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First Halo game I haven't bought. And not the last. 343 killed Halo. RIP.

That honor goes to Halo Wars for me.

But yeah. I never bought Halo 5, and played it only once to get the cutscenes. I had no desire to revisit.

At the very end, they say 60 FPS is quadruple the work of 30 FPS. Can someone explain why?

That might just be hyperbole.

It might be referencing the idea that you're not just doubling the number of frames in a given time period, which means pushing more pixels, but that scripts have to evaluate twice as often as well.

Honestly I was kind of puzzled by that statement as well.

At the very end, they say 60 FPS is quadruple the work of 30 FPS. Can someone explain why?

Depends on the game engine and how it's set up. I can imagine a way this would be the case, but it's pure conjecture on my part; I've never seen their code:

Destiny did some very (VERY) clever things in order to squeeze every ounce of juice out of the hardware it was running on (this is true), and some of that had to do with multithreading actions to be calculated separately from the graphics render (also true). So, in essence (this next bit is conjecture based on the two previous facts), Destiny is "drawing" the physics and AI and a third thing (netcode?) at the same time that it's drawing the graphics, (and now we're entering the land of complete and total speculation) so doubling the refresh rate necessarily means doubling the rate at which all of those other things happen as well, lest they become oddly jittery in an otherwise fluid world.

At the very end, they say 60 FPS is quadruple the work of 30 FPS. Can someone explain why?

Have you ever seen a a whole bunch of cheese wheels? Or! How about a million explosive barrels go off all at once? Well- thanks to Skyrim and Crysis, I have!

So why these examples? Well, these are good cases where the user is visibly stressing an engine vs the hardware they have to do all the computations. Physics and the nature of particle effects make them quite expensive to run. In these sorts of videos (though I have to admit I didn't check if it's IN the videos I linked... I hope so O_O,) you will often see the computer frame rate....SlOW......DOWN- as the computer thinks. That is the frame rate crashing down to...Oh 5 or 2 or whatever. In that moment, using the CPU/GPU power to send frames to your screen aren't the most important; It's all about doing those computations. That's not to say it's even limited to that. The resolution of the screen, the resolution of the textures on the different meshes, Alpha (transparency) blending, the number of realtime lights in a given frame, the number of things you can see on the screen at one time... ALL sorts of things govern the final frame rate.

That's why, for example, when ever you have a city in a video game, often times there is stuff everywhere blocking the horizon. That stuff ain't there because it looks super cool (well... not the only reason at least). It's to stop you from looking down the 23 mile corridor of the city - or whatever. Really long sight lines with stuff in them are expensive.

Hope that helps!

And with any luck Destiny 2 is like Halo 2. The core basis for the rest of a great series of games that stretch another 10 years into the future. It has a bit of that feel already just from the excellent reveal event...

THAT SAID, You'd think that with all they learned about making Halo over the years that the whole starting-over-Destiny-mid-cycle thing wouldn't have happened.... I mean, c'mon. You guys have done this before..... did you not learn from the mistakes?

THEY may have learned, but certain other people may not have…

Nobody has given the real reason and full context for Destiny's troubles. I'm wondering if Jason Schreier's book will present the whole picture.

Jason Schreier's book will likely just be a compilation of regurgitated internet-facts most of us already know.

That is possible. For instance, his article on the 'supercut' was technically correct in that the facts were all right, but it again did not provide the context for why the supercut was the way it was. Context which would make Joe look much more favorable. I know he knows this, so I would be willing to bet his book will dig a little deeper.

Except Marty straight up tried to convince the seemingly only person at Bungie that was really passionate about Halo to quit working on Halo with what amounts to "fuck those guys."

I'm sure it's more nuanced than that, but it was presented in way that really bums me out. They seem so fucking bitter about making the series of games that put them on the map, and that sucks.

So they owe Halo deference like they owe the Xbox deference I guess. I'm sure if I look I can find a post that says that they should've made Myth III. After all, that game put them on the map. And the Bungie/MS friction is famous at this point. I'm sure it went both ways. That part of this article is not new. Regardless, I see introspection in this article, from all sides. Marty was a true believer in Bungie, so he said what a true believer in Bungie would say to a valuable asset about to leave. "Dude! We're awesome!"

I find your spin a bit negative, and I won't tell you how to feel, but this article didn’t depress me. I will say that hearing some of these stories (originally—a few years ago) did disturb me and cause me to update the Platonic ideal of Bungie I held in my imagination, but at the end of the day I was glad to know, not just because I like knowing the truth (or something closer to it), but knowing reminded me of what I had tended to forget—especially when I indulged in Bungie hagiography--namely, that the who work at Bungie are just like you and me. I hope that this has made me a better (or more balanced) fan. Mig has described the relationship once as like a friend making this cool thing they like, and you like it, too. So far, when it comes to Bungie games, I like them (to varying degrees). I can also, knowing what I know, better relate to the difficulties they face, and that’s weirdly inspirational. I want to create, but I struggle with that. I want to be a leader in my career, but not everyone wants that from me. Sometimes the worst of us overcomes the best of us. Sometimes the pressures of our jobs amplify our weaknesses. I won’t repeat my long list of bullet points related to Marty’s firing, but much of it applies here.

