Like any great team, Bungie is the sum of its individuals. Between those very same individuals, there exists healthy rivalries, expressions of mutual inspiration, moments of celebration, and a secret desire to use one another as a human shield in the event of a zombie apocalypse. In opening the letters that tumbled from the Mail Sack this week, a theme emerged about how Bungie employees feel about one another. Here are the individuals who agreed to open their hearts and reveal their deepest feelings about their fellow developers.
Sam Arguez, Producer
Chris Carney, Senior Designer
Andrew Davis, Artist
David Gasca, Senior Test Engineer
Tom Gioconda, aka Achronos
Nate Hawbaker, Associate Technical Artist
Luke Ledwich, Test Engineer
Michael Williams, Senior Engineer
Ben Wommack, Associate Production Engineer
Hello, gentle friends. Let’s open the Sack.
dmg04 Before Bungie, what was your "epiphany" moment. What brought you to the conclusion that you wanted to do what you're doing now?
I was undecided about pursuing a more technical oriented graphics rendering position or a more art-focused position. The moment I had instant clarity is when I saw a job listing *
cough*, on bungie.net. The list of criteria for the position I now hold was quite literally everything I loved to do. Until that moment, I didn't realize that such a hybrid position existed.
Nate Hawbaker
Watching Jurassic Park had me hooked on the idea that I wanted to be in entertainment, creating something amazing out of thin air. It was a round-about journey to get from dinosaurs to interface art.
Andrew Davis
I was in the fourth grade, and we had been assigned to do a project based on the book Old Yeller. My partner and I ended up writing a small BASIC program that printed an ASCII dog onto the screen. Looking back, it was a really silly little thing to have made, but at the time I was amazed that we had been able to create a program that created art. Shortly afterwards, I stumbled across a book in the library about creating adventure games. From that point onwards, I knew I wanted to make games.
Michael Williams
I decided I was going to work in the industry when I was 10, while reading the Chrono Trigger manual in the car on the way home from Toys R Us. The good feelings that game gave me, even before I started playing, made working on videogames seem like the best way to live a happy life.
Ben Wommack
Watching my dad make a 20 pixel helicopter shoot a 4 pixel rocket across our Commodore 64 at home.
Luke Ledwich
EZcompany2ndsqd For those who are I guess newer at Bungie, How does it feel not just to be a fan anymore? But a Fan and a worker at Bungie?
As someone who is (I guess) newer at Bungie, I am going to hoard this question from the panel and enjoy it all by myself. The feeling is just as surreal as you would expect. On any given day, you can be walking the floor and cross paths with someone you remember from countless ViDocs or media appearances that you scrutinized over a decade of waiting for Halo titles. Other people speak names when they introduce themselves that you had only read in print previously. It can be hard to maintain your dignity in line for coffee, and you never want to make excited eye contact in the restroom. With this sense of awe comes a self-imposed burden of responsibility. When you come into Bungie from the realm of fandom, you bring with you a mission to keep the Bungie community experience as cool as it ever was.
Hylebos What's the strangest or most humorous glitch or error that you've encountered in one of your games during development?
There have been lots of those, but I still think one of the better glitches was the Halo: Combat Evolved Marine using a Needler to taunt (shoot at) the body of a dead Elite... only to cause the needles to super-combine and kill the taunting marine. Particularly in the Keyes escort mission when Keyes did it.
Tom Gioconda
Look in my two eyes.
Andrew Davis
Not exactly a glitch, but during the development of Sandtrap, the Elephant was given temporary sound effects until we could hook up the real assets. It was amazing fighting on the map and suddenly hearing the distant sound of Herb Alpert's "Spanish Flea" getting louder and louder, as the Elephant approached.
Michael Williams
On Reach, in New Alexandria, one of the civilians went all ET when she took damage.
Sam Arguez
I've been waiting to show this off for years. During ODST, there was a content bug where Dare's textures were mismatched, creating a horrific demon in human skin with white eyes and a mouth on her ponytail.
