WEBVTT - The Bungie Story Part One 0:00:04.200 --> 0:00:07.200 Get in touch with technology with Text Stuff from how 0:00:07.240 --> 0:00:14.720 Stuff Works dot com. Either everyone, and welcome to Text Stuff. 0:00:14.880 --> 0:00:18.040 I'm Jonathan Strickland and I'm Lauren volk Plump, and today 0:00:18.120 --> 0:00:21.560 we're taking uh an interesting subject, one that is near 0:00:21.600 --> 0:00:23.919 and dear to both our hearts. Yes, we are going 0:00:24.000 --> 0:00:28.160 to tackle in a two parter the company Bunging, makers, 0:00:28.160 --> 0:00:32.280 famously of Halo, among many other things. Also, I have 0:00:32.440 --> 0:00:36.520 an announcement to make. This is unfortunately my final episode 0:00:36.560 --> 0:00:39.600 of or or episodes of Text Stuff. After this, I'm 0:00:39.640 --> 0:00:43.240 going to move on. I'm staying with How Stuff Works 0:00:43.280 --> 0:00:46.640 in order to pursue a bunch of other opportunities within 0:00:46.680 --> 0:00:49.400 the company. You'll still be able to hear me on 0:00:49.440 --> 0:00:53.000 our other show, Forward Thinking, So don't worry. Jonathan and 0:00:53.040 --> 0:00:55.520 I are not in any kind of ancient grudge match 0:00:55.600 --> 0:00:59.440 which only one of us will survive. Probably Joe is 0:00:59.560 --> 0:01:03.040 a great mediator, and Joe is the other co host 0:01:03.200 --> 0:01:05.840 on Forward Thinking, and he is the one who is 0:01:06.240 --> 0:01:09.280 able to keep us in line. No, this is something 0:01:09.280 --> 0:01:12.199 that is very exciting for you, Lauren, because here here's 0:01:12.240 --> 0:01:14.840 the thing, folks behind You're gonna get a peek behind 0:01:14.840 --> 0:01:17.640 the curtain. We did this for episode six, We're gonna 0:01:17.640 --> 0:01:21.040 give you another peak right now, which is that working 0:01:21.040 --> 0:01:23.800 at how Stuff Works is amazing, but it's a lot 0:01:23.880 --> 0:01:26.600 of work, right Oh yeah, And I mean there's a 0:01:26.640 --> 0:01:30.039 lot of stuff going on within the company and so 0:01:30.040 --> 0:01:32.560 so yes, but but we we really wanted to do 0:01:32.600 --> 0:01:34.720 this episode on Bungee as my kind of send off 0:01:34.800 --> 0:01:38.000 because we are both so fond of the series and 0:01:38.040 --> 0:01:41.320 it's interesting bookends because I think the very first episode 0:01:41.319 --> 0:01:46.039 you and I recorded together was about survival horror video 0:01:46.080 --> 0:01:49.800 games Silent Hill, Right, yeah, we specifically did. So that's right. 0:01:49.840 --> 0:01:51.840 We're we're coming and going on or I'm coming and 0:01:51.840 --> 0:01:54.200 going on a on a video game kick. And uh 0:01:54.240 --> 0:01:55.960 and for those of you who are wondering about the 0:01:55.960 --> 0:01:59.400 fate of tech stuff that will continue and I'll talk 0:01:59.440 --> 0:02:01.559 more about at the end of the next episode. Let's 0:02:01.720 --> 0:02:05.240 let's move on to talking about Bungee, this company that 0:02:05.640 --> 0:02:09.280 created a game that both of us have grown to love, 0:02:09.880 --> 0:02:14.480 and I became the world's best sniper bullet magnet in 0:02:14.520 --> 0:02:19.840 that game. So so let's where those bullets went spawned death. 0:02:21.639 --> 0:02:25.600 But the story of Bungee actually begins way back in 0:02:25.800 --> 0:02:30.959 nineteen one. That's when a fellow named Alex Serropian, who 0:02:31.000 --> 0:02:34.480 was attending the University of Chicago as major in computer 0:02:34.520 --> 0:02:38.240 science and mathematics, was interested in creating a company of 0:02:38.400 --> 0:02:41.160 his very own. He was kind of always sort of 0:02:41.200 --> 0:02:47.000 a business minded in that respect. Now, back in nineteen nine, 0:02:47.600 --> 0:02:50.560 so the year before this this story really begins, he 0:02:50.600 --> 0:02:55.959 had created a clone of a popular early computer game, Pong, 0:02:56.360 --> 0:03:00.360 and he created it for for the Apple Macintosh platform. Yeah, 0:03:00.440 --> 0:03:04.359 which I know for those of us who