Video game industry veteran Martin O’Donnell, who composed the music for Halo and served on the Bungie board of directors, has spoken openly about Bungie’s treatment of Activision and how it all fell apart. In short, O’Donnell had a bad feeling about the deal for the Destiny series from the start, but the whole story is like something out of a movie.
Speaking to YouTuber HiddenXperia, O’Donnell first clarified that it was the seven Bungie board members who collectively made the decision to work with Activision. O’Donnell was a member, so he acknowledged his part in the decision. O’Donnell also continues to hold shares in Bungie.
In discussing the origins of the deal, O’Donnell said he has immediate doubts. “We knew it was a risk from the get-go,” he said. “It turned out to be exactly as bad as we thought it would be. Everyone who no longer works for Bungie will say, ‘Yes, it was bad from the start.'”
O’Donnell said the Bungie superiors who still work there will not acknowledge that it was a troublesome deal from the start.
“If you still work for Bungie, you’re going to be a politician and say all kinds of things like, ‘Oh, we had a good partnership and blah, blah, blah, we were able to build something wonderful. And it was time to go our separate ways because each had goals different, but we are happy and we love each other. ” That’s BS, “O’Donnell said. “There are so many written responses that I hear.”
O’Donnell’s summary of the Activision deal is that “it wasn’t a marriage made in heaven.”
Bungie decided to sign with Activision because the publisher of Call of Duty was allowing Bungie to retain ownership of Destiny IP. This came from Bungie’s experience working with Microsoft. Bungie sold the Halo IP to Microsoft in 2000, and has needed to respond to Microsoft ever since. Bungie didn’t want to repeat this for his new Destiny deal.
“The reason we went with Activision was not just because of the money, but because as part of the contract, they did not own the intellectual property,” said O’Donnell.
O’Donnell said it was a “non-negotiable” issue for him in his conversations with the rest of the Bungie board before reaching a deal with Activision. And to the surprise of a revelation, O’Donnell also reveals that Bungie was “very close” to reaching a deal with Microsoft for Destiny before Activision won. “We almost went back to Microsoft,” O’Donnell said.
Also during the interview, O’Donnell alluded to one of the reasons why Bungie fired him. He suggested that some members of the Bungie leadership team wanted to give Activision more control over Destiny.
“Here’s the hot part. Activision not only didn’t have the legal right to mess with the IP. But the only way they would be prevented from messing with the IP is if all of Bungie’s leadership said they can’t mess with the IP IP. And that’s not what happened. And that’s why I was fired, “O’Donnell said.
“That was probably my biggest disappointment: We worked for a decade to make sure we could be in a position where we could take on the publisher and say, no, we own the IP, you can’t mess with that.” And I was canceled and finally I let it go, “he added.
One of the more chilling revelations from the interview is a story O’Donnell shared about a dinner he had with Activision executives just before the deal, including CEO Bobby Kotick and a CFO O’Donnell referred to as a man. Austrian from the “Vienna School of Economics”. He never mentions a name, but the former chief financial officer of Activision was Thomas Tippl, an Austrian man who was involved in the deal to sign Bungie to Destiny.
O’Donnell shared that he has a saying, “Be nice to the goose,” which means you must be nice to the goose because that’s where the golden eggs come from. In this analogy, Bungie is the goose that lays the golden egg that is Destiny. This unidentified Austrian business executive told O’Donnell: “Yes, I like that story … golden eggs … the goose. But sometimes there is nothing like a good foie gras.”
Foie gras is French cuisine that is made from goose liver after the bird is fattened by force-feeding. O’Donnell was scared that Activision viewed Bungie as a goose to put on weight and then kill, and today he wishes he had voiced his concerns to his colleagues.
“The red flag went off. I’m about to drink some wine and he says that, and I say, ‘Oh my gosh.’ I felt like I was in an episode of Twilight Zone,” he said. “What I should have done is get up, turn the table and say to all the other Bungie boys: ‘We have to get away from here, now!’ But that only happens in my dreams. “
At the same time that Activision was making this deal with Bungie, Activision was in the midst of their tumultuous relationship with Call of Duty developer Modern Warfare Infinity Ward, which saw company founders fire Jason West and Vince Zampella for insubordination.
“They were eating Infinity Ward’s liver while I was sitting at that table,” O’Donnell said. “I thought we were protected from doing that [to us at Bungie]and I was wrong. My instinct was that this is bad, we shouldn’t do this. However, that is hindsight. “
In 2015 O’Donnell won his legal case against Bungie. A court-appointed arbitrator found that Bungie violated his contract with O’Donnell when he fired him “without cause” and forced him to give up his company’s shares and abandon Bungie’s profit-sharing plan.
As for Bungie, with Activision now out of the picture, Bungie is self-publishing the Destiny series. The studio has bold ambitions for Destiny’s future, including new expansions through 2022.
Additionally, Bungie received $ 100 million from Chinese company NetEase to make non-Destiny games.
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