Ben Wommack
Watching the entire studio crash from the balcony. You can’t help but laugh, watching every monitor turn an angry red.
Luke Ledwich
Anonym0us Who is the one person at Bungie that everyone can look to for inspiration or advice on any subject?
ONE person? It wouldn't be Bungie if we couldn't go to just about EVERYONE here for inspiration and advice. (Anyone who answers otherwise is off my list.)
Andrew Davis
Every day, I'm surprised at how wide everyone's skill set is. Traditionally, an engineer will have excellent knowledge of just engineering. This is the only working environment I've been in where I can discuss rendering costs with a concept artist, and artistic merits with an engineer. I think it's that constant edge-bleeding of abilities that helps us craft extremely informed problem solving and innovation.
Nate Hawbaker
Marty. He's certain to have an opinion on whatever you need. Admittedly, the advice may not be good advice, but it will always be inspirational.
Tom Gioconda
One of the joys of working here is that you can start up a conversation with anyone, and come away with amazing ideas. For the purposes of the question, I'll just choose someone recent I had a conversation with: Steve Lopez. He has a huge range of knowledge on tons of topics.
Michael Williams
Joshua Rodgers, once Production Engineer turned Tools Engineer. I maintain he knows everything and only holds back information so we children may better ourselves through self-discovery.
Ben Wommack
Probably Pete Parsons. It’s always inspiring to see someone cheerful in any situation.
Luke Ledwich
defnop552 Does Pete Parsons still work at Bungie?
I love it when you guys cancel each other out.
AcedannyK 7 Does the studio celebrate employee birthdays at Bungie? If so, how?
On any given day, the eerie silence might be broken by a jubilant cry similar to “Hey everyone! It’s Acedanny’s Birthday!” This always triggers an enthusiastic round of applause all across the sprawling maze of desks. Coincidently, dropping something heavy on the floor is answered with the same response. All of these stories are true.
Big Black Bear Historically, developers and testers make up one of the bitterest adversarial relationships known to man... How would you classify that relationship at Bungie?
When you crave context for the test culture that rules the march of progress at Bungie, you debrief one
David Gasca, who is at this moment doing me the favor of clearing this very Sack of typos and dangerous misinformation. Let’s see if he will notice this gap in our conversation and fill in the blanks:
One of the best things about being in test at Bungie is that the testers work very closely with everyone here - much more closely than many other places I’ve worked. Test is involved in a lot features from almost the very beginning. We sit in on spec reviews, we give feedback, watch the feature come online, then test the crap out of it. It’s very common to see testers and engineers hanging out at each other’s desks talking about bugs, or new features coming online. Regardless of discipline, the goal is to make sure we have the best possible product go out the door. People from all disciplines appreciate that, it makes it easy to work together. That doesn’t mean we haven’t seen our share of snide comments in the thick of crunch.
burritosenior Who designed Blood Gulch and who named it?
Look at you, Burrito! You finally asked a Blood Gulch question that doesn’t make me roll my eyes. When you crave trivia about classic Halo multiplayer maps, you make a pilgrimage to the oracle that is known to the faithful as
Chris Carney. I made this trek, just for you, into the fabled canyon of scorched earth. Here are the historical gems that he dragged from the depths of his war-torn mind:
I designed the ground, roads, hills, and cliffs and also did the finishing of the Gulch. However, someone else did the bases (I just textured those) and slapped a name on it. If I had to guess, I would say it was Hardy LeBel.
SPARKSFLY2000 How can I hold lightning in my hand like you?
Were you not warned against playing with electricity as a child? Yeah, neither were we. Our halls are filled with brave developers who monkey with the destructive forces of nature every day. We are always seeking equally foolish souls on our
Careers Page. Give it a read. Do any of those Required Skills remind you of your special gifts? If not, you could always fly a kite adorned with a key. Or, seek education in an arena of relevant study that represents a cherished passion that we can exploit.