are more 0:03:04.360 --> 0:03:09.480 recent uh computer owners, probably don't realize the Mac platform 0:03:09.520 --> 0:03:13.200 for a very long time was catering to a much 0:03:13.320 --> 0:03:18.560 smaller audience. Oh yes, and almost no games were available, Yeah, 0:03:18.760 --> 0:03:22.040 very few and far between. So he created a Pong clone, 0:03:22.040 --> 0:03:28.840 which he creatively titled Good Knop Pong Backwards. Um. He 0:03:28.919 --> 0:03:30.959 distributed the game for free, so this was not some 0:03:31.120 --> 0:03:34.080 money making scheme. He was really kind of doing this 0:03:34.120 --> 0:03:36.880 as an exercise in his interest in in gaming in 0:03:37.360 --> 0:03:40.960 general and in Apple in particular, because he had always 0:03:40.960 --> 0:03:43.520 personally been I think an Apple and Mac user and 0:03:43.600 --> 0:03:45.800 was sort of lamenting the fact that more stuff wasn't 0:03:45.800 --> 0:03:49.120 available for for computer users like him. Yep, So he 0:03:49.280 --> 0:03:51.800 ended up deciding, you know what I think this is 0:03:51.840 --> 0:03:53.320 what I want to do. I think I want to 0:03:53.360 --> 0:03:58.400 go into developing and publishing games, And so he got 0:03:58.440 --> 0:04:03.200 back to work to think the first official Bungee title, 0:04:03.280 --> 0:04:05.840 you could say, Ganap is sort of a Bungee title 0:04:06.120 --> 0:04:09.120 they often lump it in, but in a way that 0:04:09.160 --> 0:04:11.680 was sort of the predecessor that led to right, it 0:04:11.720 --> 0:04:14.080 was a precursor. Um. The first game that they would 0:04:14.080 --> 0:04:18.160 actually publish was Operation Desert Storm, which was a tank 0:04:18.200 --> 0:04:20.440 shoot or like a like a top down tank shot. 0:04:20.720 --> 0:04:24.120 It makes me think of the old hundred, which had 0:04:24.160 --> 0:04:28.359 a combat with an exclamation point that involved top down 0:04:28.480 --> 0:04:32.520 tank battles where it was a two player game and 0:04:32.720 --> 0:04:35.440 you would maneuver through a maze sort of similar to that, 0:04:35.520 --> 0:04:38.200 a little bit more more sophisticated. The graphics were certainly 0:04:38.279 --> 0:04:42.599 more sophisticated than the old at twenty s um and it. 0:04:43.120 --> 0:04:46.719 I remember specifically that it had copyright protection in the 0:04:46.760 --> 0:04:50.320 form of a manual where you would you start the 0:04:50.320 --> 0:04:52.000 game and the game would ask you questions that you 0:04:52.000 --> 0:04:53.920 had to answer by flipping through the manual and finding 0:04:53.920 --> 0:04:56.200 the right answer on the right page, like like what 0:04:56.200 --> 0:04:59.800 what word is on or whatever? Yeah, those were the 0:04:59.839 --> 0:05:03.680 day as man when your copyright protection was involved a 0:05:03.720 --> 0:05:07.040 hard copy of the documentation that came with the game, 0:05:07.160 --> 0:05:09.680 because back then most of us didn't have access to 0:05:09.720 --> 0:05:12.720 things like scanners, so it was a viable means of 0:05:12.720 --> 0:05:16.560 copy protection and not so much these days. Uh. You 0:05:16.640 --> 0:05:19.719 would control this this tank, and you maneuver through these 0:05:19.760 --> 0:05:23.679 maze like areas, fight other tanks mortars, complete specific tasks 0:05:23.680 --> 0:05:26.359 whatever that happened to be for that level, and you 0:05:26.360 --> 0:05:29.440 could pick up a little power ups. Um. You had 0:05:29.560 --> 0:05:31.520 you know, health as well as fuel that you had 0:05:31.560 --> 0:05:33.440 to keep an eye on or else you would lose 0:05:33.520 --> 0:05:36.960 that that game, you lose a life. Um. And it 0:05:37.000 --> 0:05:41.800 was pretty primitive. But then Sarropean was a soul designer 0:05:41.839 --> 0:05:43.440 working on a game. This was back in the day 0:05:43.480 --> 0:05:47.040 when people still occasionally did that. We were getting into 0:05:47.120 --> 0:05:50.880 by the nineties, into the era of games where you 0:05:50.880 --> 0:05:55.240 would have larger teams