Welcome back to the scene of the crime that was committed when we solicited your questions on Monday morning. If being curious about life behind the scenes at Bungie is a crime, that makes all of you just the sort of master criminals whose company we want to keep. This week, the Bungie panel that stepped forward to collect evidence was larger than any seen by previous Mail Sacks.
Eric Brown, Senior Engineer
John Hopson, User Research Lead
Nate Hawbaker, Associate Technical Artist
Pat Jandro, Senior Cinematic Designer
Luke Ledwich, Test Engineer
Alex Loret de Mola, Engineer
Dave Matthews, Art Manager
Lorraine McLees, Artist
Robt McLees, Writer
Dan Miller, Senior Designer
Tom Sanocki, Staff Artist
Ben Thompson, Engineer
Michael Williams, Senior Engineer
Fellow crime fighters, let’s break out our forensics kits and open the Sack.
VENOM MDK Do you always answer the first question posted in the mail sack thread no matter what the subject?
No. In fact, I almost never answer the first question. It is usually asked by someone who was so desperate to be the “First!” one to post that they didn’t take the time to craft a worthy interrogative. I will, however, choose the first answer that you see, so that these features have a nice introduction.
Grizzwizz If you could be any video game villain, who would you be?
Nate Hawbaker
Veigar. I should note that I am one of the least skilled Veigar players out there. If you're in a match and your Veigar goes 0-8, that was probably me. I'd apologize, though I probably already put you on ignore before you had the chance to tell me how much I suck.
Alex Loret de Mola
"When all living beings look through our eyes, when the only sound is the wind and the thunder and the surf, when every drop of rain falls on our face, the universe will know peace." The Gravemind was seriously creepy and diabolical. If I'm to be a villain, what better than to sit patiently as an immortal entity and just eat everything. Is it lunch o'clock yet?
Lorraine McLees
The ba-bomb from Mario: simple, direct, and no fuss.
Dave Matthews
The Wizard of Yendor. Puttering around my room, taking care of my dog, reading “The Book of the Dead” at afternoon tea -- yup, that would be the life for me.
Tom Sanocki
Gannondorf - he often gets to enjoy his victories for years before he is defeated.
Michael Williams
I'd be the time clock.
Pat Jandro
Editor’s Note: Whether he realizes it or not, Jandro is channeling Tennessee Williams, who professed in tragic theatrical prose that the ultimate enemy was time itself.
Xd00999 Can you give us any more hints on Easter eggs we have not found yet?
No. I cannot. And you, beloved community, must all stop asking. I am sorry. This revival of Easter egg hysteria is entirely my fault. In a previous Sack, I allowed the panel to tease you with mentions of Halo eggs that have yet to be found. You will never find them all. We cannot give you hints. If we did, those eggs would lose their magic. You simply must stop sending me private messages, and stop dropping these questions into the Sack. The strain of lugging around the extra weight of them just might break my back.
mister death If you made a deal with the devil, what would it be?
I did! How do you think I got here?
Alex Loret de Mola
I only deal with the Robot Devil.
Nate Hawbaker
I get to run his domain as if I were him with all appropriate authority and powers one weekend a month for eternity. The first weekend, I would rewrite his side of the clause in my agreement. Then, I would create small battles with the most infamous leaders of history to see how they would play out.
Dave Matthews
"Show me the fruit that, ere 'tis pluck'd, doth rot,
And trees, whose verdure daily buds anew!"
(Deals with the devil are always a bad idea, by definition. But if you have to make a deal, you might as well go for broke)
Michael Williams
DARKWIND12 Anybody have a least favorite game? One that you picked up, played through just to be a good sport (or didn't if it's that bad) and then never touched again?
I think it would be the one that you made. No… not really. But, see how bad you felt when you read that? Do you now see why I don’t allow our panel to answer certain questions that tumble from the Sack? Here at Bungie, we seek to spread a message of love and fun about why playing games truly matters. We don’t want to tell anyone they suck. Except for cheaters. Those people suck. But they rarely make games, so they are irrelevant to your question.
AllusedUp Why is Zach Russell so awesome?
Those of you who don’t know Zach Russell should do some
clicking and some scrolling down to number eight. Those of you who do know Zach Russell are likely to agree with our panel, when they say:
He serves the best Chocolate Chunk Banana Bread EVER! And he brings ice cream... you just can't go wrong with that.
Ben Thompson
Words cannot say. Zach is epic and awesome.
