- No text -

Assume Occam's Razor is true, it's probably not that complicated — maybe there's more money, maybe they guarantee a better work/life balance, maybe it's an overall promotion with greater creative control? All possibilities.

Rubin leaves Bungie less than a month before Destiny's release date, September 9, but it's not likely a major concern for the project, as writing work is handled early in the development process. Plus, it sounds like Bungie already has story details locked down for Destiny's DLC.

Says it right there, he's probably put his contribution to bed already.

Prior to joining Bungie in March 2012 to work on Destiny, Rubin spent one year each at Visceral Games and Capcom where he wrote for unannounced projects.

Looks like that's the nature of the projects he undertakes. Create and move on.

Much like he says, if I was a writer who LOVED writing, Telltale games would be pretty tempting. Especially coming from the first person genre. Telling the story "between bullets" is awesome, and Bungie does a great job, but being able to tell a much more in-depth story is pretty enticing.

I live in in a city surrounded by 4 major universities and a lot of my friends are fiction writers.

The way the market is right now, it is a much better experience and job description to be a writer for a hit HBO show than for an up-and-coming video game, even if it is Destiny. I know tons of writers who would give up everything to go write for HBO.

...but working for Telltale is a great place to pick up where you left off.

Best of luck to him.

To go work on Mediocre Adventure Games?

Seems like a huge step down. Not calling gloom and doom, but man over the past few years they've lost a lot of good people.

I put this article in the news queue yesterday morning, but haven't had time to post it yet.

The quote they used answers your question, I think:

"in the end, Bungie makes games about shooting aliens in the head. And while there’s a true art to 'writing between the bullets' — as Mr. Staten once said — I couldn’t turn down an offer from Telltale, to create games that are entirely about story."

Perhaps this person saw a limit to story innovation and decided he needed more to excite him and add to his resume?

Even as exciting as the prospect of Destiny's story is to us, perhaps this writer is already burned out on it. After all, even with expansions, Destiny will still be Destiny 8-10 years from now.

If I had to guess... It's probably because they didn't like Destiny's PvP component.

;)

Not every writing job is equally compelling. I'm sure they're given assignments. It's not like when you're hired as a writer at Bungie you're necessarily charged with writing THE story.

- No text -

Seriously, something changed with Bungie when they signed that deal with Activision.

Maybe he would get to do more actual writing at Telltale than working for a shooter developer? Destiny's got backstory out the wazoo, but is probably light on character and story compared to an adventure game.

To go work on Mediocre Adventure Games?

Seems like a huge step down. Not calling gloom and doom, but man over the past few years they've lost a lot of good people.

Promotion? Raise? Something different?

When Bungie was 30 people any departure was a big deal, but people still did it back then-- look at Greg K and the rest of the Double Aught guys.

Then look at Certain Affinity.

Bungie is so large now it's a fair bet that people are coming and going every week; we just don't hear about them all.