working on a title, increasingly large teams. Yes, 0:05:55.400 --> 0:05:57.559 but but but it wasn't unheard of at the time 0:05:57.640 --> 0:06:00.719 for for especially a relatively simple game like this with 0:06:00.800 --> 0:06:03.919 a relatively small release, to have a single dev Yeah. Yeah, 0:06:04.040 --> 0:06:07.440 so this was I think he pretty much got in 0:06:08.520 --> 0:06:11.200 at at the very tail end of that era. Like 0:06:11.240 --> 0:06:13.560 if it had been much later, it would have not 0:06:13.680 --> 0:06:18.360 been a very viable business. Oh shure. I mean also 0:06:18.440 --> 0:06:21.520 within the next few years, UM blockbusters like Doom would 0:06:21.600 --> 0:06:24.279 come out for for PC and kind of blow the 0:06:24.520 --> 0:06:29.640 entire market wide open. But but that that is that 0:06:29.800 --> 0:06:33.960 is up and coming. So in two he would get 0:06:34.000 --> 0:06:37.800 together with a former classmate, Jason Jones, who had been 0:06:37.880 --> 0:06:40.320 working already I think I think unto himself on a 0:06:40.480 --> 0:06:43.719 game that he called Minotaur. Yeah, the full title is 0:06:43.839 --> 0:06:47.640 Minotaur the Labyrinth of Crete. Yes. By the time it published, right, 0:06:47.680 --> 0:06:49.720 they got together to to finish up the game and 0:06:49.920 --> 0:06:52.520 published it under Bunchie. Yeah. So this at this point, 0:06:53.040 --> 0:06:56.400 Sarropean and Jones had met in an artificial intelligence class 0:06:56.480 --> 0:06:59.440 and so they both had this interest in games. And 0:06:59.520 --> 0:07:02.800 when Jones found out about Serapians plans and Seropian found 0:07:02.800 --> 0:07:05.279 out about Jones's work on this game, they thought, well, 0:07:05.320 --> 0:07:07.599 this partnership would make sense. We'd have a lot more 0:07:08.000 --> 0:07:12.080 chance of success working together. And the game itself was 0:07:12.120 --> 0:07:15.840 a multiplayer game, which was pretty innovative at the time. 0:07:16.440 --> 0:07:19.880 It was again for the Mac, and it would uh 0:07:20.360 --> 0:07:22.960 allow up to seven people to play on a local 0:07:23.000 --> 0:07:27.120 area network or land and UH although I did read 0:07:27.160 --> 0:07:29.200 one thing where it said a player and up to 0:07:29.280 --> 0:07:32.120 seven others, So whether it was seven or eight, I 0:07:32.200 --> 0:07:35.360 don't know. I I wasn't playing Mac games at this time, 0:07:35.360 --> 0:07:38.280 so I have no personal expertise with this particular title. 0:07:38.880 --> 0:07:43.120 I always assume things going even numbers and multiples of specifically, 0:07:43.120 --> 0:07:46.400 so eight is probably more likely. Uh, but that's based 0:07:46.440 --> 0:07:50.080 on consoles, not Yeah, that's true. That's true. Uh, the 0:07:50.200 --> 0:07:52.680 same here though, because seven just seems like a weird number, 0:07:52.920 --> 0:07:56.440 but it was appropriate for Bengie, I guess. So, I 0:07:56.480 --> 0:08:00.320 guess so that it does feature pretty heavily any Sorry, 0:08:00.440 --> 0:08:04.320 they have the entire seventh column thing at any rate. So, 0:08:04.320 --> 0:08:07.600 so the game is a dungeon crawler style, right, So 0:08:07.720 --> 0:08:09.720 you have a little character and you're moving through a 0:08:09.800 --> 0:08:12.360 dungeon maze. The whole purpose of the game, at least 0:08:12.400 --> 0:08:15.880 the multiplayer version, is to kill all the other players. Um. 0:08:15.920 --> 0:08:19.120 In fact, they came up with the the slogan kill 0:08:19.200 --> 0:08:23.560 your enemies, kill your friends, enemies, kill your friends, and 0:08:23.840 --> 0:08:27.160 that that slogan would show up in other future Bungee titles, 0:08:27.240 --> 0:08:30.480 usually on game types like like a death match or something, 0:08:30.520 --> 0:08:33.520 and that would be the little descriptor uh. So this 0:08:33.679 --> 0:08:36.800 was a pretty simple game, although the networking made it 0:08:36.920 --> 0:08:41.720 again pretty innovative, interesting title. It only sold around a 0:08:41.760 --> 0:08:46.199 thousand copies, so not a huge success by any stretch 0:08:46.200 --> 0:08:50.160 of the imagination, but it convinced both Jones and Seropian 0:08:50.280 --> 0:08:53.839 that this was a good idea to have this company, Bungee, 0:08:54.200 --> 0:08:58.200 and to work together to create games. So Jones is 0:08:58.240 --> 0:09:01.439 often credited as co found or of Bungee. So even 0:09:01.480 --> 0:09:04.400 though European was really determined to create this company before 0:09:04.480 --> 0:09:07.760 Jones got involved, it wasn't until Jones had had started 0:09:07.800 --> 0:09:12.400 collaborating that it really became a thing. So uh. Their 0:09:12.400 --> 0:09:16.320 original headquarters was an apartment on the South side of Chicago. 0:09:17.000 --> 0:09:20.560 Just an apartment, just apparently there was, according to a 0:09:20.720 --> 0:09:26.679 documentary on Bungee's twentieth anniversary, a crack house behind set apartment. Um. 0:09:26.800 --> 0:09:29.040 They actually had a lot to say about that. If 0:09:29.080 --> 0:09:34.000 you haven't seen the twentieth anniversary documentary, it's a fun video. 0:09:34.040 --> 0:09:36.040 It's an hour long. It's up on YouTube so you 0:09:36.080 --> 0:09:38.560 can watch it. And those guys have a really great 0:09:38.559 --> 0:09:41.199 sense of humor, and so it's really fun to kind 0:09:41.240 --> 0:09:43.560 of get some of the behind the scenes. Um, there 0:09:43.559 --> 0:09:45.960 are a lot of a lot of bleeps and bloops 0:09:46.000 --> 0:09:49.720 that are they're they're they're colorful group. But yeah, they 0:09:49.760 --> 0:09:51.520 had like a room and a half according to one 0:09:51.520 --> 0:09:53.800 of the developers, that's about how much space they had. 0:09:54.320 --> 0:09:59.120 And uh and before too long, Jones and Seropian would 0:09:59.200 --> 0:10:01.960 end up high tiring on more people to kind of 0:10:02.040 --> 0:10:04.600 join the group and start working together to make more 0:10:04.640 --> 0:10:11.200 complex games Likerees Entry Pathways into Darkness. Yeah, yeah, this 0:10:11.240 --> 0:10:13.800 one was interesting. It's a first person shooter game, but 0:10:13.880 --> 0:10:18.520 it also incorporates action adventure type gameplay and role playing 0:10:18.559 --> 0:10:23.160 game type gameplay altogether, so it wasn't as cut and 0:10:23.240 --> 0:10:25.840 dry as a first person shooter like Wolfenstein three D 0:10:26.160 --> 0:10:28.520 or Doom Right. It had other elements. There were some 0:10:28.559 --> 0:10:32.280 puzzle solving elements, You had some stats that could increase 0:10:32.360 --> 0:10:35.800 over time as you played, and it was pretty cool 0:10:35.920 --> 0:10:39.160 that Jones himself had gotten the idea of really developing 0:10:39.160 --> 0:10:42.440 a more complex version of the first person shooter when 0:10:42.440 --> 0:10:45.720 he looked at Wolfenstein three D, which was not in 0:10:46.559 --> 0:10:50.080 three out for the Macintosh platform. Eventually, of course, it 0:10:50.080 --> 0:10:52.880 would be released for like everything, um, but it wouldn't 0:10:52.960 --> 0:10:56.360 hit mac until the next year. So so when he 0:10:56.400 --> 0:10:58.199 when he saw that, he was like, there's an opportunity 0:10:58.280 --> 0:11:00.000 for this kind of game wise in't it on a map? 0:11:01.280 --> 0:11:03.760 Let's make it? And what was fantastic? I mean I 0:11:03.880 --> 0:11:08.520 played Wolfenstein back in probably so I could totally see 0:11:08.559 --> 0:11:11.439 where he got the like, like looking at the gameplay 0:11:11.440 --> 0:11:13.679 of Pathways, I see where the inspiration came in. But 0:11:13.920 --> 0:11:18.160 also this would be when you'd start to see Bungee 0:11:18.920 --> 0:11:23.880 coming up with some really incredible storylines that get really 0:11:23.920 --> 0:11:27.320 complex and some some tropes that you can still see 0:11:27.360 --> 0:11:30.160 in their games today, which is so fascinating. Yeah, I 0:11:30.160 --> 0:11:33.360 mean it's it's a shooter, and most of us when 0:11:33.440 --> 