There may be a little self-aggrandizing in that article, but I see a lot of humility, too. Bungie devs have tended to be their most severe critics, and I think that’s apparent here, too. Despite it all, Bungie has made many things they can be proud of in a tough, competitive business. We got the games. We enjoyed them. We still can. I won’t tell you how to feel, but go play your favorite Halo level. Maybe that’ll help.

I see both sides here. As I said in my earlier post, this clearly isn't the whole story, and I don't think you get games as good as the ones Bungie makes without a lot of passionate people that love what they're doing.

But judging solely on what that story presented, I feel like I would never want to work at Bungie. Leaders blowing off entire games, severe communication issues, a really bad "us versus the world" attitude (which is good to a degree, but seems like they took it to an extreme in pretty negative ways). It all just sounds so unpleasant.

Maybe it wasn't so bad as all that, I don't know. I'm certainly in no position to judge.

Everything that most of the fanbase love about the game (the lore/campaign, the arena style multiplayer) were happy accidents that most people in the company either didn't care about or looked down on, and all the things the majority of the company actually cared about usually failed without ever seeing the light of day.

Wow, that's not my view, but maybe I overestimate how hard it is to make great games. I saw a studio without a lot of structure and inconsistent leadership, working to innovate while also meeting enormous expectations. Most people were focused on what they were good at, and yes, we were lucky so many things turned out as well as they did, but at the same time, I'm not at all certain that a studio would have made better games if they didn't have these internal conflicts, didn't have skunkworks, and ideas that didn't pan out. They went to war with the army they had, and happy accidents are common in art. Bungie didn't know in advance what their fanbase would love, and if they focused their development for the sequels on what their fanbase HAD loved, they wouldn't have innovated like they did. What they seemed to focus on was what THEY liked or were interested in, which is the perfect approach for artistic endeavors. Doesn't always blend well with business objectives, but what are you are going to do?

I don't disagree that game development is hard and I'm understanding of that fact. Here's the bits that stood out to me that informed my summary:

• Halo 1 multiplayer was thrown together at the last minute and was a happy accident of a success. Not necessarily a ding against them, but then Halo 2 arena multiplayer was referred to as the "party game" and looked down on.
  
• Halo 2 was left with a "skeleton crew" at one point while the rest of the team was working on a different game. While I expect that's an exaggeration, the sentiment that a large portion of the team was not working on Halo 2 shows that there wasn't a lot of heart in developing it.

And what if there wasn't? Does knowing this make you enjoy the game less?

[*]All of the development woes surrounding the story and the inability to settle on a good
forward direction.
[*]The general dissatisfaction with working on "another Halo game," even as early as Halo 2.
[/list]

Now I get it, sequel fatigue is real and the leadership vacuum was probably the single largest problem that lead to many of these issues. Still, it really paints a picture of a studio without focus, direction, or any sort of attention span. What the studio eventually produced for Halo 2 was definitely lacking in the story department due to the cut final act, but even what was there and what they produced for MP was phenomenal and it wasn't even something most of the studio gave a shit about. That's why I say happy accident.

Granted, I exaggerate for the sake of making a point, I'm sure it's not as bad as these absolutes; there are likely more shades of grey in the truth.

Everyone was focused on what they were assigned to, which was the most important thing to them (and it's natural for them to be critical when other people don't take their area as seriously). Lack of leadership aside, assigning resources based on people's concern for that area is an effective strategy. Perhaps multiplayer had less resources than it should have had, but that assumes that people and talent are fungible resources. What if it had more people but turned out worse because of that? We don't know.

I will also note that it puts one of their mottos into another viewpoint. "We makes games we want to play." It sounds like a great philosophy, and it is, but I wonder if it doesn't also have a twinge of "We don't care if you like this game, as long as we like it." Which, business goals aside, is a bit immature as well. At my job, I care very much about what I'm making, not just for myself, but for the people who will consume my work. If all of my goals were purely nepotistic, I probably wouldn't produce very high quality work.

I think that's an exaggeration. I mean, come on. And they certainly shouldn't care that not everyone likes it nor should they try to address all concerns.

[*]Halo 2 was left with a "skeleton crew" at one point while the rest of the team was working on a different game. While I expect that's an exaggeration, the sentiment that a large portion of the team was not working on Halo 2 shows that there wasn't a lot of heart in developing it.

