Wow (Gaming)

by car15, Saturday, September 05, 2015, 04:15 (3367 days ago) @ CyberKN
edited by car15, Saturday, September 05, 2015, 04:19

So much to unpack here.

Like many of you, I'm surprised that the truth came out so quickly. I didn't think we would hear the full story until many years after the fact. (I still think that's the way Activision and Bungie would have liked it, but unfortunately for them, Marty forced the issue and the truth came out in court. Echoes of West/Zampella...)

These court papers confirm several things that I had already suspected.

• First and foremost, we now have explicit conformation that the game underwent a major story revision in August 2013, which explains so many of the glaring problems with the final product. That fact had already been reported on Reddit shortly after the game's release, but it was dismissed by most people here because it was posted without proof. Looks like it had at least a kernel of truth to it. By the way, here's a link to that Reddit thread.
  
  
• Second, we now have explicit confirmation that Activision interfered with at least the marketing of the game, overruling Bungie's creative choices in favor of their own "executive-approved" alternatives. I would not be surprised if the story revision in 2013 was made at Activision's request. We don't know either way, of course, but it seems much more likely in light of this new information.
  
  
• Third, we now have explicit confirmation that Music of the Spheres is complete and is being intentionally withheld, for no apparent reason other than Activision. (Are you beginning to see a pattern here?)
  
  
• It's interesting to read that Bungie wanted Marty to compose the music for the entire franchise all at once, rather than game-by-game. There could be innocuous reasons for that, but it looks suspiciously like they were covering their asses in case they had to fire their "loose cannon" department head. Again, we don't know... and I'm not making any judgments. It just looks really suspicious to me.
  
  
• This passage is very interesting to me.
  
  "O’Donnell reacted angrily and believed Activision had overstepped its proper role by assuming artistic control of the trailer music. Ryan, the CEO of Bungie, and management shared his concern and filed a “veto” letter with Activision, which overruled the objection. During E3, O’Donnell tweeted that Activision, not Bungie, had composed the trailer music. He also threatened Bungie employees in an attempt to keep the trailer from being posted online, and interrupted press briefings."
  
  I truly sympathize with Marty here, but I'm also surprised at the unprofessionalism of his reaction. I agree that Activision had overstepped its boundaries. Marty had every right to be angry about that. However, once Ryan submitted his objection and it came back overruled, that should have been the end of it. It sucks that Activision has the power to overrule Bungie's creative decisions, but at the end of the day, Bungie put themselves in that position, and Marty should have known that something like this might happen one day.
  
  Actually, I'm not going to pull any punches. We're talking about Activision here. Marty should have known that something like this would happen one day, and not only once, but several times.
  
  Am I judging him? No, but his behavior here was completely unwarranted. The tweet is merely a statement of fact, and by itself just comes off as sort of snarky and egotistical, but when coupled with all this other shit it feels really unprofessional and self-centered of him.
  
  I understand (and completely agree) with his anger toward the whole situation, but damn... threatening employees is pretty indefensible.
  
  Kudos to Bungie for ignoring Activision's pleas to fire him outright. Ryan sounds way too trigger-happy and eager to please his overlords at Activision. The negative performance review was a smart alternative. In isolation, Marty's behavior can be explained as a sort of "crime of passion", and it would have been foolhardy to fire him without making any attempt to set things right and move forward.
  
  
• We don't know enough about what happened after that to say anything of substance, really, but it sounds like Marty just didn't have his heart in it after realizing the true extent of Activision's control over the game and the company. That's unbelievably sad to consider, but it explains his emphasis on "work for hire" in recent interviews. Artists need to work in an environment that foster creativity and allow for creative risk-taking. It doesn't sound like Activision is promoting that sort of environment over at Bungie.
  
  I don't know if he was intentionally giving less than 100% of his effort or if he was just burned out on the idea of working on something that was creatively compromised, but that's a pretty tough situation for Bungie to handle. At that stage, I actually sympathize more with the studio, but I'm still not sure if firing him was the right move. Again, we don't know enough about what happened to say anything of substance.
  
  
• Almost lost amidst all this drama is the revelation that we will probably never see Music of the Spheres. Never say never, I suppose, but let's look at the facts here. Activision has no interest in releasing it, Marty can't release it without explicit consent from Bungie (which he will likely never receive in light of these new facts), and Bungie either can't or won't release it independently of Activision.
  
  That makes me really sad. Music of the Spheres was one of the few things I had left to look forward to in the Destiny universe, and now we're probably not going to get it.
  
  The article does say that Bungie looked into finding a publisher in 2013, but clearly nothing ever came of that. The revelation that they were possibly (probably) withholding the release on purpose, basically to spite Marty (which is super unprofessional, but then again, so is stealing shares of the company from one of its owners), seems to indicate that it's not very important to them.

Nobody comes out of this looking good, but I have to say, at least Marty's unprofessionalism was motivated by artistic integrity. Bungie's unprofessionalism seems motivated by little more than pettiness.

And then, of course, we have Activision, who are increasingly looking like the root of most of this game's development woes. Goddamn it, Activision.