0:11:36.280 we play a shooter, we're used to a pretty bare 0:11:36.320 --> 0:11:39.080 bones storyline. Oh sure, well, I mean especially I think 0:11:39.120 --> 0:11:41.440 in these days with stuff like like Doom and Wolfenstein 0:11:41.559 --> 0:11:44.600 three d Um that was very run and gun, and 0:11:44.760 --> 0:11:47.680 I mean, and the objective was killed bad guys, where 0:11:47.720 --> 0:11:50.160 the bad guys everyone you meet right and then get 0:11:50.160 --> 0:11:52.000 to the exit at the end of the level. It's 0:11:52.040 --> 0:11:54.559 usually really a linear kind of level. I mean, you 0:11:54.640 --> 0:11:56.640 might have twist and turns, but really there's only one 0:11:56.640 --> 0:11:59.360 way to get from point A to point B and 0:11:59.640 --> 0:12:01.880 kill everything that happens to be in between point A 0:12:01.960 --> 0:12:05.040 and point B. That's about it. But this was a 0:12:05.080 --> 0:12:08.760 game where they wanted to add in a really rich mythology. 0:12:08.800 --> 0:12:12.560 They created this science fiction alien world type thing. There 0:12:12.600 --> 0:12:15.080 was an alien race called the jar oh which that's 0:12:15.120 --> 0:12:19.680 important because they'll come back um and uh. The whole 0:12:19.760 --> 0:12:25.479 thing takes place in a pyramid in the Yucatan Peninsula, 0:12:25.520 --> 0:12:27.400 and you actually have to go into the pyramid and 0:12:27.440 --> 0:12:32.040 go underneath. There's in the mythology a big evil alien 0:12:32.120 --> 0:12:37.280 monster that that rests Cathulhu like underneath the pyramid, and 0:12:37.360 --> 0:12:40.000 you come up with this brilliant plan based upon these 0:12:40.040 --> 0:12:44.280 these kindly aliens called the jar oh Um to destroy 0:12:44.640 --> 0:12:48.640 said monstrous entity, or at least slow it down. Yeah, 0:12:49.000 --> 0:12:53.679 by by detonating a nuclear weapon the pyramid. You know, 0:12:54.000 --> 0:12:56.839 it's a measured response. Yeah, well sure, I mean also, 0:12:57.120 --> 0:13:00.240 I guess you know, especially in the early nine days, 0:13:00.240 --> 0:13:02.000 if you're the president and you get a phone call 0:13:02.040 --> 0:13:05.680 from aliens and then a completely reasonable response is to go, yes, 0:13:05.760 --> 0:13:10.040 I will blow up this ancient artifact. Yes this is 0:13:10.080 --> 0:13:12.560 This would clearly be the administration before the one that 0:13:12.600 --> 0:13:14.439 we saw an Independence Day, where they try to take 0:13:14.440 --> 0:13:17.200 a much more measured approach um, you know, this was 0:13:17.800 --> 0:13:19.600 this was one of those things that as I read 0:13:19.600 --> 0:13:21.520 about it, it it really tickled me. I mean, I could 0:13:21.559 --> 0:13:25.559 definitely see where the seeds were planted for future Bungee titles, 0:13:25.600 --> 0:13:30.160 but it just made me think of, uh uh, the 0:13:30.240 --> 0:13:33.360 I could just imagine the exchange where the aliens say, yeah, 0:13:33.400 --> 0:13:35.760 do you have any huge weapons that you can use, Like, yeah, 0:13:35.800 --> 0:13:38.079 we've got these these nuclear bombs, Like all right, you 0:13:38.080 --> 0:13:42.400 should totally go into the pyramid and use one of those. 0:13:42.440 --> 0:13:43.760 And the President says, oh, and that will kill it 0:13:43.760 --> 0:13:46.679 and oh no, that won't kill it. It'll just slow 0:13:46.679 --> 0:13:48.440 it down long enough for us to get there and 0:13:48.520 --> 0:13:51.559 handle it from there. At any rate. You play as 0:13:51.600 --> 0:13:55.200 a special Forces agent who is part of a team, 0:13:55.240 --> 0:13:57.320 and at the very beginning of the game, you're separated 0:13:57.320 --> 0:13:59.760 from your team and you lose all your equipment. So 0:13:59.800 --> 0:14:02.480 it's basic kind of first person shooter where you start 0:14:02.520 --> 0:14:05.120 off with some of the lower power pieces of equipment, 0:14:05.160 --> 0:14:07.400 basically nothing, and you have to kind of run through 0:14:07.440 --> 0:14:11.680 the pyramid picking up equipment and solving