All of humanity Who are the unsung heroes at Bungie?
I thought this would be an infinite regress of who is responsible for allowing other people to work, until I got to Jerome. I think it could be said that anyone at the studio may not be here if it weren't for preventative measures taken by Jerome.
Nate Hawbaker
The testers. I'm fairly certain they're going to kill us all one day, given that they have to deal with all manner of craziness being thrown at them constantly.
Tom Gioconda
Probably our Admins and HR. They keep us running. Without them there's no way we'd survive.
Andrew Davis
The test team isn't unsung, but the song can always be sung louder. I think the quality and drive of our test team is one of the most important factors to our success. Another relatively unsung group of heroes is the Audio team, who has often ended up working the most brutal crunch cycles, due to the narrow window where audio gets finalized before release. They work amazingly hard.
Michael Williams
Definitely the admin, HR, and security staff - pretty much everyone who doesn't actually work on games. The reason the rest of us can focus so much on projects is because they're handling all of the other work details so well. We would starve without them.
Ben Wommack
The Snack Fairies
Luke Ledwich
EAGLES5 What kinds of magazines do you guys read in the break room?
What’s a break? For that matter, what is a magazine? Do you mean those things that feed bullets into rifles? Doesn’t sound like very good reading to me.
RigZ Boi My hate for you is stronger than a mother bear's love for her new-born cubs. Thoughts?
I think that you suck at metaphors. If you wanted to talk hate, you should have alluded to the fact that father bears eat their newborn cubs, so that they won’t compete with him for their mother’s attention. That might have wounded me where my esteem resides. The way you phrased it enabled me to run home to fond memories from my childhood, in which I was raised by bears.
coolmike699 What's the strangest thing a fan has ever sent you?
I haven't seen anything too odd from fans, they're usually extremely awesome. We still have poetry sent in from a fan hanging in our kitchen - it's great!
Nate Hawbaker
Lots of poems, raging voicemails, poorly-worded attempts at death threats, slabs of meat and other foodstuffs could suffice for an answer; but the strangest/most memorable was probably the crate of alcohol from someone who wanted to get rid of his booze but didn't want to just throw it away. Security "confiscated" the open containers. Riiiiight.
Tom Gioconda
If I remember this correctly, it was just after Halo 2 when we got a package from France. In it were a few Barbie and Ken dolls, messily dressed up and painted as Cortana and some Marines. There were notes scratched on a few pieces of paper in French, but the most disturbing part were the photos of the dolls they included... I'll leave it at that.
Andrew Davis
At some point, our Spanish-speaking fan-base decided that I spoke Spanish (I do not). I could only stare bemusedly at my XBL messages, and regret that I couldn't read their (presumably) kind words. I'm still not entirely sure where they got the idea, but I still get occasional messages to this day.
Michael Williams
I think the incoherent Xbox LIVE messages are the strangest.
Luke Ledwich
The custom-made, life-size cake of Master Chief's helmeted head, which probably cost hundreds of dollars to have commissioned. No one wanted to try eating any because it was so weird.
Ben Wommack
Koolen What is beyond the boundary of space itself?
Stuff, I guess. Isn’t stuff the opposite of space? Don’t we always say that we need more space for our stuff?
insaneAssass1n9 If you could switch jobs with one other Bungie employee, assuming you had the required skill set for that job, who would you switch with and why?
Probably one of the concept artists, because I really do wish I had their required skill set. They do beautiful work.
Andrew Davis
Dan Miller, one of our senior designers, and creator of the infamous trench run at the end of Halo 3. His work always seems to be among my favorite parts in any of our games.
Ben Wommack
I've always been in awe of the concept artists on our team. The quality of their work and the speed at which they create images is incredible. I'd love to have the ability to take the scenes I see in my head, and turn it into images (rather than my current line-art scribbling).