Dan Miller
If Zach Russell were even slightly less awesome, the fabric of the universe would fail to hold together, causing electrons and neutrons to rip apart from each other, turning our world (and every other) into a cloud of plasma stew. So I guess he's so awesome because the universe needs him to be.
Tom Sanocki
Because he delivers me free tickets to baseball games.
Pat Jandro
His seventh inning stretch, duh.
Dave Matthews
How can you fault someone who laughs manically and rubs his hands together over every new feature?
Luke Ledwich
H0FFman J Do androids dream of electric sheep?
They do, but for only four years. Were we to engineer them with a life-span longer than that, they might develop their own emotional responses to stimuli, making them harder to control.
elmicker For which sports team would you spill the blood of your first-born?
That’s pretty dark – even for you, elmicker. The parental instinct runs deep among the fathers who work for Bungie. So that the essence of this question can be addressed, I am changing your challenge to one of spilling the blood of our enemies. Do you hear that panel? We are now spilling the blood of our enemies for a sports team.
Every sports team, I think. They are my enemies, right? Wouldn't I use any and every opportunity to spill their blood, even metaphorically?
Tom Sanocki
We just spilled blood on the field during our Bungie Softball game last night...
Pat Jandro
Vancouver Canucks. And, what do you mean would I spill blood, better to ask have I spilled blood.
Dave Matthews
Grizzled Ancients.
Michael Williams
ALI217 Does Bungie offer jobs to people who have a degree in psychiatry or psychology and know nothing about coding/animating/designing?
It just so happens that we do… in the lab. At Bungie, we don’t conduct experiments in test tubes or petri dishes. The science in which we engage unlocks the secrets buried deep within the human mind. What motivates gamers to finish the fight? What makes a player of a game feel triumphant? These are the questions that are answered by Bungie User Research, led by a man I know as
John Hopson. On Bungie.net, you know him as
Dr. Bunsen Honeydew, and he said:
We actually have two people with degrees in psychology on our user research team. Games User Research is a fairly young field, so a lot of GUR people have degrees in something different but related: psychology, sociology, human-computer interaction, etc. The research skills generally transfer pretty well, assuming the person has a sufficiently flexible mindset.
Sven Nietzsche Would you consider this to be an accurate depiction of the Bungie.net community?
If not, would the esteemed panel present us with a more accurate photo of how they see the Bungie community?
I'd expect to see a much wider variety of hats.
Michael Williams
Kidding, you are more like…
Dave Matthews
It's hard for me to humanize internet communities... I find this to be more accurate:
Pat Jandro
Editor’s Note: After a while, we don’t even see the code. All we see now is
blonde, brunette, redhead…
Johnjohns2 If a chicken wearing an "I love Bungie" t-shirt casually strode through Bungie's front door, and attempted to casually stride past Jerome, what would happen to it?
We would casually kill it with our bare hands, pluck it with our bare hands, serve it up as a crunch dinner with our bare hands, and eat it using proper utensils (we ain’t savages).
WestCoastRonin To the married people among you: What is it like juggling your job at Bungie with your family life, especially during crunch?
My wife's gotten used to it at this point in my career: at least, I think she has. We'll find out if I come home one day and both her and anything cool or interesting that I own is gone.
Alex Loret de Mola
You make sure you come home before your kids go to sleep; eat dinner with them whenever possible, but always see them, even if it's just 15 minutes. Then you can go back to work. And you schedule dates with your wife before and after crunch.
Tom Sanocki
I feel that being a bachelor is beneficial to my work habits.
Pat Jandro
Thankfully, I commute to work and eat lunch with the hubby. There were many times when the commute time was all we had together as a couple. But I'm one of a very lucky few whose better half personally understands the passion behind the work I do and is in full support of it.
Lorraine McLees
It isn't always easy. My wife works a job where she occasionally crunches as well. When one of us crunches, the other takes care of things that need doing. But when our crunches sync up, our home gets messy very very quickly. Luckily, Bungie works hard to take care of us. Bungie tries to carefully manage any times we will crunch, with planned start and end dates and real goals.
Michael Williams
I think being in a three year relationship allows me an answer here:
We are told months in advance when we'll be crunching, and for how long. The great thing is, even during those late nights when it's 10pm, you never experience that defeatist sight of looking around and seeing that you're the last one here. That breeds a pack mentality that manages to churn out amazing results.
Nate Hawbaker
onyx spartan How good of a location would Bungie HQ make for surviving the zombie apocalypse?