I think you could only say that about the people making the decisions on where to assign personnel. So maybe you can say that about Jason Jones, but everybody else certainly had heart.

Yeah, but dig into the behind the scenes of a lot of great creative projects and you'll see the same kinds of things. For instance:

• Tomb Raider 2013 very nearly fell apart multiple times before it shipped and successfully relaunched the franchise. One of the key lead people had significant heart problems that kept him away from development for several months. Their story originally involved Lara fighting tribal spirits and having to escort some little kid. They didn't hit on the feel of combat until something like a year before they shipped.
  
• The new Beauty and the Beast movie (which I loved) was originally planned as a drama only somewhat inspired by the 1990's animated movie and would have had no songs. The original Disney Beauty and the Beast had Be Our Guest sung to Belle's father much earlier in the film and they had to redo it when they realized that it was Belle the song should have been sung to.
  
• The original Toy Story saw all sorts of different ideas not make it. At one point in production, executives at Disney kept demanding that Woody be made meaner and meaner but when they saw their first screening they literally cancelled the project. Pixar scrambled and rewrote the entire movie in something like a weekend to save their first movie from never being made.
  
• Inside Out, which I consider one of the smartest written movies ever, had significant production problems and did not hit on its core concepts of: "you can't always be happy and that sometimes sadness is a necessary part of life" until multiple years of work had already been done and it took a decent size rewrite (along with all the reanimating that entails) to make it into the brilliant movie it became. The director Pete Docter who had been a part of Pixar from the beginning only stumbled upon this core theme when he was out jogging in the woods trying to reconcile the fact that he had probably failed his studio and team and would probably be fired from Pixar because of it!
  
• And, now we see that most of the Halos, which are beloved and all of which sold several million copies and made the Xbox platform viable, were themselves trainwrecks that mostly came together in the end.

Over the years I've come to realize that a studio's programming, graphics, and story talent is only the starting point. It's having those massively talented people overcome all sorts of real and idiotically self inflicted challenges that makes a studio great. And for better or worse, Bungie seems pretty darn good at having to overcome challenges...

"We make games we want to play." It sounds like a great philosophy, and it is, but I wonder if it doesn't also have a twinge of "We don't care if you like this game, as long as we like it."

[*]Halo 2 was left with a "skeleton crew" at one point while the rest of the team was working on a different game. While I expect that's an exaggeration, the sentiment that a large portion of the team was not working on Halo 2 shows that there wasn't a lot of heart in developing it.

Dear Mr. Effortless,

Sorry to butt in on this private conversation - I've learned the hard way that nothing is private on the internet.

Even with so many of us being interviewed at separate times, and still so many others in the world that could have been interviewed, a couple of interesting observations by me.

The story is pretty well written and accurate.

People (such as yourself) still misinterpret what you read.

Halo 2 by no means had a "skeleton crew" ever. The entire team was working on Halo 2. Except for a few people who were promised that they could work on Phoenix/Gypsum. The problem was (in my opinion of course) that Jason left the Halo 2 team as the creative lead and went to work with the Gypsum team. The leadership of Halo 2 was not clear at that point, but we had plenty of people working really hard on it.

And they all put their hearts into it.

I have some amazing fond memories of all my years at Bungie. Those memories won't make news, but they might make it into my book.

- Marty

A key detail here is they left their previous engine with Microsoft and probably had to start over. Great chance to do things better but also means you're back to that time of mistakes and missteps.

I was under the impression they forked at or before Reach & merged a lot of their new engine features/ideas to the Reach build. I could be wrong, my recollection of the talk by Chris Butcher is hazier than I'd like.

Yeah... I think it was more they started with the Reach engine to prototype / visualize stuff. How all that went down on the legal side must have been very interesting!

Anyone remember Too Human and all this promise that just went down the tubes when SK pulled coders to work on other projects, then pulled funding to make up for shortfalls elsewhere, and essentially shipped the Demo+ some tacked on levels?
Then went on to blame Id and their licensed engine?

If you license an engine, you are stuck with the limits of that engine, and you won't be able to differentiate yourself much from others who use the same engine. Sure you can change the look, or some game mechanics, but you are still confined to the features in that engine.

Making your own engine is hard, but it can be customized to provide the exact features that you want, and you have the experts in house if anything goes wrong. In addition, you have the experts in house in order to optimize your game elsewhere for that engine.

In the Marathon and Myth era, it was clearly both-- and on the Mac side at least there were not a lot of engine options, to the point that they were the ones licensing an engine for use.

If you are referring to Damage Incorporated, Richard Rouse was a friend of Alex Seropian's. Bungie never licensed their engines on a scale comparable to other comapanies' engines. In fact, I can only think of Damage Incorporated / Prime Target, and Stubbs the Zombie off the top of my head.