Bungie Enjoying Activision Honeymoon Period
Activision signing a ten-year publishing deal with Bungie for the studio’s next franchise was one of the biggest news stories of last year.
Having wrestled its independence back from Microsoft, some thought the Halo creator was perhaps heading into dangerous territory by getting into bed long-term with the Call of Duty publisher, which has received some criticism for its handling of studios and IP.
While Bungie is well aware of this, composer Marty O’Donnell told IndustryGamers the studio’s unworried. In fact, it’s really upbeat about the deal, which it says will allow it to exercise full creative autonomy.
“Not only were we excited about the contract that we were able to get with Activision but they seem really committed to being hands-off,” he said.
“They really seem committed to agreeing that they are the publishers and they need to support in all the ways publishers support [titles] and they were looking for developers that were completely self-sufficient essentially – except maybe we need some money once in a while – but self-sufficient in terms of not needing to depend on them for production or development or some of these other things.
“They want a team that has a proven track record – a team that can go out and get it done,” O’Donnell added. “And so the hands-off nature of it is really appealing to us. Right now, maybe this is the honeymoon period, but it seems like the right thing for us at this time.”
He went on to say that the length of the dead with Activision was an important factor in Bungie’s decision to sign with the publisher.
“What’s most important to Bungie is that we have the 10-year deal; because we had worked for a decade on a really big project and we said, ‘All right. Our goal is to do another decade long thing. We think that’s what we can do.’ Basically we shopped that idea around and said, ‘Hey, which publisher wants to partner with us on this?’”
Yesterday, Blizzard founder Mike Morhaime also praised Activision for its hands-off approach with the World of Warcraft developer.