puzzles and killing 0:14:11.720 --> 0:14:14.680 stuff or you know, at least avoiding being killed as 0:14:14.520 --> 0:14:17.520 right as possible, and you have a time limit, so 0:14:17.559 --> 0:14:19.760 that's interesting too. You had to be able to set 0:14:19.800 --> 0:14:24.280 off the bomb and escape, either by getting out of 0:14:24.280 --> 0:14:27.160 the pyramid and calling for pick up or if you 0:14:27.280 --> 0:14:29.120 did not have a radio beacon, because that was one 0:14:29.160 --> 0:14:31.880 of the things you had to find running far enough 0:14:31.920 --> 0:14:36.360 to get outside the blast radius of a nuclear bomb. Um. 0:14:36.360 --> 0:14:39.400 And if you did those things, you got the successful 0:14:39.560 --> 0:14:42.120 ending of the game. So the game could end in 0:14:42.200 --> 0:14:46.120 various ways depending upon your choices, which was pretty cool. Yeah. Yeah, 0:14:46.240 --> 0:14:48.320 And I also found it really interesting. One of the 0:14:48.680 --> 0:14:52.080 game elements was that you could find this this yellow 0:14:52.120 --> 0:14:57.680 crystal that would let you converse with dead people. Um, 0:14:57.680 --> 0:14:59.800 and that that's that's where all the story elements came, 0:15:00.240 --> 0:15:02.760 right right, Yeah, I mean, which I'm sorry to saying 0:15:02.760 --> 0:15:05.000 that sentence out loud always makes me giggle just a 0:15:05.080 --> 0:15:07.040 little bit. Um. But of course you have to have 0:15:07.080 --> 0:15:09.040 the yellow crystal to talk to dead people. This isn't 0:15:09.040 --> 0:15:12.160 a crazy game, um, but but yeah, yeah, it was 0:15:12.200 --> 0:15:14.480 a lot of backstory about what was going on and 0:15:14.520 --> 0:15:16.440 would give you a lot of clues for what you 0:15:17.120 --> 0:15:18.920 where you should go, and what you should do next. 0:15:19.400 --> 0:15:22.240 And and that is a story element is so rampant 0:15:22.360 --> 0:15:25.480 throughout not only most of Bungee's video games, but a 0:15:25.520 --> 0:15:27.760 lot of other video games in the industry after this. 0:15:27.920 --> 0:15:30.240 So I just think that it's kind of terrific to 0:15:30.280 --> 0:15:34.000 have seen this in exactly. Yeah, this idea of of 0:15:34.280 --> 0:15:37.640 incorporating your story elements into the game itself where the 0:15:37.640 --> 0:15:41.560 player has to come into contact with it an Yeah, 0:15:41.920 --> 0:15:44.280 whether now in this case it is this yellow crystal 0:15:44.320 --> 0:15:46.600 that lets you talk to dead people, but in other 0:15:46.640 --> 0:15:49.120 games it will be like terminals, right, so going to 0:15:49.200 --> 0:15:53.240 get over that, um yeah, yeah, right, right, terminals or 0:15:53.360 --> 0:15:57.080 cassette tapes or whatever it is, right, so, uh, and 0:15:57.120 --> 0:16:00.280 you would run into all these other like adventure were 0:16:00.320 --> 0:16:03.640 types who had died in pursuit of this pyramid. Yeah, 0:16:03.640 --> 0:16:05.960 and a few right because there had been like a 0:16:06.040 --> 0:16:09.480 Nazi expedition there in some Cuban treasure hunters, I think. 0:16:09.880 --> 0:16:12.480 So it's all these like like different eras of people 0:16:12.520 --> 0:16:15.040 who had one at one time or another, had attempted 0:16:15.080 --> 0:16:19.360 to infiltrate the pyramid and had not been terribly successful, 0:16:19.720 --> 0:16:21.200 but you get to hear about it because you have 0:16:21.240 --> 0:16:24.880 the yellow crystal. They failed successfully, That's true. So the 0:16:24.960 --> 0:16:28.840 game ended up being a big success for Bungee. Keep 0:16:28.840 --> 0:16:31.360 in mind, a big success on the Mac platform was 0:16:31.800 --> 0:16:34.440 smaller than what you would find for the PC platform. 