Former Destiny Dev Opens Up About Activision

Marty O’Donnell, Bungie co-founder and former executive has explained that Bungie-Activision partership was “bad from the start”. This was shared by O’Donnell in an interview on the HiddenXperia YouTube channel.

Bungie is a very experienced team of developers, the team used to work closely with Microsoft, mainly for the Halo: Reach. The ambitions of the studio led the founders to see Activision as the perfect partner for the development and launch of Destiny.

O’Donnell suggest that Activision was the perfect publisher because they allowed them to retain the IP. Bungie did not want to go trough a similar experience as they had with Halo.

“Because I was in leadership and on the board of directors when we went with Activision, if there is any blame for going to Activision, I am part of it,” … “There were seven of us total I think… and made that deal with Activision. We knew it was a risk right from the get go, and it turned out to be exactly as bad as we thought it to be.

“I am the only one who is gonna say that, except anyone who no longer works for Bungie, and anyone who no longer works for Bungie is gonna say, ‘yeah, it was bad from the start.’

Destiny 2 launched with some inconveniences for fans of the franchise, mainly, the implementation of micro-transactions, something that fans and Bungie suggested to be Activision’s doing. There is also the claims that Activision wanted to make several Destiny games, something that Bungie has already clarified. Their intention is to feature a constantly evolving experience.

“My biggest disappointment was, we worked for a decade to be in a position to make sure we could stand up to the publisher, saying we own the IP and you can’t mess with the IP. Eventually, I was overruled and let go,” said O’Donnell.

Source: GamesIndustry.Biz

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