When Bungie is threatened by the undead, we consult
Robt McLees (depicted below). He’s the best disaster recovery expert that we have on hand for the scenario you have pitched. As someone who helped originally conceive of The Flood (I mean the infection form, not the infected forum), he spends a lot of time contemplating the right way to fend off a brain-thirsty horde.
Robt, the walkers are at our front door. We are in your capable shovel-wielding hands:
Normally, I would say that it depends entirely on the type of outbreak. Seeing that we are all essentially in one big room over here (200+ people; and not all of them smart enough to stay home when they are sick) any plan relying on Bungie HQ as a ZA stronghold is more a recipe for disaster rather than a solid strategy for defense.
With that in mind:
1. The place has too much glass. So much that it would be a liability no matter how slow and stupid the zombies are (or how honest your pals are about whether or not they are sick).
2. The building is located in a relatively dense urban area. This is not a good thing when zombies are involved.
3. There are no true choke points. The building requires a large group to effectively defend it. And if you’ve ever seen a zombie movie, you already know that large groups do not last very long.
4. The roof is accessible only by ladder/hatch. That’s awesome if the zombies are too stupid to climb. And, even if they can climb, you only have to worry about one of them at a time.
So, yeah, the only thing that Bungie HQ has going for it is roof access. But once you’re up there you’re gonna get wet. And it's not even the tallest building on the block.
Anti Gov420 I'm going to ask questions that are sure to be ignored.
And I am going to write an answer that ignores all of the questions you asked. You know what they call that? A self-fulfilling prophecy. It’s kind of like when people start sentences with: “I don’t want to make you mad, but…”
MightyMarcher01 If you had access to a time machine, where and when would you go?
I'd pull a Michael J. Fox and get my own mother to fall in love with me. You know… I don't really like that idea. I'm going to hold off on time travel until I can come up with a less gross way of causing a universe-bending paradox.
Eric Brown
I'd go forward, but can't say how far forward as I am not sure there will be much of a world to see in the future. I'd leave the past in the past. No regrets.
Pat Jandro
E3 2512, just to see what the games look like and where technology goes in the next 500 years. And, to see Mario 428 and Metal Gear Solid 322.
Dave Matthews
I would go forward in time to take a peek at my grandkids or great-grandkids and go back to the present and giggle happily. If I didn’t find them, I would have to instate some drastic changes in the present.
Lorraine McLees
The distant future, and I'd bring back designs for Mr. Fusion, and tons of future-swag.
Michael Williams
OFFICIAL AI DeeJ, my son. What if I were to tell you that everything you're doing now is nothing but a lie, and everyone you know has been paid to play along with your little games?
Dad? Did you start playing video games and not tell me? Whoever you are, that was creepy. I looked over my shoulder after I read that question, to see if Halcylon was smirking at me and counting cash (he was). I really don’t have anything to say, but I feel like people should read that question. Plus, you are my Dad after all, so you get special treatment. Thanks for teaching me to swim. Now get lost. I am working here.
thatguyaknow Who has the best poker face at Bungie?
Ling Ling.
Pat Jandro
Nate Hawbaker
FlexedCookie What makes you get up in the morning and come to work?
My 6 month old boy usually makes me get up in the morning.
Ben Thompson
An overwhelming and crippling sense of guilt. Well, not really, but I'm trying, I'm trying!
Tom Sanocki
My klaxon alarm and sometimes a dog sitting on my head.
Pat Jandro
Having the opportunity to work in the games industry.
Dave Matthews
It's good to put your alarm clock in a place where you actually need to get up out of bed to snooze it. Sometimes, it's the pleasant sound of our two kids barging into our room to say good morning and getting crushed under a pile of little elbows and knees. We work for their future, and the satisfaction of executing on a job well done.
Lorraine McLees
The black sludge of life.
Luke Ledwich
Every morning on the way to my desk, I walk past a ton of awesome concept art & screenshots posted on the walls. I love seeing the amazing stuff my teammates are building.
Michael Williams
trooper905 Why is it that when we ask a question we never get the answer we were looking for?
First Rule of Show Business: Always leave them wanting more.
If I have done my job properly, you are still suspended in a state of wanting. Nevertheless, this Sack is closed. Fortunately, there is another week that follows this one on the calendar, and it begins right after our station break – something that mortal men call a weekend. Enjoy yours. When the sun rises on Monday, look for the triumphant return of the door that leads to our mail room.