0:16:34.480 --> 0:16:36.480 Oh yeah, and we'll talk a little bit about that 0:16:36.680 --> 0:16:39.520 in another couple of years down our timeline. Yeah, but 0:16:39.600 --> 0:16:43.040 it meant that the company was able to actually start 0:16:43.280 --> 0:16:47.640 really ramping up and going into their next project, which 0:16:48.840 --> 0:16:52.160 was one of the If it hadn't been for the 0:16:52.200 --> 0:16:55.360 Halo series, I think this would be the big one 0:16:55.400 --> 0:16:58.000 that people would remember. And a lot of Mac gamers 0:16:58.480 --> 0:17:01.440 are very fond of this articular series. Oh sure. I 0:17:01.480 --> 0:17:04.040 think the only reason that it's not more wildly widely 0:17:04.080 --> 0:17:08.080 remembered is just the sheer disparity of Mac two PC 0:17:08.200 --> 0:17:11.280 PC users, especially in in the mid nineties here. But yes, 0:17:11.359 --> 0:17:13.560 Marathon is the name of this game, and it was 0:17:13.560 --> 0:17:15.919 set in the same universe as Pathways. Actually yeah, it 0:17:16.000 --> 0:17:19.919 was not a sequel to Pathways. Uh. Pathways took place 0:17:20.080 --> 0:17:25.480 in what was then modern day uh Earth, which today 0:17:25.480 --> 0:17:29.160 would be like well those mid nineties Earth temporary Earth. 0:17:29.240 --> 0:17:32.359 It's a period piece now, but at the time it 0:17:32.440 --> 0:17:34.600 was supposed to be taking places during the modern day. 0:17:34.640 --> 0:17:38.480 Marathon was set in the future and uh It was 0:17:38.520 --> 0:17:42.240 originally called Marathon zero as a working title, and it 0:17:42.320 --> 0:17:45.760 was shown at the San Francisco Macworld Expo, just a demo, 0:17:45.960 --> 0:17:48.120 like a you know, kind of a sizzle real type 0:17:48.160 --> 0:17:52.720 thing in January. Yeah, and it featured a sort of 0:17:52.760 --> 0:17:56.119 a faster gameplay than Pathways. Also had some new features 0:17:56.160 --> 0:17:59.439 that have become standard in first person shooting games, like 0:17:59.560 --> 0:18:02.040 dual yielding weapons. That was one of the things they 0:18:02.040 --> 0:18:05.280 showed off, which not very many first person shooters had 0:18:05.320 --> 0:18:08.560 really done up to that point. Um, and also alternate 0:18:08.600 --> 0:18:10.119 modes of fire for your guns, so if you had 0:18:10.160 --> 0:18:12.480 a gun that had burst mode versus single fire or 0:18:12.680 --> 0:18:15.440 you know, grenade launcher or whatever and had that kind 0:18:15.480 --> 0:18:19.760 of gameplay as well. Now, according to Jones, it was 0:18:19.840 --> 0:18:23.760 kind of met with a tepid response. So the development 0:18:23.800 --> 0:18:27.359 team said, who oh, we have a problem here, a 0:18:27.400 --> 0:18:30.000 potential problem. I mean, if the if people think that 0:18:30.080 --> 0:18:33.320 this is just yet another first person shooter clone, like, oh, well, 0:18:33.320 --> 0:18:34.840 you guys are trying to do the same thing that 0:18:34.920 --> 0:18:39.320 Wolfenstein and Doom are doing, then we've got a problem. So, uh, 0:18:39.359 --> 0:18:41.800 they decided to go back to the drawing board and 0:18:41.840 --> 0:18:46.960 really revisit Marathon and and pour some new energy into it. Yeah, 0:18:47.040 --> 0:18:50.280 they hired one Ryan Martel to to create a new 0:18:50.320 --> 0:18:54.040 rendering engine for them. Yeah, and he also created a 0:18:54.080 --> 0:18:57.280 map editor tool, which again becomes kind of a hallmark 0:18:57.400 --> 0:19:01.960 of Bungee products, where they create rules that allow players 0:19:02.240 --> 0:19:04.880 to do their own sort of editing and make their 0:19:04.880 --> 0:19:08.000 own kind of maps. Um. You'll you'll find that again 0:19:08.000 --> 0:19:10.640 and again in various Bungee titles, not all of them, 0:19:10.640 --> 0:19:12.640 but enough of them where you see that they really 0:19:12.720 --> 0:19:17.360 understood that player communities could be really creative and become 0:19:18.240 --> 0:19:22.640 evangelists for your product. So if you support that, they 0:19:22.680 --> 0:19:25.240 tell everybody else, Hey, this game is awesome and I 0:19:25.320 --> 0:19:26.959 made this awesome map. But for you to be able 0:19:27.000 --> 0:19:28.359 to play my awesome map, you need to go out 0:19:28.400 --> 0:19:31.919 and the game right. Um. Although this feature would not 0:19:32.040 --> 0:19:35.400 be released to the players as of Marathon, I think 0:19:35.440 --> 0:19:38.480 it wouldn't be until Marathon three that that would happen. 