsoft reserved a small part of the company's ownership and continues to participate in the publishing and promotion of Halo series games and future studio projects. Intellectual Property Rights Halo remains with Microsoft ^[9] .

On April 29, 2010, Bungie signed a 10-year contract with Activision Blizzard for a games studio publisher ^{[10] [11]} .

January 11, 2019 Bungie announced the termination of cooperation with Activision Blizzard . ^[12]

Add-ons for games developed by Bungie

• Bungie Studios official website (eng.)
• Company History (eng.)
• Bungie Games in the gamefaqs directory (eng.)