BOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLL!
for reference this is the longest the forum will let a word be (including the exclamation point)

I'm wondering if their in-engine marketing (or lack thereof) is due to the shitstorm after the Halo 2 reveal video and if they simply haven't got anything final enough to show yet, as they don't want to waste time on stuff that won't be used?...

Idle speculation, but just a possibility...

Well to be fair they had deadlines that were put on them by other people with Halo 2 and Halo 3. There seems to have been a lot more negotiating for time with this contract with Activision since from what they said about ALL their old games (Halo 1 included)they were always released sooner than they wanted. The real point of this being, yes I think you're right and they wanted to make sure when they show the game it will be at least mostly reminiscent of what we end up playing.

Hell, you could even argue the portal gun broke Portal 2!

Haha, really? I'd like to hear that one.

Do you think Bungie is the first developer to think of this? Why hasn't this already been done? You gotta think about implementation. You can wish for things all you want, but unless they can actually be fun there's no sense.

You're talking gibberish. I don't care if Bungie isn't the first one to think of it. I don't care why it hasn't already been done. I don't care about implementation. I was speculating and expounding on something that got me excited about this (currently) vaporware of a game. It was a fun moment to speculate on something that could be fun.

Your Annette Benning to my Kevin Spacey. I'm getting drunk and romantic and charged up to pile into you, you start to complain about spilling wine on the sofa.

Oy vey!

- M

I give Bungie props for peeking out of their comfort zone during this whole new marketing mission of theirs. The post-mortem on all this (the real post-mortem, not any manufactured spin) will be very interesting to read about in a few years.

The bottom line is I'm looking forward to hearing about/seeing this game. It hasn't happened yet. I'm a patient man though, I ain't going anywhere.

I hear that. I'm sure there will be some interesting backstory to this whole piece. I'd wager that Bungie found themselves in an all too familiar situation, pressured to make a public entrance at a point where they weren't quite ready, and simply made a tough call: to repeat past mistakes by spending valuable resources on producing a dishonest bombshell demonstration, or gather genuine materials from their current build and just show the world a bit of what they're actually working on. I guess time will tell.

Right. The game industry has grown and gotten more competitive since 1999. I think that as Bungie has gotten more ambitious, they've gotten more cautious, too, at least in terms of setting expectations. They're avoiding setting a trap for themselves.

A related point: I get this feeling that one goal for the mature Bungie is smart project management. Specifically, figuring out how to achieve their visions while retaining and not crushing the souls of the talented people they've attracted, in part by allowing them to have lives outside of their work. That's quite the hat trick in an industry that's infamous for grueling schedules.

As Cody said right at the end, it only really got interesting when I came on board. ;-) Before that it was like being forced to attend an economics lecture and two TA's were debating supply-side vs kenyesian.

"Ass kissers, the lot of them!"

Now that's an entrance. :)

Heh, thanks.

You can claim the Halo reveals were fake at their core, but what they were *not* was imprecise setters of 'tone'.

I definitely appreciate that argument, but I'm saying the process of creating each of those demonstrations was also a pretty big timesink that may have been better spent actually working on real game mechanics rather than what amounted to an internal goal-setter. One could question whether the reveals created even more drive to push further and create a better final product than they would have otherwise, but who knows? It seems like a damned if you do, damned if you don't situation.

Exactly which is why I don't understand the cautious approach. As you state, there's a tipping point between 'let's show them/us what we WANT this game to be like' and 'm-f'er we're wasting so much time on this and who knows if even half of this will be in game!' Internally, I would hope a company in the biz this long has sussed out how to dance along that line.

The reveal might be that even if you spent 15 years working on a game, that commitment to a 'demo' is fraught with virgin-nervousness. Am I doing it right? Am I doing it long enough? Is she going to yell for the cops?

Down the line, after release, there was always that point where they declassified the insanity that went on behind the scenes during the development process and we found they were NOWHERE NEAR the level of progress that the reveals implied, which would have been a major letdown if the public didn't already have the game in their grubby little hands by then. With the current size of the development team and all the leaks these days, I actually wonder if Bungie could have pulled off another "fake it 'til you make it" demo without facing down an embarrassing media shitstorm.

You bring up another good point, that again puzzles me, kinda, in how it dictated their approach. Yes, when Halo 1/2/3 blah blah was shown, and then when those same games shipped, we could see what changed from conception to delivery. And more often than not, it was in a negative. Feature A was demo'd, but feature A was first on the chopping block.

Here's my point: HAVEN'T WE LEARNED OUR LESSON? After one or two games, isn't it NOW a mature sensible take that ANYTIME a demo is created, to not take it at as set in stone? Why should that one emotional problem we as gamers have with 'oh, you robbed me of my expectations' prevent a game company from ever showing their own hopes and dreams? Granted I'm talking in measures... an FPS demo'd that turns into a RTS game would be a surprise. But showing troop phalanxes and then not seeing it in game... really? That's the deal-breaker? It almost feels like Bungie would have to go to the lengths of creating a Bungie Labs wing where they can willy nilly show each and ever fevered dream they come up with, with no expectations of it appearing in any damn game because folks can't take a chill pill! The 'embarrassing media shitstorm' should be met with 'Well, that's how gaming dev goes. You shoot for the moon and then pull back until it's something manageable and shippable - and thank you for spending the last 7 years working on this until it was shippable and dammit I'm still having fun.'

And yes, I'll head you off at the pass: the above is a pipe-dream. Gamers mature and sensible? Pish posh!

The bottom line is I'm looking forward to hearing about/seeing this game. It hasn't happened yet. I'm a patient man though, I ain't going anywhere.

I hear that. I'm sure there will be some interesting backstory to this whole piece. I'd wager that Bungie found themselves in an all too familiar situation, pressured to make a public entrance at a point where they weren't quite ready, and simply made a tough call: to repeat past mistakes by spending valuable resources on producing a dishonest bombshell demonstration, or gather genuine materials from their current build and just show the world a bit of what they're actually working on. I guess time will tell.

Yep, and my only issue is that the former is a fireworks media event (that however dishonest as you label it, is a blood-pumping extravaganza), the latter is not. And the 'Bungie' that's lodged in the back of my head would've been upfront about it.

- M