0:19:38.520 --> 0:19:41.920 But we are getting ahead of ourselves. Um. They would 0:19:41.920 --> 0:19:46.800 also hire um Greg Kirkpatrick to help them develop the 0:19:46.840 --> 0:19:51.240 pathology of this game world Yeah, which again very complex. 0:19:51.320 --> 0:19:54.960 Like Pathways, was a much more complicated world than what 0:19:55.040 --> 0:19:57.600 you would typically see in a first person shooter. They 0:19:57.600 --> 0:20:02.120 were further enriching this mythology that had been created during 0:20:02.119 --> 0:20:07.359 the Pathways experience. Later in Bungee also brought on a 0:20:07.400 --> 0:20:11.119 programming named Alan Roy or a Lane Roy, who began 0:20:11.200 --> 0:20:14.440 to build in multiplayer functions to the game, which originally 0:20:14.520 --> 0:20:16.720 was not going to be one of the game features, 0:20:16.920 --> 0:20:19.320 but then they thought, oh, we could support some you know, 0:20:19.440 --> 0:20:23.360 local area network play and uh. And again that ended 0:20:23.440 --> 0:20:28.240 up being a huge deal to Marathon success. Uh and 0:20:28.400 --> 0:20:32.439 again something that Bungee would be very interested in continuing 0:20:32.440 --> 0:20:35.840 in further titles. Yeah. So, just a few months later 0:20:35.880 --> 0:20:41.880 in July, they debuted this another demo of the game, 0:20:42.080 --> 0:20:44.760 which they had officially decided to call Marathon, at the 0:20:44.920 --> 0:20:49.680 Boston Macworld Expo, and and it received a pretty huge response. Yeah. 0:20:49.760 --> 0:20:52.760 Bungee ended up even decided to take pre orders on 0:20:52.840 --> 0:20:55.879 the game. Originally promising, oh, this this thing is ready 0:20:55.880 --> 0:20:58.560 to go into boxes in two weeks. We'll have this 0:20:59.080 --> 0:21:02.280 shipping out in two weeks. It actually would not ship 0:21:02.440 --> 0:21:05.679 until December, so from July to December they realized there 0:21:05.760 --> 0:21:07.600 was still a lot more work to be done on 0:21:07.600 --> 0:21:11.400 the game. Jones says that the reason that this game 0:21:11.440 --> 0:21:13.880 was so late was partially because the team had become 0:21:13.880 --> 0:21:17.240 obsessed with playing it in multiplayer, and so instead of 0:21:17.240 --> 0:21:20.320 actually working on the game, and they tended to just 0:21:20.800 --> 0:21:24.359 fragging each other. Yeah, I could see that happening. I've 0:21:24.400 --> 0:21:28.280 been I've I have joined groups where we were having 0:21:28.359 --> 0:21:30.240 lots of plans for the day and it all ended 0:21:30.320 --> 0:21:33.360 up being, you know, just a massive land party. Um. 0:21:33.520 --> 0:21:36.240 Then it was right around this time in the early nineties, 0:21:36.640 --> 0:21:39.920 so yeah, it was someone on the team who said, 0:21:39.960 --> 0:21:43.840 you know, the single player campaign probably doesn't have the 0:21:43.880 --> 0:21:46.359 full attention that it needs for it to be a 0:21:46.440 --> 0:21:49.520 satisfying experience for a player, so perhaps some of us 0:21:49.520 --> 0:21:52.760 should stop, you know, killing each other and develop it 0:21:52.840 --> 0:21:56.439 some more. And so they they did that. They started 0:21:56.480 --> 0:21:59.000 going into full on crunch time working on the game. 0:21:59.080 --> 0:22:00.920 Oh yeah, because I mean but by the time they 0:22:00.960 --> 0:22:03.240 realized all of this, they really would have had to 0:22:03.280 --> 0:22:05.679 have shipped it like two weeks previous to get it 0:22:05.680 --> 0:22:10.440 out by Christmas, which is always the game developers called, right, yeah, 0:22:10.480 --> 0:22:13.280 you don't want to miss that holiday season because that's 0:22:13.280 --> 0:22:16.520 going to be your most lucrative time. So they finally 0:22:16.680 --> 0:22:21.199 concluded the development on December fourteenth and started shipping it 0:22:21.280 --> 0:22:23.959