Michael Williams
There's this guy, I'm not sure if you're familiar with him, I think he goes by DeeJ. From what I can tell from my observations, he spins in his chair all day whilst occasionally muttering deeply existential questions to himself. That seems like a pretty solid gig.
Nate Hawbaker
Editor’s Note: I only do that when one of you posts something mean or stupid on the forum.
Malfar Has anyone there ever secretly wished that Bungie was located in a milder climate?
As someone who just migrated here from Chicago, where it was -20 degrees in the winter and 100 degrees in the summer, I would say that a climate that is 40 degrees and rainy for nine months out of any year is pretty freaking mild.
BeguiledEnd Gimme ALL YO CASH FOO!
This is not a question. While a request in nature, it is more like a command. And, No.
HWJohn If each employee had the choice of one weapon and one fellow employee to use as a human shield to protect him/her self from the zombie apocalypse, what would their choices be?
My weapon would be an anti-zombie raygun. With that, I wouldn't need a human shield.
Andrew Davis
Weapon: A light tank loaded up with a lot of fuel. Don't even worry about the main gun, just roll over the top of the zombie hordes on your way to shelter. Make sure to have some machine gun rounds available just-in-case.
Human Shield: Robt McLees - Our resident zombie expert. If I've got him with me, I estimate my chances of survival increase 5000%. Plus, if the tank is a terrible idea, he will let me know.
Michael Williams
I'd take a gravity hammer to knock back the hordes, and enlist Dom, our resident test guru, as my shield. Because Dom is a robot, and doesn't need to eat, sleep, or leave the office, he will be immune to infection.
Ben Wommack
I think a good old fire axe. Anything else would run out of ammo. I would probably choose Andrew Harrison for the human shield. Once he had out lived his usefulness (or turned), I am sure I could outrun his gimpy knee.
Luke Ledwich
Anybody not saying "shotgun" here for their weapon is both wrong and possibly already a zombie.
Tom Gioconda
Poy Poy How about a mandatory 10 minutes a day where all of the employees roam the forums?
How about a video game that will never be ready for anyone to play?
antony X1000 Is the studio pretty much one big open room, like the previous one was?
I don’t answer questions about our facility unless bribed.
(Opens next letter, with contains a question and a crisp twenty dollar bill.)
Lekesa Do you still have limited walls to create an open environment?
We do still have limited walls to create an open environment. Good question! Here is a view of our studio from the
About Us page of Bungie.net. You can browse the rest of them as they auto-load on the page.
When I tell my friends back home about what is like to work at Bungie, I describe our space as a Day Care Center on a Star Destroyer. The development floor is a magical place, bristling with screens that display wonders that would get me terminated faster than a freedom fighter from the future if I were to tell you about them. The great thing about where we work is that people always have access to one another to share ideas or to dig each other’s work.
HEDGE 071 What is the greatest compliment a team member can receive from others working in the studio?
If you look up and discover someone behind you, just staring at the stuff you've got running on your screen, you know that you've done something well. When a crowd starts naturally gathering around someone’s desk, you know that something amazing has been created.
Michael Williams
"That's going in game!?" ...said with positive connotations, of course.
Nate Hawbaker
I really liked the bottle of whiskey that showed up on my desk after a pretty grueling milestone deadline. I think I teared up a little.
Andrew Davis
That's a tough one; it's different for so many people. The most general compliment would be something like "He / she gets stuff done." The idea that the rest of the team can rely upon a person without concern or question.
Ben Wommack
JABBERWOCK xeno Any chance once we get weekly updates going again, we could have a weekly Q&A as well?
That’s it. I quit.
(drops the mic on the stage – walks off)
Fear not, Bungie Community. I will likely regret my hasty resignation in the morning, and beg for my old job back. That’s means that the Mail Sack will return next week, starved for your usual tidal wave of interrogation. Keep your eyes trained on Bungie.net, or our point of presence on your social networking channel of choice to be alerted about your next chance to put us to the question.